Hi, welcome to Fort Print Farms and how are you today?

I'm good, how are you?

I am so good, so happy to see you.

It's the weekend before Thanksgiving and Cindy Ares Elliott is selling a harvest at a

farmer's market in Jackson, Mississippi.

We got all types of greens and we got our traditional greens, mustard, churned up,

collock kale.

Cindy runs footprint farms with a mission to bring fresh, healthy, affordable food to

communities in the blackest and most food in secure state in America.

And all the squash and everything else you see here today.

Cindy is African American and while our ancestors work the land for generations,

there are very few black farmers left in this country.

But Cindy embraces her legacy and footprint farms makes a point of growing

foods that are central to black cooking.

Like the blues and jazz, the black American culinary tradition is rooted in a specific kind

of American experience.

From fried chicken to yams, hop and john the collo greens, the foods we eat and cherish

have historically been a source of sustenance but also survival.

From one generation to the next, black families have turned traditional dishes to celebrate

the holidays, to commiserate and even to mourn.

But this holiday season with COVID-19 and hunger rising in tandem, too many black families

will be mourning rather than celebrating.

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