Natasha Bowens - The Color of Food: Stories of Race, Resilience and Farming

Praise for

The Color of Food

Through her compelling stories and powerful images Natasha Bowens rainbow of farmers rise like a host of archangels from the earth. Their mission is to remind us that the industrialization of our food system and the oppression of our people two sides of the same coin will, if not confronted, sow the seeds of our own destruction.

Mark Winne, author, Closing the Food Gap: Resetting the Table in the Land of Plenty

The Color of Food captures the heart and souls of farmers of color...farmers that are frequently forgotten as the stories of agriculture in our country are told. Through the lens of a camera we step into the cultural history of our foods and the beautiful and proud people that grow them.

Cynthia Hayes, Executive Director, Southeastern African American Farmers Organic Network

What a book! Dive into the stories and photographs Natasha Bowens shares in these pages and you come up for air with a profound apprecation for the diversity of people planting the seeds and harvesting the foods to keep alive cultural traditions and nourish communities around the country. Anyone who eats should read this book: You will come to the table with new appreciation for the intersections between race and food that so often go unsaid and undocumented. Kudos to Bowens for creating this powerful and important book.

Anna Lapp, author, Diet for a Hot Planet and Hopes Edge

Copyright 2015 by Natasha Bowens.

All rights reserved.

Cover design by Diane McIntosh.

Photography Natasha Bowens

Printed in Canada. First printing March 2015.

New Society Publishers acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF) for our publishing activities.

Paperback ISBN 978-0-86571-789-3 EBook ISBN 978-1-55092-585-2

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LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

Bowens, Natasha, author

The color of food: stories of race, resilience and farming / Natasha Bowens.

Includes bibliographical references.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 978-0-86571-789-3 (pbk.).ISBN 978-1-55092-585-2 (ebook)

1. Minority farmersUnited States. I. Title.

Contents

In search of my mothers garden, I found my own.

Alice Walker

T HE LONG, LONE ROAD stretches out in front of me and Lucilles steering wheel feels sturdy under my grip. Dust from the farm road flies off of her windshield and the wind stirs all the beads and feathers hanging from her rearview. We glow together in the light of the setting sun, heading south to the next farm. Lucille sputters gently, and I pat her dashboard, Easy girl, easy. Weve still got a long way to go.

After four consecutive months driving across this country, I have driven almost 15,000 miles, traveled through 16 states, laid my head in 49 different places, interviewed 53 farmers and taken roughly 3,500 photographs. Its been quite a journey. And its not over yet.

I never would have imagined that my desire to dig in the dirt would lead me here, digging instead into the stories of farmers of color across America Black, Latina, Native, and Asian farmers and food activists. All I wanted to do when this all started three years ago was grow food, know exactly where my food was coming from, and live more in tune with the Earth. But as I began to feel rooted in my life as someone who worked the land, I quickly realized all the cultural and historic baggage that came with that. My fathers ancestors worked in the fields as slaves; in fact, they were slaves owned by my mothers ancestors. Im literally the product of ownership and oppression reuniting, as if to rewrite the story. So when I ended up in the fields myself, I felt deeply conflicted. It was as if all of my feelings about my family history and this countrys agricultural history were converging at once. It was as if my agrarian story was already written.

The chosen story for people of color in agriculture seems to play out on repeat, reducing our agrarian identity to slavery or farm labor and summing up our communities as deserts in need of water and food. But I know our story is so much richer than that. I can feel that richness when kneeling in the sunshine to sow seeds into the damp soil. I can sense it at the community garden when harvesting side by side with elders born on foreign soil. I can see it when volunteering on urban farms led by Latina mothers changing the health of their communities. I know that if we dont change the story being told, we will continue to lose that connection to our food, culture and land. We will continue to be known as the underserved communities instead of the strong and resilient communities that we are. We will continue to scoff at the idea of tilling the land instead of embracing the beautiful tradition. If we dont tell our stories, we risk being pushed further into the shadows of the national dialogue on whole foods and sustainable living, a dialogue promoting the diets and practices our ancestors had well before the term organic came into vogue.