Giving Compass' Take:

•  Katie Howell, writing for Food Tank, spotlights the Black Yield Institute in Baltimore, for its work bringing together Black institutions and Black-owned businesses to help govern and fortify their food systems. 

• How can donors prioritize Black food sovereignty and help improve these food systems? 

• Learn what BIPOC leaders in food and agriculture want to see from food system funders. 

Based in Baltimore, Maryland, the Black Yield Institute is a Pan-African power institution working toward Black land and food sovereignty. With self-determination as a guiding principle, Black Yield Institute works to bring together Black institutions and Black-owned businesses to define and govern all aspects of their food systems.

“We’re talking about a work that’s about restoring relationships, building power, and ultimately about restoring the human dignity of the people,” Founder and Servant-Director, Eric Jackson, tells Food Tank.

Since 2015, the Black Yield Institute has worked to create a sustainable and equitable food environment. Serving as an action network and an incubator for ideas and projects, Black Yield Institute’s mission is two-fold: combat Baltimore’s food apartheid and organize toward Black-led food sovereignty.

Over sixty-two percent of Baltimore’s residents are Black. But according to Baltimore’s Department of Planning and Johns’ Hopkins Center for a Livable Future, 31 percent of all Black residents live in areas with low access to healthy food items–three and a half times the rate of white residents.

Building community relationships is Black Yield Institute’s dominant focus to achieve their goals. “When I talk about movement, I’m talking about coordination,” Jackson tells Food Tank. “People actually sitting down, deciding how we’re going to work together and figure it out: where the gaps are, where the assets are, [so] that we can build. Then building those things and materializing those networks and the systems that are needed.”

Black Yield Institute hopes to play the role of a convener, Jackson tells Food Tank. By building relationships with other organizations whose strengths support the mission, they are able to create a network of similarly driven groups working together toward a larger goal.

Read the full article about building Black food sovereignty by Katie Howell at Food Tank.