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I’m super excited because my guest is as passionate about social justice as I am and she’s used her life and skills to really connect social justice and food justice together. I think you will love this interview with Leah Penniman from Soul Fire Farm  in New York!

Soul Fire Farm is committed to ending racism and injustice in our food system.

20 years of experience as a soil steward and food sovereignty activist.

Tell us a little about yourself.

Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farm’s Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land

Definitely, I’d be happy to!

I’ve been farming 22 years and I am the founding co-director of Soul Fire Farms

IT’s a little community farm run by Black-Indigenous Latin and located up in the mountains of Grafton NY

in love with farming my whole life, NY and really see it as a foundation for social justice and environmental stewardship. Here at Soul Fire Farms

We are committed to ending racism in the food system.

Part of that is what we grow in our food.

We grow on 5 acres and all of that gets boxed up to those who need it most in the community

refugees

immigrants

people who have an incarcerated loved one

latin indigenous folks who want to farm

We have cultivated 500 new farmers over the years through our program.

How are you supporting your farm if you are donating all of this food? Where are you getting your money from do you sell some food too? Do you get donations? Where do you get your income from?

That’s a really valid question, we started out as a family farm and we started out to be a viable business. 

it would be a little strange to be training the next generation of farmers if it was a farm that relies on donations or a slush fund. 

So we use a sliding scale model

people who earn more money and have more wealth pay more

less

balance

The farmer get’s market value for the produce

non-profit branch to our work we get some funds for that that helps with our education 

youth programs we do

public education

We travel all around the regions sharing information about food justice.

I love all this, this weekend was the indigenous march in Washington DC and the kids at a large interaction with the and the government shut down over immigration and here you are helping train immigrants and doing all this wonderful work. I feel like it’s such a timely topic.

Tell me about your first gardening experience?

So, I did not grow up gardening

I did grow up in a rural area and was friends with the trees for sure. Our family was often one of the only brown skin families in...