{"id":1307,"date":"2015-10-06T20:07:45","date_gmt":"2015-10-07T01:07:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/familyfarmers.org\/?p=1307"},"modified":"2015-10-06T20:07:45","modified_gmt":"2015-10-07T01:07:45","slug":"black-farmers-lives-matter-defending-african-american-land-and-agriculture-in-the-deep-south","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/familyfarmers.org\/?p=1307","title":{"rendered":"Black Farmers Lives Matter – Defending African American Land and Agriculture in the Deep South"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Beverly Bell, Other Worlds, Oct. 5th, 2015
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The 2015 <\/span><\/span><\/span>US Food Sovereignty Prize<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a> goes to two organizations that are demonstrating just how much Black lives matter, as they defend their ancestral lands for community-controlled food production. The <\/span><\/span><\/span>Federation of Southern Cooperatives<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a>, primarily African-American farmers across the deep South, shares the prize with the <\/span><\/span><\/span>Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a>, Afro-indigenous farmers and fisher-people. <\/span><\/span><\/span>The prize will be presented in Des Moines on October 14, 2015. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Food sovereignty goes beyond ensuring that people have enough food to meet their physical needs. It asserts that citizens everywhere must reclaim their power in food systems by rebuilding the relationships between people and the land, and between food providers and those who eat. \u2029The US Food Sovereignty Alliance upholds the right to food as a basic human right and works to connect our local and national struggles to the international movement for food sovereignty. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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The Federation of Southern Cooperatives strengthens a vital piece of food sovereignty:<\/span><\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span>helping keep lands in the hands of family farmers. Its members are farmers in <\/span><\/span><\/span>13<\/span> Southern states, approximately 90 percent of them African-American, but also Native American, Latino, and White.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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The Federation\u2019s work is today more important than ever, given that African-American-owned farms in the US have fallen from<\/span><\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span>14 percent to <\/span><\/span>1 percent<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a> in fewer than 100 years. To help keep farms Black- and family-owned, the Federation promotes land-based cooperatives; provides training in sustainable agriculture and forestry, management, and marketing; and speaks truth to power in local courthouses, state legislatures, and the halls of the U.S. Congress.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Below are excerpts from an interview with Ben Burkett, an active member of the Federation. Burkett is also a <\/span><\/span><\/span>farmer, director of the <\/span><\/span><\/span>Mississippi Association of Cooperatives<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a>, president of the <\/span><\/span><\/span>National Family Farm Coalition<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a> board of directors, and a member of <\/span><\/span><\/span>La Via Campesina<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a>\u2019s international board<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOur view is local production for local consumption. It\u2019s just supporting mankind as family farmers. Everything we\u2019re about is food sovereignty, the right of every individual on earth to wholesome food, clean water, air and land, and the self-determination of a community to grow and eat what they want. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Federation of Southern Cooperatives grew out of the civil rights movement [in 1967]. Racism is still here in the marketplace and in credit, but we have learned to deal with it and not give up on changing the system. We struggle every day to bring about a change.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe recognize the natural flow of life. It\u2019s just what we\u2019ve always done. We want to go back to the way things were. It\u2019s supporting mankind as small farmers and family farmers. It\u2019s not so much a matter of making money, it\u2019s a matter of carrying on so your farm will continue on. But you have to make some profit off it in order to keep it going.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMyself, I\u2019m a fourth-generation farmer on a farm that my great-grandfather homesteaded in 1889. That wasn\u2019t but about 20 years after the end of slavery. He got 164 acres from the United States government. I still have the title \u2013 they called it a patent \u2013 signed by Grover Cleveland. And we\u2019re still farming that same land.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSome say the system is working. It appears to be working fine, but corporate agriculture is not sustainable. Our system of growing food is heavy, heavy, heavy dependent on petro-chemicals, on inorganic compounds, mostly petroleum-based. And then it takes too much control out of the local community. Now, it might last for several decades, but in the end it can\u2019t last.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve got a few companies that want to control all the <\/span><\/span><\/span>seed stock<\/span> of the world, and they\u2019ve just about got a handle on marketing three of the main commodities: corn, soybean, and cotton. [For us,] it\u2019s hard to find seeds that aren\u2019t treated with the Monsanto-manufactured Roundup Ready. I\u2019ve tried to find cotton that wasn\u2019t treated, but I couldn\u2019t. Now they\u2019re working on controlling wheat and rice.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAnd they make those seeds so most of them don\u2019t regenerate the next year anyway. But if you do save any of the seeds, Monsanto and the other companies are going to prosecute you for saving their property. Those seeds are patented, the property of the seed company, so they reserve the right to keep them. They\u2019ll take you to court and make you pay back their money. Basically you\u2019re just sharecropping for them, you\u2019re leasing their seeds.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think that\u2019s fair. Once you\u2019ve bought the seeds and planted them on your own land, it looks to me like they ought to be your own seeds. That\u2019s the essence of life. Where did Monsanto and the other companies get their first seed from? Someone gave them to them. Those seeds didn\u2019t fall out of the sky.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been \u2013 I don\u2019t want to use the word co-opted \u2013 trained by the institutions of agriculture, the companies, the university system, and technology, to give our rights over to the company, which I think is absolutely wrong. We have to be more proactive than reactive as small farmers, family farmers. We can\u2019t wait for the government and large corporations to dictate to us what we can do in our region.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve got a unique way of buying you off to not fight here. The American consumer doesn\u2019t care as long as it\u2019s cheap. But no matter what farmers plant, the consumer\u2019s got to change the system. People buying the end product have to complain. As long as they don\u2019t complain, there\u2019s no need even talking about it.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

The prize is given by the<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span> US Food Sovereignty Alliance<\/span><\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a>, which is comprised of food justice, anti-hunger, labor, environmental, faith-based, and food producer groups. <\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span>To learn more about the work of the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, please visit <\/i><\/span>http:\/\/www.federationsoutherncoop.com\/<\/span><\/i><\/span><\/span><\/a>. <\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Copyleft<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span> Other Worlds. You may reprint this article in whole or in part. \u00a0Please credit any text or original research you use to Beverly Bell, Other Worlds.<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Beverly Bell, Other Worlds, Oct. 5th, 2015 The 2015 US Food Sovereignty Prize goes to two organizations that are demonstrating just how much Black lives matter, as they defend their ancestral lands for community-controlled food production. The Federation of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-foodsovereignty"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/familyfarmers.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/familyfarmers.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/familyfarmers.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/familyfarmers.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/familyfarmers.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1307"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/familyfarmers.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1307\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1308,"href":"https:\/\/familyfarmers.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1307\/revisions\/1308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/familyfarmers.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/familyfarmers.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/familyfarmers.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}