Synopses & Reviews
James Beard Foundation Leadership Award 2019: Leah Penniman
Choice Reviews, Outstanding Academic Title
"An extraordinary book...part agricultural guide, part revolutionary manifesto" VOGUE
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.
Review
"Leah Penniman's Farming While Black is a remarkably thorough — and beautiful! — handbook for successful farming, with step-by-step instructions on how to acquire land, how to restore land, how to keep seed, and so on. If this book were only that, it would be one of the best on the subject. But this book is not only that. Farming While Black shows us how we might repair our relationships with the land, which, given as we are the land, means repairing our relationships to ourselves. And each other. In other words, this book, born of the brilliant work and study that is Soul Fire Farm, is a handbook for repairing our souls. It can feel difficult to believe in the possibility of such repair, but this book gives me faith." Ross Gay, poet; author of Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude
Review
"Nothing is more important
than the increasingly visible and energetic role of Black people in
moving toward creating and building a food system that actually works
for people — one that provides nourishing food and provides a fair
standard of living for workers while stewarding the land. Farming While Black is a brilliant guide to moving in that direction, regardless of your skin color." Mark Bittman, author of
How to Cook Everything
Review
"Equal parts practical farm instruction and spiritual reflection on mind, body, spirit, and land, Farming While Black honors
Black folks' connections to land and agriculture while recognizing
structural constraints that have ruptured those connections. Farming While Black is
an important text that (re)centers Blackness and Black people in a
conversation about being growers and responsible stewards of land." Ashanté Reese, PhD, assistant professor of anthropology; co-director of the Food Studies Program, Spelman College
Review
"For centuries Black people have utilized farming for nourishment and sustenance. Although Black
farming and the cultivation of Black land is rapidly endangered, Leah
Penniman and her family, through their work with Soul Fire Farm, are
holding down the tradition that has anchored Black communities for so
long. Farming While Black helps us remember why land
cultivation is such a significant part of the fight for freedom for
Black people. Reading this book provides practical tools along with a
beautiful visionary template for practicing land development that is
rooted in healing and transformation. Thank you, Leah, for your work and
for your vision." Patrisse Khan-Cullors, author of When They Call You a Terrorist; co-founder of Black Lives Matter
About the Author
Leah Penniman, the 2019
recipient of the James Beard Foundation Leadership Award, is a Black
Kreyol farmer who has been organizing for an anti-racist food system for
over fifteen years. She began with the Food Project in Boston,
Massachusetts, and went on to work at Farm School in Athol,
Massachusetts, and Many Hands Organic Farm in Barre, Massachusetts. She
co-founded Youth Grow urban farm in Worcester, Massachusetts. She
currently serves as founding co-executive director of Soul Fire Farm in
Grafton, New York, a people-of-color led project that works to dismantle
racism in the food system through a low cost fresh food delivery
service for people living under food apartheid, training programs for
Black, Latinx, and Indigenous aspiring farmer-activists, Uprooting
Racism training for food justice leaders, and
regional-national-international coalition building between farmers of
color advocating for policy shifts and reparations. She has dedicated
her life's work to racial justice in the food system and has been
recognized by the Soros Equality Fellowship, NYSHealth Emerging
Innovator Awards, The Andrew Goodman Foundation Hidden Heroes Award,
Fulbright Distinguished Awards in Teaching Program, New Tech Network
National Teaching Award, Presidential Award for Excellence in Teaching
(New York finalist), among others. She has contributed to two published
volumes, authored numerous online articles, and given dozens of public
talks on the subject.