on the farm
LIBERATION ON THE LAND Soul Fire Farm Photography by Gilles Uzan Words by Naima Penniman, interviewed by Elodie Tacnet
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oul Fire Farm is a BIPOCcentered community farm committed to ending racism and injustice in the food system. It was launched in 2010 on 72 acres in Petersburg, NY, by Leah Penniman and Jonah Vitale-Wolff. Soul Fire is a sustainable, certified naturally grown farm that addresses disparities in land ownership and access to produce by offering a training program for aspiring Black, Indigenous, and Latinx farmers, activist retreats, youth agriculture classes, and an inner-city CSA, which charges on a sliding scale and accepts SNAP benefits. Naima Penniman, program director at Soul Fire, is a multi-dimensional artist, movement builder, healer, grower and educator committed to planetary health and community resilience.
44 ON THE FARM CHRONOGRAM 11/20
Belonging to the Land
Food Solidarity
I like to think that we belong to the land, the land doesn’t belong to us. When we think about ownership, if anything, it goes the other way around. To steward land is that sacred responsibility that comes with that relationship, of how we take care of the land that sustains us. The land is our greatest partner, our greatest collaborator. When we acquired this property to create Soul Fire Farm, a lot of people doubted this was a strategic move because these are very rocky, marginal soils. We’re on a mountain side. But we wanted to farm the way our ancestors did, this is the land we could afford: We couldn’t be picky. And we have these ways of building back and regenerating soil so, in the last decade we’ve tripled our topsoil depth through mulching, composting, building raised beds, integrating animals.
Nobody should go to bed hungry. But in our country, it’s an all-too-common reality, and it is very racially skewed. White neighborhoods are four times more likely to have a supermarket than Black and brown communities. All that we harvest from the land we distribute through our solidarity share program, which is our way of getting the food that we grow to the people in our community that need it most, because they are living in food apartheid conditions, who are survivors of mass incarceration as well as new Americans and refugees.
Interdependence We’ve been able to sequester 50,000 tons of carbon. Every step of the way, we’re not stripping things away from the land but adding back, to generate fertility. All the buildings are made of wood from a 20-mile radius, the walls of the houses are made of straw bales for insulation, they’re all south-facing for optimal light. The hot water is solar-powered. We’re increasing our biodiversity, which has dramatically been affected by industrial agriculture, by bringing back native species and teaching our community those practices. We do a lot of intercropping, which just means many different types of species growing together because they support each other. Some repel pests, other ones provide the nutrients, they make each other more resilient.
A Community-Driven Model Ujamaa is a principle of cooperative economics that we’ve modeled Soul Fire Farm after in order to be a viable enterprise that takes care of its workers and demonstrates fair labor practices; that is generous to its community; and that is able to create a system where those with less financial means who are still deserving are able to eat healthy, nutritious food. And it’s subsidized by members of the community who are able to pay above market rate so that everyone gets to eat. Our programs operate on a sliding scale so people can pay the entry point that they can in order to come and live with us on the land and train with us and that can be covered by bigger institutions that may hire us for a keynote or a presentation. It’s a very community-driven model, so ujamaa is the name that we gave to our CSA program. We box up the food we grow here and do direct doorstep delivery—from our farm to 50
