am definitely feeling the love with the invite to open up this winter conference and kick off this great weekend with a massive ship and stories that i think are really important so thank you for having me and thank you to know for vermont for choosing to focus this conference with a theme like growing the good food movement the key piece of that phrase being growing the movement because all of us in this room whether we're farmers homesteaders food advocates food eaters we are all a part of this larger movement right whether we got into farming to heal the earth to heal our health to maybe make use of skills passed on from our families or maybe to have jobs outside of the cubicle or because we just can't get enough of soil science compost and veggies whatever the reason is that we all got into farming and whether we realize it or not we're all without a doubt a part of this incredible mass movement that is sweeping the nation right now and that's exciting right but it feels amazing to be a part of something so huge to be a part of creating change together all of us in our own small ways we are changing mindset we're changing practices we're changing the food system we're changing the soil right beneath our feet that's pretty powerful so no wonder now if i has gathered us all here this weekend to figure out how we can keep that momentum going right how we can keep growing keep building that power and how can we do that how can we do that in a way that moves beyond just calming  and hansing our skills in organic farming networking with each other that's why many of us are here and it's very important as well but i think nova vermont has gathered us here this weekend to dig a little deeper to really kind of zoom out and reflect on our movement look at ourselves in the mirror and see if there are any areas where we can learn and change and grow reflect on a movement not necessarily in size but ineffectiveness and integrity maybe we're here to look at ourselves and see if we can be not just a movement for good food but a movement for good and that might make some of us think ok a movement for good maybe a movement that's fair a movement that's just fair and just in the way that we grow our food in the way that we treat the land and the way that we treat food workers and whether that good food is reaching the families that need it all of those pieces of the good food good food movement puzzle our on our plates right all those pieces and more if we're willing to follow the food back far enough to dig deep enough so the question i pose to all of you is just how how deep are we willing to dig when it comes to addressing and equities and injustices in the food system as well as our good food movement because in equities like food access to healthy access injustices like farm worker issues those are real and urgent issues but they only scratched the surface and they don't define the communities that they exist great farm workers or food deserts those aren't the only roles for communities of color in the good food movement problems to be solved and the problems of the solutions to these problems are cut and dry right we're just scratching the surface if we think that paying an extra penny per pound for tomatoes addresses farm worker wages shoes or dropping off our extra produce at the local food bank addresses healthy food access where really only hanging out in the topsoil right not anywhere down near the deepest root down near the bedrock of where the real complexities of these issues lie where we can really start to see and understand what's going on in these communities and what's kind of going on in the power dynamics that are at play the people in power over our food system so if we really want to grow as a movement and be a stronger better movement we've really got to do some digging and when i started farming which is a whole nother story that i'll get to in a minute but when i started farming six years ago and became a part of this good food movement it really didn't take me long to see just how bad this movement needed to do a little digging seeing the glaring and equities in our food system and within the movement itself was what really caused me to get out on the road and have a life changing journey really it's what caused me to put down my pitchfork pick up my pen and my tape recorder and just listen i thought if we're not hearing from the communities that are marginalized by the food system and by the movement itself the very same communities that are most heavily impacted by our broken system then we're not hearing anything if we truly want to be a good food movement a movement that's doing good an inclusive movement a sustainable movement one that will be around for good right then we've got to start hearing all the voices at the table we've got to make sure everybody's at the table and if they're not we've got to find out why which might just mean going and knocking on their doors and asking to sit and listen at their tables it might be time to hear some of those under told stories so that we can really build understanding and develop real relationships so that we can grow into a better stronger movement and that's why i'm here today to bring some of these untold stories into the room i am off there of the color food stories of race resilience and farming and it is a book that focuses on farmers and food activists of color specifically farmers and food activists from black latino asian and native communities around the country and through photographic story telling their stories give us insight into some of the barriers and issues that they see in the movement and in the food system but it also their stories highlight the work that they're doing and their own communities the work they're doing to push the movement forward work and sustainable practices that they've often been for longer than the national movement has really taken hold work that is often largely overlooked by the larger movement but vital in their communities their stories dig a little bit into the history of injustice and inequities for people of color but also really highlight the resilience in these communities and how they're pushing forward and creating revolutionary change and it's all happening around food and farming and finally their stories remind us of the cultural the different cultures and cultural food ways that exist and teach us that without culture there is no agriculture so i'd like to share a few of these stories with you all but before i do i want to give you just a little bit of my own story so you can understand how i came to write this book and how i came to be standing up here on the stage in front of all of you because i am not a public speaker i am not an academic i don't work for an organization this project was not research mandated by some food justice policy council or by some diversity department in the u s d a although i do think it should be mandated that they all read the book  i'm not a student i haven't been one in ten years so this isn't you know my thesis research project i am simply a brown girl who wanted to start farming and this project really started for very personal reasons for me and it did just start as a very simple photographic storytelling project now turned book thanked to new society publishers and as you know mentioned the book will be out in april and i am taking preorders this weekend so you can come see me but the project really started for me because i felt it was simply necessary vital to better understand my own place in the food movement and to hopefully impact the larger movement staying up late at night on the farm i was working on and upstate new york six years ago when i started this project i was trying to put all the pieces of the project together i had no idea what i was doing i had absolutely no money but i had an incredible community of people behind me and they were encouraging me to start one of these fundraising campaigns crowdsource fundraising so i log onto one of the kickstarter websites and within sixty days i raised over ten thousand dollars and then got matching grants on top of that so that to me was overwhelming affirmation of the need for this project and the support to hear these kinds of stories so after much outreach to farmers and food activists around the country who agreed to be interviewed i was ready to hit the road but i'm not sure i was quite ready for what would end up as a life changing journey so there i found myself out on the road in the hot summer of two thousand and twelve in my nineteen ninety oldsmobile station wagon with my camera my tape recorder and my notebook by  side and i began chuckling at myself because just two years prior all i had wanted to do was farm i had quit my job as an advocate policy advocate in washington d to move onto an organic farm and frolic through the fields and tiptoe through the tulips as everyone thinks organic farmers do right and now here i was as some self appointed documentarian my family given up trying to figure out what the hell i was doing one minute i'm in d c then i'm on a farm now in a one thousand nine hundred oldsmobile station wagon with all my belongings but i knew i was just where i needed to be i knew because i was on a quest and i was searching for answers this quote from alice walker really sums up my personal reasons for starting this project growing up as a mixed kid raised by a white mother i felt i was always trying to find my place and my mother's garden right as figurative least speaking as a brown girl and white america i was always looking for my place and when i started farming when i started getting into this good food movement all of that just felt emphasized here i had joined this crunchy majority white movement for organic food farming gardening and i was really searching for for my own garden for my own place i found myself literally barefoot on an organic farm  commune in west virginia looking around and wondering what the hell i was doing there where all the other people of color were don't get me wrong i was in love with what i was doing i had finally started doing what i'd been dreaming of back in d c when i was working as a health care and environmental policy advocate and i had left my job because the lights had suddenly gone off i finally saw the elephant in the room of all of these issues i was passionate about the environmental issues social justice issues health care food was at the center of all of it how we grow our food how food is distributed to the communities that need to so i quit my job and immersed myself in the good food movement i was volunteering on farms working at farmers markets working for farmers reading as many books as i could and finally i had done it i had left my job left the city and was on this farm and i knew i was doing the right thing i knew i was on the right path for myself but at the same time i could not ignore the extreme exclusiveness of the movement that i was seeing in all of the spaces that market at the conferences i was attending in the books i was reading on the farms the faces of the movement the picture being painted was that this was for white folks even in d c what's called the chocolate city you know in some of the low income communities communities of color they were starting to address food justice by opening up community gardens farmers markets hosting food justice conferences and that was all great but the folks leading the discussions the organizations that were setting up the farmers markets in the gardens the people working at the gardens and the markets they weren't from the communities nor did they represent the communities racially culturally the farmers markets often set up in predominantly latino neighborhoods didn't have staff that were bilingual know culturally relevant foods the urban gardens the community gardens the volunteers and staff there were having a hard time in gauging the communities and any exception to this any you know those that were set up throughout d c that were community led just weren't getting the same visibility they weren't getting the same funding they weren't getting the same support from the larger movement so as i witnessed all of this along with feeling pretty alone out there on my organic farm in west virginia my giddiness about my new found path really started to slip i started to question my own place in the movement whether i belong to there or whether i belonged out on the farm whether this movement was really doing good and if i felt that way having the racially ambiguous skin tone that's been confusing curious americans since one thousand nine hundred three if i felt that way then surely other people have goller felt that way frustrated and alone in a movement that was painting this exclusive exclusive picture right this is the face of the good food movement and everywhere i was looking in all the magazines talking about the back to the land movement sweeping the nation young farmers coming back strong and this one here this is the young farmers of the capital food that's d c that's the d c area the chocolate city the picture was clear communities of color were not being represented but it's not about just about the media or the picture being painted right but if we are being left out of the literal picture what else are we being left out of are the best farmers markets whole foods or ghana grocery stores opening up in our communities are we being left out of the agricultural system itself could that have something to do with our low numbers as farmers let's take a look at that picture by looking at the numbers according to the two thousand and twelve u s d a agricultural census ninety six percent of america's farmers are white only thirteen percent are women so that means majority white men that doesn't exactly represent our country maybe those in power it represents but our people our communities right one third of the u s population is minority and that number is growing in about fifteen to twenty years the minority is predicted to be the majority so that disparity is not sustainable  and here in vermont though the population looks a little different being a state with the second smallest minority population in the country at just five percent things are changing particularly the black and hispanic community here in vermont has doubled since the year two thousand and the population growth in the state overall has been majority driven by the growth of the minority population you guys know this you live here there's also a large refugee community growing here in vermont and as mentioned a large community from mexico coming up as margaret migrant farm workers but particularly the refugee population one in four african in vermont were born in africa so the somali rwandan sudanese communities are really growing here as well as to baton iraqi and bosnian communities and there are some really great programs like the refugee resettlement program and this o c a ssion of africans living in vermont that are not only helping these refugees transition to new lives in america but they're tapping into growing the diversity in the agricultural makeup in vermont which as we can see here is quite homogenize ninety nine percent right these programs that are kind of changing the make up of farmers here in vermont they're building on programs that encourage farming for the refugee communities while also ensuring that these communities are building economic growth maintaining non western diets as they can grow their foods from their home countries selling produce at market building community with each other building stronger communities securing access and low accept food access and low access communities and also facilitating some therapy right from the trauma that is created during leaving your own country and coming to a new country all of that is happening around farming i was reading about the association of africans living in vermont they have a program the new farms for new americans and it sounds really great right here in burlington helping refugee communities navigate the farm business model here they're selling produce that market and creating platforms from which they can launch their own social enterprises and independent farm businesses so clearly things in vermont are changing and this growth in diversity not only in the overall population but in the population of farmers will have a big impact on the state's food system and the good food movement here and it seems it already is if these farmers are already introducing new crops and foods at market introducing new skills into the agricultural collaborative talked about wanting to make vermont the number one goat meat producer in the country and they're working with refugee communities and learning from refugee communities who come from countries where goat meat production is a lot more common than it is here and right now in the states goats are all the rage on a serious note the goat meat industry is the fastest growing livestock industry in the country right now and it's primarily been driven by demand and in a growth in popularity due to the cultural population shift that we're seeing so some of the farmers that i interviewed really saw that shift coming down the pike and are capitalizing on that increasing demand renard turner and his wife should net raise my atomic goats on their ninety four acre farm in charlottesville outside of charlottesville virginia and if you're at all familiar with charlottesville virginia you know that it's really growing into quite the foodie town a lot of chefs are flocking there great restaurants are opening up great food festivals are happening and there's a food have there that so cing from a lot of the local small farmers well renard engine that also have an organic produce and egg operation and they're selling a lot of their products to the food hub as well as to some of the local restaurants but they're goat meat is the heart of their business and renard's their farm is called vanguard ranch and they sell their goat meat to some of the local stores and restaurants but really managed to sell direct to consumer making about thirty eight dollars a pound yeah how are they doing that they're processing the meat into added value products in the concerts and events throughout the region this direct marketing strategy really works for them where they are because as i said charlottesville is this burgeoning foodie town and there are cars and there's a lot of vineyards in the area so there's always these great wine and food festivals seasonal events like mana chalo great summer concerts and they have people lining up for their products that's how they can get top dollar per pound and they are extremely successful in doing this they have been doing it for over ten years and renard's been farming for about twenty years so we had plenty to talk about when i was there for my three day visit in this regard the success of his farm his experience farming his love for mother earth news that has gone on since his childhood teenage years but what we talked about most in the three days i was there was how renard is constantly working to push the organic industry and the movement in charlottesville to be more inclusive he now sits on the board of the virginia biological farming association but he says that was a very long road to get there as a black farmer and he said there's still quite a long road ahead he talked about the difficulty also of breaking into the movement for the black community he explained this to me as i followed him around with my tape recorder in one hand and a fencing tool in the other because i could never get farmers to sit down for too long for an interview so we would always work as we talked and he explained this issue of why it was not easy to get to for black farmers to break into the to the leadership level of the movement but also how it was not easy to get black farmers recruited into into agriculture he said i call it anti agricultural black lash black folks are still equating farming with slavery and there were people do carry a painful past with agriculture still painful today with discrimination from the u s d a that is ended in lawsuits like the pig for case that's real and we have to recognize it but farming owning land and running our own farm businesses that creates independence self sufficiency we are doing this for self my wife and i believe what we are advocating for is larger than just farming it's a ism which for the black community can mean a lifestyle that is about choice and can be the basis for restructuring our community in a way that creates value and is lasting and another goat farmer in the south sandra simone didn't care that her family's land and eventually that live off the land lifestyle that renard talked about her land was purchased by her great grandfather in the late eighteen hundreds after arriving in alabama from mozambique land acquisition at that time when african americans had no rights and very few assets after emancipation was not easy but despite by one thousand ten black land ownership was around fifteen million acres however with the introduction of jim crow the k k k and the economic depression many black families fled north to the cities in what was known as the great migration to escape the south's extreme racism and to find work in the meantime they left behind family land that was often lost to developers or taken in legal loopholes sandra's family went through this her parents had left alabama and she was raised in southern california dreaming of being a jazz singer but when she got married and had kids her husband pushed her to look into her family's land and hold onto it because he believed what ralph pages always preaching that land is the only real wealth in this country and if we don't own any will be out of the picture now ralph page is the head of the federation of southern cooperatives one of the oldest and largest farmer cooperatives in the solve that has been fighting against black land loss for decades so most of sandra's family land was divided up and sold and sandra couldn't do much to stop it because of the tricky areas property laws that are often the culprit of black family land loss throughout the self but she was able to save some hundred acres of it intelligent a county alabama where after losing her husband to cancer she decided to stay there alone dedicated to keeping the land and farming it she raises meat goats as well and operates a small c s a farm she was recently named farmer of the year by the alabama and r c s and she's a certified organic farmer and a member of the southeastern african american farmers organic network and if you haven't heard of this network nickname safwan you should really look them up they're an amazing network of over one hundred twenty black farmers across eight southern states and throughout the caribbean all certified organic farmers due to the support and training of the organization cynthia hayes who i call my m bull farmer the themselves started the organization in two thousand and six because as cynthia puts it there was a need to find a way for black farmers to save their land and i saw the organic industry booming so it just made sense these are some of the staff on farmers just a few of them that i interviewed and i did interview many and while all of their stories were different many talked about how growing organically just made sense because it was the way their families had grown ever since before again it became a thing right many of these farmers were older in their fifty's sixty's and seventy's and they talked about how the disconnect from these farming skills that they grew up with and that has happened in today's generation in their communities due to impart a lot of the land lost their communities were seeing was the culprit of the ailing health and their communities and many other communities i interviewed talked about the same thing about how their struggles with land lost were the same and how this loss of land along with the loss of their culturally relevant foods and farming culture was impacting their health health that is disproportionately worse in their communities communities like robinson county north carolina one of the poor it poorest counties in the country and home to the largest native american population east of the mississippi forty percent of the county is native related illnesses like diabetes heart disease and obesity are rampant beverley grew up on her family's farm and first worked as a home health nurse before starting her organization american indian mothers and their farm three sisters farm and as we sat in room when i was visiting beverly she told me why she started this organization that was now doing so much for the community in the way of food farming and nutrition she said i watched as the elders were forced to choose between buying food or buying medicine and that's not right our elders never used a lock for anything and the food they are provided at these food banks is not the food of our people it's not the food they're used to and it's making them sick we've lost who we are as a people when i land was taken from us they made our land sick our rivers sick and now the food is killing us we've got to clean it up and native americans can show you how beverly has been running american indian mothers for twelve years and as an organization they started their own food bank supplied with culturally relevant foods and fresh foods grown on their farm the three sisters farm which is named after the iroquois concept of growing beings corn and squash together three crops that work well together in the garden and compliment each other nutritionally they also run youth programs on the farm educational nutritional education programs host storytelling and cultural pride events on the farm and support local native farmers who are facing off obstacles in the u s d a system far from beverly in the appalachian mountains of north carolina live the eastern band of the cherokee nation and right outside of what was once their eleven million acre homeland is where they are now but the eleven million acres is today the smoky mountain national park the cherokee now live on a much smaller piece of land their reservation sits right outside of the park where tourists pass through to buy cherokee trinkets and gamble at the casinos on their way in and out of the park my husband and i who had joined me on the road at this point met with kevin welch of the center for cherokee plants kevin explained to us the definition of agriculture for his tribe as we sat in the shade with the birds chirping at our backs kevin spoke so softly that we had t scoot our chairs up to hear him cherokee he started are the original agriculturists of this land we have been growing food here for thousands of years but we are forest people to which means we hunt and harvest wild foods this is a part of agriculture for us it is part of our cocke our culture kevin talked about the loss of what was once their harvesting and hunting grounds and is now the national park he talked about the misunderstanding of the effects of harvesting and the beneficial role it can play in the ecosystem if done properly the way his people had been doing for thousands of years part of his work at the center for cherokee plants is preserving wild cherokee plan and they are a seed bank that was her wild onions otherwise known as ramps they are a seed bank that is focused on propagating and saving heirloom cherokee plants many that were cultivated and many that were typically wild harvested like the wild onions throughout cherokee history but as kevin says they are little different and being a seed bank and that they don't just sit on the seeds they give them away kevin propagates a variety of plants and they give them out as garden kids every year to residents on the cherokee reservation seven hundred garden kids a year go out to the families who then start their own gardens with them with the poverty level and the healthy and the charity community so low this is directly affecting health and food access in the community kevin explains my research doesn't go into a book somewhere or sit on a shelf it goes directly into the homes on to the tables and to belize of this community where it belongs kevin and his wife sarah also take a mobile classroom around the reservation and support folks with garden education storytelling nutrition education and sarah says it makes all the difference that the teacher and the one pushing these kinds of initiatives in the cherokee community is cherokee and not from outside of the community she explains there's just a different connection that's happening a cultural understanding that is lacking and a lot of this kind of work happening elsewhere lewis casting it and knows exactly what she means about the difference that cultural understanding can mean he and his wife came to the u s from mexico and worked for years on conventional farms throughout new mexico before transitioning to farm owners to do this they have the support and connection from people within their community people like rico delgado rigo is the head of the national immigrant farming initiative and as a local farmer himself his organization supports and trains farmers like luis lewis now runs a cooperative vegetable farm with two other families and chaparral new mexico they receive training and support from rigo and other farmers like don boost us who is an endo hispanic farmer in northern new mexico who trains beginning farmers throughout the southwest lewis and his farm partners have now started a farmer's market in their community which is considered a food desert but they are proving that there can be food in the literal desert their growing healthy organic produce and  they are getting other families on board and building a commercial community kitchen where families can british begin producing added value products like acid arrow cheese tortillas and those which are mexican candies made from calabasas squash and they're selling them at market they're not only creating a shared economy but they're preserving cultural foodways recruiting new farmers transitioning out of farm worker life and promoting fresh foods in their own communities and this is happening all over the country and many different communities has a similar story up in northern washington state where she used to work as a berry picker unconventional farms before her son got leukemia and her fears that the exposure that her family was getting to the toxic chemicals being used on the farms was directly affecting the health of her family so she decided she wanted to start her own organic farm and that's exactly what she did with the support of an incubator farm program in northern washington called v among farmer a refugee that came to america and now is living and farming in fresno california is growing tropical fruits like mango and papaya in an impossible arid climate and central california by using greenhouses and having the support and access to u s d a training with help from michael yang also among refugee and extension hegemon who helps translate documents and helps him reach distributors the point is that these communities within agriculture and within the good food movement are here they exist and they're not going anywhere and we as a larger movement have a lot we can learn from the work that they're doing but first we have a lot to learn about these communities themselves what's going on in these communities and the complex dynamics that are at play that are keeping them in the shadows i am vait you to learn more about these stories and the stories that exist in your own community i invite you to think about why you do the work that you do what your role is in this good food movement and what your goals are for growing the movement and i leave you with this closing question from valerie seacrest a native food educator in the tribe of the state of washington how can we live like our teachers the plants and foods around us how can we learn to grow and thrive and diversity and be big medicine in the world thank you