Afro-Indigenous healing on Soul Fire Farm

KPFA - Womens Magazine

Regenerative farming practices rooted in African-Indigenous wisdom and technologies are part of the solution to feeding the world without undermining its ecology

Soul Fire Farm is an example of that. co founded by Leah Penniman and Located in upstate New York soul fire farm is an Afro-Indigenous centered community farm committed dedicated to uprooting racism and seeding sovereignty in the food system.

Soul Fire grows mostly perennial crops—berries, orchards of fruit trees, medicinal herbs—that help capture carbon. They also practice silvopasture, a system in which livestock like poultry and sheep graze among fruit trees, which also works to mitigate the effects of climate change. Much of what is grown is donated to the residents of Albany neighborhoods classed as food deserts, although Penniman prefers the term “food apartheid.”

They raise and distribute life-giving food as a means to end food apartheid. It’s an alternative to the capitalist economic model. It’s about relationships. It’s not just a model of selling.”^[9]With deep reverence for the land and wisdom of their ancestors, they work to reclaim their collective right to belong to the earth and to have agency in the food system.Soul Fire farm bring diverse communities together on this healing land to share skills on sustainable agriculture, natural building, spiritual activism, health, and environmental justice.They are training the next generation of activist-farmers and strengthening the movements for food sovereignty and community self-determination.

Their food sovereignty programs reach over 50,000 people each year, including farmer training for Black and Brown growers, reparations and land return initiatives for northeast farmers, food justice workshops for urban youth, home gardens for city-dwellers living under food apartheid, doorstep harvest delivery for food insecure households, and systems and policy education for public decision-makers.

Today Joy Moore and I talk to Briana Alfaro about the Soul Fire farms programs and the importance of its trainings to create the new activists of the future who will help heal our planet. Briana Alfaro co-creates educational offerings as Administrative Program Manager at Soul Fire Farm.

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