Black Farmers’ Markets Work to “Redesign the Food System”

Giving Compass' Take:

• Grace Abels at The Counter highlights how Black farmers are finding success connecting directly with consumers at farmers' markets, a place where they are usually underrepresented. 

• How are you utilizing charitable giving to examine and fund projects within the intersections of racial injustice, health, environment, food, and the economy? 

• Here's why investment is necessary to uplift black food businesses.

On a recent Sunday in July, a line of over 100 people social distancing and wearing masks in the muggy North Carolina heat stretched around the block waiting to get into the downtown Durham Black Farmers Market. Families with toddlers, grandparents, huddles of teens, and young adults showed up to buy fresh food and explore a new kind of farmers’ market. The event promoting Black farmers and Black-owned businesses in North Carolina was organized by Black August in the Park, a local group that connects people of African descent to engage in social and cultural change.

Back in 2015, Black August in the Park began hosting a family reunion-style event of the same name to build community in Durham. The organizers—Moses Ochola, Crystal Taylor, and JaNell Henry—heard from Black business owners looking for a place to sell their goods, so that same year they launched the Black Market. The Black farmers who got involved became that event’s biggest fans, and the organizers soon realized how much farmers in particular needed help.

So in 2018, Black August in the Park organized the first Black Farmers Market in Durham as an annual event—one of the first of its kind in the South. This June they expanded to twice-monthly one-day events alternating between Durham and nearby Raleigh that have attracted up to 1,500 customers a day.

The Black Farmers Markets are working to “redesign the food system,” says co-organizer Moses Ochola, who helps his parents, Caren and Maurice Ochola, run their popular Palace International African restaurant in downtown Durham. Through community and commerce, he and the other organizers hope to give Black farmers—dramatically underrepresented in traditional farmers’ markets—a space that celebrates them.