When "Grow Your Own Food" Is a Tool of Oppression
Hello Big Team Farm!
Hope everyone had a chance to get out and enjoy Fools Spring last week, and now that we’re rested and rejuvenated, are ready to jump back into All the Work.
Great American Farmers
A horrific tragedy occurred this week, an attack on the Asian-American community perpetrated by a white terrorist. There is a long history in America of discrimination and violence against people of Asian decent and some of the worst of it was concentrated in the agricultural sector. In 1900, tens of thousands of people of Asian decent were working as tenant farmers or agricultural laborers in the Western United States in particular, and in many cases they were specifically responsible for introducing and maintaining valuable crops like stone fruits in areas that white farmers could not get them to grow. In fact, they were such efficient and successful farmers that that fact was often specifically sited, in public, as a key reason why their white neighbors wanted them gone.
Over the course of decades, racist actions like the 1913 Alien Land Act in California, which prohibited people of Asian descent from owning land in the state or from leasing land for more than three years, and Japanese internment which forced virtually all farmers and laborers of Japanese descent off their land and into distant concentration camps, made it nearly impossible for people of Asian descent to turn their world-class mastery of farming into a viable career. Not to mention the fact that racist groups, from the Klan to local civil bodies like the Farm Bureau, formed balls-out groups like the Merced County Anti-Japanese Association, that would go on to violently kidnap groups of Asian workers and move them, in the middle of the night, to faraway towns, a type of vigilante “deportation,” among other acts of terror.
There is so much more to discuss here, but I recommend going to straight to the source with Farming the Home Place: A Japanese American Community in California by Valerie J. Matsumoto to learn more. Also David M. Masumoto writes some beautiful poetic prose about his experience in Californian agriculture in several books, including Epitaph for a Peach.
A great group to support if you’re looking to put your money towards empowering Asian-American farmers today is the Hmong American Farmers Association (HAFA). These farmers came to Minnesota (outside the Twin Cities) as refugees in past decades, and have become a force for change and thinking differently about agriculture. They’re also a collective, not unlike what Sylvanaqua Farms is aiming towards!
“As part of an integrated approach to community wealth building, HAFA manages a 155-acre farm in Dakota County where member families can lease land, hone their business and agricultural practices, and sell produce to the HAFA Food Hub. The HAFA Food Hub aggregates and sells members’ produce through community-supported agriculture (CSA) shares, schools, retailers and institutions. Through collective farm business development, education and advocacy, we are building paths to wealth creation, not just income generation, toward a sustainable, fair food economy for all.”
If other folx have recommendations of how people can learn more about Asian-American leadership in agriculture, send them along and I’ll include them in next week’s email.
“If You Know So Much About Farming, Grow Your Own”
If you’ve ever said true facts about agriculture in public, you’ve probably come up against some version of this argument”
Of course, the boiled down version of this “argument” is captured in one of my favorite memes.
But I want to take some time to really dig into the “grow your own food” challenge, because it’s not just high and mighty farmers, who are unwilling to participate in productive public discussion, that love this line. In fact, *a lot* of people who focus on environmental outcomes and social justice also lean heavily on self-sufficiency arguments.
First, let’s consider Alan. When a farmer, who likely owns millions in agricultural-related assets and who’s received at least $200k in direct, taxpayer-funded payments in the last decade, suggests that consumers “do it themselves,” that is a transparent invitation to fail, but one that we are conditioned to accept.
That’s in part because American media is over-saturated with under-dog stories. There are few narratives more universally appealing in this country than a classic rags-to-riches case (it is much less common for us to publicly discuss the fact that a person is more likely to fall victim to a shark attack or win the lottery than to experience significant socio-economic mobility). Pair that with our culture of defiance— the idea of being motivated to prove someone wrong, and a lot of us get incredibly geared up to prove that by sheer grit and extraordinary effort, each of us are capable of achieving the impossible, including nutritional self-sufficiency.
This is common in the food and agriculture. I hear a lot of voices suggesting that, because the system is so broken, the work of feeding the community can only be done by communities themselves. “We’ll do it ourselves,” feels like a power move, a way to reclaim agency where it has been eroded. A major urban agriculture trend was founded around ideas like this— that communities could come together in their free time, reclaim community spaces, and participate in feeding themselves.
There is undoubtedly community-building value in this work. But it can also be problematic. Because the thing is, impossibly few communities have the land resources they need to actually feed themselves in a meaningful, safe, and affordable way, let alone the financial resources. And to saddle low-income people in particular (those most likely to be excluded through food apartheid) with physical gardening labor that they must do in their outside-of-work hours seems like an impossible-to-sustain demand, even if it is, at times, enjoyable.
This is the exact reason why “grow it yourself” is used as a tool to discourage criticism of mainstream agriculture. Because the people who offer it as a “solution” know it will fail. They’re planning on it. That’s the whole point. They know that when a relatively poor individual or community attempts to feed themselves, whether on half an acre of lead-laden dirt on a vacant lot or on a hard-to-access rooftop or in a minuscule window box, they’ll eventually run out of time, money, or energy to keep going. And when that moment comes, these wealth-holders plan to feel vindicated and to demand subservience. They know that a community fighting for their own survival not only nutritionally, but in terms of safety, healthcare, employment protections, education, and on countless other fronts, will never be able to match the staying power of thousands of acres of low-taxed, privately-held agricultural land, significant publicly-funded benefits, and the amassed stolen and exploited wealth of generations.
At a deeper level, many of these calls to self-sufficiency are really just demands that we play by the rules invented by the people who are already winning. Self-sufficiency, especially at the personal or family level, is a settler-colonial ideal. When farmers like Alan say, “I’d like to see you try,” they are saying “I get to do whatever I want with what I have, if you want it done differently, then you have to gain what I have.” It encodes the idea that it’s only possible for a person to serve their own, private needs, so to get your needs served, you’ll have to do it yourself. That premise is false. These people want private-land, private-wealth, capitalistic markets, because that’s how they’ve become “self-sufficient,” i.e. rich. Actually trying to do it ourselves, accepting that challenge, is just agreeing to play by those rules. But winning at the settler-colonial game will not change the system, in fact, it reinforces it.
In other words, when someone with all the resources tells critics who have no resources to do the work that requires resources, we should not listen. If someone wants to build a wall around their farm, their wealth, or their lives, and they call on us to do the same, our answer should be no. We want no walls. We want transparency, accountability, and participation on all sides, that must be the social price of owning land in this country.
In many ways, self-sufficiency is an anti-social concept, and that is not what we’re striving for. We live in a society, not an anti-society, and from my perspective, we’re aiming to live in a society where the people without access to immense wealth and land resources must still have a voice in how those resources (especially when backed by public support, as agriculture is) are used.
So the next time you hear someone with much wealth or other food-growing resources (be it a farmer, a non-profit, or a thought-leader on a speaking tour) tells someone with significantly fewer that “growing their own” is a vital part of changing the food system, remember that a plan that requires self-sufficiency among the poor while the rich do what they please is the standard that oppressors fight for. Remember that staying publicly engaged, fighting to get more real resources (land, knowledge, land, equipment, land, wealth, and have I mentioned, land?) into the hands of oppressed people is *way* more impactful work. We should not feel motivated to prove that we can be self-sufficient individuals, we should fight back against the cop-out inherent in that challenge and insist that those who hold resources and benefits are responsible for making improvements, not those who don’t.
If you garden, grow food, or work in urban agriculture, I think it’s important to keep these realities in mind. I’ve met many people who insist that they are passionate about transforming the food system, but the main action they take to do so is growing their own food. In terms of an enjoyable life experience or a meaningful stop-gap for the food insecure, this can be good work. But all the urban gardens and window boxes on this continent will do nothing to change the bigger issues in agriculture, which absolutely must be addressed. And by focusing on self-sufficiency, we let the wealthy farm community off the hook. Because every bushel of tomatoes or lettuce grown in a vacant lot is 10 more bushels of commodity corn that some farmer like Alan grows while our attention is focused elsewhere, with all the environmental consequences. By providing what we can for ourselves, we relieve the pressure that they should be feeling to grow more food, better, and to make it more accessible and affordable.
We must keep the pressure on. We must hold farming and food businesses accountable to our expectations. We must not allow them to use calls for us to be self-sufficient to excuse them from their duties to our communities.
And if you don’t garden or if you’ve never felt compelled to grow food, know that you are still well-placed to demand a more just food system. The more we participate, the more opportunities we have to force change. Not all of us want to garden or cook, aren’t good at it, and don’t need to do it. The good news is, humans are more than capable of working in one another’s interests.
So remember; no one can tell you what you can and can’t fight for, and certainly not the people who are withholding from us the things we need to survive. Don’t let anyone tell you how to fight, either, don’t let threats or bad-faith negotiating tactics derail your passion. The roots of injustice in the farm system are wrapped around unjust distribution of resources. Don’t let anyone tell you that the way that is is a feature, not a bug. We know that’s not the truth.
Ginny & Georgia & Exploitation
I just want to flag for all the fabulous people who have reached out that I have indeed watched Ginny & Georgia and heard the scam that Joe that farmer is perpetuating to avoid paying for labor at both his retail and farm locations. It is a tiny part of the overall plot, and pretty crappy for the screenwriters to put a Person of Color in the role of farmer-exploiter (when POC represent little more than 1% of total US farm owners), especially in the Northeast.
But still, it’s always fun when someone, knowingly or unknowingly, says the quiet parts about the food movement out loud.
#FarmArt
Y’all I am so excited to share that for the foreseeable future, the Big Team Farm is going to be supporting The Toasted Sister Podcast, an award winning show about Indigenous food. Podcast host, writer, and artist extraordinaire Andi Murphy (Diné) has been making the pod for a few years and I really can’t recommend any of her work highly enough.
More on Andi: “I started the Toasted Sister Podcast in January 2017 and talked with dozens of Indigenous people across the country about food. This is an award-winning podcast. It got first place for general excellence (in the professional division II) in radio and podcasting at the Native American Journalists Association 2019 National Native Media awards.
I’m Navajo from Crownpoint, N.M. and I live in Albuquerque. I am a full-time radio producer for Native America Calling, a national show about Native issues and topics, and a freelance multimedia journalist. If I’m not producing, podcasting or doing freelance food writing and photography, I’m cooking and challenging myself in the kitchen and giving my boys (tabby cats named Carrot and Lucifur) the best life. I’m also a mentee in the 2020 Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance’s Food and Culinary Mentorship program.”
There is literally not one episode of Toasted Sister that I haven’t deeply enjoyed, but I’d definitely recommend:
On the Pueblo Bread Trail in New Mexico
Bruce Savage - Spirit Lake Native Farms
Brian Yazzie - “Constantly Working”
as good first episodes to dip your toes into.
Plus, in addition to an incredible podcast, gorgeous art, and fun merch, Andi and her collaborator Monica Braine also put together this zine:
Honestly, I’m not cool enough to have really gotten into zines in my life, but this one is excellent. If one of the things that excites you about Farm (and Other F Words) is the independence in the publishing process, get excited about this little book. It’s super fun and extremely hopeful, and starts with an essay about the 2098 Farm Bill. You can get a copy by supporting the Patreon!
And don’t forget to sign up for Andi’s newsletter here.
Last F(ew) Things
It’s planting season— got seeds you’d like to share? Big Teammate Reana Kovalcik just launched a new project putting the power of mutual aid to work for seed re-matriation and to make the expense of gardening a little bit more affordable for all in these challenging times. Learn more about Share a Seed here.
Have you listened to Escaping 1980 but wished you could seemour faces? Then you’ll love Escaping 1980: Beyond the Podcast.
I was quoted in an article this week by the inimitable Lela Nargi about wetlands, “Can More Farmers Be Convinced to Conserve and Restore Wetlands.” I bet you can guess what I said said 💀 .
If you’re ever trying to staff a panel or looking for speakers and want better representation of womxn in agriculture— check out this great article by Big Teammate Tim Hammermich and the linked database put together by Teammates Sarah Nolet and Connie Bowen.
I’ll also sneak in this little tease: former Congressional Candidate J.D. Scholten and I have a radio project in the works. Stay tuned for more on non-metro progressive news!
If you’re new to Big Team Farms and want some explanation for what the F you just read, check out The Intro Newsletter and more recent additions by visiting Big Team Farms online.
Do you have announcements that would be relevant to the 1,200 or so members of the Big Team? Feel free to shoot me messages about projects, resources, job posting, etc. And to everyone who’s done that already, or who has asked questions that I haven’t yet responded to, look out for those in the next couple of newsletters.
Don’t forget to share this email!
Stay safe and well out there, friends. And remember, if you have questions, comments, concerns, or high quality gifs (especially farm-related) you’d like to share, I’m right on the other end of this email.
Rock on,
Sarah
"In other words, when someone with all the resources tells critics who have no resources to do the work that requires resources, we should not listen." <-- I stood up and shouted "fuck yeah!" at this