Agricultural Education A Love Story

i

love food i’m sure it’s noticeable right

me and food have a deep relationship

deep like the fibrous root hairs

extracting nutrients from the soil

embedding in them to the plant to give

me nourishment kind of deep

i like to plant it prepare it

eat it and talk about it

heck even my degree is in talking

about food but one thing that breaks my

heart

is the disconnect that the black

community

has with the very industry that sustains

us

agriculture

my love of food goes all the way back

to my paternal great grandfather

miles moser milos was the product

of his slave mother and his white owner

father

born in slavery after emancipation my

great-grandfather was given land by his

white siblings

he then took that land and bestowed it

upon his own children so that they could

grow

their own families one of which was my

papa harold

my papa herrera was able to use that

land and leverage it

to get even more land to be able to grow

his own family

unfortunately my papa herald passed away

in 1986

but my grandma eliza stewarded his land

for many years

i remember going to her house in

taylorsville north carolina

and walking in the door and smelling

flowers cut from her own garden

the sweet smell of tobacco because she

packs enough

and always something delicious

in the oven like a

blackberry cobbler or better yet

persimmon bread

made with persimmons that she foraged

and picked

with her own hands

behind her house was a smokehouse and

then my personal favorite

the greenhouse i was

always so in awe of my grandma eliza

and this woman who had a room devoted to

fancy hats and gloves

was also the same woman who would put on

jeans

a t-shirt throw a scarf on her head and

was on her knees

working in the ground

i think that was when i fell in love

around the time i was about 10 years old

she developed alzheimer’s

and that was also about the time that my

parents decided to dig a garden

in our backyard on the south side of

columbus

i remember coming home from school going

in the backyard picking a zucchini

slicing it

sauteing it and making it for my after

school snack

the power to be able to grow and prepare

my own food at that age

made me feel like i had super powers

a few years later on a trip to ghana

west africa with my auntie malika

i remember that we visited a cocoa farm

and there was the cocoa beans being

processed

to turn them into chocolate and

something that struck me so hard

was the fact that the people who are

working

in that garden and on that farm were

unable to afford

the end product a simple chocolate bar

the relationship was broken

and that’s when my auntie malik reminded

me

he who feeds you controls you

so that’s when i made the decision to

pursue my degree

in agricultural communications and

economic and social development

i told you i had a degree in talking

about food

and i was so excited after graduation

to be able to land a job at a local

settlement house

and their award-winning garden working

for their summer

teen employment program i was so excited

to share with those kids my love

of food and what i noticed

was that the kids as they came into that

garden they thought of it

as slave work

i was appalled that someone would think

that something that i loved so

much was slave work

so i vowed to be able to teach those

kids

to fall in love with food the same way

that i did

so the following year i worked with the

teacher and we developed a curriculum

i wanted to show these kids how their

world connected with food everything

from

food to fiber to fuel within agriculture

and teaching these kids that this wasn’t

slave work that this was the work that

made our ancestors resilient

this work was done centuries

proceeding in our enslavement this was

the work of growing

okra and sorghum and rice and yes

even cotton and with this knowledge

those kids came back year

over year

and i was on to something and i realized

we need to switch the narrative and if

we can teach these kids

that he who feeds us controls us we need

to switch that narrative

into thinking and reminding ourselves of

our rightful place as the masters

of this work

the agricultural industry is a more than

one trillion dollar industry in the

united states

of that there are about 2.2

million farms of those 2.2 million farms

only 5 are minority owned of that

2 percent are black owned now we know

that that black ownership has a lot to

do with land ownership but that’s a

different ted talk for a different day

but when i realized this i thought of a

saying

from a friend of mine named javier

sanchez he says

i don’t want a piece of the pie i want

the recipe

and the recipe is agricultural

education where do kids

spend most of their waking hours but in

school

heck the school year was predicated on

the agricultural calendar

so we’re best to sow the seed to be able

to connect our youth

to food to fiber and to fuel

and understanding their food system than

in

the science curriculum and then

utilizing those school grounds to be

able to have learning gardens

where best can we connect black and

brown students

to become and to know about the george

washington carvers

who developed amazing sustainable

agriculture systems

as well as developing more than 200

products with peanuts

or teaching them how to be profitable

like booker t

watley who is the father of the oh so

love

community supported agriculture program

my kids loved the work that they did

the ownership of the land and the

knowledge that they

learned and instilled in their peers and

younger students

was invaluable

some of them even fell in love too

going on to pursue careers in food

service

and in landscaping

but without a mere introduction

into the education and understanding

how their world connects and grows

they won’t have that ability to fall in

love

and so i ask that we petition our school

districts especially our urban school

districts

to be able to connect those students

through the science classroom

and if you’re like me and you’re

teaching at home

start saving food scraps and using them

to grow your own soil with composting

or if you’re an educator being able to

show

your students the power of growing their

own

only takes one

single seed i told you

i i love food

i love how it brings people together

and when i think about having faith the

size of a mustard seed

i feel that because i have that same

faith that when you grow and instill a

seed

of agricultural education into our black

and brown students

connecting them so that they know where

their food comes from

how it’s grown how to sell it for a

profit

that those students will take that

knowledge

to be able to grow thriving food systems

to sustain our communities

and for our future because

we all got to eat right