Fight against ‘food apartheid,’ pushes more Black Americans into urban farming
Bryan Ibrafall Wright, founder of the Black Urban Gardening Society based in Oklahoma City, said his group has had “easily” over 30,000 membership inquiries since the beginning of the pandemic. The four-year-old group has accepted about 5,000 new members.
By Karen Robinson-Jacobs
The St. Louis American
Dec 12, 2022
Excerpt:
“Black people in urban areas are currently and increasingly interested in controlling our food system and resisting against the violence that our people experience through the corporate-controlled food system,” said Dara Cooper, co-founder of the National Black Food and Justice Alliance, a coalition focused on “creating a just food and land revolution.”
“I’m not saying we don’t want access to grocery stores, but my point is we want deeper solutions.”
Since the pandemic began, community organizations, nonprofits and the federal government have been scrambling to head off what loomed as a major food catastrophe.
The deadly virus shuttered businesses, slashing worker incomes. Schools across the nation, a source of food for millions of children, shut down.
In 2020, one in four Black residents across the U.S. experienced food insecurity — more than three times the rate for white households — according to Feeding America, the nation’s largest charitable hunger-relief organization.
Rise of the Black farmer
Against that backdrop, many groups looking specifically to help Black Americans get a shovel in the ground say they have seen exponential growth.
