By Draven Hawkins, writer and volunteer for Sierra Club Chicago Group
Have you ever wondered how farmers plant their seeds so fast? Or how gardeners don’t get tired of watering all those flowers at the right time everyday without forgetting who needs what when?
Well, you have Black ingenuity to thank for the ease that comes with planting seeds and irrigating crops without stress.
The earth is full of life, beauty and resources. It’s often forgotten just how much of it we’ve lost to colonization and gentrification, especially when the origins of so many agricultural advancements and milestones are rooted in Black minds and resilience. Here are some reminders about how Black farmers impacted agriculture and horticulture.
George Washington Carver: More to him than peanuts
You may know George as the guy who helped really put peanuts on the map, his expressions of the usefulness of the seed that would inspire the invention of peanut butter.
However, there’s more to his story than just the gift of PB&J sandwiches he’s graced us with. George Washington Carver changed the way we go about crop maintenance and care as a whole. His main focus in a lot of his studies was scientific agriculture, and being the only African American man in the nation with an advanced degree in the subject, he made it his mission to make agriculture in the Black community less burdensome for us to handle.
His main focus in his studies was to improve the lives of impoverished farmers, using his knowledge of resource distribution from his study of growing and maintaining peanuts to refine the practices we use today. He blended chemistry, science methodology and dedication to ease the process of growing food and raw materials. That led to techniques such as crop rotation. His work allows us to successfully distribute nutrients to each plant per their required needs. Soil sustainability being prioritized as an essential part of fruitful crop yields is thanks to his study and research.
Henry Blair: The agricultural savior of time and daylight
The mere thought of having to plant each individual seed in a field, especially when there’s more than one crop I’m growing, makes me want to take a nap. This is a reality we no longer have to live in, and it’s all thanks to Henry Blair. His invention of the cotton planter and the corn planter took the weight off the shoulders of farmers everywhere, allowing them to quickly and efficiently get through their work without much error at all.
Not only that, but there are many medical issues that occur when farming, such as musculoskeletal diseases and acute injuries from spending hours bending over to get each and every seed in the correct place. With the cotton planter, the spread of osteoarthritis and osteoporosis is significantly lessened due to their work being relieved by a reliable machine. Blair’s inventions spread beyond just making life easier- he actively saved many farmers from developing serious medical ailments by creating a device that takes on a little bit of the workload.
Booker T. Washington: Learning, training, and doing
Booker T. Washington was the founder of the Tuskegee Institute, a school that prioritized education of Black men and promoted the importance of agricultural knowledge, vocational training, and self-sufficiency outside of begging white farmers for scraps. He was and still is a man praised for giving Black men the education they needed to provide for their families without having to worry about how they’d get what they needed to survive.
Especially in a post-slavery climate where segregation was rampant, it was not just important, but essential for these young men to be able to take care of their families without proving the point that white farmers and higher class people were making that Black people needed them to survive. His dedication to giving these young men the life skills they needed to thrive.
National Black Farmers Association: The tradition carries on
In our modern era, we have people like John W. Boyd, a fourth generation farmer and the founder of the National Black Farmers Association (NBFA), a non-profit group that recognizes and celebrates Black agriculturists throughout the US.
Beyond that, the NBFA led a White House march in 1995 consisting of 60 farmers in protest of discrimination against Black farmers in need of financial support by the government. Boyd’s work, along with his colleagues at NBFA, were the direct catalyst that helped the Pigford V. Glickman settlement in 1999, which finally acknowledged the discrimination against 22,363 farmers. After organizing and speaking out endlessly for over 15 years, going through legal battles and gathering support from the community, Boyd worked directly with Obama to secure settlement funding, leading to a 2010 law that set aside $1.15 billion.
NBFA still focuses its attention on resources for Black farmers, as well as providing education for anyone who wishes to learn more about how our food is grown and provided by the Black community. You can learn more about their work here — I highly suggest reading about their achievements, it’s very impressive!
In conclusion
What we put in our bodies is so incredibly important. Food gives us energy, it gives us strength, and it feeds the soul alongside feeding your growth. Food brings community, culture, and love. This is because it was made with community, culture, and love; every head of lettuce, every bag of flour, even down to your favorite cinnamon and brown sugar Pop Tart (objectively the best Pop Tart, by the way,) had to have started somewhere.
We often take for granted the work that is put into growing the things we eat, especially when we don’t have to do it ourselves. But every time you enjoy something sweet, something savory, or something at all, take a moment to remember that there are hands that carry burdens and hardships just to get you that little treat you like, or your favorite fruit. And those hands are likely as brown as the soil that they’re grown from.
Please check out the National Black Farmers Association to learn about how Black and brown farmers today: https://share.google/