Giving Compass' Take:

• Leah Penniman, the cofounder of upstate New York’s Soul Fire Farm which runs farming immersion training programs for Black, Indigenous, and other people of color, writes on the sacred relationship she and her ancestors have with the earth and soil. 

• How can donors help support organizations such as Soul Fire Farm to connect people with agriculture? 

• Here's an article on why humans and ecosystems need healthy soil. 

Dijour Carter refused to get out of the van parked in the gravel driveway at Soul Fire Farm in Grafton, New York. The other teens in his program emerged skeptical, but Dijour lingered in the van with his hood up, headphones on, eyes averted.

There was no way he was going to get mud on his new Jordans and no way he would soil his hands with the dirty work of farming.

I didn’t blame him. Almost without exception, when I ask Black visitors to the farm what they first think of when they see the soil, they respond “slavery” or “plantation.” Our families fled the red clays of Georgia for good reason—the memories of chattel slavery, sharecropping, convict leasing, and lynching were bound up with our relationship to the earth. For many of our ancestors, freedom from terror and separation from the soil were synonymous.

Read the full article about Soul Fire Farm by Leah Penniman at YES! Magazine.