“I had come to a stop in Vallejo when my landlord called and he’d sounded more than a little frantic. He said, ‘I think your house is gone,’” Kaisel recalls. “I knew it was hot out here, but I really didn’t think we’d be getting yet another fire. Sure enough, it came through.”

On June 8, 2019, the Sand Fire started in Rumsey, a small town in California’s Capay Valley about 60 miles northwest of Sacramento. The wildfire was extinguished only a few yards away from Kaisel’s doorstep, so his house was saved. But he lost his tractor, forklift, storage sheds, and a field of heirloom wheat—on the spot where a Cal Fire helicopter had landed.

A pink bathtub that doubled as a water trough for Kaisel’s is all that’s left in a grazing field hit by wildfire.

His farm has since recovered, but the day of the fire—and the weeks that followed it—are still burnt in Kaisel’s mind. And he’s not alone.

Two years ago, hundreds of fires broke out on October 8 and 9 across the Northern California counties of Butte, Lake, Mendocino, Napa, Solano, and Sonoma. Thirteen months later, the Camp Fire leveled the town of Paradise and killed 88 people, making it the deadliest fire in California history.

As fire season ramps up again in the state this month, and as a deadline for farmers to file reimbursement claims for their losses looms—many California farmers are still on the long the road to recovery.

An Ecological Crisis

“We’re talking about an ecological crisis that is being perpetuated by climate change,” says Evan Wiig, of the Community Alliance with Family Farmers and The Farmers Guild. “This is not just the occasional fire or flood we’ve seen in the past. We have a crisis at a global level.”

Although wildfires affect every state, the fires in California are larger, with more than 1.6 million acres burned in 2018 alone. The blazes are also getting more destructive, as human development further encroaches on formerly wild lands and some fire management practices add fuel to the fire.

“When you have a system where you do everything you possibly can to avoid fire at all costs, you end up getting these forests that are just totally overgrown, with a lot of underbrush,” says Wiig. “By preventing small, natural fires, you’re building this incredibly dense tinderbox, so when we have that one fire we do miss, it’s explosive.”

Kaisel checks the damage to a shed and his forklift, which he used to harvest his heirloom grains.

CAFF is doing what it can to help farmers in the state recover. Over the past two years, the group has funded $100,000 in grants to small-scale farmers and farmworkers affected by wildfire. The grants have been used for a variety of purposes: to replace farm equipment and fencing, to help recoup lost wages, and to make up for lost sales. One beekeeper was able to replace hives that he lost. In addition, CAFF has given at least $50,000 to the Undocufund, to support the undocumented farmworkers and other residents who are central to the farm economy in these counties.

While Kaisel is in the earliest stages of recovery, he is also preparing to clear space on the farm before the next fire. “I plan to get my own mower and really get on it as early as possible. This idea of defensible space is no joke,” he says. “I’ve been watering as well, and I’ve been a putting sprinkler on the yard and just trying to keep things a little green.”

He’s also advising other farmers to look at what they grow a little differently. “Think about what you’re planting around the periphery of your property. What are your irrigated crops? What are you dry farming? Assuming the power is going to be cut, do you have generators? Can you run your wells, or can you run your pumps and irrigate without [power]?”

Kaisel waters plants immediately surrounding his home.

For Wiig, sharing stories of fire survival is an important step. “You can read every book and online resource and go through the FEMA website and do as much objective research as you can, but nothing will really prepare you for what [wildfire] does,” he says. “Hearing stories from real people who have lived through it is absolutely vital.”

“Wall of Fire” in Paradise

On Paradise Ridge in the Sierra Nevada foothills, the Noble family has been growing apples since 1921. But on November 8, 2018, the fast-moving Camp Fire swept over the canyon and quickly destroyed 11 buildings on the property.

Jim and Laurie Noble.

“When it was time to go, there were flames shooting up about 100 feet in the air, and you knew if you stuck around, it was not going to be good,” Jim Noble recalls.

Jim and his wife, Laurie, loaded their vehicles with animals and possessions and left the farm only to encounter a wall of fire. “You’re in this black smoke and your headlights are on because it’s 11 o’clock in the morning but it looks like midnight,” he recalls.

The Nobles made it off the farm that day, and they spent the next seven months in a trailer parked near a friend’s home in Oroville. Since June, they have lived in a trailer on their own property. Although their buildings, equipment, and many towering trees were destroyed, 12 acres of apple orchards survived.

Jim Noble checks on the stone walls remaining from a garage his grandfather built.

“From a philosophical standpoint, the trees produced; we had to do something with them,” Laurie says. “There was no way for us to provide pickers, the equipment, cold storage, etc. So the only answer looking at the trees was to let people come and u-pick.”

Duy Batchelder of Chico came with friends to pick apples.

In late August, the couple decided to open Noble Orchard to the public on Tuesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays. Hundreds of people arrived on Labor Day weekend, and now a few dozen families come out most weekends to pick Gala apples and other fruit.

“The trees are just loaded, hanging all over,” Jim says. “You can’t even drive a tractor on the road. Being the only apple orchard in town, there is an economic advantage in that… And we’ve got a lot of people who want us to come back.”

Jim and Laurie Noble have opened their orchard for free u-pick on weekends, but donations are accepted.

Back into the Burn Scar

A few miles south, TurkeyTail Farm is also struggling to come back. First-generation farmers Cheetah Tchudi and his wife, Samantha Zangrilli, spent nearly 10 years building the infrastructure for a diversified farm that produced lamb, pork, duck eggs, mushrooms, herbs, and cut flowers. Then came the Camp Fire, which roared down the canyon and eventually burned more than 150,000 acres across Butte County before it was declared contained on November 25, 2018.

Cheetah Tchudi and Samantha Zangrilli.

“Typically, in the past, when we get evacuated it’s like two, three days maybe,” Tchudi says. “So you split a couple sacks of feed, leave a bale out, and you can feel pretty secure that you’re going to be home in a couple of days. But something about the Camp Fire, they couldn’t get it out, and even when they were starting to get to containment they were reluctant to let people back in.”

Tchudi received a special permit from the country agriculture commissioner, which allowed him back into the active burn area.

Tchudi used working dog Haro (right) to herd sheep and pigs that had sheltered in place during the Camp Fire.

“I just drove straight back into the burn scar,” says Tchudi, who brought his sheepdog Haro to herd the livestock. “To my great surprise, all the sheep and pigs had survived. There was a big livestock trough that I’d filled with butternut squash that I’d gleaned from a friend’s farm. The trough had melted just enough that all the pigs and the sheep could jump in and out of it. [They had no access to water, and] that’s most likely what saved them in those few days, the moisture from those squash. Just serendipity there.”

Tchudi and Zangrilli lost their home, greenhouse, water system, and most of their equipment. Tchudi’s parents’ house survived on top of a hill overlooking the west branch of Lake Oroville. But the young couple are still living in an RV, with plans to move into a yurt this winter.

The couple plan to move from their trailer into a yurt this winter.

Still Recovering in Sonoma

Recovery takes time. Nearly two years after the Nuns Fire—one of the hundreds that broke out across Wine Country in October 2017—left a burn scar through Sonoma County, farmers such as David Cooper of Oak Hill Farm and Melissa and Austin Lely of Bee-Well Farms are still trying to put their businesses back together. The fire broke out just north of Bee-Well Farms and quickly spread to Oak Hill Farm, just three miles away, and beyond. Both families lost their homes, possessions, farm equipment and more.

Cooper walks through the upper portion of Oak HIll Farm.

Oak Hill has replaced “the one tractor we really needed,” Cooper says, and rebuilt the farm workshop—it took a year, and they rebuilt it in a new location on the farm—but it will take even longer for the workshop and the farm to feel full.

The workshop had been there since the 1950s or ’60s, and was “full of so many things,” Cooper says. “Some people would say it’s junk, but it’s so valuable to a farm—it’s bolts and pieces and broken-down parts so you can scavenge when something breaks. It takes years to accumulate stuff like that.”

“But insurance is tricky. You certainly don’t get enough money for what it costs to replace [equipment] today,” Cooper says. “So it’s a process to rebuild. It’s going to take at least a decade to really get back.”

Oak Hill’s red barn survived and continues to host a farmstand on Sunday mornings.

The Lelys lost the house they lived in, their possessions, and their crops. But their livestock survived. So did their row-crop business, which this year includes a pumpkin patch that will be open to the public for the month of October.

Two years in, the recovery is still in progress. “It’s just endless really, with the loss of facilities, and trying to come up with a new plan and then also having put all of our resources into getting things back together,” Melissa Lely says. “But we’re not going to stop farming and we’re going to do the best we can to push forward with what we have and make it work. We’re very thankful that we’ve gotten the support to be able to keep doing this.”

Melissa and Austin Lely.

The Lelys have some hard-earned advice for others recovering from wildfire. “Do the best you can to prepare and prevent, and have connections to the community. Stay calm and have a plan. Then it’s easier to take action instead of when it’s on top of you and you’re trying to figure it all out,” says Melissa.

“And have the supplies you need,” adds Austin. “If you’re on a ranch, have a chainsaw accessible. We had to cut trees every 30 feet to get anywhere on this ranch. A chain and a chainsaw can be some of the most important things.”

Only the foundation remains of the house that Melissa and Austin Lely lived in.

Every farmer we heard from spoke about the importance of community; they have all depended upon their neighbors for support and survival.

“Everyone around us, this whole community, banded together as one,” Austin says. “Nothing was off-limits to anybody. If we have it, it’s yours. If you have it, it’s ours. That was a remarkable thing, because we were all strangers at that point. And then the effect was that over the next couple of months everybody became stronger.”

“The stuff is just stuff in the end,” Cooper adds. “But community is irreplaceable.”

Longer versions of these interviews are available at CaughtInTheDrift.com/Climate.

Top photo: Kaisel’s vintage John Deere tractor was destroyed in the fire. He has since replaced it.

All photos © Joan Cusick.

The post California Farmers Face a Long Road to Recovery After Wildfires appeared first on Civil Eats.

In the end, Emily doesn’t manage to open the gate. But knowing each cow is just one part of the philosophy behind this no-slaughter farm that puts the highest emphasis on animal welfare. “I can’t conceive of not knowing the names of all the cattle, knowing their histories,” Abrahams says. “It’s important to understand who their friends are, who they’re related to… I wouldn’t want to do this if I couldn’t be completely hands-on, because I think there’s so much value originating from that.”

Andrew Abrahams and his wife, Krista, established Long Dream in 2011 on a 90-acre home farm, plus hundreds of acres of grazing land, in Northern California’s Sierra Nevada foothills. The farm is home to 190 heritage-breed cattle, plus chickens, donkeys, emus, guinea fowl, horses, pigs, seven working dogs, and one alpaca.

At most dairies, farmers are not on a first-name basis with their cows. One farm can have hundreds or thousands of cows that eat in indoor stalls or crowded feedlots. These operations push cows hard to increase milk production, which often translates into twice-a-day milkings, hormone injections, and too-frequent pregnancies, with calves separated from their mothers just hours after birth. After three or four years, when a cow’s milk production starts to decrease, she is sold and slaughtered for hamburger meat.

But Long Dream and other independent farms are beginning to challenge traditional dairy practices by prioritizing animal welfare over high-volume milk production. Under the Abrahams’ care, the cattle at Long Dream live mostly outdoors in large, fenced areas and have daily access to acres of hillside pasture. Rotational grazing provides abundant feed, which the farm supplements with hay, alfalfa, sprouted barley, and small amounts of grain and minerals. They breed cows every two years or less, and calves stay with their mothers for at least nine months. Meanwhile, chickens have free range of the farm during the day and sleep in airy coops at night as farm dogs patrol for predators.

Cattle like “Captain” have their names printed on ear tags, but the Abrahams family knows all of the animals on sight.

“We want the animals to feel like they are free, as much as someone working in an office,” Andrew says. “They have some responsibilities. They have some constraints on their existence… But we can have them live really happy lives with their families.”

While Andrew manages the farm operations, Krista works in the farm’s state-certified Grade A dairy and milk products plant known as “the creamery.” Their four children—ranging in age from 5 to 29—handle various farm duties, such as milking cows and collecting eggs. The farm currently milks about 30 cows once a day, and each cow produces up to three gallons of milk per day.

The farm pipes fresh milk directly to the creamery, where Krista makes butter, ice cream, yogurt, and four kinds of cheese. In addition to the Tahoe Food Hub, they sell their products at the Old Town Auburn farmers’ market and online through Amazon and the farm’s website, which touts “dairy re-thought from the cow’s perspective.”

“What sets them apart is the quality of their product,” says Carol Arnold, CEO of PlacerGrown, which runs farmers’ markets and advocates for Placer County produce. “It’s small batch, family owned, and the taste is extraordinary. There just aren’t [many] dairies in Placer County; they’re the only one I know of that sell to the consumer, so it’s really special.”

Disrupting the Status Quo

In challenging what he calls “a house of cards” of large-scale dairy farming practices, Andrew admits there are many details to think through, like how to encourage lactation extension in mother cows. “It’s not just that calves can stay with their moms,” Andrew said. “It’s actually very important for them to stay with their moms.”

The cows chow down on breakfast before being released to the hillside pasture.

“Take a big guy like Lassen here,” he says, pointing to a young bull standing on the other side of the fence. “He’s still living with his mom and still nursing from his mom, even though he’s a year and a half old. That’s part of keeping the milk production going. Why do you want to keep the milk production going? Because otherwise you need to keep producing more animals on a yearly cycle like regular dairies do. And then what do you do with all the animals?”

The latter is a question many ask of Andrew and Krista: On a no-slaughter farm, where the animals would only die of natural causes and not be used for meat, what do you do with all the animals, particularly those not active in milk production? The Abrahams have designed their operations to allow all their animals to stay on the farm for their entire lives.

“Our analysis shows that we can produce dairy products economically while providing a home for all our milk cows, bulls, and their offspring for their natural lives,” Andrew says. “The key factor is to carefully control breeding and calving. As necessary, we can reduce our calf and milk production to guarantee sanctuary for all and maintain the environmental health of the land.”

Andrew and Krista do not know of many farms that manage their animals like Long Dream. “We’ve met enough people and we’ve visited enough places to know that there are not many people practicing things like this,” Andrew says. “There are clearly people who want to. But disrupting something is not for most people.”

“Long Dream is helping to change the perception of dairy,” says Susie Sutphin, director of Tahoe Food Hub, which promotes Long Dream products to 70 restaurants in North Lake Tahoe. “As consumers become more conscious of their food choices, they start asking questions; Long Dream is more than amazing dairy products, but an education in our food system.”

Surviving a Landscape Designed for Big Players

Andrew and Krista see a market for high-welfare dairy products, and they hope that by de-coupling milk from meat production, their products will appeal to consumers who might currently be purchasing milk substitutes for animal-welfare reasons.

Clara Abrahams points out an alpaca as she leads a Sunday morning tour around the farm.

Over the past decade, nearly 17,000 U.S. dairy farms—mostly small and family-owned—have gone out of business as the average herd size and overall milk production have increased. In California, which is the nation’s largest milk-producing state, the average herd size is 1,304 compared to a national average of 234. More than half of California dairies produce at least a tanker load of milk per day, or approximately 1.5 million pounds of milk per month.

The way the dairy industry exists in California is a function of both economic pressure—or specifically, farms seeking economies of scale—and regulatory pressure, says Dr. Peter H. Robinson, a dairy specialist with the University of California at Davis Cooperative Extension Service.

“It seems to me the urban population would like to see smaller dairy farms, but the politicians we elect have designed a regulatory system that makes it hard for small operations to stay in business,” Robinson adds. “If we don’t like the system we’ve got—and some people clearly don’t—I think one answer is to simplify state regulation.”

Andrew and Krista have felt the burden of a regulatory scheme designed for large commercial dairies. “To pass regulation, you need to have specialized buildings, specialized infrastructure. You need to pass inspections all the time. There are a ton of regulations to deal with,” Andrew says. “Gradually, we try to get people to understand that one-size-fits-all really does not apply to regulating something as complicated as milk production.”

He and Krista hope Long Dream can serve as a model for what is possible outside the mega-dairy system. “Our view is that there is room for some fraction of current production to come from small, geographically diversified farms where the highest standards of animal care and safety can be maintained,” Andrew says.

Free-range chickens spend the night in airy chicken coops (left) and lay their eggs in cozy red sheds (center), where they feel safe from predators.

He sees multiple advantages to the smaller, regional approach—improved animal welfare, better management of greenhouse gases, lower transportation costs, and faster delivery of products to market.

A Mission to Educate

Although the Abrahams family makes and sells dairy products, they do not view their farm as a typical productional agriculture operation. Instead, these two problem-solvers—Andrew has a PhD in astrophysics; Krista is an attorney—see their mission as two-pronged: education and research. That’s why they offer farm tours on Sunday mornings and overnight farm stays in a four-bedroom guest house.

On a cool Sunday morning in January, four guests arrive for the farm tour at 7 a.m., in time for the morning milking. It’s not quite sunrise, but roosters are crowing from their perch in a nearby tree.

Roosters greet the new day from a tree at Long Dream Farm.

“Our chickens think they are good fliers, so they like to roost high up in the tree,” says daughter Clara, 14, who helps her parents escort guests around the farm.

After a quick visit with the calves, the four visitors join Andrew for morning milking—the top attraction on the Sunday farm tour. Then Clara and her brother, Frederic, lead the tour group on a walk around the farm, with stops to feed carrots to the horses, visit the emus, and see the windowless red boxes where the free-range chickens like to lay their eggs.

Chad Eatinger, his wife Jane Hong, and their three children made the three-hour drive from San Francisco for their third overnight stay in the farm’s guest house. A year earlier, they came with friends who were visiting from Spain. “We came to hang out with our kids and it was too fun, so we keep on coming back,” Hong says as one of her twin daughters asks if a nearby cow is a mommy. Hong smiles and adds, “Obviously, my kids love this place.”

Chad Eatinger takes his daughter for an early morning walk. The Eatinger family has made three overnight “farmstays” to Long Dream Farm.

Farm tours will continue to be on the agenda as Long Dream Farm transitions to a nonprofit 501(c)3 corporation, which Andrew and Krista believe will help them expand research and educate the general public about “a superior—in our view—form of human-animal partnership and food production” that is small-scale and geographically distributed.

“All this space can be used in a combination of preservation, recreation, and food production,” Andrew says. “That’s kind of what we wanted to prototype with the nonprofit, to be able to have school outreach and groups coming for educational programs. The basic education is—how do animals work, and how can you interact with them? Because that’s emotionally satisfying. I think it’s therapeutic to people.”

Frederic and Clara Abrahams hand out carrots so the farm’s tour group can feed the horses and alpaca.

The second prong of the farm’s mission—research—takes many forms, including basic observation of animals living long, productive lives within their family groups. Andrew tells the story of a rooster that taught its offspring its own “funny” walk. Krista has observed mother-cows and grandmother-cows helping to raise calves. And then there was the story of a tiny calf that liked to hang out with a huge Scottish Highland bull.

“This tiny calf would dash underneath fences, go under gates, and he would hang out with his buddy,” Krista says. “When you’re trying to exert control, you see a bull as a very dangerous creature. But it’s like he’s a big brother, too. You don’t need to impose a vision of order when animals are organizing themselves…

“There’s a lot more going on while the animals are living their own animal life than we are taught in our picture books,” she adds. “And it’s much more complex.”

This article was updated to reflect the fact that Long Dream Farm includes several hundred acres of land for grazing in addition to the 90 acre main farm.

All photos © Joan Cusick.

The post At This Small, Family-Run Dairy, Animal Welfare Comes First appeared first on Civil Eats.

“It’s very healing to get your hands in the dirt,” said Aline Reed, Freedom School’s board chair. “For African-American children, especially, we are changing the narrative of working outside—of planting, harvesting, and working.”

The church’s associate pastor, the Rev. Floyd D. Harris, Jr. (pictured above), founded the Freedom School in 2015 based generally on the Freedom Schools of the 1960s Civil Rights movement. This school is a wrap-around program for West Fresno youth, offering cultural, educational, and job skills programs to at-risk students in grades K-12.

The urban farming group meets on Saturdays during the school year and twice a week during the summer, including at least three farmers’ markets held at the church. Children also perform public service projects and give produce to seniors and others in the neighborhood. In addition to agriculture, the Freedom School teaches tangible job skills such as construction, landscaping, janitorial work, photography, journalism, and video production.

A flock of geese fly over Freedom School Fresno’s demonstration farm, located behind New Light for New Life Church of God.

Dr. Ruth Dahlquist-Willard, a small farms advisor with the University of California Cooperative Extension Service in Fresno, occasionally works with community programs like the Freedom School. “It’s a small group, but they are filling an important role in the food security of our communities,” she said. “You’ve got projects like the Freedom School and the Sweet Potato Project [run by the West Fresno Family Resource Center] that are providing young people opportunities they might not have had in job development.”

Harris grew up in West Fresno and remains passionate about the need to lift up its low-income residents. One recent analysis rated Fresno, 8 percent of whose 527,000 residents are Black, the 10th-worst U.S. city for African-Americans to live in: the Black median income is $25,895, less than half the average white income in the city, and the Black poverty rate is 41.2 percent—one of the largest rates for any city—compared with a 13 percent white poverty rate. Fresno was the only West Coast metro area to make the list.

“When the children come [to the Freedom School], they see a sense of self, a sense of love, a sense of purpose, a sense of someone to care about me,” Harris said. “At the Freedom School, we are about character-building. We’re about discipline. We’re about having fun.”

Growing and Learning Year-Round

When Maria Else joined the Freedom School Board in 2017 as its secretary and curriculum coordinator, the urban farming program “was only supposed to be in the summer,” she said. But based on the children’s interest and enthusiasm, the demonstration farm extends year-round.

“Farming has so many parts to it,” Else said. “The kids all kind of gravitate toward different areas. And that’s what we want to teach them: Agriculture is not just planting. It is engineering and science and so many different aspects.”

Marie Else manages Freedom School’s curriculum.

The curriculum covers a wide range of topics, too. In January and February, the Saturday classes focus on African-American culture and history. (While Fresno is a predominantly Latinx city, and the Freedom School is open to students of all backgrounds, its home in an African-American church guides much of its curriculum and student body.)

In the spring, several weeks of planting are followed by farm maintenance. During the summer, the program expands to twice a week, allowing time for harvesting, selling, and field trips. In September, the urban farmers prepare their entry for the Big Fresno Fair, where they’ll enter recipes such as watermelon chutney and craft projects like black-and-green potholders.

As the year winds down, the students plant and maintain winter crops while learning about nutrition and cooking. The young students have learned to prepare dishes such as stuffed peppers, black-eyed pea hummus, dill pickles, and their award-winning watermelon chutney. Healthy eating is a frequent topic.

“We talk to them about different diseases and illnesses that affect African-Americans, including high rates of diabetes and high blood pressure,” Else said.

They’re also getting exposure to the world of agricultural research. Last spring, researchers selected the Freedom School as one of three test sites to grow two types of black-eyed peas—one a U.S. commercial blend, and the other an aphid-resistant strain crossed with Nigerian lines from the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture. The project included researchers Bao-Lam Huynh and Philip Roberts of U.C. Riverside, plus Nick Clark and Dahlquist-Willard, both with the U.C. extension service. Freedom School students helped plant, maintain, and harvest the peas. Dahlquist-Willard is analyzing their results.

“The Nigerian blend did not get one aphid on it, and they were planted right next to the American blend, which was covered in aphids,” Else reported. “We don’t know what kind of magic is in those Nigerian black-eyed peas.”

Changing the Narrative of Black Farmers

Arogeanae Brown, who grew up in Fresno and now works for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), wrote her Virginia Tech master’s thesis about nine Black-led community-based agricultural programs, including Freedom School Fresno. She also devoted time to mentoring its students when she came home between semesters, talking with them about agricultural careers and introducing them to groups like 4-H and Future Farmers of America.

“It’s very healing to get your hands in the dirt,” says board member Aline Reed.

Although the ag programs Brown studied welcome children of all races, Brown concluded, the emphasis on Black history helped African-American children thrive. “[The school’s] major focus was allowing students to have a knowledge of their history—where they come from and how the land is managed,” she said. “To get students interested in agriculture overall, we really have to dig up our history and understand slavery.”

Freedom School also strives to change the Black farmer stereotype, which is often cited as a barrier to entry for ag-related careers.

“Most Blacks have an impression of farming based on our history in this country,” said Fresno farmer Will Scott, citing a history of slavery, sharecropping, and Jim Crow laws. “But we need to get back into it from a new approach. We need to get young people of color back to the farm not just so they can grow their own food but so they can participate in the food system.”

A student poster for Freedom School hangs in the multipurpose room, where classes are held.

The challenges facing Black farmers in Fresno are mirrored nationwide. In the 2012 USDA Census of Agriculture, Black farmers accounted for just 1.4 percent of the country’s 3.2 million farmers. California reported 526 Black farm operators—.7 percent of the state’s nearly 78,000 total farms—of whom only 345 were principal operators in charge of day-to-day operations. In Fresno County alone, only 42 out of 5,683 farms reported African-American farmers.

Harris sees the Freedom School as one way to give African-American children in West Fresno the extra help they need to avoid becoming another statistic. Of more than 100 students to complete the program, several have received college scholarships, and two have completed USDA internships.

“God has favor on us,” Harris said, “because when we look at the success rate of our students—the grades are going up, the behaviors are getting better, they’re eating better, and they’re winning competitions. This is self-esteem building.”

Board Chair Reed said the Freedom School shows kids that agriculture is not just a pastime; “This is something you can devote a career to and make it your future,” she said.

Harris agreed. “When we can see our children walking across the stage with a second degree and a $100,000 job waiting on them at the USDA, that’s what we want to see,” he said. “We want these children to grow into healthy Black men and healthy Black women, and to change society to be a healthy place for them.”

The post Fresno’s Freedom School is Changing the Narrative on Farming for Black Youth appeared first on Civil Eats.