Foreword
Jump to Farmer Tiffany’s Guide to Black Soilship in the Black Belt >
How Tiffany Became Farmer Tiffany
The summer before my senior year of undergrad my mom suffered a massive stroke. She had to learn how to walk, talk, chew, swallow, live life all over again. I thought that I could heal her with food. This begins the story of Tiffany becoming Farmer TIffany. I began traveling to not only learn how to grow food, but to do it responsibly and in a way that protected the soil, biodiversity, and climate. As I began to learn more, I discovered that I did not have access to healthy food or land to grow my own food. Originally from East Texas, my grandparents fled their land and the dangers of the rural south in the 1940s. There was no land for me to inherit. This lack of land drove me to pursue Black agricultural practices to understand how Black farming practices can be reintroduced into the US historical memory.
Cultural Geography of the Black Belt
The term Black Belt originally referred to a strip of rich, dark, fertile soils in the Southeastern United States. These soils were formed about 145 to 66 million years ago by the weathering of limestone from the ancient ocean floor. The natural fertility of the soils across the Southern Piedmont and Coastal Plain lies predominantly in the topsoil and organic matter. The soils were developed under prairie and forest vegetation until deemed prime farmland, most suitable for crop production by European colonists. Following the forced removal of North America’s Indigenous peoples, millions of years of soil development was depleted by the cash crop plantation systems (slavery era cotton & tobacco production), followed by mechanized industrial monoculture. It took only a few decades of intense tillage to drive around 50 percent of the original organic matter from the soil into the sky as carbon dioxide.
Black Farmers are 1.4% of the nation’s 3.4 million producers (Census of Agriculture, 2017).
The Black Belt plays an important role in Black agricultural history. It is part of an ancestral corridor, as millions were migrated from Maryland to Texas during the domestic slave trade.
“Over the course of 100 years, the amount of Black-owned farmland dropped by 90%, according to Data for Progress, due to higher rates of loan and credit denials, lack of legal and industry support and outright acts of violence and intimidation.”
(Bustillo, 2023)
A history of discriminatory practices by the U.S. Department of Agriculture has made it nearly impossible for Black farmers to operate their farms and buy land. Black farmers were denied loans, information, and access to the programs essential to survival in a capital-intensive farm structure. We have to deal with racial bias at almost every level of government.
Government policy that has contributed to the decline of Black farmers:
- Agricultural Adjustment Act (1933) provided a significant increase in government services to White farmers but raised barriers to land ownership for Black farmers. It also limited the opportunity to stay in farms or achieve the status of operating as independent farmers (Reynolds, 2003).
- In 2021, Under the American Rescue Plan, socially disadvantaged farmers were set to get $4 billion in loan relief. The funds were supposed to correct the Agriculture Department’s historic denial of loans to ethnic minorities based on race. The law was abandoned after White farmers claimed that the program discriminated against them by specifying that loan assistance was available only for socially disadvantaged groups (Sheehey, 2022).
Despite the last 100 years of racist government policy and inequitable access to subsidies, disaster payments and loans – Black farmers are here, forging forward with resilience and creativity.
Farmer Tiffany’s Guide to Black Soilship in the Black Belt
Exploring the relationship between soil and the historical and cultural context of the land for Black farmers
Black farmers, horticulturists, scientists and inventors have revolutionized the way our agricultural system functions. While this region was the scene of great historical trauma, Black farmers have remained, responding with efforts to liberate and heal both themselves and the soil by incorporating ancestral African traditions and Indigenous land knowledge. Only by elevating and incorporating the voices of Black farmers, can we fully appreciate the range and scope of soil health knowledge and practices in the United States.
My larger research project brings to the foreground the voices of 30 to 50 Black farmers in Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas – merging soil health perceptions with soil landscape relationships and historical and cultural connections to soil.
The natural and cultural histories of the southern U.S have interacted and shaped the Black experience and relationships with soil. I define Black soilship as our burdensome, yet beautiful, relationship to the soil. It is our ability to steward and dance upon the same soil that was the scene of great trauma. It is a connection with such strong roots, bruised, but unbroken, by 500 years of oppression. It is a journey that only people who are rich in melanin can experience because it is so intimately weaved into our experience of this land. It is the knowledge passed down from our ancestors to ensure that we hold onto our sacred soil. It is a bond that often can not be defined by words, but instead by taste, touch and smell.
This guidebook highlights stories of soils and the Black folks stewarding them. It is a tribute to the soil – ancestor – farmer connection. Working with Black farmers in the Black Belt region was a powerful, memorable, and enriching experience. Each stop on the map begins with a snapshot of the soil, followed by farmer brilliance and gems of passed down ancestral knowledge, Black history and with their permission, added rich video/audio of interviews and images taken while I was on the farm.
Click on the pins in the map above to learn more about each of the farms highlighted in this guidebook.
Virginia: Carter Farms
Virginia: Carter Farms
Michael Carter, Jr. and Tiffany on the “Walk a Mile in My Shoes” tour at Carter Farms in Orange County, VA
Ultisols are the predominant soils in the Virginia Piedmont region. These soils are old (mature), and deficient in nutrients such as calcium and potassium. The soils show an absence of organic matter. Organic matter is the foundation of healthy soil. Healthy soil is the foundation for healthy plants, animals and people.
“Whenever the soil is rich the people flourish, physically and economically. Wherever the soil is wasted the people are wasted. A poor soil produces only a poor people—poor economically, poor spiritually and intellectually, poor physically” (Carver, 1938 as cited in USDA National Agricultural Library).
Over a century ago, Black scientist Dr. George Washington Carver developed farming methods that increased crop yields, safeguarded ecological health, and revitalized soil ravaged by the overproduction of cotton. A founder of the modern day organic movement, Carver experimented with rotating nitrogen rich cover crops. He was an advocate of compost as an all natural fertilizer and agroforestry as a way to improve topsoil and reinvigorate the land.
Michael describes the Tatum clay on his family farm as “unique.” Clay soils do have interesting physical, chemical and biological characteristics that make it a challenging growing medium for crops. These soils have the finest – smallest particles (grains). This means the soil compacts very tightly, leaving plants without the ability to establish root systems. They require creative problem solving techniques such as cover cropping, minimizing soil disturbance, plant diversity, living roots, and livestock integration – all soil health practices happening on site.
Michael is the fifth generation to farm family land in Orange County, Virginia. His great-great-grandparents purchased the 150 acres in 1910 for $722.05. He took me on what he calls the “Walk a Mile in My Shoes Tour” – which includes history of the land, resilience of his ancestors, untold stories of Black grandmothers, soldiers, farmers, and chefs. The farm is a walking, working piece of Black history. Michael told stories of his “brilliant” great-grandmother, the matriarch that was determined to keep the land in the family.
Watch: Michael Carter, Jr. & Carter Farms
(M. Carter, personal communication, June 21, 2021)
Virginia: Sweet Vines Farm Winery
Virginia: Sweet Vines Farm Winery
Sadie Armstrong and Tiffany at Sweet Vines Farm Winery
Less than 10 minutes from Carter Farms, Sadie Armstrong in Unionville, Va is also carrying on her Granny’s Legacy. Sadie is an enologist, farmer and owner of Sweet Vines Farm Winery, the first black woman owned vineyard and winery in the state of Virginia.
“Winemaking is in my family genes dating back to the early 20th century! My great grandmother and great-great grandmother made wine from Muscadine grapes.
“I come from a family of farmers. We picked cotton. My great grandmother was a strong, powerful woman, always teaching us. I saw her kill a snake with her bare hands. She would talk about the time she picked cotton on Friday, gave birth on Saturday and was back in the fields by Monday” (S. Armstrong, personal communication, June 6, 2021).
Over a century ago, Black scientist Dr. George Washington Carver developed farming methods that increased crop yields, safeguarded ecological health, and revitalized soil ravaged by the overproduction of cotton. A founder of the modern day organic movement, Carver experimented with rotating nitrogen rich cover crops. He was an advocate of compost as all natural fertilizer and agroforestry as a way to improve topsoil and reinvigorate the land.
The Ancestors’ Garden
Poem by Sadie Armstrong
Insurmountable strength and resilience enabled you to sow seeds that will cultivate and scatter throughout the ends of the earth and these now buds called hope, patience and love would bloom and go fourth speaking your great name through their work. Thus creating your legacy.
Watch: Farmer Sadie Armstrong, The Ancestors’ Garden
(S. Armstrong, personal communication, June 6, 2021)
“When you taste wine, the flavor – you’re tasting the soils. It’s all in the soil” (S. Armstrong, personal communication, June 6, 2021).
Georgia: High Hog Farm
Georgia: High Hog Farm
Keisha Cameron pictured with livestock guardian dogs Marshall & Deacon
Georgia is known for its red clay. Tiffany, the soil scientist would say that the color indicates that the soil is low in organic matter, old, highly weathered in a warm, humid climate. And the materials that remained after leaching are composed of iron oxides.
Tiffany, the Black woman and farmer would say that it is enriched by my ancestors’ blood shed.
While fiber production of the 18th and 19th century degraded soils – today, stewards like Keisha Cameron are regenerating soils with restorative fiber production practices. Her farm is in silvopasture with grazing fiber animals, an orchard, fiber forest, herb and vegetable garden.
Silvopasture is an ancient farming practice that combines trees, forage, and grazing animals in an ecological way that sequesters carbon in the soil and restores the land.
Keisha grazes and shears fiber animals such as: rabbit, sheep, lama, alpaca and goats. She also processes wool, grows bast fibers (flax), and grows dyes such as indigo. Indigo is a plant used to make natural dye.
“The cultural memory of indigo is heightened” (Butler, 2019) among Black folks in what is now called the Gullah Geechee Culture of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. South Carolina had over 100 indigo plantations to meet the demand of dye products in the British textile industry during the 1700’s (Butler, 2019).
In addition to carrying “the knowledge of indigo cultivation to the United States” (McKinley, 2011), Black folks have developed intricate processes for assessing soil health for thousands of years (McKinley, 2011). Indigenous African methods of soil evaluation are “passed-down” knowledge about the local environment of the farmers by their ancestors and also programmatically gained through working the land from early childhood.
Georgia: Carbon Farm
Georgia: Carbon Farm
Farmer Maurice Small teaches carbon sequestration
West African Indigenous methods of soil evaluation included evaluation of Awo Iyepe – soil color; Ora Iyepe – soil fertility; Idagun ile – slope. Soil tasting is also a method of assessment and a traditional practice that traveled to the southern United States from Africa during enslavement. 30 miles south of Keisha, Farmer Maurice Small teaches carbon sequestration at Carbon Farm in Atlanta, GA.
“That was some of the best soil I ever tasted” (M. Small, personal communication, May 23, 2022).
Watch: Farmer Maurice Small
(M. Small, personal communication, May 23, 2022)
Mississippi: Roberts Properties
Mississippi: Roberts Properties
Vickie Roberts Ratliff at Roberts Properties
56% of the landscape in Mississippi (171,559 acres) has Natchez silt loam soil. These soils are on strongly sloping to very steep hillsides in the highly dissected parts of the bluff hills that border the Mississippi Delta floodplains.
Compared to the clays of Georgia, these soils have a bit more natural fertility and desirable workability for row crops – if the topography does not limit management to forest and pasture.
Vickie’s soil is a beautiful silt loam with the most organic matter in that top horizon that I encountered on rural land in the Black Belt Region. Vickie described her father as a thoughtful soil steward and award winning horticulturist.
Vickie and her family own 500 acres in Montgomery County, Mississippi. The land has been in the family for four generations (despite the city coming after her for eminent domain).
We had so much fun touring her forest farm, walking about six miles – harvesting berries, as she shared her plans of Agroturism, Recreation, Agroforestry, education, legacy and “building for future generations” (V. Roberts Ratliff, personal communication, July 2, 2022).
Vickie is a Black farmer outreach/land retention specialist. She is the author of Roberts Rules for Land Retention: Using Your Land to Create Generational Wealth. She’s also the family historian. Her house was like a library/museum. Many photos of her ancestors, historical artifacts, books about segregation, civil rights, & being Black in one of the most racially repressed states in the country.
Vickie gave me a tour of Winona. The highlight of the tour was visiting a site dedicated to Mother Fannie Lou Hamer. Vickie is responsible for establishing annual Fannie Lou Hamer Day – held June 9. Fifty-nine years later a historical marker is placed at the old jail site.
Watch: Vickie Roberts Ratliff
(V. Roberts Ratliff, personal communication, July 02, 2022)
Mississippi: Foxfire Ranch
Mississippi: Foxfire Ranch
Foxfire Ranch is just three miles from the Tallahatchie River. Photo by Richard Apple – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0
In Waterford, MS, Bill and Ann Hollowell are also passionate about Agrotourism and celebrating our farm roots. Agrotourism links agriculture and entertainment to attract visitors. Foxfire Ranch offers their space for events, family reunions, weddings, and concerts. They are most famous for their Mississippi Hill Country Blues Festivals every other weekend.
Bill’s dad purchased the 80 acres in 1919 for $480. The ranch is a former plantation and actually had small patches of cotton fields until the 1960s. Black farmers were prevented from profiting from cotton production. County agents limited yield by measuring harvest and burning any surplus above limit.
Foxfire Ranch is three miles away from the Tallahatchie River.
Emmett Till’s body was found in the Tallahatchie River in 1955. Till was a 14-year-old Black boy who was abducted, tortured, and lynched in Mississippi in 1955, after being wrongfully accused of offending a White woman (“Emmett Till”, 2023).
Mississippi: Brown’s Farm
Mississippi: Brown’s Farm
Tractor at Brown’s Farm in Yalobusha County, Mississippi
Farmer Brown farms 400 acres in Yalobusha County, Mississippi. He shared stories of generational loan denial and Black farmers’ abilities to “sustain by working hard, shifting gears, moving forward and using what we have” (Brown, personal communication, July 02, 2022).
Watch: Farmer Brown
(Brown, personal communication, July 02, 2022)
Texas: Ross Ranch
Texas: Ross Ranch
Henry Day & Dr. Wade Ross
Texas Black Gumbo was developed from clays that were deposited millions of years ago from the receding and advancing shorelines of ancient seas. With its high clay content, this soil becomes thick and sticky when wet, and it remains wet for long periods because of its low permeability. This trapped moisture makes the soil swell, until it finally dries, causing the soil to shrink. This particular property creates soil management limitations.
Soil texture describes the proportions of sand, silt, or clay in a soil. Texture influences nutrients available for plant uptake, the ease with which soil can be worked, and the amount of water and air soil holds.
Watch: Dr. Wade Ross
(W. Ross, personal communication, April 27, 2022)
Dr. Ross describes the soil as the “worst you’ve seen.” While not the “worst” – because no soil is worst or best – it is just different. His soils are sticky, puddled and perfect for his strategy of grazing Black Angus cattle and growing Tifton 85 grass. As most properties acquired by Black folks in the early 1900s, the Ross property is not prime agricultural farmland.
Dr. Ross is farming and ranching on 120 acres in Bryan, Texas. According to Dr. Ross, the farm is a “legacy from his paternal grandfather, Jack Ross (a runaway slave from South Carolina in the late 1890’s). The uncultivated property was offered to Grampa Jack for $1,200 by the townsfolks that wanted to keep him in the community for his excellent blacksmith talent. He was allowed to pay $100 a year for 12 years, so since he couldn’t read or write he notched an old tree in front of his little shack each year before he went into town to make his annual payment. On the 12th year after he made his final payment in town, a group of White men told him that they had chopped down his ‘payment tree’ so he had to start his payments again which Jack did for another 12 years…” (personal communication, April 27, 2022).
Dr. Ross and his friend, Henry Day, both produce cattle, pasture grass and vegetables. (Mr. Day is known for raising Texas Grand Champion Bulls). Both men will also leave the land that they were born and raised on to their children and grandchildren. Black Land Matters!
Watch: Henry Day
(H. Day, personal communication, April 27, 2022)
Watch: Grand Champion Bull
(H. Day, personal communication, April 27, 2022)
Sidebar: Cleopatra, NewSoil & the Earthseed Land Collective
Cleopatra is the Mother of Soil Science
Her work began long before modern researchers (50 B.C.). Vermiculture is the process of producing organically rich compost by preparing a medium including different types of biodegradable wastes, and earthworms. Cleopatra passed a law that decreed anyone who removed worms from the soil was an offense punishable by death (Penniman, 2022).
She is also responsible for the soil recharge. During her reign, farmers developed irrigation systems that trapped floodwaters in their fields. They let the water recharge the soil for a few months while the organics settled out, providing nutrients to the earth. They would then release the water to the receding river and plant their crops. In this way, year after year, the fields could produce enough food to sustain a large population living in the desert (EarthDate).
NewSoil & the Earthseed Land Collective
NewSoil Vermiculture LLC is a Black-owned vermiculture resource that I visited in Durham, North Carolina. They specialize in worm castings, worm tea, and composting equipment. NewSoil is a part of Earthseed Land Collective. Earthseed Land Collective is 48 acres of collective healing, cultural arts, food justice, food sovereignty and cooperative learning (established 2016).
Soil monolith from Tierra Negra Farm at Earthseed Collective, Durham, NC
Watch: Tierra Negra Farm at Earthseed Land Collective
Sidebar: Millie’s Plant Farm
Millie’s Plant Farm
During the Transatlantic Slave Trade, 12.5 million Africans were kidnapped by Europeans to be the labor force behind the plantation based system. Enslavers did not steal menial laborers, they targeted specific African communities known for farming technologies, carrying vast knowledge of plant, animal and soil health.
- West Africans in present day Nigeria & Cameroon have domesticated wild cattle – animal husbandry since 3000 BC.
- Women in West Africa have been producing ‘biochar’ for over 700 years, creating the African Dark Earths. According to a 2016 study in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, this black gold has high concentrations of calcium, phosphorus, and 200 to 300 percent more organic carbon than soils typical to the region (Solomon et.al, 2016).
- Rice cultivation in South Carolina has origins in West African knowledge systems that transferred across the Middle Passage of slavery (1670) (Carney, 2000).
The natural and cultural histories of the southern U.S have interacted and shaped the Black experience and relationships with soil. I define Black soilship as our burdensome, yet beautiful, relationship to the soil. It is our ability to steward and dance upon the same soil that was the scene of great trauma. It is a connection with such strong roots, bruised, but unbroken, by 500 years of oppression. It is a journey that only people who are rich in melanin can experience because it is so intimately weaved into our experience of this land. It is the knowledge passed down from our ancestors to ensure that we hold onto our sacred soil. It is a bond that often can not be defined by words, but instead by taste, touch and smell.
Diann and Milton Woods are using knowledge passed down from their ancestors…
The Woods own and operate Millie’s Plant Farm, a 12 acre CSA (diverse vegetable production) farm in Wharton County, TX. The land was acquired in 1908 by Diann’s Aunt Millie. How did a Black woman acquire land in South Texas in the early 1900s? They didn’t know she was Black! According to Diann, Millie was very ‘fair skinned’ (White passing). In the 1960s the state removed all of the top soil from their property to build a road. After retirement, Diann and Milton returned to the land. They worked for at least a decade to improve the soil conditions.
“We use a fertilizer that my great grandfather developed in 1863 on a plantation…”
(D. Woods, personal communication, April 24, 2022; M. Woods, personal communication, April 24, 2022)
Watch: Millie’s Plant Farm
Sidebar: Soil Monoliths
Soil Monoliths
Watch: Reconstruction of a soil profile to a depth of 1 meter using a hand auger
A soil profile tells the story of the soil from beneath the surface.
Soil forms in layers making up the soil profile. Observing the soil profile allows us to see soil properties such as color, texture and structure. These properties provide clues to information such as land management histories and climate events.
References
Bustillo, Ximena. (2023, February 12). Black farmers call for justice from the USDA. NPR.
Butler, Nic. (2019, August 6). Indigo in the Fabric of Early South Carolina.
Carney, J. (2000). The African origins of Carolina rice culture. Ecumene, 7(2), 125-149.
EarthDate. (n.d.). Cleopatra loved the flood. Bureau of Economic Geology.
McKinley, C. (2011). Indigo : In search of the color that seduced the world (1st U.S. ed.). New York: Bloomsbury.
Penniman, L. (2022). Black Land Matters: Climate Solutions in Black Agrarianism. Transition 133, 20-32. .
Reynolds, B. (2003). Black Farmers in America, 1865-2000: The Pursuit of Independent Farming and the Role of Cooperatives.
Sheehey, Maeve. (2022, August 22). Democrats abandon race-based loan relief after white farmers sue. Bloomberg Law.
Solomon, D., Lehmann, J., Fraser, J., Leach, M., Amanor, K., Frausin, V., . . . Fairhead, J. (2016). Indigenous African soil enrichment as a climate-smart sustainable agriculture alternative. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 14(2), 71-76.
USDA National Agricultural Library. (n.d.) George Washington Carver: A National Agricultural Library Digital Exhibit. U.S. Department of Agriculture.
USDA NASS, 2017 Census of Agriculture. (2017). Census of Agriculture Highlights: Black Producers. U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Wikipedia contributors. (2023, May 9). Emmett Till. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.