Farmer and activist Karen Washington knows that food is more than sustenance—it’s the foundation of strong, healthy, and connected communities as well as regional food and farming systems. In 1985, she worked with Bronx neighborhoods to turn empty lots into community gardens, advocated for garden protection and preservation, and launched a City Farms Market to bring fresh produce to her neighbors. In 2010, she co-founded Black Urban Growers (BUGS), an organization supporting growers in both urban and rural settings. In 2014, she helped found Rise & Root Farm in Chester, New York, a QT+BIPOC centered farm rooted in social justice. And in 2019 she co-founded Black Farmer Fund to encourage economic wealth. For her achievements, Washington has received numerous awards and accolades, including the James Beard Leadership Award and James Beard Humanitarian Award. In 2024, Washington was named an Emerson Collective Fellow.

In this conversation with Food Tank’s Content Director Elena Seeley, Washington discusses why she’s precise in her language when naming the problem, how she’s working to strengthen regional food and farming systems, and the power of community in times of instability.

The term food apartheid—which you coined and use in place of food desert or food swamp—asks us to examine the systems of oppression in our food and agriculture systems. Can you talk about what it has been like watching the term gain popularity? 

I feel great that it’s really being used in more urban areas where people have been fighting for food and social justice. And I’m humbled to see people using food apartheid in workshops, in conversation, and on social media. It’s a term the community can own and it gets people talking about why they’re using it. It’s not a food desert, which is more politicized and academic. People are using the term food apartheid in the hood. For me, it’s validation of the issues with regional food and farming systems. We own it, this is ours. We’re using it instead of a term someone else forced us to use—something that was not for us or by us, and did not really hone in on exactly what was happening at the community level.

Read the full article about transforming regional food and farming systems by Karen Washington and Elena Seeley at Food Tank.