On Wednesday, we attended the Young Farmers Conference, held annually at the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture in upstate New York.

Even though it’s a conference for ag-idealists, the proceedings are, for the most part, pretty mild and uneventful. Around 300 attendees attended discussions, panels, and workshops that were intended to be helpful to practitioners, covering issues like crop rotation and federal subsidies for hoop houses.

But the evening was rocked by a conflict that, according to a few people we spoke with, felt long overdue. At the heart of it, a question with few simple answers: Do the foot soldiers of the sustainable farm movement feel like their figureheads speak for them?

Food journalist, author, and former New York Times columnist Mark Bittman and Ricardo Salvador, a senior scientist for food and agriculture at the Union of Concerned Scientists, delivered a keynote address that proposed nothing less than remedying America’s racist farm system. It was ambitious and rousing.

How do you hold yourself accountable to communities of color, and vulnerable communities?” she [Nadine Nelson] asked. “To the things you say that you aspire to change?”

Bittman didn’t respond at length, saying only, “fair enough.”

Land reform, she said, was not the answer to systemic racism. What was needed, instead, was for white men, like Bittman, to respect the voices of people of color, and give them a seat at the table.

And we’re not all friends. Y’all don’t listen to us.”

Read the full article by Sam Bloch and Hillary Bonhomme about food movement The New Food Economy