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Farming While Black: African Diasporic Wisdom for Farming and Food Justice

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Online presentation by Naima Penniman of Soul Fire Farm. Attendees are encouraged to come and go as they like, but please be respectful of our speaker by muting their microphones outside of the question and answer session.

 

Hosted by the Graduate Program in Sustainable Agriculture

 

Some of our most cherished sustainable farming practices – from organic agriculture to the farm cooperative and the CSA – have roots in African wisdom. Yet, discrimination and violence against African-American farmers has led to our decline from 14 percent of all growers in 1920 to less than 2 percent today, with a corresponding loss of over 14 million acres of land.  Further, Black communities suffer disproportionately from illnesses related to lack of access to fresh food and healthy natural ecosystems. Soul Fire Farm, cofounded by author, activist, and farmer Leah Penniman, is committed to ending racism and injustice in our food system. Through programs such as the Black-Indigenous Farmers Immersion, a sliding-scale farmshare CSA, and Youth Food Justice leadership training, Soul Fire Farm is part of a global network of farmers working to increase farmland stewardship by people of color, restore Afro-indigenous farming practices, and end food apartheid. And now, with the book Farming While Black, Soul Fire Farm extends that work by offering the first comprehensive manual for African-heritage people ready to reclaim our rightful place of dignified agency in the food system. Join us to learn how you too can be part of the movement for food sovereignty and help build a food system based on justice, dignity, and abundance for all members of our community.

 

Naima Penniman is a multi-dimensional artist, movement builder, healer, grower and educator committed to planetary health and community resilience. She is the Program Director at SOUL FIRE FARM, where she coordinates Afro-Indigenous farming immersions and workshops to equip hundreds of adults and youth annually with the land-based skills needed to reclaim leadership as farmers and food justice organizers in their communities, to heal their relationship with earth, and to imagine bolder futures. She is the Co-Founder of WILDSEED Community Farm & Healing Village, a Black and Brown-led intentional community focused on ecological collaboration, transformative justice, and intergenerational responsibility. She is also the Co-Founder/Co-Artistic Director of CLIMBING POETREE, an internationally-acclaimed performance duo that uses art as a tool for popular education, community activism, and personal transformation. Naima is devoted to subverting injustice, igniting imagination, and cultivating collaborations that elevate the healing of our earth, ourselves, our communities, lineages and descendants.