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PORTSIDE CULTURE

THE BLACK FARMERS GROWING RICE  
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Liz Susman Karp
March 29, 2024
Ambrook Research
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_ A hopeful Southern project is helping reclaim lost heritage while
building livelihoods, rebuilding old foodways, and rejuvenating land.
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From left, farm manager Myles Gaines, Konda Mason, and Cornell's
Erika Styger, Photo by Brian Chadwell

 

In 1926, Konda Mason’s grandfather fled his prosperous Alabama farm
in the dark of night, wife and infant son in tow, to escape being
lynched by the Klu Klux Klan. He lost everything he had worked for.
His story is all too typical of Black farming’s legacy in America,
punctuated with painful stories of lost land and livelihoods.

In 2019, Mason, a serial entrepreneur and economic and social
activist, founded Jubilee Justice, an organization that uses
regenerative agriculture to foster racial healing and equity. It now
runs The Black Rice Project, helping Black smallholder farmers in the
Southeast foster repair and reconciliation with an especially symbolic
crop: rice.

Before cotton growing, enslaved West Africans produced rice on South
Carolina farms
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helping propel America to economic wealth and power. Mason said they
had developed successful, sophisticated growing methods on all kinds
of African topographies — European captors recognized the value of
this expertise. “When emancipation happened, African-style farmers
immediately got out of the situation they were in and walked away from
rice farming,” she said, leaving behind that fundamental part of
their identity.

Mason wasn’t planning on forming a nonprofit, but friend and Lotus
Foods co-owner Caryl Levine told her about System of Rice Integration
(SRI),
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methodology employed worldwide that sustainably increases productivity
while utilizing less water.

Lotus imports artisan rice from smallholder farms globally but was
looking to work with U.S. farms. Mason, who has a permaculture
background, recognized an impactful opportunity for Black growers, who
in the 1920s totaled 14% of the United States’ agricultural
community but who now comprise just 1.4%. They also lost 18 million
acres of farmland between the 1920s-1970s, what she calls “an
intentional collusion” between the government, the USDA, and
private businesses
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Roy Mosely drove a tractor on his grandfather’s farm at age 5. Today
he pasture-raises hogs on 16 acres and grows heirloom vegetables and
grains on another 40 acres in Portal, Georgia. Moved by Mason’s
support, he joined The Black Rice Project three years ago. Jubilee
Justice has “taken on the cost to show us how serious they were just
to give us the chance to learn,” he said. Mosley initially trialed
half an acre of rice; next year he’ll grow between seven and 10
acres.

Mason moved to Alexandria, Louisiana, where the group is headquartered
at a former plantation, Inglewood Farms. It’s owned by another
friend, Elisabeth Keller, who donated land to the initiative.

The enterprise has made great strides. Ten farmers from Louisiana,
Georgia, Mississippi, and North Carolina joined up last year; Mason
hopes to add three more in 2024. Over 75 varieties have been trialed;
the group identified 7 particularly successful ones and will focus on
growing 3-5 of them.

Notably, the group opened the country’s first Black-owned mill last
May. Producers keep more money in their pockets by not having to pay a
middleman to process the rice. Keller gifted the approximately 5000
square-foot building on the Inglewood Farms property, and it’s been
remodeled with solar panels and state-of-the-art equipment.

Collectively owning the mill, the means of production, said Mason,
contributes to self-determination in a way that can lead to healthy
Black farming communities. The mill is designated as a Public Benefit
Corporation, which will be converted to a co-op once its structure is
agreed on by the farmers and running smoothly.

Milling trials and plans to process other grains and dry beans are
underway. Hopefully a robust crop this year will have the mill
humming. Mosely said the mill provides “more incentive to work
harder to keep everything going. You feel more a part of it knowing
that you’re the owner.”

A farmer cooperative is also being formed. The cohort shared their
farms’ legacies and experiences at a recent first retreat, by all
accounts a meaningful, bonding experience. The project also offers
networking and farm education, including a grower’s manual.

Gaining the farmers’ trust didn’t happen overnight. But now,
“They really trust the work we’re doing,” Mason said, “because
we keep showing up. Everything we say we’ve got to do, we do. And we
do it well.”

Collie Graddick grew up on a 200-acre sustainable farm in western
Georgia; his father was a founding member of two Black farmer
cooperatives during the Civil Rights Movement. Graddick is now growing
rice and lending his farming knowledge and work experience to develop
the cooperative’s structure.

Mason’s fundraising and support resonate with him, as well as the
project’s long-term potential. During the New Deal, Blacks were
forced to move from his home county to an area that remains one of the
state’s poorest. He sees the lasting effects infusing government
money can have on building a community — in that historical case, it
was the white community. “I see this as the same opportunity to make
a difference in a lot of people’s lives,” he said, “bringing
opportunities to a community, a larger community, because we’re
gonna rise across the Southeast.”

A co-op Graddick has organized in East Alabama, comprised of young
farmers who are heirs and descendants of the Federation of Southern
Cooperatives [[link removed]], will grow
rice on two leased acres next year. They’ll give their crops to food
shelves in East Alabama.

The farmers are growing specialty rice because they fetch higher
prices, and the pigments and fragrances are more interesting than
commodity varieties. They include a black sticky, a creole red, and
one they’ve branded Jubilee Jasmine, which they’re deciding how to
market. Lotus Foods will purchase the majority of all the harvests;
some may be sold to chefs or at farmer’s markets. Prices by the
pound vary from $1 wholesale to $6 for direct sales.

Mosley said it’s been a steep learning curve; growing rice
regeneratively is different than growing other crops, and most rice
grown in the U.S. is conventionally farmed. “Not using any
chemicals. Just being a student of the crop, certain stuff you do to
grow the crops,” he explained. For example, rice, unlike his
heirloom corn, does not like having dirt thrown on it to suppress
weeds.

Jubilee Justice has also partnered with SRI expert Erika Styger,
director of Cornell University’s Climate-Resilient Farming Systems
Program. Styger takes a collaborative listening approach with the
farmers, tailoring plans and solutions with them. She and Mason hop in
Mason’s RV twice a season, visiting each farm to troubleshoot and
discuss harvest plans.

The project posed a new challenge for her. “It has been very
difficult,” said Styger, to produce enough rice of high quality,
“but that doesn’t mean it’s not possible.” The irrigation
required is very different. There is trial and error in planning the
whole workflow for smallholder farmers, to plant a new crop
differently than it was planted before. This is the first time SRI is
being used in the U.S. and it can take years to figure out a new way
of growing crops.

Now armed with new ecological knowledge and techniques to control
weeds and a better understanding of required equipment, Styger’s
fairly confident they’ve come up with methods that will scale
production in 2024.

“We have heard stories you wouldn’t believe,” she said, “how
farmers have been sabotaged … This is an opportunity to reverse
this.” Grateful to work on the project, Styger hopes to train Black
farmers to take on a technical role. “They have the opportunity to
create their own products,” she said. “That’s really
beautiful.”

Liz Susman Karp

Liz Susman Karp is a freelance writer with a focus on culinary
history, foodways, and the intersection of food and culture. Her work
has been published in Civil Eats, Plate, Modern Farmer, Atlas Obscura,
Vine Pair, and Cheese Professor, among others. She’s based in the
Hudson Valley, where she enjoys exploring the area’s rich
agricultural heritage and offerings.

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