Food Justice in the City | Report on Black Farmers and Urban Growers Conference

Moderator’s Note: It is our privilege to present a guest blog prepared by
Jacqueline A. Smith, a Chicago-based urban farmer and food justice
activist with roots in the African American sharecropper community.  Ms. Smith recently
attended the Black Farmers and Urban Growers (BUGs) conference in Detroit and
offers an insightful report on the proceedings. She emphasizes two themes
that defined this important gathering: The resurgence of Africanness and
Indigeneity as expressed through food justice activism in the urban agriculture
movement. This resurgence involves making connections to our past, including our heritage cuisines, in order to strengthen our community autonomy and health. Smith observes how the conference participants explored and shared strategies of community
sustainability and homage to ancestors who grew food before them. This revolutionary idea empowers the struggle for food justice by recognizing the wisdom of our elders and valuing their deep ancestral knowledge of how to eat rightly and justly.

Another message Smith offers is something the anti-GMO movement needs to hear and think about: Discussion at
the conference acknowledged that “the food system has been broken before the start of giant
ag companies like Monsanto and ConAgra.” Indeed, the history of white settler colonialism and slavery included the widespread suppression and destruction of indigenous foods and foodways in an assault every bit as violent and displacing as the threats posed by GMO crops controlled by a handful of transnational corporations. For indigenous and people of color communities, the food system was broken some 500 years ago. The resurgence of organizations like BUGs is our collective action response to that assault and represents our ability to decolonize our food system by knowing the past, our food heritage, as future tense.

We are very pleased to
add a new voice to our Environmental and Food Justice blog. Please look for
future contributions from Ms. Smith to the Food Justice in the City series. We agree with her vision that dialogue and
joint action on the part of all indigenous and people of color communities strengthens the
environmental and food justice movement. 

The photos were selected by the site moderator as being consistent with the message of this guest blog.

Africanness and Indigeneity

THE BLACK FARMERS AND URBAN GROWERS CONFERENCE

  

“There is no culture without agriculture.” 

Jacqueline A. Smith | Detroit, MI | December 1, 2014

An elder at the 2014
Black Farmers and Urban Growers (BUGs) conference in Detroit summed up the
significance of the event saying, “There is no culture without agriculture.”
BUGs is an organization composed of individuals devoting their energies to
building networks and support for urban and rural growers.  The organization utilizes education and
advocacy centered on food and farm issues.  The conferences are gatherings created to magnify the
connection between food and the Black community by empowering growers,
activists, and those involved in food. 
The conference website (http://www.blackurbangrowers.org) provides the event’s theme: “Sankofa:
 Green in Black, Honoring Our Past
as We Move Towards the Future”. 
The essence of those words go beyond the culture of agriculture to
express what the past is bringing for the future in the black farming
community.

As an urban farmer in
Chicago and the descendant of a rural grower, my experience at the BUGs
conference was unlike any other I have attended.  I found parts of my triumphs and challenges are similar to
other growers.  The atmosphere was
filled with farmers of African descent engaged in fellowship as well as
dialogue concerning food justice, land stewardship, strategies of community
sustainability and homage to ancestors who grew food before them. 

The dialogue came from
seasoned, inexperienced, women, men, national and international farmers sharing
their victories as cultivators growing vegetable and fruit crops  as well as their challenges of land
ownership, battles against industrial agricultural companies, and the
injustices they face in the broken food system.  The keynote speakers are not individuals with agendas of
scholarly pursuit. They possess indigenous knowledge  and have a sense of familiarity with conference attendees because
the speakers also grow, prepare and secure food for their communities. 

As the descendant of a
sharecropper, I am creating vegetable oases in the Chicago food mirage I live
in to nurture my community which  is
negatively impacted by the  capitalist food system.  I also relate through my Africanness and my indigeneity  as I experience the dynamics of the
food justice frame and watch politics affect those uneducated about food they
consume.

Urban
gardener in Detroit. Photo credit: geovanni169

The Black Farmer and
Urban Growers conference is a significant event that needs to be shared with
others. There are many lenses that I observed the conference through but the
ones I choose for this blog post are Africanness, indigeneity and politics of
the food justice frame.  These
lenses I speak to are from the words and the actions of the conference
participants who shared their thoughts and experiences.  Keynote speakers Ladonna Sanders
Redmond (urban gardener/activist) Barbara Norman (blueberry farmer) and Chef
Bryant Terry (food advocate) provided insight on these topics during their dynamic
presentations. 

Africanness and the
Food Justice Frame

The cultures of Africa
were emphasized at the conference. The agricultural practices of the Black
farmers at the BUGs conference represent ties to Africa by sharing their
non-industrial agricultural methods of food production and holistic means of
sustainability  Farmers from South
Africa and Kenya shared their strategies of sustainable efforts at land
stewardship for food cultivation which sparked fellowship and encouraged
conversations of personal stories of feeding families and communities.

There were talks
concerning how Black farming communities have been sustained for generations
using seed saving and permaculture designs specific to their needs.  Attendees engaged in African traditions
such as libations, African drumming and dance during the conference These
traditions celebrate life and victories in the community.  These practices involve the  beginning of life in Africa, the youth,
giving homage to the ancestors and acknowledging those that paved the way for
all people of indigenous descent. 

Barbara Norman and
Africanness

Barbara Norman, a
sixth generation blueberry farmer from Covert, Michigan, made two important statements:
“we remember whom we came from” and “plant with love and power”.  These statements give insight to many
African cultures.  Her statements
spoke to her emphasis on how garden teachings to youth are crucial to remember
who we are as people of the land and the blessing we receive helping people by
growing food.  Ms. Norman explained
the importance of knowing the soil 
and preparing the land for future generations. 

As she spoke, I
observed how the audience agreed with her words because Black growers are
standing on their Africanness in order to progress in the food justice
movement. Ms. Norman’s statements are the essence of Sankofa which in the Akan
language of Ghana translates to ‘reach back and get it’ and it shows how people
of African and other descents look at their past to learn for the future.

Lohren
Nzoma and Lawrence at D-Town Farm.

Photo courtesy of:  Be
Black and Green

Indigeneity and the
Food Justice Frame

According to the group
Cultural Survival, an organization advocating for Indigenous People’s rights,
“Indigenous peoples are often thought of as the primary stewards of the planets
biological resources.  Their ways
of life and cosmovisions have contributed to the protection of the natural
environment on which they depend on. 
Indigenous communities and the environments they maintain are
increasingly under assault from mining, oil, dam building, logging and
agro-industrial projects.” 

The Black farmers at
the BUGs conference epitomize this situation since they currently practice the
ways of African native people to promote food justice and are under attack by
the capitalist system.   

Attendees at the
conference shared the importance of preserving heirloom seeds from their crops as
their African ancestors did in order to continue the original genetic characteristics
of vegetable plants.  This practice
also shows resistance to the dominance of genetically modified food.  Seed preservation was a survival skill
of the native people that sustained the African indigenous communities. Their
descendants are redeveloping this skill after the negative impact of industrial
agriculture.  Almost all the
attendees spoke about the variety of vegetables they grow in the land such as
kale, collards, tomatoes, potatoes, cabbage, corn, berries, and medicinal
herbs. 

These practices mirror
what indigenous people have done for centuries.   Our ancestors preserved the land’s natural ecosystem
by enhancing biodiversity in the soil by growing a diversification of
crops.  Black farmers are keeping
these native traditions alive as a strategy in the food justice movement.

Chef Bryant Terry and
Indigeneity

Food justice activist
and grower Ladonna Sanders Redmond stated that “We have to return to the
kitchen of our ancestors”.  Keynote
speaker and author of several books including Afro-Vegan Chef Bryant Terry emphasized this perspective in his
food demonstration at the BUGs conference.  As he prepared an African vegan dish he spoke  about how his culinary career began
assisting his grandmother with home-cooked meals of fresh foods from the
garden.

The audience related
to his story as if it were their own since many Black people began their
cooking skills in the kitchen of our elders who passed on indigenous traditions
of growing fresh foods and unique cooking methods.  He explained how it is better to create spice mixes of fresh
ingredients (that was done for generations) as opposed to buying them from
commercial grocers.  His
demonstration of grinding spices using a mortar and pestle also takes us back
to ancestral ways. That explanation is what I recognized as a way to take
charge, a powerful means of liberation from the commercial, colonized diets
that we have relied on for years.

Chef Terry also showed
a video from his Youtube cooking show, Urban Organic that featured  a community aquaponics garden in the middle of Oakland. The
garden did not use electricity to operate and was completely sustainable.  Self-sustaining gardens have been
created and operated by our Black ancestors for years and are becoming a
prominent way to decolonize our diets going forward in the food justice
movement.

Politics and the Food
Justice Movement

The broken food system
and the challenges to acquire land were central topics brought up among urban
and rural growers alike at the BUGs event.  Power within the Black farming community has been recognized
as something that does not solely belong to the community because of dominating
capitalist agriculture forces and unfavorable government policy.

It was acknowledged at
the conference that the food system has been broken before the start of giant
ag companies like Monsanto and ConAgra. It broke with the start of colonialism
in African countries and the mechanism of harsh slave labor to obtain
profit  from cash crops.  During the large collaborative group
discussion growers from Chicago and Detroit shared defeats from municipal
entities. 

Chicago growers talked
about how the city bulldozed productive vegetable plots  without any warning destroying crops
and natural ecosystems.  Detroit
growers told how they were able to buy their own land and properties only to
lose them due to extreme tax increase that forced them to foreclose on their
properties and give up their land. 
These political forces were recognized as barriers that prevent people
of African indigenous cultures from reaching a level of true freedom. 

The conference was a
vehicle to release frustrations as farmers of color seek wisdom from fellow
cultivators and work to build for future generations despite a broken food system.

Ladonna Sanders
Redmond and Politics in the Food Justice Frame

Ladonna Sanders
Redmond spoke to the idea that “Politics is personal” on the opening night of
the BUGs conference.   I
recognized her as a powerhouse of wisdom and information on how to overcome the
political boundaries that limit people of color from having access to fresh
food.  She shared her story of
starting out in the food justice movement as an urban grower on Chicago’s
poverty-stricken, newly gentrified, west side growing fresh unprocessed foods
for her son who suffered from severe food allergies. 

Ladonna
Sanders Redmond.

Photo
courtesy of: Our Kitchen
Table

The cost of organic
food from mainstream grocers like Whole Foods was unreasonable for her and lack
of organic food access in her community forced her to not take ‘no’ for an
answer from government officials. 
She took matters in her hands by growing food on the city lots in her
neighborhood; an act that was not only a benefit to her family but to the
members of her community who were employed to cultivate the land in order to
provide produce on a larger scale. 
Mrs. Redmond networked with individuals who were close to the food
security issue like herself and shared the knowledge with those who were
uninformed of the issues which created an entity that was not solely reliant on
outside political power.

She emphasized three
things:  sustainability cannot be
bought, cheap food plus cheap land equals wealth for someone else,  and cooperative economics is needed in
the Black farm community.  Mrs.
Redmond’s story moved the audience of farmers and inspired a young, Black
female urban farmer like myself to continue in the food justice movement with
increased self-reliant power and unshakable faith to feed the community and
carry on the native traditions of stewarding the land to grow food.

The BUGs
conference reflected my role as an urban farmer and the descendant of a rural
indigenous grower. The conference is a significant event that must be shared
with individuals of all cultures struggling to own land and have food access.
The Africanness, indigeneity and political topics of this blog post reflect the
food justice movement from my perspective, morals and ethics as a Black farmer.

The
conference provides a voice for the Black farmers and farmers of color to share
their thoughts and experiences in the movement.  It is my hope that they will encourage a stronger connection
between indigenous cultures to cultivate food and heal the land the ancestors
left for us to cherish as we move forward in the food justice movement.