“Right now, it’s too wet for us to get into the field with a tractor,” she explained the night after a thunderstorm this summer. “We’ve had very few days where we can go into the field so far this year, and that is problematic.”

Mason is the founder of Jubilee Justice, a nonprofit that helps small-holder Black farmers in the South grow specialty rice with the System of Rice Intensification (SRI), a “dry-land” method developed in the 1970s and 1980s. Instead of growing rice in flooded paddies to prevent weeds from overtaking the crop, SRI farmers treat rice like a vegetable, irrigating it as needed and using other weed control methods.

Created on Madagascar and practiced in about 60 countries today, SRI has been shown to increase grain yields, sometimes twofold. The method also tackles the significant climate impact of conventional rice production. Methane emissions created by flooded rice paddies account for about 10 percent of global agricultural emissions. That’s because so much rice is grown around the world: Roughly 11 percent of all arable land is devoted to this crop, a daily staple for half the people on Earth.

Per calorie, though, rice produces fewer emissions than most staple foods, including meat, fish, eggs, dairy, and even other grains like wheat and corn. And growing rice with SRI can cut those emissions nearly in half. (Rice has other issues, namely that it can contain high amounts of arsenic, depending on the variety and where it’s grown; however, SRI likely reduces arsenic uptake.)

Despite all the advantages of SRI, it’s scarcely practiced in the U.S. because it requires specialized equipment, involves a lot more labor, and is extremely difficult to pull off. “That’s why people think we’re crazy,” Mason said.

But she has powerful reasons to focus on rice despite the challenges. For Mason, rice represents a way to transform lives and reclaim the past, offering a path toward racial, economic, and climate justice.

A Flow of Knowledge

“We are basically figuring it out year by year,” explained Erika Styger, director of the Climate-Resilient Farming Systems Program at Cornell University. A leading provider of SRI technical assistance to small-holder farmers worldwide, Styger has been a Jubilee Justice advisor since the Black Farmers Cohort began in 2019.

Jublilee Justice is the only organization in the U.S. “actively implementing and systematically researching the [SRI] method organically, regeneratively, and in collaboration with multiple farmers,” she said. Essentially, these farmers are the vanguards of a grand Southern experiment—part of what makes their work so challenging.

SRI can take years to adjust to a single farming operation and microclimate, Styger said, and having farmers around who have already done it successfully and can share their wisdom minimizes a “difficult” and “fragile” learning period. Being the first ones to pursue SRI on U.S. soil, Jubilee Justice doesn’t have this option.

“It takes a lot of knowledge and fine-tuning, and you need to be ready to adapt to different situations,” she added. Styger thinks the growing pains are worth it, though: “In the long run, of course, you’re building a much-improved system that will be able to withstand climate change much better.”

With SRI, farmers can cut by half the typical 800 to 5,000 liters of water used to grow one kilogram of rice, resulting in a 43 percent reduction in methane emissions, according to a brief by Styger and her Cornell colleague Norman Uphoff. While SRI may slightly increase nitrous oxide emissions, Styger and Uphoff found its advantages outweigh the potential downsides: SRI has been shown to lower the global warming potential of rice production by 25 percent on average.

Caryl Levine, co-founder of Lotus Foods, a California-based company specializing in SRI with farmers in Asia and Southeast Asia, says dryland rice farming is gaining popularity because “it’s much more regenerative” than conventional flooding. Still, it’s taken decades for the practice to spread.

Lotus Foods primarily works with farmers overseas, but teamed up with Mason to work on bringing Jubilee Justice rice to market. “It was a long-term goal of Lotus Foods to work with domestic farmers who are willing to use SRI practices,” Levine has said. With as many challenges as successes these past four years, the Black Farmers Cohort has yet to meet the volume threshold for Lotus to put their rice on grocery store shelves. Mason remains optimistic, though, saying, “We’re getting there.” In November, her farm in Alexandria achieved a milestone by harvesting its first full acre of rice after three years of smaller trials, marking their best harvest yet.

Jubilee Justice supplies farmers who are a part of the Black Farmers Cohort with everything they need to get started with SRI, including seeds, equipment, minerals, fertilizers, labor support, and technical assistance. In addition to funding from small family foundations, the organization received a $500,000 grant from the MacArthur Foundation in 2021.

MacArthur described the organization as “transformative,” providing support to “Black farming communities through new models of regenerative farming, cooperative ownership, and access to new markets by restoring and accelerating Black land ownership to create generational wealth.”

Honoring Their Ancestors

Mason’s choice to focus on rice was an intentional nod to America’s intertwined racial, economic, and environmental histories: Around the end of the 17th century, before “king cotton” blanketed Southern fields, American colonists in the South Carolina Lowcountry recognized the potential to profit from cultivating rice along coastal waterways.

“But the American colonists had no experience with the cultivation of rice, and they needed African slaves who knew how to plant, harvest, and process this difficult crop,” writes anthropologist Joseph A. Opala. The colonists set their sights on the peoples of Africa’s “Rice Coast,” from present-day Senegal down to Liberia, who had developed sophisticated rice cultivation systems.

Opala says plantation owners were willing to pay higher prices for dragging these expert farmers across the Atlantic into North American slavery. Over two centuries, hundreds of thousands of acres were cleared to establish rice plantations, shaping the Southern economy and landscape.

“After emancipation, Black folks left and walked away from our birthright to be rice farmers,” said Mason. “What we’re doing [at Jubilee Justice] is reclaiming rice and rice farming as our foodways, as our birthright—and in that is nothing but the spirit of the ancestors.”

Even the name Jubilee Justice suggests reclamation and restoration. Mason was inspired by the “Jubilee Year,” referenced in the Bible, signifying a cycle that occurred every 50 years when “land that was taken goes back to its original owner, debts are forgiven, and people who have been enslaved are set free,” said Mason. “It’s a year of reboot and equity and justice.”

Challenges of a Changing Climate

“It’s like the spigot turned off, which was the rain, and the heat turned up,” said Donna Isaacs, who runs Campti Field of Dreams, a nonprofit with a 43-acre organic farm in Campti, Louisiana. “You would walk on what was supposed to be grass and you heard crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch. That’s how bad it was last year.”

Most of Campti’s land is dedicated to livestock, including sheep, goats, pigs, and chickens, while 2.5 acres are reserved for vegetables. (The farm is working toward organic certification.) Only a fraction of the land, around a quarter acre, is devoted to rice. Isaacs had never grown rice before meeting Mason and thought the crop was a money suck. “My understanding of rice at the time was, you were only getting a few cents per pound, so growing it was not cost-effective,” Isaacs explained in her Jamaican accent.

When Mason told Isaacs there was no financial outlay to join the Black Farmers Cohort, it was easier for her to take a chance on rice. Isaacs’ face lit up as she reminisced about their “amazing” first harvest of four varieties. Last year was different, though: Campti lost most of its rice crops to drought and heat. Half their livestock died, too. This spring, they encountered the opposite problem, facing the same cold and wet conditions as Mason’s team, which left them unable to plant rice at all.

In Richmond, Kentucky, near the foothills of Appalachia, cohort member Brian Chadwell had no trouble planting rice this year. But he’s been battling heat and weeds ever since. Chadwell lost about half of his rice crops to weeds last year, which was Kentucky’s fourth warmest on record. State climatologist Jerry Brotzge told Civil Eats that Kentucky is on track to surpass that record this year.

Chadwell dreams of establishing a wholly organic SRI operation. For now, he’s reluctantly laying plastic mulch and spraying Roundup to suppress weeds. He’s learned how to make gradual shifts in his operation with guidance from Jubilee Justice and his idol, Nazirahk Amen of Purple Mountain Organics, a Louisiana-born farmer and naturopathic doctor living in Takoma Park, Maryland.

Amen isn’t part of the Black Farmers Cohort because he’d been growing rice regeneratively for years by the time Jubilee Justice got started. Still, he faces some of the same challenges. He anticipates that of the 1.5 acres he devoted to growing rice this year, approximately 80 percent of his red rice and 20 percent of another variety will be lost to blast, a fungal disease he says is worsened by the drought conditions his region experienced this summer.

“Like, why do I farm?” Amen said, laughing. “At some point, I was telling people that I feel like [the biblical character] Job. Like, I don’t know what else could go wrong.”

Driven by the healing power of nutritious food for his family and patients, Amen continues doing what farmers do best: adapting. “We’re not doing true SRI,” Amen said about Purple Mountain Organics. “We’re doing practical SRI.” He’s adjusted some of the principles to make the system work for him.

At one point, he imported two combines from Japan specifically designed for rice. “They have a system of production that we don’t have [in the U.S.],” he noted, pointing out that their combines are well-suited to SRI because their plant spacing is similar to the 25-x-25-centimeter spacing that SRI recommends, giving plants more space to grow. When Mason visited Amen in 2021 to learn about his operation, he sold her one of his combines and delivered it personally. “I’m so grateful,” Mason said. “He saved my life.”

Experience has taught Amen that it’s advantageous to diversify his crops so that if one fails, another might thrive. (He was pleased to hear that the Black Farmers Cohort is doing the same; they’re currently experimenting with red wheat, black corn, indigo, and more.) But given the overall risks involved in specialty rice farming, he believes the only way to survive is to account for losses by raising consumer pricing. “I don’t think it’s possible for farmers to do this below $6 or $8 or $10 a pound—even in the South,” he said.

Despite the losses Isaacs experienced, she estimates that her farm in Campti could save $10,000 a month by growing SRI rice and other grains they can use in livestock feed. Building up soil health and improving its water-holding capacity to better withstand climate events will be an added benefit. “What started out as a quarter of an acre of rice may end up becoming 10 acres twice a year,” Isaacs said. To avoid potential barriers to planting next year, the Campti team is planting cover crops early and building new infrastructure—investments that she estimates will cost over $20,000 and incalculable sweat equity.

Rice, Racism, and Repair

In 1910, Black farmers were 14 percent of the U.S. farming population but account for only 1.4 percent today. Black farmers lost 90 percent of their land between 1910 and 1997, due to a combination of racial terrorism, forced property sales, and discriminatory USDA policies that the agency has said were “designed to benefit those with access, education, assets, [and] privilege rather than for those without.” All that acreage, most of which was in the South, is worth roughly $326 billion today, according to a 2022 study.

Recent federal efforts to repair this history of anti-Black harm have faced backlash, with claims of discrimination against white farmers. In response, Congress opened discrimination payments to farmers of all racial backgrounds. In July, the USDA announced it had distributed about $2 billion to more than 40,000 farmers who endured past discrimination. To date, the agency has not shared what percentage of these payments went to Black farmers, although more than half of the recipients were in Mississippi and Alabama, states that boast the largest populations of Black agricultural producers.

Recognizing that Black farmers are often under-resourced and need forms of capital beyond what Jubilee Justice provides, Mason and Mark Watson, former managing director of the Fair Food Fund, co-founded a sister organization called Potlikker Capital in 2020. Potlikker Capital provides grants and loans meant to “nourish farmers, not to be extractive,” as Mason put it. (A potlikker recipe in a cookbook by her friend, the renowned chef Bryant Terry, inspired the name.)

According to Watson, Potlikker invests in rural Black, Indigenous, and farmers of color through a mix of grants, loans, and equity. Instead of making decisions based on credit scores or tax returns, Potlikker takes a “relational” and “holistic” approach to funding by visiting farmers regularly and building relationships with them, reviewing their business plans, and making introductions to distributors and lawyers “to create more supportive ecosystems for BIPOC farmers to thrive,” Watson said.

In many ways, the Black Farmers Cohort became a reality through an act of reparations. During an earlier Jubilee Justice program called “Our Ancestral Journey,” Mason crossed paths with Elisabeth Keller, whose family owns the former plantation in Alexandria that now serves as the Jubilee Justice headquarters. Their relationship deepened over the course of the two-year program, which brought together people from different backgrounds to delve into their genealogical roots and reimagine capitalism, “healing backwards in order to heal forward,” as noted in an annual report.

Mason and Keller found an affinity in the work they wanted to do: Keller had transformed part of the plantation into an organic farm but hadn’t figured out how to “heal the land” from the trauma inflicted on the enslaved peoples and sharecroppers who’d labored there. When Mason came up with the idea for the Black Farmers Cohort and was still looking for a place to begin, she remembers Keller saying, “Konda, bring Jubilee Justice here to this land.”

Jubilee Justice recently expanded its initial lease from 5 acres to 17, which now includes Elisabeth Keller’s organic farm. In 2022, the Keller family gave the organization the deed to a piece of land with a building that now houses the first cooperatively Black-owned rice mill in the U.S., enabling Black farmers to cut out middlemen and own their means of production.

Mason’s journey bears a striking resemblance to that of Charley Bordelone West, the mill founder in the television series Queen Sugar, though the show predates Jubilee Justice. (It’s worth noting that Natalie Baszile, who wrote Queen Sugar, is now on Mason’s board of directors.) Like Bordelone, Mason is out to build a durable model of Black self-determination.

Taking a break at the mill during the busy November harvest, Mason voiced her fatigue after an equipment failure left her team to manually process 3,000 pounds of rice by spreading it out on tarps and using fans and rakes to dry it. It was the fourth day of grueling shifts, and her weary eyes reflected both exhaustion and pride in the farmers’ accomplishments.

The cohort was scheduled to arrive the following week to decide on their path forward. Despite the rollercoaster nature of their startup journey, Mason felt invigorated by their progress. “There’s so many people waiting for the rice—and nobody more so than me,” said Mason. “I’m hoping that we’ll get all the channels that are available to us.”

Mason stressed that Jubilee Justice is not a project but a legacy, meant to live beyond her. “This is not about me. It’s not about condemnation . . . This is justice work and healing work.”

For Mason, producing rice organically and regeneratively, with Black farmers in the South, goes beyond climate action. Rice is a conduit for honoring ancestral practices and the long-existing bond Black people have with “the land and earth and interconnectedness of all life,” she said. “Nobody can take that away.”

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]]> https://civileats.com/2024/12/02/new-southern-cookbook-challenges-simplified-notions-of-black-cuisine/ Mon, 02 Dec 2024 09:00:43 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=59304  A version of this article originally appeared in The Deep Dish, our members-only newsletter. Become a member today and get the next issue directly in your inbox. “I want to dispel the myths of what America thinks Black cooking is and is not,” she writes in the opening pages. “Through my stories, recipes, and experiences, I […]

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]]>  A version of this article originally appeared in The Deep Dish, our members-only newsletter. Become a member today and get the next issue directly in your inbox.

“I want to dispel the myths of what America thinks Black cooking is and is not,” she writes in the opening pages. “Through my stories, recipes, and experiences, I challenge the belief that Black cuisine is monochromatic.” 

Named one of “16 Black Chefs Changing Food in America” by the New York Times, Shanti has been hard at work building her legacy as a Black, queer woman in the culinary world. In 2020, she earned a James Beard nomination for Rising Star Chef of the Year, recognizing her “Affrilachian” cooking at Benne on Eagle in Asheville, North Carolina. After that, she dazzled American television viewers on season 19 of Bravo’s Top Chef. Earlier this year, she opened a fish-fry restaurant, Good Hot Fish, in Asheville’s historically Black business district, earning accolades from Eater as one of the best new restaurants in America.

Now, the Virginia native blesses us with a cookbook that doubles as a memoir, honoring the Southern matriarchs in her family while celebrating the culinary diversity of the Black diaspora. Featuring 125 recipes and vibrant photography by Johnny Autry, Our South takes readers on a journey through five southern micro-regions—each revealing its own “courses and customs”—and people who shaped Shanti into the chef she is today. 

Between stops on her book tour, Shanti took a moment to speak with Civil Eats about Black food, queer voices in cooking, and what it’s like to be a restaurant owner in post-hurricane, post-election Asheville.

When and why did you decide to write this cookbook?

In 2020, a literary agent named Rica Allannic approached me about writing a cookbook. At the time, I was incredibly burdened by my chef position [at Benne on Eagle]. It was a very high-pressure job, with the restaurant open seven days a week for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Like a lot of people during 2020, I had a moment of reflection where I asked myself what I was doing and what legacy I was leaving. I had never opened my own restaurant, never even done a popup or anything like that. What I needed at that time, or what I wanted most, was to feel like I had a voice.

It was important for me to document these recipes, not just for me personally. I feel like there are so many foodways and traditions within Southern cooking that are kind of dying. A lot of the recipes in my family weren’t even written down. If I wanted to know how to make something, I had to call my auntie, or my mom had to track down little handwritten pieces of paper. 

In the introduction, you write that you “want to dispel the myths of what America thinks Black cooking is and is not.” What are some myths of this type you see perpetuated in the culinary world and beyond?

When our industry, our nation, hears of a Black chef, they automatically put us into a box and expect a certain cuisine of us. If someone makes fried chicken, that is suddenly their identity. I love fried chicken, and it’s in the cookbook, but the South has so much more to offer when it comes to our foodways. I have a best friend who is a Black chef in Louisville, and he’s making amazing Asian food. The diaspora is so vast, and there are so many influences we pull from, but people don’t really dig deep into what our foodways look like.

I think about how I grew up eating more vegetables than meat, which was secondary on the plate and there to bring flavor; it wasn’t the star of the dish. When it comes to agriculture and farm-to-table cooking, those things for me are synonymous with the ways we cook in the South. I wanted people to walk away from the cookbook not just with the knowledge of how to make really great recipes; I wanted them to gain a deeper understanding of the South. I do believe that this book offers something that other Southern cookbooks don’t.

How did you come to know the micro-regions highlighted in the book?

I identify with the micro-regions because of familial connections. I grew up in coastal Virginia. I have family on my dad’s side from Charleston, South Carolina, and kind of spread out all over the state. My mom’s side is in western North Carolina and southwestern Virginia. I didn’t set out to write a book that was divided by region, but writing it helped me understand who I am as a chef, why I cook the way that I do, why my mom’s rice is boggy and why my dad likes his rice dry, or why my mom uses a splash of apple cider vinegar and black pepper to season—that is a very Appalachian thing to do. I don’t even think I realized these things until I started documenting these recipes and tracking down all these food memories and seeing there was a common denominator through a lot of them. Certain regions cook a certain way.

You have a “U-Haul” shrimp cocktail recipe, referring to the stereotype of lesbians who fall in love and move in together “at lightning speed.” As a U-Hauler myself, this gave me a chuckle. Has it always been important for you to celebrate queer identity or culture in your culinary work? And what has that looked like over time?

I’m glad you understood the title of the recipe. I had to explain it to my publishers. Identifying as a Black queer chef is obviously incredibly important to me. It’s who I am. I don’t remember seeing anyone like me coming up in the industry. That’s what drives me to be forthright and loud about my queerness and my Blackness: I want other people who are struggling to find themselves to feel like they’re represented.

Aside from the U-Haul recipe, is there one dish or technique in the book that you think might surprise people?

I am always surprised to hear that people don’t know what leather britches are. Stringing britches [green beans] on my aunt’s porch is such an early food memory of mine and something I thought everyone did. It [connects to] these really fancy, high-end kitchens that dry vegetables and then rehydrate them to intensify and concentrate the flavor. It’s a very technique-driven thing that grandmas have been doing for centuries. Whenever I talk to people about britches, they’re pretty fascinated.

What are some essential ingredients or techniques you feel home cooks should learn, to get the most out of your recipes in this book?

Well, I would direct them to the “Supreme” [chapter] at the beginning of the book. I feel like being able to make potlikker and even understanding the concept of what potlikker is goes a very long way in cooking. You’ve also got to know how to make a pot of rice—that’s very important. Also, they should understand the versatility of something like cornmeal and be able to do a gluten-free dredge or make a nice cornbread. Readers will find what they need to know instantly in opening this book because I detail all of this in the first chapter.

How would you describe your restaurant Good Hot Fish? 

I would describe it as a modern-day fish camp. That was the idea in my creation of it—a fast-casual counter service spot. We play jazz music. There are pictures of old Black Asheville all over the walls, and little trinkets and artwork that my wife, Meaghan, created. We’re all decked out in the restaurant with some really cool stuff. We get fresh seafood daily that’s local, and we source from local farmers. We also pay a livable wage of $23 an hour, which is very hard to do in Asheville.

Multiple times people sitting at the counter have told me that our food at Good Hot Fish reminds them of a meal their grandmother would make. That makes me so happy to hear, especially where we’re nestled, in the South Side (now called South Slope) of Asheville, which was formerly a Black business district. There is not a whisper of that anymore, unfortunately. I mean, there is another Black restaurant and a couple of food trucks, but there are no full-service Black-owned restaurants in Asheville anymore. If you look in the Green Book, you can see that there were plenty. I know some elders in the community who had restaurants in that area, and it was so incredible when we first opened to have them come through our doors—with tears in their eyes

I saw on your Instagram account that Asheville’s culinary community is involved in ongoing relief efforts. What are you all doing—and how’s that going? 

One thing that we started doing in the midst of our closing is start what’s called Sweet Relief Kitchen, a free fish-fry popup supported by food donations. (Good Hot Fish had to close after Hurricane Helene and reopened on November 15.)  We are cooking for free and going to underserved communities, posting up at their local church or park, putting the word out, and feeding as many people as we can. We’ve fed hundreds of people, which feels really good.

How can people best support Asheville’s culinary community?

I’m hoping for an Asheville Renaissance when all this is over. It’s really encouraging to ride down the same street every day and start to see some progress, like trees getting cleared out and mud scraped away. We are doing our best in a city driven by tourism to ensure that tourists can come back and have an amazing time in Asheville. I would encourage people to visit our city and support our small businesses, our restaurants. We’re a city that has so many makers, and we’re working to get everything back to normal as possible in hopes that tourists will support us when this is over.

Since the election, I’ve been thinking about John T. Edge’s book, The Potlikker Papers, about the Black women who fed freedom fighters during the Civil Rights Movement, and the role of food and cooking in our current moment. What does food do for you in times like these?

Cooking is such a meditative practice for me that all I want to do is cook right now. When I’m feeling emotional, the first thing that I want is my mother’s food, something comforting, a bowl of beans or some of her stewed greens. I certainly turn to food when my emotions are heightened, whether that is joy or sadness, and I think a lot of people feel that way. A big part of why I’m in the service industry is because of the feelings a good meal has the power to evoke in people.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

The post A Debut Southern Cookbook Challenges Simplified Notions of Black Cuisine appeared first on Civil Eats.

“Only recently are farm people becoming more open to seeking mental health assistance,” says Michael Rosmann, a clinical psychologist and fourth-generation farmer, whose latest book, Meditations on Farming: The Agrarian Drive, Stress, and Mental Health is out this month. His previous book, Excellent Joy: Fishing, Farming, Hunting, and Psychology, was recognized by one critic for “the author’s compassion for the mental health of the farmers who are bonded first and foremost to their land.”

Rosmann, 78, is a leading expert on agricultural behavioral health, a specialization he was instrumental in developing to support food producers’ unique needs. Meditations on Farming isn’t the jargony academic text you might expect from an influential scholar.

Instead, it’s an offbeat collection of stories that, at first glance, may seem to have little in common—from reflections on his wife’s garden and his beloved fly-fishing adventures to riveting accounts of losing his toes in a combine and a lawsuit by a former patient that unfolded in a five-week court trial worthy of a Netflix series. Interspersed throughout are essays detailing lessons learned from nearly 50 years of counseling the people he calls his “best teachers”—farmers, ranchers, farm workers, and their families.

Together, the book is a nonlinear narrative of Rosmann’s life, revealing how our everyday actions, even the most mundane ones, prepare us for challenges we might never see coming. At times, the book reads like a spiritual guide, which makes sense given his early journey toward the Catholic priesthood. He changed his path after a friend told him over beers, “You need to be a father in a different sense,” encouraging him to marry, have kids, and become a psychologist.

Rosmann received a PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Utah and returned to his native Iowa to farm with his family, coincidentally arriving at the dawn of the 1980s Farm Crisis. Farmer suicides doubled during that time, and Rosmann was the first psychologist in the state to develop a response, gathering farmers after church on Sundays to talk openly about their struggles.

Later, he co-founded Agriwellness, a nonprofit whose 14 years of research on agricultural behavioral health informed the national Farm and Ranch Stress Assistance Network, which funds mental health services for agricultural workers.

In an interview with Civil Eats, Rosmann shares the personality traits that motivate people to farm despite its difficulties, the power of faith, and what truly works to save lives.

What is “mental health,” and why do you encourage psychologists working with the agricultural community to use the term “behavioral health” instead?

Mental health consists of behaviors that indicate a maladjustment that could be codified by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. I would say that behavioral health is the preferred term because there is a negative stigma about the word “mental.” You could use it to insult someone by saying, “Oh, you’re mental.” Try saying, “You’re behavioral.” It just doesn’t work; you can’t use that term in a nonchalant way.

Farm people who need mental health assistance have sometimes, in the past, avoided it because it was viewed as a sign of weakness or because you had to turn yourself over to someone else to become healthy. We doctors needed people to understand that we are in charge of our behaviors.

Behavioral health therapies include a great many approaches that change behavior or are capable of changing behavior—such as talking to an advisor who knows a lot about farming—that can be very supportive. How much we sleep, whether we take vacations or time to restore ourselves daily, eat correctly, take prescribed medication appropriately, talk about a financial situation with family, or pray—these are behaviors we control. We can’t control the weather or farm prices, but we can control our behaviors.

You’ve devoted a whole book chapter to the question: Why do people farm? Why is this an important question to ask in the context of behavioral health?

The psychological traits of successful farmers identified in research across multiple countries all point to a cluster of similar behaviors or characteristics that are central to the agrarian imperative [my theory for why people farm]. One is great tolerance for adversity. That is, farmers don’t give up and will continue to struggle until they don’t have an ounce of energy left or can’t function. Another is that they trust their own judgment and will do what they think is best, even if it overrides what another person might recommend. Another is that successful farmers take risks. Another is that they want to do it by themselves, and this reliance on their own judgment is very important to their self-esteem.

Now, these behavioral styles also have their downsides. The first one, to persevere in the face of overwhelming distress, means that sometimes farmers will push themselves into an anxiety disorder, which eventually turns into depression, and the depression can turn into suicide. The second factor—that they rely on their own judgment—often gets them into trouble because they won’t seek help, and it’s pretty clear now that having a team of people to solve a problem together is very beneficial. The third one, high risk-taking, easily can be seen as having its negative side because farmers will push the limits and sometimes make risky decisions that don’t pan out. Healthy farmers are able to make better decisions.

In the book, you emphasize that financial stress and the prospect of losing land are the top contributors to mental health challenges for farmers. What is the farmer’s responsibility, and what is the responsibility of their community and government?

We all need to understand that agriculture is not an easy way of life and is more than a business. If we think of food production only as a business, then it becomes selfish, and it’s all about making money that doesn’t have survival value. But if we think about producing food as a way of life for the purpose of sustaining our family, our communities, and people around the world, then [eaters] understand that they are stakeholders in the well-being of farmers.

During the Trump administration, when tariffs were imposed on China and it retaliated by reducing imports of American grain and pork, nearly all of the supplemental aid given to farmers went to larger corporate farms rather than those who farm as a way of life.

We need a different type of governmental involvement, and that is to help create the foundations for the services that take care of the mental health of farmers. The 2018 Farm Bill had that in it, and it’s called the Farm and Ranch Stress Assistance Network. For the first time, this program allocated funds ($10 million annually) to four land grant universities, some of which are attached to consortiums, around the U.S. that are required to help pass funds to others in their state and region to set up farm crisis services such as hotlines and helplines, train counselors who understand agriculture, make services available without incurring insurance billing, and conduct community education. We have seen a considerable shift in the way farmers view mental health since the Network came out.

Can you share any success stories or case studies that illustrate the positive impact of stress management for farmers?

We’ve seen the rate of suicide decrease in areas where they have the best practices installed that I talked about [in the book] relating to the Network. We are seeing farmers now reach out for behavioral health assistance a whole lot more than they did in the past. They are not as afraid of seeking counseling, medications, or substance abuse treatment. We see them progressing toward more efficient, understanding, better relationships with their workers and family members—and even with their animals, if they raise animals. 

What are some key behavioral health challenges you’ve noticed among farmers?

We know that higher rates of anxiety disorders and depressive disorders occur in farm people. We also know that most farmers carry a proclivity toward attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). We used to think that was some negative mental health problem, but it needs to be viewed in a different light. ADHD has its benefits.

The original research [conducted by anthropologist Dan Eisenberg] on Kenyan farmers in Africa showed that the most skilled and successful cattle, sheep, and goat herders didn’t require a lot of sleep. They were keen observers of opportunities for their animals to graze or secure water. They took more risks, sometimes sleeping or herding their animals close to terrain where predators were known to come after the livestock. And they developed some methods to drive lions away. All of the things I’ve said are beneficial, but they can get us into trouble if we don’t know how to use them.

At one time, my own ADHD got the better of me. I didn’t properly manage it and I lost some toes [in a combine]. I realized that I had to be more careful for the sake of my family. I realized that I was trying too hard to be successful. What was success? Maybe political power, recognition, things that many people valued and which I valued, but these urges were more about me than taking care of others and myself properly.

In the book, you write about your relationship with God and how faith got you through a series of challenges. How has your faith influenced your work with farmers?

It has influenced me in many ways. When I feel desperate to come up with a solution for somebody who is highly suicidal, I have to know what to say. Of course, I’ve had training in psychology and 50 years or so of experience, but I don’t know everything.

I say to my concept of a higher being, “God help me with this. What can I do?” That quick meditation sometimes allows me the freedom to think clearly, and sometimes things come to me that I can’t understand how they came. They just happen, and they’ve happened to me repeatedly. I know there’s a higher force governing me. If I get to being too concerned about Mike and not adequately concerned about everybody else, I get knocked off my horse. And if I don’t get knocked off my horse for quite a while, when it happens, it happens hard. But I think God is trying to teach me a lesson and to say, “Hey, what’s more important, you or others?”

Taking care of others is my way of achieving meaning, fulfillment and happiness. But it’s also my way of helping others be happier and healthier emotionally so they can go about their farming properly.

Do you encourage your own clients to meditate?

Yes, I encourage clients to meditate in their own way. It is their responsibility to establish openness to input from all sources around us and not just depend on the words of one or two people. We need to understand the dignity of farming as one of the highest callings anybody can have, and I think that does involve spiritual reliance on a higher source. We all need a core set of beliefs that get us through the tough times, and it’s easier to have that set of core beliefs when we’re deeply spiritual. Not religious, but spiritual.

Lots of media reporting on farmer mental health focuses on suicide. Are we missing something by focusing on suicide alone? Do you think our focus should be elsewhere?

Yes, I do. Our focus now needs to be on the establishment of helpful services, training farmers in stress management, making behavioral healthcare affordable and accessible when needed, and building teams that help distressed farmers resolve their problems.

We now have courses called agricultural medicine, which includes a section on managing behavioral health. We also have four centers for studying agricultural behavioral health that we didn’t have six years ago. We’ve come a ways, and I think the progress is partly due to the media getting the information out there on TV, in farm newspapers and magazines, and even in brochures in the farm service agencies.

We’ve seen a change in sentiment about mental health. Now, the focus needs to be on the progress that’s been made—and making it equally available to everyone in agriculture, not just the owners and operators, but also workers, people who want to get into agriculture, farmers who are not running large operations, and people of different economic and racial strata. All this [progress] needs to be equitably applied.

What messages do you hope readers take away from your book?

Golly, I hope they understand the rigors of agriculture better in terms of how it impacts behavioral and mental well-being. I hope they see agricultural production as a highly beneficial and sought-after way of life, not just an occupation or a business. I hope they see they need to be stewards of the land and all the resources needed rather than exploiters. I hope, above all, that they see reading the book as a spiritual journey that makes them better people who care about others.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The post For Farmers and Ranchers Grappling With Mental Health, This Fourth-Generation Farmer Offers Help That Works appeared first on Civil Eats.

]]> https://civileats.com/2024/11/01/michael-rosmann-on-the-stresses-struggles-and-hopes-of-farmers-and-ranchers-and-the-kind-of-help-that-works/feed/ 1 https://civileats.com/2024/07/30/shelf-life-peeks-into-the-nooks-and-crannies-of-the-cheesemakers-world/ Tue, 30 Jul 2024 09:00:39 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=57066 Stillwagon’s strange philosophical musings on curd set the tone for Shelf Life, a new documentary about the parallels between cheese aging and human aging. Produced by Robyn Metcalfe and directed by Ian Cheney (whose films include King Corn and The Search for General Tso), Shelf Life premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in June, where […]

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“Milk is one of the simplest things in nature,” says Jim Stillwagon, an eccentric cheesemaker standing in his cluttered kitchen somewhere in the Pyrenees. “When a child vomits on your shoulder, those are the earliest vestiges of cheese.”

Stillwagon’s strange philosophical musings on curd set the tone for Shelf Life, a new documentary about the parallels between cheese aging and human aging. Produced by Robyn Metcalfe and directed by Ian Cheney (whose films include King Corn and The Search for General Tso), Shelf Life premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in June, where it won the award for Best Cinematography in a Documentary Feature.

Filmed in more than six countries over three years, Shelf Life takes us inside the work spaces of artisan cheesemakers and specialists to observe them at their craft: through the halls of underground cheese vaults in Vermont. Under the microscope with a cheese microbiologist in California. Behind the scenes of the World Cheese Awards in Wales. Into a children’s classroom in Japan for a cheese-making lesson. And to the cheese-laden dining-room table of an award-winning cheesemonger in Chicago (see “Five Questions for Alisha Norris Jones,” below).

Cheesemaker Jim Stillwagon in his kitchen somewhere in the Pyrenees. (Photo courtesy of Wicked Delicate Films)

Wonderfully diverse in scope, we even get to visit an archeologist’s dig site in Egypt to learn about cheese in the afterlife, observe a traditional hand-pulled cheese practice in Tbilisi, Georgia, and descend into the shadowy basement stacks of a cheese librarian in Switzerland. Metcalfe calls this remarkable cast of characters “the poets of the cheese business.”

Shelf Life captures the vast and complex universe of cheese, acknowledging its place in the food system without getting into its politics—even when there’s a lot to say: The global cheese market is estimated at around $187 billion, according to one report, but this monetary worth comes with a sizable carbon footprint. According to a joint study by the Environmental Working Group and the firm Clean Metrics, dairy-based cheese is the third-highest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, trailing behind beef and lamb.

Some have advocated for vegan cheese as a potential solution to environmental troubles. But dairy-based cheeses play an important role in local economies and culinary traditions worldwide, enriching people’s stories and ways of life—something Shelf Life celebrates.

Although film is a relatively new medium for Metcalfe, her connection to the food industry goes back to her grandfather, Roy Diem, who worked with entrepreneur Bob Wian to build the first Bob’s Big Boy. Metcalfe grew up spending time at the restaurant, famous for its double-decker hamburger. She went on to study historical food systems at Boston University, where she earned her Ph.D., and taught modern European food history at the University of Texas, Austin. At one time, she conserved rare breeds of livestock in Maine.

Metcalfe has authored several books on the food supply chain, including Food Routes: Growing Bananas in Iceland and Other Tales from the Logistics of Eating (featured in Civil Eats’ 2019 summer book guide). She also founded Food+City, a nonprofit storytelling platform that delves into how cities are fed, and the Food+City Challenge Prize, a pitch competition funding food-tech startups around the world.

We spoke with Metcalfe recently about why she made the documentary, the future of vegan cheese, and how aging builds character both in cheeses and humans.

What inspired you to make a documentary about cheese—and why now?

The first urge to pursue this subject came from an unanswered question I had as I finished a book called Humans in Our Food. My interest in food, oddly, is not so much about the food; it’s about the systems that bring the food to the table. Often, they feel industrial and disconnected from humans.

One of my curiosities was, what are the food stories we’re not hearing? Who’s missing and unseen? I sensed that it was the people building pallets, working in food service, driving trucks, packing, and all of that stuff. I wondered if what we imagine about them is true—for example, that they’d all rather be doing something else. Or that they’re working for very little money, are pretty much exploited, kind of a sad picture, and not very smart. Some people think, “Well, if you were really smart, you would not be doing that work.”

What I did [for the book] was travel all over the world and look at a really simple dish, like a slice of pizza in New York or a rice ball in Japan. Then, I went to see who brought those things together. In doing so, the answer I got was, these unseen people are aspirational. For many immigrants in particular, it’s the way they get in and up and move onward. Some of them, surprisingly, love their jobs. Not all of them, but the assumption was so much one way, and I discovered it’s much more nuanced. One group I was really curious about was affineurs, people who work in caves. [You] might be familiar with going through a winery and seeing people who age wine, but not many people know who’s in caves aging cheese.

The second thing is that, in becoming older, I was really put off by the conversations that people wanted to have with me even a decade ago, which were, “Oh, are you still doing X?” It was all about decline and being careful and not taking any risks and certainly not building up, but designing down. It was disturbing to me. This is not what anyone wants to hear. And how much of it is a self-fulfilling prophecy, after all?

So, I’m holding this thought about how cheese ages and I thought, “I wonder if we can learn something about aging a cheese, which gets better over time or transforms [and becomes] what it wants to be in terms of character. Might we push back on this human conversation of decline?” Those two things are why I chose this subject. It wasn’t because I was a cheese lover who wanted to make a film about cheese and found a way.

Did making ‘Shelf Life’ turn you into a cheese lover?

At one point, I got a cheese certificate at Boston University because that’s how you learn about things. But if someone said to me, “Robyn, what’s the difference between these two blues?” or asked me to tease out all the different flavor molecules, I would be absolutely helpless. [But cheese is] a wonderful lens to look at life.

A cheese expert feels the rind that develops during the aging process. (Photo courtesy of Wicked Delicate Films)

What were some challenges you faced when filming?

It was a challenge getting [the cheesemakers] to talk about aging. I mean, how many people do you know who like to talk about aging? People, especially younger generations, want to be relatable and supportive, and they’re curious about being older, but it’s an awkward conversation.

(Instead,) everyone wanted to share their cheese [process]. We would get responses like, “Thank you for contacting us. This is how we make our cheese.” But we weren’t actually that interested in the how but more the why. That was very hard, because people are over the moon about cheese and want to talk about it. So, we spent more time getting to know our characters before they felt they had told us their story about cheese and would speak to us about other things.

Did you learn anything new or surprising from the conversations about cheese and aging?

Absolutely. There were a lot of really fun little paradoxes. Initially, we talked to a cheese-making nun who was featured in a New Yorker article [but didn’t make it into the film]. She had a very interesting spiritual approach to what’s going on with cheese. I was really surprised to see how you could draw a metaphor about cheese as a body. Generations of microbes transform the cheese. They eat the cheese, then they die, and leave it for the next generation of microbes . . . changing the landscape of that cheese as it develops into its character.

Also, I appreciated cheesemaker Mary Quicke’s comments about multiple peaking. People talk a lot about how I’ve “passed my peak,” “I’m not in my prime,” or “Are these the sunset years of my life?” I was surprised by her clarity and understanding that you have a lot of peaks, and you’ll have more peaks. There’s not a limited supply of peaks; it’s just a limited imagination.

Were any of the people you interviewed for the film concerned about climate change?

Some people were attaching sustainability to their farming practices—for example, Jasper Hill, in Vermont. But some of the cheese companies and cheesemakers we spoke to are so small-scale that, in most cases, climate concerns never came up. Jasper Hill uses milk from, shall we say, a largish dairy and sort of sits on the edge of artisanal and scale. That’s the conundrum, isn’t it? If you want to have good food available at a low cost to as many people as possible, then you have to get bigger. In Shelf Life, you can see that Jasper Hill already has a robot flipping cheese.

A quality control group in the underground cellars at Jasper Hill Farm in Vermont. (Photo courtesy of Wicked Delicate Films)

As a historian, were there specific experiences or people you encountered while filming that stuck with you more than others—for instance, the notion that cheese, for Egyptians, was a food they envisioned in the afterlife?

I could relate to the archeologist in Egypt trying to read artifacts and divine a story from them. Historians often don’t have the actual pieces of things and are always groping and learning how to tell the story. I was surprised to hear about the Egyptians’ concept of cheese, because you don’t read much about that.

I was fascinated by the use of old historic buildings being used to age cheese, like old breweries, for example, and some of the bunkers in Europe. Or weird places like subway halls. These repurposed spaces bring up a terroir sort of conversation about the minerals, the humidity, the bacteria, and all of that. I’m not in the cheese business, but all these moves for new sanitation standards—removing the bacteria and original wooden shelves where cheese has aged—are disheartening, because often it’s that magic elixir of all those things that make cheese special.

**  **  **

Alisha Norris Jones. (Photo courtesy of Wicked Delicate Films)

5 Questions for Cheesemonger Alisha Norris Jones

Shelf Life offers a glimpse into the life of Alisha Norris Jones, an artist and professional cheesemonger based in Chicago. Jones is the creative mind behind @_immortalmilk, an “underground” cheese shop that pops up at different locations, offering curated cheese boards inspired by various aspects of culture, from art books and Instagram to Jones’ mood and travels.

 

Her work has garnered acclaim, leading to multiple awards and social media praise. Recently, she took first place at the inaugural Cheesy Chopped Championship hosted by the Cheese Culture Coalition, an organization promoting equity and inclusion in the cheese industry. We caught up with Jones to learn how she got started, what makes a good pairing, and how economic status influences our relationship with cheese.

 

How did you find your way to the fine cheese business?

 

I’m originally from Boston and moved to Chicago about 16 years ago. I got my start in food and hospitality by working at Publican Quality Meats, serving and making coffee. I eventually became a pastry assistant.

 

I was a really bad pastry chef. I lasted about three months and left before I could get fired. But one of the things that caught my attention was working with the cheese case. I went to school for religion and anthropology and have always been interested in food and food justice. Cheese seemed like a really cool way to talk about justice, class, culture and also food, wrapped all up into one thing that’s a living and breathing product—because all cheese is still alive, for the most part, when it arrives on your plate.

 

From there, I fell in love with cheese, worked at a couple more restaurants, and then took a break from fine dining to work in the specialty department at Whole Foods. I ended up being there for about five years and realized I could go for my cheese certification and become more of a professional in this field. It kind of took off from there.

 

Tell us more about how cheese is a conduit to conversations about justice and class.

 

Almost every culture that can produce cheese, across the globe, does. It can be a sign of the elite and bourgeois—a person might only go to France for Brie or pay $300 for a tasting menu. On the flip side, cheese is what got us through industrialization. By preserving milk, a person could bring it to a factory and eat it over the course of a 12-hour shift.

 

It was also a way for people to survive through the ‘70s and ‘80s with government cheese. I think it’s fascinating that some folks to this day believe that cheese isn’t for them because it’s perceived as a white thing or a rich thing, when it really affects all levels of society. I can almost tell you where you grew up and what you’ve had access to through what your favorite cheeses are.

 

As far as justice, seeing the way that land rights can also factor into cheese makes me think about who we’re advocating for. Some cheesemakers have gotten into growing marijuana because they’re not getting dairy subsidies anymore or because their land is being encroached upon by large growers or multinational dairy companies.

 

As an artist with a background in anthropology, how do you approach curating cheese boards?

 

I think about the season, especially what’s available in produce and cheese. Then, I think about my mood. Say it’s early spring: A lot of beautiful Loire-style French goat cheese is coming out [then], so I’ll look towards France and get into French cheese culture, like French movies or French visual artists and pick up on whatever palettes and moods they’re using and incorporate that into the larger board.

 

How do you know when a cheese pairs well with something? What are you looking for?

 

I’m looking for a volume match. If I have a loud cheese, I want something that’ll either be just as loud on a palate, or through texture, to complement it. I’m also thinking about acidity—again, I want something that won’t overpower the cheese—and something interesting that you haven’t really seen before, without necessarily talking down to the person eating it. There’s been this trend of matching junk food with cheese, where I’m like, “This is cool, but we can be a little bit better about this. Let’s get some fruit in here. Let’s get out of the candy aisle.”

 

Cheese raises questions about climate and whether vegan cheese is better for the environment. Do climate concerns come up for you in your work?

 

In past years, no. But I am thinking about it now, especially after going to the American Cheese Society conference and hearing fellow industry folks say we need to talk about this. With droughts and hotter temperatures, there is a concern about the cows and what milk they will provide when they’re literally overheated. And do we have enough money to keep them in an air-conditioned barn, which is insane to think about.

 

There’s not one solution to the climate question. I think more folks should be eating better cheese; sometimes, that means eating vegan cheese. Some vegan cheese artisans are doing cool things informed by traditional cheese making, and there should be room for everybody at the table. But cashews and almonds take up a lot of water. [Vegan cheese won’t] solve anything unless we’re careful about climate altogether.

These conversations have been edited for length and clarity.

To find a screening of Shelf Life, or to host one, visit https://www.shelflifefilm.org/

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]]> https://civileats.com/2024/07/01/can-cooking-in-community-slow-dementia-and-diabetes/ Mon, 01 Jul 2024 09:00:36 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=56745 “They teach us how to cook a dish without meat, and I love it,” Pratt, a charismatic New Orleans native, told me on a recent afternoon in Oakland. “I have more energy and I just feel better when I eat better.” Several people in the class, including Pratt, are Black women living with diabetes. The […]

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Gail Pratt is the oldest of seven sisters and the only one who didn’t learn to cook growing up. When a friend told her about a cooking class at The Good Life, an Oakland, California-based nonprofit offering healthy aging activities for older adults, she decided to enroll. For the past four years, 69-year-old Pratt has logged on most Thursday mornings from her kitchen, joining about 50 other women in her age group from all over the San Francisco Bay Area for an hourlong virtual lesson.

“They teach us how to cook a dish without meat, and I love it,” Pratt, a charismatic New Orleans native, told me on a recent afternoon in Oakland. “I have more energy and I just feel better when I eat better.” Several people in the class, including Pratt, are Black women living with diabetes.

“If you have type 2 diabetes left unchecked, unmanaged, then you are absolutely increasing your risk of developing dementia at later stages of life.”

The Good Life originated in 2020 as a clinical research study on dementia and diabetes prevention led by the U.C. Davis Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center. Some researchers have dubbed dementia “type 3 diabetes” or “diabetes of the brain,” linking blood sugar levels to cognitive decline, though more research is needed to link the conditions.

“If you have type 2 diabetes left unchecked, unmanaged, then you are absolutely increasing your risk of developing dementia at later stages of life,” said Shanette Merrick, U.C. Davis’ clinical research supervisor and The Good Life’s executive director. She and her team recently concluded a study, she said, designed to show that “a healthy lifestyle change would slow down or stop the onset of dementia and diabetes.”

Shanette Merrick’s live cooking class with Mattie Stevenson in attendance, pictured second row from top. (Image courtesy of The Good Life)

Food holds significance at various stages of Alzheimer’s and other dementias—the third leading cause of death for older residents in Alameda County, where The Good Life operates. Early warning signs of Alzheimer’s include forgetting directions to familiar locations like the grocery store and struggling to organize a shopping list. At later stages of the disease, individuals may have difficulty preparing meals and recognizing the food on their plate as edible; some ultimately forget to chew or have difficulty swallowing due to muscle weakness and changes in the brain region responsible for coordination. Cooking and eating nutritious foods, meanwhile, has shown promise in helping individuals maintain and even enhance their cognitive function. Cooking with others may amplify these benefits, by reducing social isolation—a growing problem and one that’s associated with an even greater risk for dementia.

Projects like The Good Life and others around the country are tackling multiple needs. They improve nutrition, social connection, and mental well-being, especially for people living in communities burdened by chronic disinvestment and disease. The Michigan Center for Urban African American Aging Research, for example, is working to feed Black elders while reducing health disparities. With The Good Life, Merrick set out to transform the way Black elders perceive food, hoping to influence dietary changes within entire families. “I see it happening,” she said.

Cooking to Heal

Merrick works closely with David K. Johnson, a clinical psychologist who designed U.C. Davis’ study. He found a civic partner for his research in the city of Oakland. Initially, The Good Life’s cooking and exercise classes were scheduled at the East Oakland Sports Center, which shares a parking lot with a senior center, but pandemic shelter-in-place orders thwarted their plans. Merrick, who lives in East Oakland, proposed online classes to bring people together and address something she was seeing in her community: Black elders grappling with extreme isolation and fear of their vulnerability to the coronavirus. An avid cook and self-identified creative, Merrick offered to teach the cooking class herself. She did not expect classes to last more than a few months, but now, four years later, interest is still growing: Merrick sees 40 to 55 participants weekly, including the core group of around 30 women who’ve been with her since the beginning.

“When they first started the class, I would always add some meat to my dishes, like some shrimp or some chicken,” said Pratt, who is one of those early members. “And now I can do the dishes without the meat, so they’re really helpful as far as teaching us how to cook healthy meatless meals.” (Studies have shown that a vegan or high-vegetable diet may reduce risk of dementia.)

Shanette Merrick shops for lemons and other food items at the legendary supermarket Berkeley Bowl in Berkeley, California. (Image courtesy of The Good Life)

Merrick chooses seasonal recipes from cookbooks and websites to spotlight foods that promote optimal brain functioning and overall health. In recent months, the class has prepared a “Moroccan Style” bowl featuring chickpeas, couscous and roasted root vegetables; “Peanut Chili Noodles”; and various leafy green salads with fresh herbs and homemade dressings. While Merrick prepares a dish on camera, her production manager and fellow cooking instructor Nya Siwatu (also her daughter) explains each ingredient’s beneficial properties. When they finish cooking, the group stays online, eating together and sharing unique twists anyone might have added to the recipe.

“They’re learning how to really look at their plates and say, ‘That heals my pancreas, this is good for my heart, this is good for my skin—everything on this plate is healing my body,’” Merrick said. “That’s super powerful.”

Regular class participants say they’ve changed how they shop, stock their pantries and season their food. They also report having lower A1Cs, the most commonly used measurement for tracking blood sugar levels. Pratt credits The Good Life with decreasing her blood pressure and blood sugar—and as partial inspiration for renting a community garden plot with another participant, Brenda Harrel, 72, a mother and active gardener. The rising costs of food and the short shelf life of fresh produce also contributed to their decision.

“All of the herbs that we use when we’re cooking, we’ll go to the store and buy it, and when we get ready to use it again, it’s no good,” Harrel said.

Harrel and Pratt wanted the option to pick truly fresh produce from their garden for their weekly class. So far, they’ve planted basil, cilantro, parsley, hot peppers, onions, butter lettuce, collard greens, strawberries, cherry tomatoes, and bell peppers.

Creating Food Access

Not all elders can access a community garden plot or have the energy to tend one. For many, simply getting to a grocery store with a variety of nutritious, affordable foods can be a challenge. California is home to the largest population of adults over 65 in the United States, but many who live on low incomes can’t meet their basic needs, increasing their risk of chronic illness and disease. The U.C. Davis Alzheimer’s Research Center received a $5 million grant from the state to ask, “What are the ways that we cannot only get older adults to exercise and diet, but what are the important differences in the way that Black Americans adopt healthy lifestyles and white Americans adopt healthy lifestyles?” Johnson explained. “Sometimes I call that the study of haves and have-nots.”

“I want to remain mobile. So what do you do? You eat right and you exercise.”

According to the Alzheimer’s Association, older Black Americans are twice as likely as older non-Hispanic white Americans to have Alzheimer’s or other dementias. Latinx Americans are about 1.5 times as likely. And women make up almost two-thirds of Americans living with the disease. Researchers at Columbia University’s Irving Medical Center have attributed the racial disparities to social and environmental factors, including chronic exposure to racism and unequal access to healthy food options. East Oakland is a prime example: Driving with Merrick from the East Oakland Sports Center to the a supermarket for a few red onions was a 2-mile one-way journey, which would have taken 45 minutes on foot or roughly 30 minutes by public transit, each way.

In addition to online classes, The Good Life provides free food, through pickups at the Sports Center to ensure participants get the ingredients they need for the recipes. Merrick says the number of food pickups has nearly doubled since the program started. The day before class, she and her team, including Spanish-language instructor Irma Hernandez, meet at the Sports Center to bag and package the week’s ingredients, usually sourced from a legendary local supermarket, the Berkeley Bowl. An hour later, women start trickling into the Sports Center lobby with reusable shopping bags and backpacks to pick up their ingredients, along with additional food—milk, eggs, vegetables, crackers, chips, and more—donated by the Alameda County Food Bank. During pickup hours, the lobby transforms from an echoey transactional space into a social scene. Many women linger to chat with each other and the staff, filling the air with warmth and laughter. They share cooking stories and catch up on each other’s lives.

Patricia Richard, an active 77-year-old who many credit with telling them about The Good Life, said she visits her neighborhood farmers’ market weekly, but still goes to the Sports Center for specific food items. “I want to remain mobile,” she said. “So what do you do? You eat right and you exercise.” A Good Life participant since it launched, Richard transitioned to a vegan diet a year and a half ago after learning she had partial artery blockage. “I decided that rather than taking drugs, I’ll just go with the diet.”

Patricia Richard (center) with fitness supervisor and trainer Michael Tatmon, Jr. (left), Shanette Merrick (top right), and Irma Hernandez (bottom right). (Image courtesy of The Good Life)

Despite the prevalence of dementia in the Black community, this group is underrepresented in research studies on preventing and treating the condition (though there are signs of improvement). Richard wanted to help researchers collect information “about Black people, about the discrepancies, and why we have so much dementia,” she said, so she joined U.C. Davis’ Alzheimer’s Disease Cohort, an ongoing study for which she undergoes a “grueling” 2.5-hour annual examination involving memory tests, blood work, and an MRI scan. Her involvement will continue for the rest of her life.

Forming Intergenerational Bonds

In the program’s first two years, Merrick personally delivered ingredients to Mattie Stevenson, an Oakland resident since the 1950s and the eldest participant in her class. When she spoke with me last year, Stevenson told me the cooking class had helped her manage diabetes and a heart condition by teaching her new ways to cook foods she loved and ones she had avoided, like cauliflower. Learning about new utensils provided a surprising benefit. “I just love the potato peeler,” she said. “It’s brought a joy to my life.”

“Loneliness is the most significant mental health issue facing older adults, no matter race, creed, or color—doesn’t matter. People want to be together.”

As this story was being reported, Stevenson passed away, at the age of 95. Merrick said she had come to think of Stevenson as family. On delivery days, the two would often sit on the porch and talk. That Stevenson’s son asked Merrick to speak at his mother’s funeral reflects the bond the two women formed in a relatively short time. “[Her passing] was devastating,” said Merrick. “It’s the hardest thing I’ve had to deal with since I’ve been doing this.” Not long before her death, The Good Life posted a promotional video on YouTube capturing Stevenson for a few moments at the center of the screen, a video that now also honors her memory.

For Johnson, the U.C. Davis psychologist, the power of social interaction and support is a critical facet of The Good Life. “Loneliness is the most significant mental health issue facing older adults, no matter race, creed, or color—doesn’t matter,” he said. “People want to be together.” He plans to publish a paper on his findings in the coming months; for now, he says the combination of maintaining a healthy, whole-foods diet and having a vibrant social life is our most effective defense against cognitive decline and dementia. As for the question he set out to answer about lifestyle differences: “Not all the data is analyzed,” he explained in an email, “but I can say with great certainty that Black Americans feel most at home and therefore most likely to adopt healthy lifestyles when other Black Americans from similar communities (what we call cultural congruence) lead the classes and comport themselves as unapologetically African American.”

The Good Life anticipates serving roughly 1,200 people across all its classes this summer, with around 700 of them participating in La Buena Vida, the Spanish-language version of the organization that launched last year. In Hernandez’s cooking class, participants often prepare vegetarian versions of “traditional Mexican food,” like chiles en nogada and cactus salad, she said. Recently, her class was broadcast to Oakland’s San Antonio Senior Center, tripling the number of participants—and offering a glimpse into the future.

Irma Hernandez teaching La Buena Vida participants to cook a vegetarian dish. (Image courtesy of The Good Life)

To expand its reach, The Good Life has started building studios in Oakland, with the goal of broadcasting programming to senior centers throughout California. Hernandez says that older adults, including herself, have struggled to engage online because they “didn’t grow up with the technology, don’t have a computer, or internet at home.” Senior centers often have all the tech on-site—and a captive audience. Ten centers have already agreed to partner; they hope to solidify 40 more partners by the end of the year.

Meanwhile, Merrick is focused on scaling to serve people of all ages and facilitate healing across generations within family lines.

“Our kitchens should be our pharmacies; our kitchens should be our spaces of healing,” she said. “We don’t pass down the diabetes gene; we pass down recipes and eating habits.”

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