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Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farm's Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land
Recipient of the 28th Heinz Awards for the Leah Penniman James Beard Foundation Leadership Award 2019: Leah Penniman Choice Reviews , Outstanding Academic Title "An extraordinary book...part agricultural guide, part revolutionary manifesto."― VOGUE Named a "Best Book on Sustainable Living and Sustainability" by Book Riot In 1920, 14 percent of all land-owning US farmers were black. Today less than 2 percent of farms are controlled by black people―a loss of over 14 million acres and the result of discrimination and dispossession. While farm management is among the whitest of professions, farm labor is predominantly brown and exploited, and people of color disproportionately live in “food apartheid” neighborhoods and suffer from diet-related illness. The system is built on stolen land and stolen labor and needs a redesign.
Farming While Black is the first comprehensive “how to” guide for aspiring African-heritage growers to reclaim their dignity as agriculturists and for all farmers to understand the distinct, technical contributions of African-heritage people to sustainable agriculture. At Soul Fire Farm, author Leah Penniman co-created the Black and Latinx Farmers Immersion (BLFI) program as a container for new farmers to share growing skills in a culturally relevant and supportive environment led by people of color. Farming While Black organizes and expands upon the curriculum of the BLFI to provide readers with a concise guide to all aspects of small-scale farming, from business planning to preserving the harvest. Throughout the chapters Penniman uplifts the wisdom of the African diasporic farmers and activists whose work informs the techniques described―from whole farm planning, soil fertility, seed selection, and agroecology, to using whole foods in culturally appropriate recipes, sharing stories of ancestors, and tools for healing from the trauma associated with slavery and economic exploitation on the land. Woven throughout the book is the story of Soul Fire Farm, a national leader in the food justice movement.
The technical information is designed for farmers and gardeners with beginning to intermediate experience. For those with more experience, the book provides a fresh lens on practices that may have been taken for granted as ahistorical or strictly European. Black ancestors and contemporaries have always been leaders―and continue to lead―in the sustainable agriculture and food justice movements. It is time for all of us to listen. "A moving and powerful how-to book for Black farmers to reclaim the occupation and the contributions of the BIPOC community that introduced sustainable agriculture."―BookRiot.com "Leah Penniman is . . . opening the door for the next generation of farmers."―CBS This Morning
Farming While Black is the first comprehensive “how to” guide for aspiring African-heritage growers to reclaim their dignity as agriculturists and for all farmers to understand the distinct, technical contributions of African-heritage people to sustainable agriculture. At Soul Fire Farm, author Leah Penniman co-created the Black and Latinx Farmers Immersion (BLFI) program as a container for new farmers to share growing skills in a culturally relevant and supportive environment led by people of color. Farming While Black organizes and expands upon the curriculum of the BLFI to provide readers with a concise guide to all aspects of small-scale farming, from business planning to preserving the harvest. Throughout the chapters Penniman uplifts the wisdom of the African diasporic farmers and activists whose work informs the techniques described―from whole farm planning, soil fertility, seed selection, and agroecology, to using whole foods in culturally appropriate recipes, sharing stories of ancestors, and tools for healing from the trauma associated with slavery and economic exploitation on the land. Woven throughout the book is the story of Soul Fire Farm, a national leader in the food justice movement.
The technical information is designed for farmers and gardeners with beginning to intermediate experience. For those with more experience, the book provides a fresh lens on practices that may have been taken for granted as ahistorical or strictly European. Black ancestors and contemporaries have always been leaders―and continue to lead―in the sustainable agriculture and food justice movements. It is time for all of us to listen. "A moving and powerful how-to book for Black farmers to reclaim the occupation and the contributions of the BIPOC community that introduced sustainable agriculture."―BookRiot.com "Leah Penniman is . . . opening the door for the next generation of farmers."―CBS This Morning
368 pages, Paperback
Published October 12, 2018
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September 1, 2025
“Without the land we cannot be free”…
Preamble:
--With capitalism/imperialism playing chicken with the Doomsday Clock (Nuclear War and Environmental Catastrophe), I must remind myself to balance a mountain of de-constructive readings with re-constructive books like this (i.e. healing, rooted in the real world).
--For those inspired by Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants (“We restore the land, and the land restores us”), here is another gift.
Highlights:
1) Black Stewardship and Reconstruction:
--Penniman revives the ecological stewardship in Black history:
i) Alternative farming practices:
--Organic farming was revived in US by Dr. George Washington Carver in 1900’s.
--Crop rotation of diversified horticulture/nitrogen-fixing legumes/cover crops; these was needed for Southern farmers given depleted soils, thus “regenerative agriculture”.
--Shifting agriculture (shift between cultivation and fallow periods), including swidden agriculture’s slash-and-burn, have been long practiced (fire is essential in indigenous ecological stewardship: The Earth's Blanket: Traditional Teachings for Sustainable Living).
…Penniman uses the example of sub-Saharan Africa, along with the later debates between Western theorists critiquing the practice for contributing to climate change vs. more recent scientists integrating indigenous knowledge (arguing that more carbon is sequestered than emitted). The issue now is with less land access, fallow periods are shortened.
--Penniman references Kimmerer on indigenous “honorable harvest”, of building reciprocity/socioecological relationships. On black/indigenous relations, I’m reminded of Tiya Miles’ research (who also wrote a lovely bio of Tubman’s spiritual/ecological knowledge: Night Flyer: Harriet Tubman and the Faith Dreams of a Free People).
ii) Alternative organization/ownership:
--Community-supported agriculture (CSA): Dr. Booker T. Whatley in the 1970’s; connecting farmers to urban members, providing fresh produce at 60% supermarket prices.
--Community land trusts: in the US, this was started in 1969 during the Civil Rights movement by Black farmers (New Communities movement).
--Cooperative farming: housing/farm equipment/scholarships/loans, etc.; 1896 Colored Farmers National Alliance and Cooperative Union; Fannie Lou Hammer’s 1972 Freedom Farm.
--Alternative organization/ownership are in the historical context of responding to dispossession. While Penniman references history, some brief connections with (geo)political economy are made (ex. Slavery's Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development); I’m reminded of Marx:
…US’s Great Migration (1910-1970) saw 6 million black Americans escape the South’s reactionary lynching to relocate to the urban North, where discrimination continued (ex. redlining denying the mortgages that built the white suburban middle-class: The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America). 1960s-70s urban decline led to the response of community gardens.
--On movement-making, Penniman describes a balance between:
(i) Protest: ex. Cesar Chavez’ National Farm Workers Association, MLK Jr. building alliances for the Poor People’s Movement, etc.
(ii) Reform: leverage legal system (ex. community law clinics)/nonprofits, etc.
(iii) Alternatives: mutual aid, ex. Federation of Southern Cooperatives’s Land Assistance Fund organizing cooperatives.
2) Case Study: Soul Fire Farm:
--Most of this book is a “practical guide” (thus, technical details) for owning/operating a farm (inspired by Black history), using Penniman’s farm as an example.
--Bringing together the above alternative farming practices and alternative organization/ownership, the rest of the book lists:
i) material resources needed
ii) financial organization:
iv) ecological goals: restoring degraded/marginal land…ex. lead remediation, various organic farming techniques to mimic nature (I’m reminded of Nature's Matrix: Linking Agriculture, Conservation and Food Sovereignty), “African dark Earth” (“anthropogenic soil invented by women in Ghana and Liberia 700 years ago”), etc.
…My main remaining questions involve scale/(geo)political economy (I need to review A Foodie's Guide to Capitalism); however, it is clear the de-constructive side needs to fend off capitalism/imperialism to help open more space for (re)constructive grassroots projects like this to flourish. What a nourishing read...
Preamble:
--With capitalism/imperialism playing chicken with the Doomsday Clock (Nuclear War and Environmental Catastrophe), I must remind myself to balance a mountain of de-constructive readings with re-constructive books like this (i.e. healing, rooted in the real world).
--For those inspired by Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants (“We restore the land, and the land restores us”), here is another gift.
Highlights:
1) Black Stewardship and Reconstruction:
--Penniman revives the ecological stewardship in Black history:
Learning about Carver, Hamer, Whatley, and New Communities, I realized that during all those years of seeing images of only white people as the stewards of the land, only white people as organic farmers, only white people in conversations about sustainability, the only consistent story I’d seen or been told about Black people and the land was about slavery and sharecropping, about coercion and brutality and misery and sorrow. And yet here was an entire history, blooming into our present, in which Black people’s expertise and love of the land and one another was evident. When we as Black people are bombarded with messages that our only place of belonging on land is as slaves, performing dangerous and backbreaking menial labor, to learn of our true and noble history as farmers and ecological stewards is deeply healing. […]--With deep roots (ex. Black Rice: The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in the Americas), Penniman highlights:
Our people have been traumatized and disoriented. While the land was the “scene of the crime,” she was never the criminal. Our people mistakenly strove to divorce ourselves from her in an effort to get free. But without the land we cannot be free.
i) Alternative farming practices:
--Organic farming was revived in US by Dr. George Washington Carver in 1900’s.
--Crop rotation of diversified horticulture/nitrogen-fixing legumes/cover crops; these was needed for Southern farmers given depleted soils, thus “regenerative agriculture”.
--Shifting agriculture (shift between cultivation and fallow periods), including swidden agriculture’s slash-and-burn, have been long practiced (fire is essential in indigenous ecological stewardship: The Earth's Blanket: Traditional Teachings for Sustainable Living).
…Penniman uses the example of sub-Saharan Africa, along with the later debates between Western theorists critiquing the practice for contributing to climate change vs. more recent scientists integrating indigenous knowledge (arguing that more carbon is sequestered than emitted). The issue now is with less land access, fallow periods are shortened.
--Penniman references Kimmerer on indigenous “honorable harvest”, of building reciprocity/socioecological relationships. On black/indigenous relations, I’m reminded of Tiya Miles’ research (who also wrote a lovely bio of Tubman’s spiritual/ecological knowledge: Night Flyer: Harriet Tubman and the Faith Dreams of a Free People).
ii) Alternative organization/ownership:
--Community-supported agriculture (CSA): Dr. Booker T. Whatley in the 1970’s; connecting farmers to urban members, providing fresh produce at 60% supermarket prices.
--Community land trusts: in the US, this was started in 1969 during the Civil Rights movement by Black farmers (New Communities movement).
--Cooperative farming: housing/farm equipment/scholarships/loans, etc.; 1896 Colored Farmers National Alliance and Cooperative Union; Fannie Lou Hammer’s 1972 Freedom Farm.
--Alternative organization/ownership are in the historical context of responding to dispossession. While Penniman references history, some brief connections with (geo)political economy are made (ex. Slavery's Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development); I’m reminded of Marx:
In the United States of America, every independent workers’ movement was paralysed as long as slavery disfigured a part of the republic. Labour in a white skin cannot emancipate itself where it is branded in a black skin. However, a new life immediately arose from the death of slavery. The first fruit of the American Civil War was the eight hours’ agitation […]…The American Civil War’s “forty acres and a mule” broken promise and post-Civil War Reconstruction era (1865-1877) was countered by the segregationist Black Codes’ vagrancy laws, etc. Black farmers still struggled to purchase 14% of US farmland by 1910s (today, it’s less than 1%).
…US’s Great Migration (1910-1970) saw 6 million black Americans escape the South’s reactionary lynching to relocate to the urban North, where discrimination continued (ex. redlining denying the mortgages that built the white suburban middle-class: The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America). 1960s-70s urban decline led to the response of community gardens.
--On movement-making, Penniman describes a balance between:
(i) Protest: ex. Cesar Chavez’ National Farm Workers Association, MLK Jr. building alliances for the Poor People’s Movement, etc.
(ii) Reform: leverage legal system (ex. community law clinics)/nonprofits, etc.
(iii) Alternatives: mutual aid, ex. Federation of Southern Cooperatives’s Land Assistance Fund organizing cooperatives.
2) Case Study: Soul Fire Farm:
--Most of this book is a “practical guide” (thus, technical details) for owning/operating a farm (inspired by Black history), using Penniman’s farm as an example.
--Bringing together the above alternative farming practices and alternative organization/ownership, the rest of the book lists:
i) material resources needed
ii) financial organization:
In the case of Soul Fire Farm, we started as a sole proprietorship for its simplicity and then transitioned to a worker-run nonprofit organization to be able to access resources to support our educational programs. We are putting our land into an LLC [Limited Liability Company] that will be run as a cooperative, to maintain maximum flexibility and the ability for members, including children, to build equity.iii) social goals: i.e. building decolonial communities/food sovereignty, bringing healthy produce to communities struggling with food apartheid; outreach opportunities/institutional partnerships (ex. community centers/food shelters/social services); flexible payment; product distribution (doorstep delivery; food hubs); educational programs (ex. rehabbing youth crime) reconnecting communities with the land and their food, etc.
iv) ecological goals: restoring degraded/marginal land…ex. lead remediation, various organic farming techniques to mimic nature (I’m reminded of Nature's Matrix: Linking Agriculture, Conservation and Food Sovereignty), “African dark Earth” (“anthropogenic soil invented by women in Ghana and Liberia 700 years ago”), etc.
…My main remaining questions involve scale/(geo)political economy (I need to review A Foodie's Guide to Capitalism); however, it is clear the de-constructive side needs to fend off capitalism/imperialism to help open more space for (re)constructive grassroots projects like this to flourish. What a nourishing read...
January 3, 2020
This book is full of liberatory farming methods and is incredibly true to the "practical" in the title. I am a young Black farmer and this book is pretty much not going to leave my side probably for the rest of my life or until I memorize it. Whichever comes first.
June 15, 2019
I'm not the target demographic for the book, but I wish it had been available to me 30 years ago. Besides addressing the relationship of Black and Latinx people to the land, it's also a very thorough introduction to small-scale farming for newcomers. It traces the author's path to success, a journey from urban gardener to owner of acres of marginal land in the country and operator of a successful CSA.
My son had the good fortune to be a student of Ms. Penniman's while in high school. She is a person of seemingly boundless energy, and is doing truly important work to reconnect urban youth of color with the land. I have great admiration for her and her work.
My son had the good fortune to be a student of Ms. Penniman's while in high school. She is a person of seemingly boundless energy, and is doing truly important work to reconnect urban youth of color with the land. I have great admiration for her and her work.
December 22, 2024
Leah Penniman is so cool and I got to meet her last spring and was stupid enough to not bring my copy of this book to get signed and I still regret that.
This book is so important and really emphasizes how so much of the ag world is centered around whiteness. I guess I’m lucky that at my work at GrowBoston I was exposed to so many urban farmers of color but I almost forgot that’s absolutely not the norm. I was highlighting so much from the beginning I might as well have highlighted the whole book!
Love that she started at The Food Project.
Also love how the foreword was written by Karen Washington, who I first learned the term “food apartheid” from. Wrote a lot of essays about that.
I miss farming!
November 22, 2020
I am not Black. I am not a farmer. This book is a literal textbook, the kind that you would be assigned to read chapters from in a high school or college class. (Sidenote: I hope this book is adopted by teachers all over the world.) Despite all of that, I read "Farming While Black" from cover to cover. (Well, I'm vegan, so I skipped the chapter on raising animals for food.) This is a treasure trove of information -- agricultural, cultural, and spiritual. Even though I'm only tangentially involved in caring for our backyard potted garden, I came away from this book understanding so much more about the land we live on, including the food apartheid that has been intentionally and systematically established in the United States, and how to heal it.
July 7, 2021
Cannot overstate how much this book has been on my mind! Penniman is compelling, compassionate, and endlessly practical. This has started so many good conversations!
October 16, 2020
This was a really extraordinary read. As Penniman points out, the legacy of racism in America means both that many black, latinx and indigenous folk live in urban food deserts or on land so despoiled no one else wants it, and that farmland is “the scene of the crime” where people of color were forced to do brutal labor for the profit of white landowners. For these reasons, significant work is required for people of color to claim land, restore it, and use it well, but the results for both the people and the land can be extraordinarily healing.
With that in mind, Penniman lays out the things she has learned over the years of running a successful organic farm and CSA, as well as alternatives for people in different circumstances. These range from getting permits and testing/treating contaminated soil to a variety of farming methods and tricks for good crop yields, to spiritual traditions and ways to incorporate social justice work into farming (and vice versa). Throughout, she pays homage to an astonishing array of innovative individuals and communities, sharing their ideas and giving credit to the long and varied history of successful farmers of color. This ranges from techniques Haitian farmers used to replenish topsoil that had been washed away, to George Washington Carver’s original concept of the farm share/CSA program. All of these stories are not just useful or interesting, they help disrupt the myth that farming and gardening are and have always been done best by white farmers.
She’s also not shy about the mistakes she made along the way and how she adapted to succeed. For example, she admits that she would have been better off taking over a farm from a retiring farmer rather than trying to cultivate new land on a mountainside, but also explains the steps she took to make that land thrive as a working farm.
One thing that was really powerful for me in reading was that I’m used to farmers and gardeners talking about their love of plants and how to maximize yields, given weather and soil conditions, but Penniman seems to be focused on growing crops as a way to leave the earth better than she found it: not just to grow food for her family and the larger community, but to ensure the soil is thicker and more nutrient-rich with each passing year. To forage without depleting wild herbs and mushrooms. To treat chemically poisoned ground and bring it back to health. The bumper crops are a sign of success, but Penniman keeps coming back to a deeper truth: our focus needs to be on the long-term health of the land, and losing sight of that might mean short-term gains, but we’ll pay for it in the end.
With that in mind, Penniman lays out the things she has learned over the years of running a successful organic farm and CSA, as well as alternatives for people in different circumstances. These range from getting permits and testing/treating contaminated soil to a variety of farming methods and tricks for good crop yields, to spiritual traditions and ways to incorporate social justice work into farming (and vice versa). Throughout, she pays homage to an astonishing array of innovative individuals and communities, sharing their ideas and giving credit to the long and varied history of successful farmers of color. This ranges from techniques Haitian farmers used to replenish topsoil that had been washed away, to George Washington Carver’s original concept of the farm share/CSA program. All of these stories are not just useful or interesting, they help disrupt the myth that farming and gardening are and have always been done best by white farmers.
She’s also not shy about the mistakes she made along the way and how she adapted to succeed. For example, she admits that she would have been better off taking over a farm from a retiring farmer rather than trying to cultivate new land on a mountainside, but also explains the steps she took to make that land thrive as a working farm.
One thing that was really powerful for me in reading was that I’m used to farmers and gardeners talking about their love of plants and how to maximize yields, given weather and soil conditions, but Penniman seems to be focused on growing crops as a way to leave the earth better than she found it: not just to grow food for her family and the larger community, but to ensure the soil is thicker and more nutrient-rich with each passing year. To forage without depleting wild herbs and mushrooms. To treat chemically poisoned ground and bring it back to health. The bumper crops are a sign of success, but Penniman keeps coming back to a deeper truth: our focus needs to be on the long-term health of the land, and losing sight of that might mean short-term gains, but we’ll pay for it in the end.
June 22, 2020
100% recommend for anyone who is involved with agriculture. I feel like I have a much better understanding of the richness of African and Black farming wisdom & knowledge - and oh my goodness, this book is so full of practical sustainable farming advice. Definitely important for white folks to read - I appreciated the final chapter focused on white people uprooting racism. Thank you Leah and thank you Soul Fire Farm for this labor of love.
January 25, 2021
THIS BOOK. Swooooooning with all kinds of admiration. Also, this is a straight up farming primer mixed with a historical schooling and a liberation primer PLUS so much more.
May 2, 2021
A terrific primer on food justice, (and a good primer on farming too!), and includes helpful suggestions for white allies working in this space.
November 4, 2022
this book is so amazing! gonna try and use a lot of it for allie and i’s future farm program!
July 26, 2020
Helpful if you are looking to learn more about how to grow food in a sustainable/equitable way. Also helpful if you are looking to learn more about the history of exploitation in the food system.
Some of my favorite clips:
Revolution is based on land. Land is the basis of all independence. Land is the basis of freedom, justice, and equality. - Malcolm X
Organic farming was an African-indigenous system developed over millennia and first revived in the US by a black farmer, Dr. George Washington Carver.
Dr. Booker T. Whatley was one of the inventors of CSA.
While the government labels the South End of Albany of food desert, I prefer the term food apartheid, because it makes clear that we have a human-created system of segregation that relegates certain groups to food opulence and prevents others from accessing life-giving nourishment.
Racism is built into the DNA of the US food system. Beginning with the genocidal land theft from indigenous people, continuing with the kidnapping of our ancestors from the shores of West Africa for force agricultural labor, morphing into convict leasing expanding to the migrant guestworker program, and maturing into its current state where farm management is among the whitest professions, farm labor is predominately Brown and exploited, and people of color disproportionately live in food apartheid neighborhoods and suffer from diet related illness, this system is built on stolen land and stolen labor, and needs a redesign.
Arguably, the seminal civil rights issue of our time is the systemic racism permeating the criminal "justice" system.
In 1910, at the height of Black landownership, 16 million acres of farmland - 14% of the total - was owned and cultivated by Black families. Now less than 1% of farms are Black-owned.
Our Black ancestors were forced, tricked, and scared off land until 6.5 million of them migrated to the urban North in the largest migration in US history. This was no accident. Just as the US government sanctioned the slaughter of buffalo to drive Native Americans off their land, so did the USDA and the FHA deny access to farm credit and other resources to any Black person who joined the NAACP, registered to vote, or signed any petition pertaining to civil rights. When Carver's methods helped Black farmers be successful enough to pay off their debts, their white landlords responded by beating them almost to death, burning down their houses, and driving them off their land.
Forty acres and a mule would be at least $6.4 trillion in the hands of Black Americans today. The economic offenses committed by this nation against Black people are numerous. They include hundreds of years of unpaid wages under slavery, discriminatory fees and lending rates imposed upon African American business owners under the Black Codes, and the exclusion of Black people from the social safety net and government housing programs.
Soils with low CEC are most susceptible to losing nutrients through leaching. Mos-Def is like low-CEC soil that has few binding sites for nutrients because there's just one vocalist in the project, while Wu-Tang Clan is like high-CEC soil that has more binding sites because there are more vocalists.
Biochar is the result of low-temp controlled burning of wood and plant material, in a process called pyrolysis.
Soil comprises 5 ingredients: minerals, water, organic matter, air, and microorganisms. While microbial life makes up only 1% of the volume of soil, it is essential to soil's capacity to support plants. 1 tsp of soil holds over 20,000 organisms. These organisms are decomposers of organic matter, consuming detritus, water, and air, and recycling it into nutrient-rich humus.
At SFF we use rye, oats, peas, bell beans, vetch, soybeans, sorghum sudangrass, sunn hemp, triticale, and clover as cover crops.
Crop rotation rules:
-Avoid planting crops from the same plant family in the same place in successive years
-Precede nitrogen lovers, such as brassicas, tomatoes, and corn, with nitrogen fixers (legumes)
-Crops with lower N requirements, such as root veggies and herbs, can follow heavy N feeders.
-Organize your crop rotation around the plant families that will take up the most space on your farm.
Muck brand waterproof boots are the best for farmers.
60 years ago, seeds were largely stewarded by small farmers and public plant breeders. Today the proprietary seed market accounts for 82% of the seed supply globally, with Monsanto and DuPont owning the largest shares. In our work with sibling farms in Haiti, we learned about Monsanto's insidious practice of making 'donations' of seed for a few seasons, until the native seed stock was depleted, and then charging farmers unreasonable prices for the company's proprietary seed in subsequent seasons.
Fearful that enslaved Africans could buy their freedom from profits made by selling animals, the Virginia General Assembly in 1692 made it illegal for slaves to won horses, cattle, ducks, geese, or pigs. Chickens, though, weren't considered worth mentioning. Black farmers - both free and enslaved - built their farm businesses on the raising of chickens.
Intensive, industrial livestock production is an environmental justice disaster, adversely impacting communities of color.
Using meat as a 'spice' and not a 'slab' may represent the correct ratio of animal to plant foods in the sustainable modern diet.
Meat is part of our cultural heritage and ancestral cuisine.
We participate in the cultural cuisine of our people with joy and also keep love of the planet and the sanctity of life at the center of our consciousness.
Harriet Tubman used wild plants to keep her Underground Railroad passengers healthy.
Like so many Black and Brown survivors, members of our family struggle with anxiety, depression, and insomnia. Lemon balm, vervain, codonopsis, skullcap, chamomile, and lavender are here to support us.
Wormwood, bee balm, yarrow, thyme, echinacea, and elderflower provide immune support.
Calendula oil and slave can be used to heal wounds, reduce inflammation, sooth burns, heal acne, kill fungal infection, and sooth diaper rash.
Thyme essential oil can be used for athlete's foot.
From Braiding Sweetgrass (Robin Wall):
“Know the ways of the ones who take care of you, so that you may take care of them.
Introduce yourself. Be accountable as the one who comes asking for life. Ask permission before taking. Abide by the answer.
Never take the first. Never take the last. Take only what you need.
Take only that which is given.
Never take more than half. Leave some for others. Harvest in a way that minimizes harm.
Use it respectfully. Never waste what you have taken. Share.
Give thanks for what you have been given.
Give a gift, in reciprocity for what you have taken.
Sustain the ones who sustain you and the earth will last forever.”
In addition to mass incarceration, one of the most insidious and pervasive forms of state violence against our people is the flooding of our communities with foods that kill us. In fact, Black people are 10 times more likely to die from poor diets than from all forms of physical violence combined.
Traditional African diets are inherently healthy and sustainable, based in leafy greens, vegetables, fruits, tubers, and legumes. Communities that maintain our traditional diets have much lower rates of CVD, HTN, CKD, CA, DM, CA, etc.
We need nature not just for the material sustenance she provides, but for our physiological, emotional, and spiritual well-being.
In 2014 the Pew Research Center found that white households had 13 times the median wealth of Black households in 2013, up from 8 times the wealth in 2010. 80% of wealth is inherited, often traceable back to slavery.
Black people own approximately 1% of rural land in the country, with a combined value of $14 billion. White people own more than 98% of US rural land, over 856 million acres valued at more than $1 trillion.
I asked her, "Jun San, can you give me any tips for sitting meditation? I get antsy and can't focus?" She laughed and tossed back the cloth of her orange robe. "I no meditate! Too boring! I beat drum, chop wood, carry water," she responded. While sitting meditation is a unique and powerful tool, our indigenous African traditions often engage dynamic meditation, including drumming, long-distance running, chanting, singing, candle gazing, and stone balancing. What differentiates meditation from just doing activities is the focused attention on a singular point in the present moment.
Two African plants are especially powerful in relieving anxiety and depression connected to trauma: Solenostemon monostachyus and Dysphania ambrosioides.
I prominently display a list of healing practices categorized by how long they take. My list includes 10 people I can call at any time, affirmations to say out loud, quick actions I can take to shift my energy, and more involved healing practices.
"Never forget that food justice requires land justice." -Savi Horne, Land Loss Prevention Project
If African American people were paid $20 per week for our agricultural labor rather than enslaved, we would have $6.4 trillion in today's dollars in the band right now. This figure does not include reparations for denied credit and home-ownership opportunities, exclusion from the social safety net and education, or property theft and destruction.
True reparations:
1. Nothing about us, without us. Black people get to define what reparations look like.
2. No strings attached. Transfers of land and resources w/o oversight or conditionality.
3. The whole pie. Give the land, money, and jobs away, even and especially when it entails personal sacrifice.
Take stock of your resources, including your job, assets, property, and power. Ask yourself what you can give away in a loving act of reparations.
Taking intellectual property, traditional knowledge, cultural expressions, or artifacts from someone else's culture w/o permission is cultural appropriation.
Some of my favorite clips:
Revolution is based on land. Land is the basis of all independence. Land is the basis of freedom, justice, and equality. - Malcolm X
Organic farming was an African-indigenous system developed over millennia and first revived in the US by a black farmer, Dr. George Washington Carver.
Dr. Booker T. Whatley was one of the inventors of CSA.
While the government labels the South End of Albany of food desert, I prefer the term food apartheid, because it makes clear that we have a human-created system of segregation that relegates certain groups to food opulence and prevents others from accessing life-giving nourishment.
Racism is built into the DNA of the US food system. Beginning with the genocidal land theft from indigenous people, continuing with the kidnapping of our ancestors from the shores of West Africa for force agricultural labor, morphing into convict leasing expanding to the migrant guestworker program, and maturing into its current state where farm management is among the whitest professions, farm labor is predominately Brown and exploited, and people of color disproportionately live in food apartheid neighborhoods and suffer from diet related illness, this system is built on stolen land and stolen labor, and needs a redesign.
Arguably, the seminal civil rights issue of our time is the systemic racism permeating the criminal "justice" system.
In 1910, at the height of Black landownership, 16 million acres of farmland - 14% of the total - was owned and cultivated by Black families. Now less than 1% of farms are Black-owned.
Our Black ancestors were forced, tricked, and scared off land until 6.5 million of them migrated to the urban North in the largest migration in US history. This was no accident. Just as the US government sanctioned the slaughter of buffalo to drive Native Americans off their land, so did the USDA and the FHA deny access to farm credit and other resources to any Black person who joined the NAACP, registered to vote, or signed any petition pertaining to civil rights. When Carver's methods helped Black farmers be successful enough to pay off their debts, their white landlords responded by beating them almost to death, burning down their houses, and driving them off their land.
Forty acres and a mule would be at least $6.4 trillion in the hands of Black Americans today. The economic offenses committed by this nation against Black people are numerous. They include hundreds of years of unpaid wages under slavery, discriminatory fees and lending rates imposed upon African American business owners under the Black Codes, and the exclusion of Black people from the social safety net and government housing programs.
Soils with low CEC are most susceptible to losing nutrients through leaching. Mos-Def is like low-CEC soil that has few binding sites for nutrients because there's just one vocalist in the project, while Wu-Tang Clan is like high-CEC soil that has more binding sites because there are more vocalists.
Biochar is the result of low-temp controlled burning of wood and plant material, in a process called pyrolysis.
Soil comprises 5 ingredients: minerals, water, organic matter, air, and microorganisms. While microbial life makes up only 1% of the volume of soil, it is essential to soil's capacity to support plants. 1 tsp of soil holds over 20,000 organisms. These organisms are decomposers of organic matter, consuming detritus, water, and air, and recycling it into nutrient-rich humus.
At SFF we use rye, oats, peas, bell beans, vetch, soybeans, sorghum sudangrass, sunn hemp, triticale, and clover as cover crops.
Crop rotation rules:
-Avoid planting crops from the same plant family in the same place in successive years
-Precede nitrogen lovers, such as brassicas, tomatoes, and corn, with nitrogen fixers (legumes)
-Crops with lower N requirements, such as root veggies and herbs, can follow heavy N feeders.
-Organize your crop rotation around the plant families that will take up the most space on your farm.
Muck brand waterproof boots are the best for farmers.
60 years ago, seeds were largely stewarded by small farmers and public plant breeders. Today the proprietary seed market accounts for 82% of the seed supply globally, with Monsanto and DuPont owning the largest shares. In our work with sibling farms in Haiti, we learned about Monsanto's insidious practice of making 'donations' of seed for a few seasons, until the native seed stock was depleted, and then charging farmers unreasonable prices for the company's proprietary seed in subsequent seasons.
Fearful that enslaved Africans could buy their freedom from profits made by selling animals, the Virginia General Assembly in 1692 made it illegal for slaves to won horses, cattle, ducks, geese, or pigs. Chickens, though, weren't considered worth mentioning. Black farmers - both free and enslaved - built their farm businesses on the raising of chickens.
Intensive, industrial livestock production is an environmental justice disaster, adversely impacting communities of color.
Using meat as a 'spice' and not a 'slab' may represent the correct ratio of animal to plant foods in the sustainable modern diet.
Meat is part of our cultural heritage and ancestral cuisine.
We participate in the cultural cuisine of our people with joy and also keep love of the planet and the sanctity of life at the center of our consciousness.
Harriet Tubman used wild plants to keep her Underground Railroad passengers healthy.
Like so many Black and Brown survivors, members of our family struggle with anxiety, depression, and insomnia. Lemon balm, vervain, codonopsis, skullcap, chamomile, and lavender are here to support us.
Wormwood, bee balm, yarrow, thyme, echinacea, and elderflower provide immune support.
Calendula oil and slave can be used to heal wounds, reduce inflammation, sooth burns, heal acne, kill fungal infection, and sooth diaper rash.
Thyme essential oil can be used for athlete's foot.
From Braiding Sweetgrass (Robin Wall):
“Know the ways of the ones who take care of you, so that you may take care of them.
Introduce yourself. Be accountable as the one who comes asking for life. Ask permission before taking. Abide by the answer.
Never take the first. Never take the last. Take only what you need.
Take only that which is given.
Never take more than half. Leave some for others. Harvest in a way that minimizes harm.
Use it respectfully. Never waste what you have taken. Share.
Give thanks for what you have been given.
Give a gift, in reciprocity for what you have taken.
Sustain the ones who sustain you and the earth will last forever.”
In addition to mass incarceration, one of the most insidious and pervasive forms of state violence against our people is the flooding of our communities with foods that kill us. In fact, Black people are 10 times more likely to die from poor diets than from all forms of physical violence combined.
Traditional African diets are inherently healthy and sustainable, based in leafy greens, vegetables, fruits, tubers, and legumes. Communities that maintain our traditional diets have much lower rates of CVD, HTN, CKD, CA, DM, CA, etc.
We need nature not just for the material sustenance she provides, but for our physiological, emotional, and spiritual well-being.
In 2014 the Pew Research Center found that white households had 13 times the median wealth of Black households in 2013, up from 8 times the wealth in 2010. 80% of wealth is inherited, often traceable back to slavery.
Black people own approximately 1% of rural land in the country, with a combined value of $14 billion. White people own more than 98% of US rural land, over 856 million acres valued at more than $1 trillion.
I asked her, "Jun San, can you give me any tips for sitting meditation? I get antsy and can't focus?" She laughed and tossed back the cloth of her orange robe. "I no meditate! Too boring! I beat drum, chop wood, carry water," she responded. While sitting meditation is a unique and powerful tool, our indigenous African traditions often engage dynamic meditation, including drumming, long-distance running, chanting, singing, candle gazing, and stone balancing. What differentiates meditation from just doing activities is the focused attention on a singular point in the present moment.
Two African plants are especially powerful in relieving anxiety and depression connected to trauma: Solenostemon monostachyus and Dysphania ambrosioides.
I prominently display a list of healing practices categorized by how long they take. My list includes 10 people I can call at any time, affirmations to say out loud, quick actions I can take to shift my energy, and more involved healing practices.
"Never forget that food justice requires land justice." -Savi Horne, Land Loss Prevention Project
If African American people were paid $20 per week for our agricultural labor rather than enslaved, we would have $6.4 trillion in today's dollars in the band right now. This figure does not include reparations for denied credit and home-ownership opportunities, exclusion from the social safety net and education, or property theft and destruction.
True reparations:
1. Nothing about us, without us. Black people get to define what reparations look like.
2. No strings attached. Transfers of land and resources w/o oversight or conditionality.
3. The whole pie. Give the land, money, and jobs away, even and especially when it entails personal sacrifice.
Take stock of your resources, including your job, assets, property, and power. Ask yourself what you can give away in a loving act of reparations.
Taking intellectual property, traditional knowledge, cultural expressions, or artifacts from someone else's culture w/o permission is cultural appropriation.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 18, 2021
I was not expecting the format of this book to be so much like a textbook, but I tried to rate it based on who their intended audience was (people who are serious about starting farming but haven't bought land or started planting yet). It contains a lot of information about buying land and overcoming barriers to beginning farming, such as acquiring capital and finding loans. It also has information about various crops (including medicinal herbs) and crop plans, although if you are farming I don't think the depth of this information will suffice for you, but at least it's a starting point.
What I really liked about this book were the insets throughout that referenced cultural practices from Africa, Haiti, and other parts of the world that we can learn from, as well as historical black farmers and leaders who are less well-known. There was a strong element of culture and connecting to your roots as an element of farming that I thought was beautiful and isn't usually captured in books written by white farmers for other (presumably white) farmers.
This is not really a book you read through from start to finish, though I did try to do that. But if you are seriously considering farming and want to learn more about how to do that through a decolonized lens, I think this is an excellent resource.
What I really liked about this book were the insets throughout that referenced cultural practices from Africa, Haiti, and other parts of the world that we can learn from, as well as historical black farmers and leaders who are less well-known. There was a strong element of culture and connecting to your roots as an element of farming that I thought was beautiful and isn't usually captured in books written by white farmers for other (presumably white) farmers.
This is not really a book you read through from start to finish, though I did try to do that. But if you are seriously considering farming and want to learn more about how to do that through a decolonized lens, I think this is an excellent resource.
September 13, 2019
Easy and informative read. I read it a few months back so not fresh in my head any more. However, from what i recall this is what I liked about the book:
It was a call to action (get involved in agriculture at any level from growing your own, supporting those who do, politics, creating a community around it, something)
Community is a theme that runs throughout the book
black history summary was good
resources for black and brown farmers, herbalists, etc
spiritual component (earth as a living being, honoring and respecting land)
highlights the history and contributions black people have made to the sustainable agriculture movement. We were and are the movement YET we go unseen (raised bed, polycultures, composting, use of nitrogen fixers, pick your own, CSA, etc)
It's a technical guide
recipes
seeds with African history
reparations map
It was a call to action (get involved in agriculture at any level from growing your own, supporting those who do, politics, creating a community around it, something)
Community is a theme that runs throughout the book
black history summary was good
resources for black and brown farmers, herbalists, etc
spiritual component (earth as a living being, honoring and respecting land)
highlights the history and contributions black people have made to the sustainable agriculture movement. We were and are the movement YET we go unseen (raised bed, polycultures, composting, use of nitrogen fixers, pick your own, CSA, etc)
It's a technical guide
recipes
seeds with African history
reparations map
October 18, 2019
Beautifully written, inspiring, and yet real. Cooperative farming, which is vital for the future of saving productive land, is being revived by farmer-leaders of color and of marginalized communities who are setting their goals at the systemic level to build true food sovereignty even as they dig in the dirt to feed their families and neighbors nutritious, glorious food. This is a primer for organizers and growers at the same time, and marks a next step in the transfer of power happening in this hemisphere.
February 4, 2021
i impatiently waited for this book because i missed preorder. but i distinctly remember the moment of finding it in the nmaahc in dc. one of fastest purchases i think i have ever made. i read it back when i was not yet a farmer but a gardener. since, leah and soul fire have come into a bit of fame certainly within the farming community but outside of it as well. (much because of the release and positive reception of this book). i highly recommend reading this book no matter your proximity to farming.
this book is a great starter guide to farming fo all. if i were to recommend *one* book to farmers, to people who dream of farming, and to people who want to better support farmers, this would be the one. it tackles a bit of everything and from perspective of a Black & indigenous woman. so while it operates as a textbook or manual of sorts, it doesn't quite feel this way because it reads like companion--full of anecdotes, stories, untold histories, and indigenous and Black wisdoms. it is a must read for all.
this book is a great starter guide to farming fo all. if i were to recommend *one* book to farmers, to people who dream of farming, and to people who want to better support farmers, this would be the one. it tackles a bit of everything and from perspective of a Black & indigenous woman. so while it operates as a textbook or manual of sorts, it doesn't quite feel this way because it reads like companion--full of anecdotes, stories, untold histories, and indigenous and Black wisdoms. it is a must read for all.
August 24, 2025
Best parts of this book, to me: historical context of racism and land ownership and cultivation; incredibly detailed practical how-tos of soil selection and care, crop selection and maintenance, animal husbandry; and organization for bringing justice to all of these topics.
April 24, 2021
Transformative -- Leah Penniman, in an act of mutual aid, provides this guide to aspiring Black farmers in such detail, along with practical advice for organizing and uplifting. Even though I just finished this book a couple hours ago, I can already tell this is one of those works that will have a lasting impact on me (especially in the field of food justice).
January 11, 2020
Mind blown. I am quite familiar with the tenants and practices of sustainable agriculture and social justice both in theory and in practice. That said, Ms. Penniman’s book is the first time I have thought about sustainable agriculture through the equity lens. I am ashamed to say it never crossed my mind that of all the wisdom I have gained in this regard, never have I acknowledged the shared knowledge and ancestral wisdom of generations of African Americans, Africans, the African diaspora, descendants of former share croppers or enslaved people as a part of the current day practice of farming. How is that possible?
This book is replete with knowledge of the land and the plants humans can cultivate there and how that in itself is an act of rebellion: being Black and working the land for yourself and your community to have access to healthy food and be self sufficient. If I could, I would give this book 10 stars. I plan to purchase a copy as a reference tool.
This book is replete with knowledge of the land and the plants humans can cultivate there and how that in itself is an act of rebellion: being Black and working the land for yourself and your community to have access to healthy food and be self sufficient. If I could, I would give this book 10 stars. I plan to purchase a copy as a reference tool.
May 28, 2020
Incredible. Everyone should read this, whether you care about farming or not. Leah Penniman gives a deeply personal yet incredibly practical account about her experience as a black woman farming in America, today, right now, with a lens toward how to create meaningful change where it matters most: in reuniting communities of color with the land that they have historically been denied ownership of, and access to. This book is an amazing guide to empowerment, enfranchisement, intentional community, and dismantling barriers to success. There are lists of grant programs, funding mechanisms, community support groups, and resources; as well as a deep emotional empathy that this work is not easy, but that it is necessary. So thankful I came across this book.
August 26, 2020
This is certainly the most unique book on farming I’ve read. Very few manuals also have instructions for casting spells from a syncretic blend of African traditions, Jewish prayers, etc. For being useful for my own purposes I’d probably lean closer to three stars but just for the sake of staking our such novel territory it deserves the fourth star.
April 7, 2020
An Incredible Read
I picked up the book to learn about new strategies for gardening. I ended up learning history, culture, recipes, and a how the land can be used as a program to reach youth. I’ll also be able to make even better use of the food that comes from my garden.
I picked up the book to learn about new strategies for gardening. I ended up learning history, culture, recipes, and a how the land can be used as a program to reach youth. I’ll also be able to make even better use of the food that comes from my garden.
September 24, 2020
I could never do justice to this book and the breath and depth of its impact on me. It’s about how to farm and how to “life”. It’s an all encompassing blanket of how do and who to. It’s wonderful and motivating. Enlightening and grounding.
November 27, 2020
Essential reading not just for people of color considering farming, but for anyone who cares about sustainable farming practices, food and economic justice, and the value farm-raised food provides in nurturing body and soul.
December 28, 2022
This is a wide-ranging guide covering everything from how to save seeds, to how to support agricultural policies that address discrimination and land theft of Black and Indigenous farmers. Leah provides a model for how to turn a farm into a community hub for healing and action.
November 5, 2019
This is just really good. A social movement history of black farming interwoven (intercropped) with the practicals of growing.
February 27, 2020
This left me both sad and hopeful. Sad that the gulf is so wide, hopeful that Ms Penniman had the leadership to get a conversation going.
October 19, 2020
Provides useful and interesting information, regardless of the reader's racial or occupational identity.
April 27, 2021
Literally the only reason it took me so long to read this book was because of it's size and my physical state weren't compatible! So good ♡♡♡
November 23, 2020
I read this with my (all-white) permaculture group. Excellent resource for people of colour and others who are drawn to the land, or those who are repelled because farm work equals slavery. There's a lot of history (mostly American, some African), advice about farming/gardening and teaching young people about farming/gardening, business start-up and land-buying tips, herbal medicine info, seed-keeping techniques, Africa-based soul food cooking recipes, plus so much inspiration and many creative ideas packed into this well-footnoted 300+-page book. Useful photos and charts, too. Highly recommended.
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