RALEIGH, N.C. — The brown beauties Mark Paylor Jr. sells by the dozen epitomize Black eggs-cellence.
And his greens — oh, his greens!
“They’re delicious,” Lisa Yebuah said. “Sometimes I do a combo of the greens and cabbage together when I want to just switch it up a little bit.”
When Yebuah purchases Paylor’s produce, because he’s a Black farmer, she’s simultaneously doing her part to offset climate change and support both environmental and economic justice, said Sacoby Wilson, Ph.D., a professor in the School of Public Health at the University of Maryland-College Park. That’s where he directs The Health, Environmental and Economic Justice Lab.
“A lot of Black communities have gotten poisons, toxicants, landfills, incinerators, highways, byways, chemical plants, refineries, power plants, right?” Wilson offered.
Right along here is where Paylor figuratively rides in on his tractor at 4M Farms, where he toils with and tills his acres in Hurdle Mills, in Person County. It’s land that’s remaining undeveloped. That means Paylor’s playing a part in not putting more pollutants into the planet, moving Mother Earth toward net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. In other words, he and other Black farmers are environmental mitigators.
“What they’re doing is environmental protection because they are safeguarding the land against erosion,” said Ja’Nell Henry, the executive director of the Black Farmers’ Market. “They’re making sure the soil is healthy. They are conservationsists. They are scientists.”
The Black Farmers’ Market is a collective of Black farmers and likeminded artisans who set up shop on alternating Sundays at Southeast Raleigh YMCA and Durham Technical Community College. North Carolina Black Alliance (NCBA) partnered with the Black Farmers’ Market for the Oct. 26 Harvest Market Festival at the YMCA.
“The connector, the way to empower Black people, the way to empower Black communities is through food,” Wilson said. “Bringing forward the lessons learned, the genius of Booker T. Washington and looking at self-sufficiency, growing your own food and also economic power; that’s what we need right now.”
Black farmers are doing that.
“Black farmers are key to getting the Black community healthy again,” Wilson said.
Root causes
Raleigh residents Ava Campbell and Emmanuel Carmichael regularly support the Black Farmers’ Market as a way to keep Black dollars in the Black community.
“The majority of our shopping is here,” Carmichael said while visiting the YMCA location. “They have a lot of variety here, and it’s a lot healthier, too.”
“And even if it is a little bit more expensive, it’s about the quality,” Campbell said. “It’s local. Some vendors are organic, and they make their things fresh. So even if it is a little bit more expensive, it’s a lot better quality than the grocery store.”
Campbell and Carmichael demonstrate the intentionality necessary to keep Black farmers in business, Henry said.
According to the Black Farmers’ Market, of some 3 million farmers in America, less than 2% are Black, and that’s because of discriminatory banking practices and other systemic hindrances.
“For a long time, Black farmers have not been a part of the food ecosystem,” Henry said.
The Black Farmers’ Market provides space for Clarence DuBois to showcase his big, fat shitake mushrooms. He grows them at his Gabor Farms in Rockingham County.
“We want to get our products to market reasonably and be able to reach our customer base, but I think that is a challenge,” DuBois said.
Another challenge for Black farmers is accessing health care, including treatment for mental health, Henry said.
DuBois is a military veteran, so he’s got health care figured out. Mental health, though, is a real thing for farmers, he said.
“Farming — you put your expectation in the end product,” DuBois said.
But let’s say pests eat up the crops, or a drought dries up everything, not to mention a funding drought doing a number on the farm.
“You’ve spent all that energy and mental effort waiting for a crop to come that never comes. Now you’ve lost a whole season. So now you have to start another season in the hole,” said DuBois, underscoring the need for Black farmers to have access to mental health care.
Nearly half of the 24 million people who purchase insurance through Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplaces are small business owners, including farmers, according to KFF, a health policy organization. The enrollment period for ACA coverage, also known as Obamacare, started Nov. 1, and people are paying hundreds of dollars more for health insurance because Congress has not extended subsidies to make it more affordable. It’s why the federal government is shut down. Politicians can’t come to terms on providing relief so folks can more affordably go see their doctors.
Community-led, Black and greens
There’s Black farming on the macro level with people working acres and acres of land, yet Wilson also highlights microfarming as an entry point where most anybody can get their hands in the dirt.
“Food is the connector. Food is power. Food is culture. Food is health. Food is wealth. And so you’re going to have people growing food at community gardens, at school gardens, in their neighborhoods,” Wilson said. “You’re basically putting in green infrastructure. So that green infrastructure is absorbing toxicants. It’s helping to do food for us. It’s helping to do shading and cooling, doing air-pollution mitigation, heat mitigation. Then you’re having a network of community gardens, right? A network of farmers working together, providing food to folks so they don’t have to go to the store and get the preservatives, get the unhealthy foods.”
“Environmental justice is one’s right to a healthy living environment,” said Brayndon Stafford, the environmental justice coordinator for North Carolina Black Alliance. “Oftentimes, communities of color and marginalized communities have limited to no access to healthy foods, which leads to higher incidences of heart disease, [high] blood pressure, diabetes and cancers due to that lack of access. Couple that with already existing environmental concerns in communities like air [and] water pollution, it adds further burden to already burdened communities. By supporting Black farmers, we help to mitigate those effects on community while also promoting Black farmers and businesses who are able to directly access and impact our communities to do the same.”
More Afrocentric greens for Yebuah, please!
“It matters that we reclaim our relationship to land, and remembering that our food isn’t mass produced. There are actually people behind the produce that we eat, and I think there’s something to be said about actually getting to meet the people who till the land. And, again, reclaiming our relationship as Black folks with that; we do have everything that we need. I prefer to get my produce from someone who I know from beginning to end has cultivated that process,” Yebuah said.
