Join Indigenous Seed Keeper Rowen White and Black cook activist Jocelyn Jackson to dream into a food culture of liberation & care on November 4th, at the first Around The Table event of RFRS' new virtual series.

How can we reclaim our shared food culture to feed our collective care, healing, liberation, and joy? This is the question at the heart of Real Food Real Stories' (RFRS) November 4th virtual roundtable. Join celebrated food activists, Mohawk Seed Keeper and farmer Rowen White and Black culinary artist and Peoples Kitchen Collective co-founder Jocelyn Jackson, for an electrifying conversation on decolonizing mainstream food culture, and the role food culture plays in shaping our lives, stories, and dreams for the future.

A new virtual series, Around The Table events feature informal conversations with thought leaders, elders, organizers, and culture-bearers working at the intersection of food, culture, place, and power. Together, we take a deep dive––sinking our teeth into the juicy stories, live questions, and challenging conversations buzzing in our ecosystems.

Young Farmers 7th Annual National Leadership Convergence will be held virtually as the second half of a two-year event with the theme of “Achieving Equity Through Agriculture.“ In 2021 we will gather in a hybrid virtual and in-person format to move from learning to action to make equitable change in our own food and farming communities. 

Last Convergence four hundred farmers, ranchers, and supporters from across the country gathered virtually for a week in November to build a shared understanding of the racist histories of American agriculture, and how we came to have the food and farming systems we do today. 

Join us for another insightful conversation with Barbie Izquierdo, Jimmieka Mills, and Diane Sullivan on how and why organizations should engage people with lived and living experiences with hunger and poverty. 

During this conversation the team will welcome a special guest, Alissa Beers of the Center for Health Care Strategies, to highlight practical tips for centering the knowledge and perspectives of community members with lived and living experiences. The group will share learnings around how organizations can develop effective and sustainable partnerships and will hold time to address audience questions.

In honor of Native American Heritage Month, join the Norwalk Historical Society via Zoom on Thursday, November 18, 2021 at 6:00pm for the virtual lecture, "Food Sovereignty in Native America", with guest presenter Rachel Sayet of the Mohegan Tribe.

Join Rachel Sayet of the Mohegan Tribe as she discusses her work with the Mohegan Tribe’s Cultural Department where she developed food sovereignty initiatives and continued her community-based research focused on promoting traditional foods. She will also explain her most recent project, the Native Food Discussion Group, created to bring community members into discussion about Native foodways and to record traditional knowledge about seasonal eating, harvesting, growing and fishing practices.

The Disparity to Parity project (see https://disparitytoparity.org/) has explored issues around agriculture and fairness in the United States, but we have always seen these issues in the broader international context of human rights, globalization and social movements that extend beyond national borders. The concept of parity is grounded in fair prices for farmers, but it extends beyond that to issues of environmental, cultural and social justice for producers and their communities. In this webinar, we will hear from partners around the world about what the concept of parity means in their context, as well as the international policies and agreements that need to be changed. The webinar will be held on the eve of the World Trade Organization Ministerial. It will also honor the successes of the Indian Farmer Protests, as well as plans for the November 26 General Strike in solidarity with the farmers’ demands. We hope it will serve as input for critical reflection on the failures of neoliberal globalization and the need for alternatives that advance food sovereignty and agroecology.

The webinar is hosted by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, the American University Center for Environment, Community, and Equity, and the National Family Farm Coalition.

The Department of Agriculture's civil rights record is among the worst in the federal government. Black farmers have lost hundreds of billions in land and income since 1910 in large part due to federal policies—implemented by USDA—designed to drive them out of business. Despite sporadic attempts to reform the department's civil rights process, farmers, advocates, and reporters have continued to document widespread discrimination within the department in recent years. After Congress created a debt cancellation program for Black farmers in response to USDA's discriminatory lending practices, opposition groups brought the program to a halt through litigation. Our panelists will examine USDA's civil rights record, share their experiences in the fight for debt cancellation, and analyze the legal issues at stake, many of which will have important repercussions for public policy in the coming decades. Co-hosted by The Counter.

Join us for a deep dive into understanding how traditional philanthropic practices have negatively impacted movements led by people of color, specifically understanding “movement capture” and how participatory grantmaking practices aim to address those negative impacts.

Our sessions will feature BIPOC centered participatory processes, and how committee selection, orientation, committee support, and the deliberative process look like for these models.

Black farmers have a rich history and promising future in the United States, even though the Black history of agriculture is often reduced to slavery and cotton plantations. In Farming While Black (2018), Leah Penniman argues that justice for Black people, farmers and otherwise, requires learning about Black histories of agriculture, creating new experiences in the natural world, and getting in touch with our food systems. With a panel of Black scholars, farmers, and activists, in this webinar we explore what justice for Black farmers is today, what it has been in the past, and what it can be in the future.

Esteemed Panelists:
Maya Allen, PhD Candidate in Botany | The University of New Mexico
Teona Williams, PhD Candidate in History | Yale University
Ashley Gripper, PhD Candidate in Environmental Epidemiology | Harvard University
Laquanda Dobson, Chef and Farming Activist
Jayson Porter, PhD candidate in History | Northwestern University & Social Justice Intern | The Organic Center (Discussion Leader)

This webinar is open to all and will be recorded and made available on demand

Recounting stories from the early twentieth century and across generations to the present, the recent book In the Struggle: Scholars and the Fight Against Industrial Agribusiness in California (2021, NYU Press) by Daniel O’Connell and Scott Peters brings together the experiences of eight politically engaged scholars, documenting their opposition to industrial-scale agribusiness in California. As the narrative unfolds, these eight scholars’ previously censored and suppressed research, together with personal accounts of intimidation and subterfuge, is introduced into the public arena for the first time. This event, a part of the Fall 2021 “Food and the Public” series, will begin with these narratives as grounding for a discussion and public discourse on timely agricultural justice and policy issues in New York City and State