This summer, it has felt like the flow of Black folks and families arriving at Deep Roots CPS Farm in Charlotte, North Carolina, has never let up, said Cherie Jzar, the farm’s managing director.

They’re in search of something that has become harder to find in the grocery aisle: certainty.

They’re asking about lettuce — when and where you can best grow it — and how they can incorporate other vegetables like tomatoes, cucumbers, and leafy greens into their diets.

Increasingly, Jzar has noted, they’re asking because they are worried about cyclospora, the parasite at the center of a sprawling national foodborne-illness outbreak tied in part to iceberg lettuce grown in central Mexico.

Since June, the federal government has noted more than 22,000 cases in 47 states, over 500 hospitalizations, and at least two deaths related to the parasite.

“They are coming to us wanting to purchase from a trusted source,” said Jzar, co-founder of Deep Roots CPS Farm. “They tell us straight away, like, we’re looking to purchase because we’re concerned about the parasite.”

For Black farmers, the outbreak has become a stark reminder of why their work matters. In communities where generations of Black families have been pushed off farmland and shut out of healthy-food access, farms like Deep Roots are offering a chance to rebuild a relationship to the land and the people who grow what ends up on the table.

Jzar hopes the moment will push more Black consumers to seek out and invest in Black growers — not just during a food-safety crisis, but as a way to build a more self-sustaining local food system.

Across the country, Americans are turning to local growers. Farmers markets are experiencing record attendance and subscriptions for Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farms, where people can sign up for regularly distributed boxes of fresh produce, are on the rise.

Read the full article about local Black-owned farms by Adam Mahoney at Capital B News.