Herbert L. White
THE CHARLOTTE POST
Sustainability grows at Deep Roots CPS Urban Farm.
On Cherie and Wisdom Jazr’s 7-acre spread in west Charlotte, melons, mushrooms, okra and cucumber grow toward harvest. Honeybees buzz in their hive. Chicks chirp. And goats are constantly grazing. At the center of it all is a rarity: First-generation Black farmers in North Carolina’s biggest and most urban city.
As of 2017, 48,697 farmers identified as Black, according to the United States Department of Agriculture, accounting for 1.4% of the country’s 3.4 million producers. Most of them live and farm primarily in southeastern and mid-Atlantic states.
“Black farmers are becoming extinct,” said Wisdom, an Oakland, California, native. “Some people just say there’s not a lot of us, but from what we’ve been learning, there’s almost none of us.”
Their ownership of farmland is dwindling, too. In 1930, it was 37 million acres. Today, it’s 4.7 million, or .5% of all farmland. North Carolina has more than 46,000 farms, and Black people run about 1,500 of them. The Jazrs, who launched Deep Roots in 2019, acknowledge raising the profile of Black farmers and their place in U.S. agriculture as imperative.
“We understand the power of not just advocating, even though we do advocate in different ways – politically, socially, etc.,” Wisdom said, “but … if you don’t see yourself reflected in the industry, in a place, then you don’t really have the strongest connection to it, let alone the ability to feel like you can actually achieve it. That’s been a problem across the board for us in this country for so long.
“So, our first step was to be [in position] so people don’t just hear us talking about healthy food or farming, but they see it, and they not only see it because we’re Black folk, but they see it in a way that connects to them outside of the old tropes of the farmer with the overalls.”
Cherie, a Savannah, Georgia native, adds a correction.
“Sometimes we do wear overalls with the big tractor and straw hats,” she said, tugging on her blue denim overalls.
“We are farming and we’re trying to be as visible as we can, because there is a deep desire for Black folk to farm. But there are some barriers for them to do that, barriers that we had to hurdle and mountains we had to climb. The biggest one is access to land. You can’t grow food if you don’t have land in which to grow it on, not at a point where you can operate a business to share your produce or sell your produce at a market. There are various reasons, historically based, that Black folk have lost land and not have the economic opportunity to purchase land, so if the masses of Black folk don’t have that grand opportunity, then you won’t have Black farmers.”
Deep Roots is expanding its ties in the community through “Food is Medicine,” a pilot initiative funded by Aetna Better Health to provide affordable farm-to-table connectivity for healthy eating habits. The farm earned a $10,000 grant, as did C.W. Williams Community Health Center for a teaching kitchen program and Uptown Farmers Market, which received $20,000.
The farm already has ties to three markets: Rosa Parks on West Trade Street, North End on North Graham Street and Uptown at South Davidson Street.
According to the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services data, about 10.9% of the state’s population – about 1.2 million people – are food insecure, which means they have a reduced quality and variety of diet, may eat less, and have eating patterns that are disrupted due to lack of money and resources. Among that total are nearly 394,000 children.
Nearly 12% of Mecklenburg County households are food insecure.
The cost of hunger is high in terms of health outcomes associated with higher probability of hypertension, heart disease, stroke, cancer, asthma, diabetes and arthritis. Nearly $173 billion a year is spent on health care for obesity alone, according to the U.S. Department of health and Human Services.
“When you think about it, in the scheme of overall healthcare outcomes, food plays a major part of ensuring that somebody is healthier also managing their chronic conditions,” said Nick Duran, lead director of Medicaid business strategy and health policy at Aetna. “So, if you think about high blood pressure, diabetes, all of these types of conditions, a lot of the times, it’s about that old saying of you are what you eat.”
Deep Roots’ produce will be available for Medicaid beneficiaries to buy at a discount at the farmers’ market, where Aetna is tripling the value of SNAP benefits on Sept. 21 Triple Bucks Day. From there, people they can learn to cook healthy through at the community teaching kitchen.
“They have a better handle or skill set than we do in some areas, and so our partnership … allows them to come in and give demonstrations of how to not only prepare things that you’re not used to or maybe it’s already processed, but how to do it quickly and efficiently and in a manner that doesn’t take a lot of time, a lot of energy, or too many extra additives,” Wisdom said. “So, a family is able to actually utilize the freshness in a way that doesn’t take away from it.”
The Jazrs are already investing in passing the farm along to their children so they can sustain and expand the business.
“Our son is full time working with us now,” Cherie said. “He’s 19, and we hope we inspire him to keep going and long after we are no longer able to farm that he continues to operate Deep Roots CPS farm. We have two younger children who are still at home with us. One is at Howard University. She wants to be a physician and her passion is community health, so we hope she comes back and creates a separate enterprise that connects with Deep Roots.
“It has always been our dream and vision that our children would stay deeply connected to the land, to steward the land, to grow food and beyond any other thing really connect with the people in the community, to be the change that they want to see and leave our world better than they found it.”
