Page 26 - Valley Table- Winter 2025

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, such
surroundings wildly 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.
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,
as reported in the 2017 census.
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 and 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 or known to
the federal government, which
administers the census, while
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.
BLACK FARMING IN OUR
OWN BACKYARD
There’s been a “big change
to the landscape,” says Leah
Penniman, co-executive
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
24 Valley Table | December 2024 – February 2025
Leah Penniman is the
author of the book,
Farming While Black.
roundtrip to pick up their
CSA share, balancing bags of
produce atop a stroller. They
were determined to have
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.
SFF has evolved from a
volunteer staff into a registered
PHOTOS (TOP TO BOTTOM) BY JAMEL MOSEL Y; KITREELADOBE STOCK