Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farms Practical Guide To Liberation on the Land by Leah Penniman and Karen Washington

Abstract

Reviewed by: Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farms Practical Guide To Liberation on the Land by Leah Penniman and Karen Washington C. K. Cartagena Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farms Practical Guide To Liberation on the Land. Leah Penniman and Karen Washington. Chelsea Green Publishing, White River Junction, VT, 2018. 355 pp.; resources, charts, diagrs., ills., notes, photos, and index. $34.95. (ISBN 978-1-60358-761-7). Farming While Black is a step by step guide for the modern-day Black farmer with historical accounts exploring the struggles and solutions encountered by past Black farmers who lived under both oppression from the state and their counterparts. A manual for operating in the realm of land stewardship is necessary when racial discrimination in the farming sector resulted in a class action lawsuit against the United States Department of Agriculture, as in the case of Pigford v. Glickman (Daniel 2013). Even the mere act of growing food as a Black person separate from corporate commodification was met with violence, in the case of Ron Finley of California (Ron Finley Project 2020) who dealt with over-policing of his property by the City of Los Angeles. Farming While Black acts as a comprehensive guide for aspiring and practicing Black farmers that offers a variety of instruction: obtaining land and resources, outlining farm business plans, honoring spirits of the land, land restoration, crop planning, preserving harvests and seeds, raising animals, urban farming, movement building through education, and action and policy change. Penniman has done extensive research and included personal documentation to identify land-based movements of oppressed populations throughout the world that coincide with the outline of this book. It serves as an acknowledgment of obstacles faced by many Black farmers and a welcome home to so many people who have been discouraged and rejected by land stewards and workers through entities such as banks and farmers markets. This book is a radical and educational option from Soul Fire Farms, a Black- and Indigenous-centered community farm in Rensselaer County, New York (Penniman and Washington 2018). As a guide, the book seeks to offer itself as a reference for sustaining productive farmland and activism through the lens of a desire to obtain land autonomy for Black people of the African diaspora. Farming While Black exposes to the reader a plethora of sustainability initiatives, particularly throughout the North and South American continents. Such initiatives exist because food and land are desired amongst Black people seeking sovereignty from violent statist structures and resisting food apartheids, [End Page 183] defined as “segregation that relegates certain groups to food opulence and prevents others from accessing life-giving nourishment” (Penniman and Washington 2018). Refugees, immigrants, residents of food apartheid areas, and formerly-incarcerated folks are particularly in need of initiatives of this kind, where fresh food is provided. This need arises out of a right to nutritious food, but especially for those most vulnerable to the highest levels of disease and food insecurity. The Black Radical Tradition is a Pan-Africanist and Indigenous frame of reference that historically sought land for its people. This initiative occurs as an element of the Black radical tradition: addressing the geopolitical ontology of the Black population through advocating for and obtaining spatial existence. Political power, stemming from geographic space, defined as “organized locations where social relations are fostered and maintained” (Razack 2002) is how spatial existence is formalized and often recognized in the field of political geography. Penniman illustrates spatial existence in more informal terms using this frame of reference. According to Priscilla McCutcheon, by pairing the Black Radical Tradition and feminist geopolitical ideologies, discussions of Black spirituality and agrarianism (McCutcheon 2019) are more accurately understood. One of the overarching elements that separates this book from others like it is the attention paid to spirituality. This storytelling move is framed by collectivism, an informal, bottom-up approach to conducting business (Secor 2001). Penniman recants her own ethnic identity, “my family’s mixed ethnic heritage” (Penniman and Washington 2018), where identity is tied to cultural practices that have helped shape the spirituality of African diasporic people and a strenuous relationship with the land due to colonialism. This understanding of the body as mixed...