What Is It Really Like to Be a Black Farmer in the US?
Food with Mark Bittman
Sweetness and Light
4.9 • 947 Ratings
🗓️ 26 March 2025
⏱️ 35 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Revisiting a (still quite relevant) episode from 2023: Kathleen Finlay, president of Glynwood, and Mark talk with Black Farmer Fund co-founders Olivia Watkins and Karen Washington about the special, specific challenges facing Black farmers; who the food system "belongs" to; and how to combat the inherent racial injustices in the US food system, notably as applied to farmers.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to food. I'm Kate Bitman. I hope you've been enjoying the show. And if that's the case, |
| 0:08.6 | you might want to find us online at bitmanproject.com, where we've got more than 1,500 recipes, |
| 0:15.7 | cooking how-toes, essays about how food affects us, Mark's opinions, and a lot more. |
| 0:22.5 | It's a burgeoning community, and if you care about food, I'm fairly certain. |
| 0:26.6 | You'll enjoy our site. We recently ran an audience survey for this show, and we were heartened to hear that many of you love the interviews we've done that are related to food policy, farming, |
| 0:55.9 | food justice, regenerative agriculture, the environment and related topics. You want more of it, |
| 1:02.2 | and we hear you, and we share your enthusiasm, so there's more to come. Today's episode is one from two |
| 1:07.7 | years ago, and is just as relevant today as it was then. |
| 1:11.6 | And it's with Mark and his partner Kathleen Finley, who is the president of the Glenwood Center for Regional Food and Farming, |
| 1:18.4 | and they're interviewing Karen Washington and Olivia Watkins, who are the co-founders of one of our |
| 1:24.7 | favorite organizations, Black Farmer Fund. |
| 1:28.8 | I'm going to stop here and let you listen to Mark's original intro. If you haven't listened to this episode yet, though, |
| 1:33.8 | or even if you have, I encourage you to do so. Today we have two special guests, Karen Washington |
| 1:40.3 | and Olivia Watkins, Karen, a native New Yorker, a farmer activist, the founder of |
| 1:45.9 | black urban growers, and with Olivia, our other guest, the co-founder of the Black |
| 1:51.2 | Farmer Fund, which is what we're going to talk about. |
| 1:53.4 | Karen, it should be said, is one of the most important figures in sustainable and regenerative |
| 1:59.2 | farming in the Northeast and especially among black people |
| 2:03.2 | and other people of color. She's been active in the Bronx, in Orange County, and elsewhere in our |
| 2:11.0 | region, that is my region, for decades. Olivia, who specifically returned to school in order to gain the skills and knowledge |
| 2:18.9 | she need to help start the Black Farmer Fund, was recognized on the Forbes 2021, 30 under 30 |
| 2:25.8 | social impact list, and on the Grist 50. It's been seven years now that she has been financing, |
... |
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