Natalie Peart, YES! Magazine | Civil Eats

Black Farmers Are Rebuilding Agriculture in Coal Country

Natalie Peart, YES! Magazine — Mon, 24 Jan 2022 09:00:42 +0000

Jason Tartt, a farmer in West Virginia, says the Mountain State is fertile territory for honey production and maple and fruit orchards in the flood plains. Tartt, who is Black, sees his role as both developing economic opportunity through farming and supporting other Black farmers in West Virginia.

Growing up in rural McDowell County (population 19,111 in 2020), Tartt remembers that it was commonplace for Black people in his community to be involved in small-scale agriculture, whether they were growing gardens or processing pork and poultry. Those practices tapered off over the years as Black people left seeking better economic prospects in Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina, and Washington, D.C. The population overall in McDowell County has declined by more than 20 percent since 2010, and Black people make up just 8.5 percent of the local population.

In West Virginia, only 31 of 23,622 farms are Black-owned or -operated.

As a farmer, Tartt’s goals are twofold: build a viable agricultural economy in the county and state, and attract other Black people to see West Virginia, and particularly McDowell County, as a viable place to build a life.

In the United States, Black farmers are an underrepresented group. According to the 2017 Census of Agriculture, 35,470 farms are Black-owned, out of more than 2 million total farms. The majority of farms in the U.S. are owned by white people. In West Virginia, only 31 of the 23,622 farms are Black-owned or -operated. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) estimates that farmers who identified as Black or Black in combination with another race accounted for just 1.4 percent of the approximately 3.4 million agricultural producers in an industry that generated $388.5 billion in 2017.

Coal continues to be West Virginia’s most visible industry. In 2020, West Virginia was the second largest producer of coal, after Wyoming, and accounted for 13 percent of total coal production in the U.S. But employment in the coal industry fell 17 percent from 2016 to 2020, and in West Virginia, the number of industry jobs fell to 11,418 in 2020, down from a peak of more than 100,000 jobs in the 1950s.

Employment opportunities in coal mining were a draw for many Black southerners like Tartt’s family, who migrated from Alabama in the 1920s and put down roots in the Appalachian region that now stretch back four generations. As coal dwindles in West Virginia, Tartt says many people, regardless of their race, are left without much economic opportunity.

“There’s a lot of poverty, a lot of unemployment, those sorts of things,” Tartt says. “A lot of that is because the coal mining industry is gone. In addition to that, it’s almost like these people and this place have been left behind.”

This is where farming enters the picture. Tartt enlisted in the military in 1991 and worked as a U.S. Department of Defense contractor before returning to McDowell County in 2010. In his second career as a farmer, he is using his new role to help educate the local residents about what bounty lies in the flood plains and mountainous terrain. Tartt has piloted growing fruit orchards and making honey on hillsides and has plans to expand. He recently leased 335 acres to build out the hillside growing model.

Shortly after returning to West Virginia, Tartt joined the Veterans & Heroes to Agriculture program run through the state’s Department of Agriculture. The program was started with a mission to help veterans or people transitioning out of the military to enter the agricultural sector.

The program’s overall goal is to empower the public to control their access to fresh food.

While in the program, he met Skye Edwards, who had learned to farm growing up on the Eastern Band of Cherokee reservation in North Carolina. Tartt and Edwards decided to start McDowell County Farms in 2013.

“[Edwards] was an older man. You know how the old-timers are, they don’t spare feelings,” Tartt says. “They just give it to you straight. He really taught me a lot: the business side of [farming], the science that goes into it. So, he gave me that kind of perspective and really helped me to appreciate what went into this creation, but also how to make the most of it.”

Tartt and Edwards (who passed away in early 2021) linked up with West Virginia State University Extension Service. The program’s overall goal is to empower the public to control their access to fresh food. They do this by connecting farmers, growers, and ranchers from underserved backgrounds, like Black and brown communities, or other people in Appalachia who are transitioning out of mining and timber and have limited job prospects.

“Agriculture is an essential part of our community fabric, even if people don’t understand that,” says Christy Martin, the alternative agriculture extension agent in the Agriculture and Natural Resources Division at West Virginia State University.

As in the case with Tartt, the extension program is helping farmers utilize small spaces that have not been traditionally thought of as or intended to be agricultural land.

“It’s like these little, tiny strips in flood plains, or areas that had been an abandoned lot, or something that had been part of a coal or timber operation, and now trying to adapt those to agriculture,” says Martin. “So, in many cases, we’re not dealing in acreage. We might even be dealing in square footage.”

“A handful of counties in West Virginia could probably produce more than the entire state of Vermont.”

The extension service is piloting a project to grow fruit trees on what was formerly logging land. The benefits are that the roads are already terraced from the logging industry and may make great use for planting orchards.

“And now, that space that wasn’t being used is now a productive orchard,” says Martin of the project.

In addition to orchards, Tartt says West Virginia has plentiful maple trees, which is an overlooked market in West Virginia. Vermont is currently the top producer of maple syrup in the United States, according to the 2017 Census of Agriculture, producing almost half of the nation’s supply.

“A handful of counties in West Virginia could probably produce more than the entire state of Vermont,” says Tartt.

To build an enduring farming economy, Tartt also points to younger farmers, a demographic the farming sector is lacking. In 2017, the average age of a farmer in the U.S. was 57.5 years old. In an effort to attract and develop younger farmers, Tartt founded a nonprofit called the American Youth Agripreneur Association; however, due to the pandemic, the association has yet to operate at full capacity.

“Reaping what you planted in the ground is a beautiful thing,” says Michael Ferguson, president of the nascent association.

Father and son, Jason Tartt and Jason Tartt Jr. (Photo credit: Suzanne Pender and Rebecca Haddix, USDA)

Ferguson, who is also Black, grew up in McDowell County and has been growing plants and food since he was young, having learned from his grandparents. He has been farming with the Tartt family for nearly 10 years and has now started his own farm, Ferguson Farms. Ferguson first met Tartt through his son, Jason Jr., when Jason Jr. would sell produce from McDowell County Farms. Part of Ferguson’s role will be to help steward the 335 acres that Tartt has leased. Similar to Tartt, Ferguson would like to use farming to improve the quality of life in his hometown.

Ferguson points to some of issues that have cropped up in McDowell County in recent years, including drug use. He suggests that people have forgotten the farming way of life.

“This is who we are; we’re the Mountain State. We farm around here, and people just forget. I just want to bring it back so you can still live here and have a good life.”

This article originally appeared at YES! Magazine, and is reprinted with permission.

The post Black Farmers Are Rebuilding Agriculture in Coal Country appeared first on Civil Eats.

How Gleaning Could Reshape the Farm Economy

Natalie Peart, YES! Magazine — Fri, 09 Jul 2021 08:00:11 +0000

Each year, farmers like Joe Tisbert of Valley Dream Farm in Cambridge, Vermont, are challenged with finding an outlet for their surplus crop. Surplus crop is defined as the food remaining after a harvest that cannot be sold on the market, or which cannot be harvested. As a result, farmers make less revenue for the season, but it also poses a potential loss of food for people in their communities.

Farming is the genesis of our food supply, and it’s an industry that is wracked with labor shortages, weather impacts from climate change, food waste, price volatility, and unequal distribution of land.

In response to some of the challenges that some Vermont farmers face, one Vermont nonprofit organization, Salvation Farms, which is not a farm, is devising ways to work with farmers to manage their crop surplus and get it to people who need fresh produce.

Salvation Farms co-founders, Theresa Snow and Jen O’Donnell, piloted their model in 2004, which centered the agrarian practice called gleaning. Since ancient times, poor people or travelers would visit local farmed fields, whose owners would leave small sections of their land to be harvested, or gleaned, by those with lesser means. Snow, who now sits as the executive director of Salvation Farms, learned about gleaning while she was serving in AmeriCorps in the early 2000s on a farm in rural Virginia. She grew up with parents who Snow described as “modest homesteaders” and with grandparents who owned a dairy farm, and she says her upbringing was very rooted in home and land-based economies and not “just a monetary commerce-based economy.”

AmeriCorps later transferred Snow to New York City, where she was tasked with helping families and individuals who had lost their jobs, homes, and loved ones in and after the 9/11 attacks. There, Snow realized how far people were from meeting their basic subsistence needs.

“What I experienced providing service—essentially casework to individuals who are seeking support—was that these individuals had no ability to meet any of their essential needs because they had fully bought into a monetary economy,” said Snow.

Snow maintains this was not just an issue for people in metropolitan areas, but also in her home state of Vermont, where people could be just as removed from their food sources. After her time in AmeriCorps, Snow moved back to Vermont and returned to working on a farm. She struggled with what to do with her life and when asked by a farmer where she really wanted to put her energy, she said that she wanted to teach people about farming. On that farm, Pete’s Greens, she devised and tested the plan for Salvation Farms.

“I want to teach people about farms, I want to teach people and communities that, through relationship and appreciation with farms, we can have more personal and community agency,” Snow said. “We can have more control over meeting our needs.”

The United States has more than 2 million farms. According to the USDA, agriculture, food, and adjacent industries contribute $1.11 trillion to the U.S. economy. Of that amount, farming produces $136.1 billion. Snow, along with staff and volunteers at Salvation Farms, help farmers such as Tisbert find a place for their surplus food.

Valley Dream Farm sits on a 300-acre tract made up mostly of streams, pastures, and woods, with 10 to 15 acres reserved for growing food. Its main crops are potatoes, cucumbers, and kale, which are sold through three channels: its own farm stand, wholesale buyers such as groceries, and a cooperative, Deep Root Organic Cooperative, which sells farmers’ produce to other food cooperatives, CSAs, and some grocery chains like Whole Foods.

“It’s great to grow something and say, ‘Wow, I really like to grow this little one. I like to really grow this and sell it and try to make a living on it,’” Tisbert said. “Well, you’ve got to find a market. Everybody has to have a niche. People are trying to figure out where to go. How can I sell it?”

That’s where Salvation Farms comes in.

“When I can’t market the product, I have Salvation Farms,” said Tisbert, who has been working with the organization since 2006. “They show up, and I give them things that I can’t sell in a timely manner. I need to get it out the door because I need my space.”

Salvation Farms is part of the Vermont Gleaning Collective, which consists of a number of organizations that glean throughout the state.

For some farmers of color, such as Amber Arnold, gleaning is not something her farm uses now. Arnold, who identifies as Black and multiracial, has other considerations in establishing her farm’s practices.

Most farms in Vermont, and in the U.S., have White owners. As of 2017, White farmers owned nearly 93 percent of farmland in the United States, and accounted for about 97 percent of the market value of their products. Nevertheless, Black, Asian, Native American, and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander farmers still owned about 60 million acres combined, and farmers of Hispanic, Latino or Spanish origin, regardless of other racial identification, owned 32 million acres. Of the nearly 7,000 farms in the state of Vermont, only 13 are owned or operated by those of Asian descent, 17 by Black Vermonters, 23 by Native Americans, and 82 by people with more than one racial identity.

Arnold’s farm, Susu CommUnity Farm in Brattleboro, Vermont, was founded in October 2020 as a response to its community’s wants and needs around food access during the pandemic. Arnold and her co-founder, Naomi Moody, who identifies as AfroIndigenous, are in the process of purchasing 37 acres to grow and continue a free CSA program they devised called Boxes of Resilience.

Arnold and Moody learned about gleaning through a funder and ultimately determined that the way Susu CommUnity Farm’s produce is harvested, and the way they want to work with whom they harvest or partner, has to be intentional and aligned with the founders’ values.

“All of the people who engage in our programs and stuff, we want to make sure that they have a racial analysis and that they want to connect in a very particular way,” Arnold said. “And so I think it’s not just about labor for us. There’s a whole communal collective piece that has to be present.”

Salvation Farms only gleans produce that will be used by the organizations and people it works with. The group works with 20 to 30 farms and 50 recipient sites, including food banks and other charitable food organizations like Meals on Wheels of Lamoille County, and Lamoille Community Food Share as a way to bring farm fresh produce to the food insecure. According to the USDA, the average food insecurity rate for Vermont households between 2017 and 2019 was 9.6 percent before the pandemic.

Meredith Niles, a researcher and professor of food systems at the University of Vermont, is part of a team that has conducted six studies on food insecurity in the state during the pandemic. In the first month of COVID-19, Niles and her colleagues surveyed 600 people about their food security before and after the onset of the pandemic in the U.S. in March 2020. The survey revealed a 33 percent increase in food insecurity among households during the COVID pandemic.

Food insecurity is not just defined by the lack of economic resources with which people can obtain food, but also whether or not people have the ability to travel to access food. Additional obstacles were presented by the pandemic when much public transportation was curtailed.

Niles believes that Vermont farmers, including a small number who identified as BIPOC, have the opportunity to act as a solution to this issue.

“We did see that there were a number of respondents—farmers—that wanted to in the future start accepting SNAP benefits post-COVID, for example,” she said. “So there’s a lot of opportunity to better connect these two things, especially in a state like Vermont where we have such a vibrant local farmer and food business sector, and also we have demonstrated a need for increasing food security.”

Food service programs such as Meals on Wheels of Lamoille County receive, on average, 100 pounds of local produce a week from the Salvation Farms gleaning program. During their eight-year relationship, Salvation Farms has learned what produce will serve the recipients of the Meals on Wheels program, many of whom are older Vermonters.

“They know what we need,” said Nicole Fournier Grisgraber, executive director of Meals on Wheels of Lamoille County. “They show up here every Monday and drop our delivery off.”

It’s important to note that the work of Salvation Farms is one strategy of collaborative ecosystem of food banks, food pantries, gleaning collectives, and farmers to feed those in Vermont who may lack sufficient access to food.

In some cases, Salvation Farms will act as a broker for farmers who might not have a client base. In those instances, Salvation Farms will purchase the produce outright when they have found a buyer who will pay for the produce as well as transportation costs.

Snow believes that food that does not make it off the farm and into the community is food lost. In Snow’s eyes, food loss is different from food waste. Food waste is a product that has left the farm and gone into the food supply chain; waste can occur anywhere along that chain from storing, to shipping and distribution to consumers.

In the U.S., about 400 pounds of food per person is wasted annually, according to the National Resources Defense Council. An organization like Salvation Farms tries to intercept food before it leaves the farm to make sure that food has a clear endpoint. In the end, there is less food loss and potentially less food waste.

Snow also maintains, and Tisbert supports, that most farmers are not wasteful and that if they cannot sell a crop in the traditional market, they will find something to do with it, even if it’s tilling that harvest back into the land. Tisbert composts some his surplus on-site. For other farms, if no recipient for a donation can be found, or there is too much surplus crop, Salvation Farms will help give that food to an animal farmer or composting operation.

Tisbert said working with Salvation Farms has been helpful, “Farmers sometimes have crops that are second, that the Whole Foods of the world won’t take,” he said. “So, you’ve got to find something to do with it. And you don’t want to just throw it away. They have a great service to myself and a lot of other farmers that I know.”

This article originally appeared in YES! Magazine, and is reprinted with permission.

The post How Gleaning Could Reshape the Farm Economy appeared first on Civil Eats.