Black Farmers Promote Education and Awareness in the Hudson Valley

Efforts to reclaim Black agricultural heritage are reshaping the landscape in the Hudson Valley.

Karen Washington says that growing a tomato changed her world.

“I didn’t know it grew on a vine,” recalls Washington, a founder of Rise & Root Farm, an organic farm in Chester. “I had never seen vegetables grown before.”

The simple act of growing a bright red tomato led New York City-bred Washington on an unexpected path to becoming a farmer and a leading activist in the fight for food justice. The two-time James Beard Award-winner is part of a burgeoning movement in the Hudson Valley to revive and reclaim the agricultural heritage that had been taken from Black people as a result of slavery and land dispossession.

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Growing food for Washington, a former physical therapist, was painful at first because, to her, farming connotated slavery. But she loved the garden and farm stories of her patients, many of whom had been raised in the South. “I took that wisdom and energy with me,” she says, “how going back to the land can be a source of reclamation, of resilience, instead of a stem of hurt, stress, and negativity.”

Washington began a community gardening movement in the Bronx, turning empty lots into plots, and a city farms market (both of which are thriving today), before starting Rise & Root with three friends in 2014. It supplies restaurants, farmers’ markets, and community food programs in the borough as well as the Guild of St. Margaret, a soup kitchen in Middletown.

Karen Washington co-founded Rise & Root Farm in Chester.
Karen Washington co-founded Rise & Root Farm in Chester. Photo by Ethan Harrison.

The History of Black Farming

Black people were brought from Africa to this country against their will for their agricultural knowledge and expertise beginning in 1619. Though slavery was outlawed by 1865, ongoing physical danger and Jim Crow laws caused many to move from the South during what’s known as The Great Migration, which took place between 1910-1970. In doing so, they lost their land, livelihoods, and sense of selves, which were connected to agriculture.

Starting over was formidable. Black people encountered systemic racism, like redlining, when banks refused to give mortgages to residents of certain neighborhoods based on government maps, making it extremely difficult to own land, farm, and live. They wound up living and working in urban environments, surroundings unfamiliar to them.

In New York, formerly enslaved Black people began farming in 1640 when the Dutch gave them stolen Lenape land. By 1910, the state had 295 Black growers.

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Going back to the land can be a source of reclamation, of resilience, instead of a stem of hurt, stress, and negativity.
Going back to the land can be a source of reclamation, of resilience, instead of a stem of hurt, stress, and negativity. Adobe Stock / Costas.

That number dramatically decreased over the next century despite the Black population rising to more than three million. Similar declines occurred across the country; in the 1920s, Black farmers comprised 14 percent of farmers. Today that figure is less than 2 percent. The 2022 USDA Agriculture census shows 157 Black farmers in New York, up slightly from 139 in the 2017 census.

Black Farming in Our Own Backyard

There’s been a “big change to the landscape,” says Leah Penniman, co-executive director and farm director of Soul Fire Farm (SFF), an Afro-Indigenous-centered community farm in Grafton. There were no other Black and Brown-led farms nearby in 2010 when SFF was founded; today there are at least 10 within a 90-minute radius of the farm.

It’s estimated that there are at least 40 BIPOC farms in the Hudson Valley, according to Christine Hutchinson, a former chicken farmer, Black Land Stewardship Cultivation co-director of Northeast Farmers of Color Land Trust (NEFOC), and co-president of Black Farmers United NYS. However, she believes that number is undercounted, as some farmers don’t want to be associated with the federal government, which administers the census, while others may not think it applies to them.

Before founding SFF, Penniman, her husband, and two young children lived in a previously redlined neighborhood in Albany’s South End. With no access to a car, they walked miles roundtrip to pick up their CSA share, balancing bags of produce atop a stroller. They appreciated having healthy food and a connection to the earth.

When their neighbors learned the pair had farming experience, they asked them to start a farm. The intention was to sustain a family farm that supplied neighbors. But they were surprised, says Penniman, by “the immense interest” in learning how to farm among people of color.

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SFF has evolved from a volunteer staff into a 501(c)(3) cooperative with 18 full and parttime, seasonal, and year-round employees that steward seven acres of its 80-acre property. Offerings include solidarity shares (a no- and low-cost doorstep food delivery program), an urban gardening program, farm education classes, farm-to-table cooking immersions, builders training, and an 18-month fellowship for career-ready farmers.

farming
Adobe Stock / Alfribeiro

It was so beautiful to stand here and say that you grow this food that is so magnificent, and it’s going to be given to people who look like me.

SFF is also involved in public education and policy work regionally, nationally, and internationally, and has helped build NEFOC and Black Farmer Fund, co-founded by Washington, to connect growers to land, and financial and technical assistance. The debt relief given to disadvantaged farmers in the Inflation Reduction Act was “a big win,” enthuses Penniman, and a result of SFF and partner organizing.

Washington has also established Black Urban Growers, a conference for both urban and rural Black farmers, and she recently created a distribution hub for small BIPOC (and queer) Hudson Valley farms that provides them with top dollar for their produce and a market they would not otherwise reach.

These organizations are born out of necessity, says Hutchinson, who conducts advocacy work, educating legislators on Black farmers’ needs—from land access to helping change how the state reaches out to and connects with them. ”A lot of time, people don’t know about [available funding] opportunities because things spread through word of mouth,” she explains.

Leah Penniman is the author of the book, Farming While Black.
Leah Penniman is the author of the book, Farming While Black. Photo by Janel Mosely.

Hutchinson, who is also a teacher in Newburgh, founded AgriCultural Education, a character and life skills development program for BIPOC high schoolers there. Students learn all about farming in class and in the dirt; the thousands of pounds of produce they grow goes to student-chosen food pantries.

All of this adds up, says Penniman, to “an ecosystem of support for rising generation farmers in the Northeast.”

Washington thinks of her ancestors and intends to continue to uplift Black agriculture and ensure others can have a fair chance to farm. She shares a recent field experience, surrounded by a mound of collards, kale, and broccoli. “It was so beautiful,” she says tearfully, “to stand here and say that you grow this food that is so magnificent and it’s going to be given to people who look like me, who would never be able to experience food this beautiful, that is so rich, so good. And we did it with our own hands.”

Related: Regional Food Bank Hudson Valley Opens New Distribution Center in Montgomery

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