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A Brief History of Discrimination against Black Farmers—Including by the USDA

The Equation

Following the formation of the USDA in 1862 and the abolishment of slavery in 1865, many formerly enslaved African Americans pursued independent farming. However, most of the land offered was of poor quality and was not suitable for farming. Let’s backtrack to the post-Civil War era Enslaved people had limited access to land.

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Black Earth: A Family’s Journey from Enslavement to Reclamation

Civil Eats

In the months before Patrick Brown was born in November 1982, his father, Arthur, lay down on a road near the familys farm to prevent a caravan of yellow dump trucks from depositing toxic soil in his community. Patrick currently operates Brown Family Farms on the land that Byron worked as a sharecropper once he was freed.

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The Future of Resilient Agricultural Communities in California Is Alive in Allensworth

The Equation

We must not forget that at that time the economic options for Black Americans were scarcely more than sharecropping on former plantations or brutal industrial labor in northern cities; political and social freedoms were systematically denied. Community leaders are now in conversation with the corporation that owns the pistachio farm.

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Q&A: A New Book Tells the Story of Food, From the Civil Rights Movement to Now

Daily Yonder

Each week, Path Finders features a Q&A with a rural thinker, creator, or doer. So I show how the North Bolivar County Farm cooperative in many ways is a direct response to the ways in which food was withheld from Black communities. DY: You write that the North Bolivar County Farm Cooperative left no physical trace.

Food 81
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California Will Help BIPOC Collective Cultivate Land Access for Underserved Farmers

Civil Eats

Surrounded by low-income apartments, senior housing, and the cheerful hum of an elementary school playground, We Grow Farms is an unlikely yet central landmark in West Sacramento. Leased through the West Sacramento Urban Farm Program , the regenerative urban oasis attracts nearby residents, students, and plenty of honeybees.

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Oral History Project Preserves Black and Indigenous Food Traditions

Civil Eats

The heirloom gardens project, a collaboration between Princeton University, Spelman College’s Food Studies program, and Ujamaa Cooperative Farming Alliance , aims to memorialize their long-held expertise and culturally meaningful foods. A lot of Black and Indigenous farmers are working full-time jobs and farming on weekends and at night.

Food 111
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Brea Baker on the Legacy of Stolen Farmland in America

Civil Eats

She was left with half-opened conversations, but they created enough of a blueprint for her to begin piecing together the Baker familys multigenerational farming legacy through historical research. ” Bakers book is a memoir, a history, and an argument for Black Americans to return to rural life. .

Farmland 131