- According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture,
only .07% of Wisconsin farmers are Black.
That's less than 1%.
Where our food comes from and who has access to it
can have a huge impact on the health of a community.
On this episode of Why Race Matters ,
we'll chat with a Black farmer
who spent most of their life battling food insecurity
within the Black community.
We'll also discuss land access and other barriers
that prevent Black people from farming.
But first, let's dig a little deeper
and explore why race matters when it comes to our food.
[upbeat music]
The story of Black farmers throughout history
is one of strength, loss, and resilience.
In Wisconsin, that story might be best represented
by Pleasant Ridge, a community of Black farmers
founded in 1850 by Charles Shepard,
a freedman from Virginia.
The community was a refuge for escaped slaves
and sat on land in Grant County, Wisconsin.
In 1863, the emancipation of slavery came
with the promise of 40 acres and a mule.
The program intended to help freedmen and women
find their way after slavery,
but was later revoked by President Andrew Johnson.
Today, there are only 62 Black farmers
out of more than 88,000 producers statewide.
In 1910, Black farmers owned more than 16 million acres
of farmland nationwide.
That's compared to 2.5 million acres in 2017.
It's a major loss of land
that several studies have linked back
to systemic injustices involving lending practices
and access to federal resources.
The landmark class action lawsuit Pigford versus Glickman,
sought to shed light on the injustice
and relieve Black farmers who were discriminated against
by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
In spite of these barriers,
the work of Black farmers today persists
as an act of social justice.
Not only do Black farmers help
to maintain traditional agricultural practices,
they also help to increase access
to healthy, natural, and affordable foods
within their communities.
For urban farmer and longtime Madison resident
Robert Pierce, farming is a source of liberation,
a way to pay homage to the past
and create a path to a more equitable future.
[Robert laughing]
- So thank you for joining me today, Mr. Pierce.
- Thank you for letting me join you.
[laughing] - Of course.
So can you tell us your story
and what has brought you into the world of farming?
[Robert laughing]
If that's a simple story to tell.
- Well, it's not that simple. - Okay.
- But I'll simplify it.
I came back from Vietnam,
became allergic to a lot of stuff that was in food.
At that point, I didn't know what was going on,
I just knew that I was eating stuff and getting sick,
had to go and get these shots from the hospital
and stuff like that so, and [laughing] I had decided
that I was gonna grow food, you know?
You know, after service, you know, I mean,
when I was a kid my thing was,
my grandmother sent me to all these elderly people
to help them clean their gardens
or pick their vegetables for 'em and stuff,
so I was always in someone's garden,
so it wasn't unnatural for me to do this, you know?
I mean, I always did it,
but I also noticed when I got back from the service
how the elderlies, their health was depleting, you know.
And one of the reasons were,
we were the first McDonald's in Madison,
it was on south Madison. - Mm.
So you mean the Black community
had the first McDonald's?
- Now how the heck could you beat a 25 cent cheeseburger?
Come on now! [laughing]
And 10 cent fries!
Come on, you know,
I mean, a dollar, you could get full! [laughing]
- That's true.
- And they had stopped eating and growing, you know,
they stopped growing food
and stopped, you know, cooking meals and stuff
because they could always spend a, you know, dollar
and feed, you know, $5 is gonna feed the whole family,
you know, quick, you know?
And so I noticed their health, you know, started to deplete
and so when I took on this venture,
that was one of the things I seen, you know,
that their health and, you know, was depleting.
They weren't eating like we were when we grew up, you know?
So that's why I started, you know, doing the greens
and, you know, stuff like that, you know,
make sure that they were getting these things that you know,
that we knew, you know, that we grew up with.
- Up until that point, was this still like a family,
more of a home venture?
Like, it wasn't a business in the sense
or at that point had it extended to...
- Well, I had, you know, I mean,
I was in the Madison Business College
so, you know, I turned it into a business, yes.
- Mm-hmm.
- I did the old, you know, go into the neighborhoods
and taking it to the people's houses
and parking my, you know, old raggly truck out,
[laughing] you know, out on corners and stuff
and, you know, and go to somebody's house,
they say, "Oh, so-and-so down the street
wants you to come by there."
We did the farmers market down on the Square
and I was like, single parent with four kids, you know.
- Mm.
- Four years old, two, one, and three and a half months old.
- Oh, wow.
- They're all with us in the truck, you know,
we're selling vegetables. - Wow.
- So at some point, you know, it's like
we decided that, well, it wasn't making enough money
up at the farmers market up here
which, you know, everybody else was,
but I was the only Black man out there. [laughing]
So they would look at my stuff
but not buy, you know, so it was kinda, "Okay."
- Well, what was that even like for you
in terms of stepping into an industry that may be,
like you said, people didn't easily associate you
with the image, right,
that's put in front of us of farming?
So like, how did you, once, come to see yourself as this
but also navigate other people's perceptions
of what a farmer was? - Well, I've never really cared
what people thought about me, you know.
I mean, I do what I'm gonna do.
If I decided I was gonna do something,
I'd just do it, you know,
and you know, down on the Square they used to name things,
you know, because I wasn't,
I was, you know, not conventional as they were.
You know, we'll put it that way. [laughing]
But you know, I just, if it's something I'd seen
I wanted to do and I went after it, you know.
It was like, I quit down on the Square
'cause I wasn't making any money down there,
I just said, "Forget that, that's a waste of my time."
You know, the last straw with that was... [laughing]
I started growing blue potatoes and there was a guy that...
Now, we're getting all this publicity
about the farmers market
being the largest farmers market in the country.
- Right.
- And there was a guy from the Chicago Tribune that came by,
and he never said who the guy was, he just said,
"There's a guy at the Madison Farmers Market
that grows blue potatoes."
We had this rash amount of people that came
and they looked at my blue potatoes,
but they wouldn't buy 'em.
- Because you were the one that was selling them.
- Right, but they looked at 'em.
They wanted to buy one or two of 'em, you know,
and I'm having, you know, I've got, you know, piles of 'em,
but they wanted to buy one or two 'em
to show somebody, you know.
And the next year the young guy that was next to me,
he started growing blue potatoes
and they bought out, he sold out.
He was still, he was buying 'em from me
and selling 'em, you know. - Wow.
- 'Cause he sold, he already sold his out.
- And he probably noticed that people weren't buying from you,
so he wanted to capitalize. - Well, of course.
- Wow. - Yeah.
So that was the last straw,
I said, "I don't need this," you know.
I mean, right before my face, that type of racism, you know?
And so I just said, "Nah, enough of that."
- What was people's initial reaction
to you doing something that maybe
they were not familiar or accustomed
to hearing a Black man
specifically say he was gonna do?
- Well, the elderly people loved it.
- Okay! - Because, as I stated before,
I used to do that as a kid for them.
Now for my peers, they were like,
"Man, that's, are you crazy?
"That's hard work, man!
Hey, man, you're getting dirty!"
and all this other stuff you know,
and I'm going, "Yeah, man, so what?"
They would see me, you know, in the fields working.
You hear someone yell out, "Man, that's slavery!"
And I go, "No, that's money!" [Angela laughing]
And they didn't understand, you know, that,
you know, that having land is power.
Having, growing your own food
where you don't have to answer to anybody, is power.
- Right, right, no one can take that away from you.
- Yeah, they didn't understand that, you know what I mean?
You know, I could, you know, go ahead and go through my field
and get whatever I wanted and go home and eat!
I didn't have to worry about, you know,
where my food was coming from 'cause I was growing it.
And after years, you know, they you know, they would,
some of the people that see me out in them fields,
they were going, "You still doing that?"
You know, but it was so hard to convince people
that what I was doing was the right thing
because it was like they equated it with slavery.
They, you know, the hard work you know,
was like, you know.
You know, they didn't realize there was a payout
for that hard work.
- Right, and that's so interesting
because we have been separated
from our connection to the land. - Well, of course!
- Because there was a time when it was forced
upon us to do that. - Oh, yeah!
- And so our, possibly attempts of separating ourselves
from that part of our history
has led us to maybe lose some of that connection
that's super important and that would be beneficial now.
- And that's also another reason why we've lost so much land
because that land transferred to younger,
to the next generation, they equated it with slavery
and they equated it with harder work
they didn't want to do, or they've seen their parents do
and they weren't gonna to do that,
and they ended up selling that land for you know,
for whatever it wasn't worth,
it was worth a lot more for them to keep it.
- Mm, but they just did not want to be bothered.
- Yeah, didn't wanna be bothered with it, so.
- But do you see a return back to that?
Because I follow quite a few
young Black homesteaders on Instagram,
I'm hearing about this kind of reverse Northern migration
where Black people in northern cities
are now returning back to the South
'cause it's cheaper, warmer weather.
So do you think we're gonna see somewhat of a reversal
of what exactly you described, of us trying to reclaim?
- Well, I'm hoping that.
I just seen an article about someone in Georgia
where they just got together and bought land.
- Mm-hmm.
- 95 acres, brought joy to me. [laughing]
I said, "Wow, someone's getting it," you know.
- It's happening. - Yes, it's happening.
I think it's a great thing, you know,
and I think, you know,
I'm hoping that it gets to be more prevalent, you know,
because it's like, I'd love to see that in my lifetime
to see where, you know,
we could be able to have our own communities
like we used to and be prosperous, you know.
- I understand you have an interesting story
about one young person that you talked to
that had a hard time accepting that you were a farmer.
[Robert laughing] Can you tell us about that?
- I used to go through the schools and talk to the kids,
you know, kindergarten kids about different vegetables,
and there was this young kid who kept staring at me
when I walked in, you know,
they knew that the farmer was coming,
you know, he's a kindergartner
and he knew the farmer was coming to the class.
And so when I came in, he stared at me, you know,
and he just kept staring at me.
And so I was talking,
as I kept talking to the kids and stuff
and at the very end, I said, "Is there any questions?"
and this kid throws his hand up and he says,
I said to him, "Yes?"
And he goes, "You ain't no farmer."
And I go, "Yes, I am."
He said, "No, you're not!"
And I said, "Well, why am I not?
Why am I not a farmer?" - Right.
- He said, "'Cause you wearing FUBU."
[both laughing]
So I looked at him, I said, "Well, I'm an urban farmer."
- There you go. [Robert laughing]
That is hilarious.
So he clearly had an image in his mind
about what all farmers look like.
- Well, of course, you know, most, yeah,
especially in kindergarten, you know,
they give 'em a book and see,
they see a white farmer with a straw hat
and bib overalls, you know. [laughing]
Nah, no, I don't do that. [laughing]
- Yeah, like, all farmers don't look like that.
- No, no, they don't, you know, I mean,
it's like, [laughing] you know,
I guess I crushed his vision of a farmer, but, you know.
- But maybe in a good way where he's like,
"Oh, I can see myself as a farmer.
"I don't have to fit this farmer uniform
and the stereotype."
- Yeah, now he could go and become a farmer
and not have to wear, you know, a straw hat,
but I do have a straw hat. [laughing]
- "I just didn't bring it today, but that is part of my uniform."
- Yeah, I mean, I do have one,
but I just don't wear it all the time, all right? [laughing]
- But you mentioned you were an urban farmer,
so can you tell me more about that?
'Cause I have heard of folks
who even live in like, really densely populated cities
who consider themselves farmers.
- This is a new thing for, I think,
for African-Americans where we can capitalize on
since we don't have land.
- So urban farming is an alternative
to the typical farming model
that requires having all of this land.
- Right. - Okay.
So, urban farming with the...
It was teaching people that having the right type of soil,
that you can create a profit on a smaller scale,
that you don't need all of that land.
You can work out of a greenhouse
or you can work on, you know, anywhere
with the right type of soil, you can grow on it.
And I think this is a new norm for, you know,
since African-Americans don't have land,
this is where you can be able to, you know,
plant anywhere and grow food, you know?
And if we do this as collectively, as a group,
we could be able to sell those at markets or whatever
and be able to make money by doing that.
I think the new norm for African-American farmers
is urban farming.
- Hmm, I like that.
What, I guess, are examples of different crops
that you could easily grow even within a small space?
- Anything, I mean-- - Really?
Well, with the right soil, yes.
- Okay. - Yeah.
But, you know, I mean, your collards,
your spinach and kale, all these different things
you can grow very easily, you know?
I mean, out in the fields, you know,
I'm doing melons and everything else,
but I'm doing them on mounds and stuff out in the fields,
but you have to have land for that, you know.
- So things that just take up more space
once they're fully grown.
- Yeah, but if you're just doing stuff in town
or in small areas, you could be able to, you know,
do smaller stuff, you know, like kale
and stuff like that.
High, you know, high-dollar stuff.
- Angela: Mm-hmm.
- You know, out of greenhouses, you know,
you can be able to do sprouts,
which are, you know, five to seven days you know,
and nutritious and be able to make money with it.
- Mm, so that is an interesting model.
It's like, the land access part,
not to ignore that conversation, it's still very important,
but not to wait for that in order for,
like, the growing to take place.
I like that, I may have to do some Googling,
figure out how I can do that on my small little patio.
[both laughing]
At my house, see what I can grow that's actually edible.
- You can do that out of pots and, you know, buckets.
- Well, what's the easiest thing to start with?
Like, if you're a beginner,
you know nothing about anything green
but you want to try, the enthusiasm is there,
what would you suggest people start with?
- Leafy stuff, greens, lettuce.
- Leafy stuff, okay.
- Greens, lettuce, stuff like that, kale.
Those things, you know... - Are easy to grow?
- They're easy to grow.
I mean, you can't... [laughing]
You can't-- - You can't mess those up!
- You can't mess that up too much. [laughing]
- That's encouraging 'cause I like those things, too.
So I may have to try those and report back to you.
- Yeah, if you mess those up,
it's like, you will not be able to get it.
- If my kale comes out yellow then it's like--
- Robert: You missed something!
- It just wasn't for me, that wasn't my lane.
[both laughing] Thank you for that.
[serene music]
Food is essential, but the option to grow your own food
is not a given in every community.
Systemic factors, such as land ownership,
wealth, and location all play a role
in healthy food options for people of color,
which can then lead to health issues
that can last for generations,
proving why race matters when it comes our food.
To learn more, go to pbswisconsin.org/whyracematters
to find additional links and resources
to help keep you informed.
There, you can also check out the Why Race Matters podcast
as well as additional episodes.
[upbeat string music]
[serene music]
Funding for Why Race Matters is provided by
CUNA Mutual Group, Park Bank, Alliant Energy,
Madison Museum of Contemporary Art,
Focus Fund for Wisconsin Programming,
and Friends of PBS Wisconsin.