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Every month I post an Ask Me Anything Thread over on the Patreon for the podcast at Patreon.com/permaculturepodcast. Most of the time these threads are about design and plants, like the best time to transplant Elderberry. Sometimes we get away from permaculture and a question will come up like, What is my favorite Halloween Candy? To which the answer is anything with chocolate and peanuts, whether that’s the whole legume or peanut-butter.

Their question was, “Do you have an opinion on the recent debate between Joel Salatin and Chris Newman of Sylvanaqua farms concerning racism and land access?”

If you’d asked me even a few years ago if race was an issue with land access, I would have said no. The issue for me then wasn’t race, but socioeconomic or class divide. Most of us were just too poor to buy any appreciable amount of land as wealth gets concentrated into the hands of developers and speculators, who could buy up the large chunks for cash and sell back ever smaller parcels at even higher prices for people who wanted a suburban or rural homesite. I saw this time and time again in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, my home from 1996 - 2007, as I knew several people with family farms that were offered millions of dollars for land that was later turned into developments. This same pattern repeated itself when I relocated to Harrisurg, Pennsylvania, as the price per acre climbed to $100,000 or more. Now living outside of Washington, D.C. undeveloped land here goes for over $1,000,000 an acre, if you can find any for sale.

Through this lens of class and the concentration of wealth I came to read White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America by Nancy Isenberg in 2018, which challenged my ideas about race and inter-generational wealth as it relates to class. Then the work of urban planner Jeff Speck, who I interviewed earlier this year, expressed concerns about the displacement (gentrification) which occurs with development that disproportionately impacts people of color. Jeff suggested The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein, which added clarity to why this is the case. For generations in the United States—with roots in the enslavement of people, red-lining of properties to exclude Black people from government services, and Black exclusion laws in the origins of Oregon—people of color have had less access to property and land. When and where property was available, the land was marginal compared to what whites could purchase, and at an increased price compared to white mortgages. 

Because of those readings and by becoming aware of the systemic policies, both tacit and explicit, which existed and continue to exist within this society, I agree with Chris’s perspective that agriculture in America has been guided by racist processes. Land, wealth, and the ability to grow food have been excluded to BIPOC (black and indigenous people of color) folks for generations. Whereas white farmers can regularly inherit their family farms across generations—and Joel Salatin is clear he inherited his farm from his family—Black, and indigenous farmers rarely have this possibility and instead, like Chris Newman, must exist on rented land. 

But, those are just my thoughts on Race and Land Access in America. If you have an opinion, leave a comment or get in touch by sending me an email: The Permaculture Podcast.