Conference Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89250494983
Session Description:
We invite you to join us as we explore the narratives of our relationship to food and sovereignty. Blacks have always had a strong connection to the land and the food we grew and cooked our family and community. Food has and continues to be an important part of our lives, often center to our fellowship, celebration, ritual, and healing. This connection was broken on the backs of enslaved Africans on plantations and for many a spirit of love for the land was turned to shame and pain.
In this session, we will provide examples of how the resilience of our people and a spirit of love have sustained us. Our panelists will share on how this resilience is showing up today in a variety of communities including farming, the Black Church, the culinary world, food cooperatives, and activism and as Black folks, of all ages, are reclaiming food sovereignty.
Participants will learn how Black farmers are involved in our food sovereignty, how the Black Churches and faith are involved in our healing Black people and inspiration for creative cooking venues such as pop up kitchens and other ways those with a love of cooking can be a part of our collective Food Sovereignty.
Adamaah Craig will open this session with a libation ceremony to honor our ancestors.
Panel Curated by Ethel Jemila Sequiera & Dr. Gail P. Myers
Panelists
Dr. Owusu Bandele, Co-founder SAAFON
ShaVon Terrell, Black Church Food Security Network
Eric Jackson, Founder Black Yield Institute
Wanda Blake, Business Owner, Food Operations and Chef
Mr. Will Scott, Founder of African American Farmers of California.
Adamaah Craig, Trained Organic Farmer, Yoruba Priestess.
Mikhael “Magik” Ali, Worker-Owner Mandela Grocery
About our guest panelists:
Dr. Owusu Bandele
Dr. Owusu Bandele is professor emeritus at the Southern University Agricultural Center SUAREC), Bandele and the late Cynthia Hayes were co-founders of the Southeastern African American Farmers Organic Network SAAFON). Bandele has conducted organic production workshops throughout the Southeast, the Caribbean and Africa. Through his work with SAAFON and SUAREC he has provided organic training that led to organic certification of African American farms in North and South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. During the 1990s, Bandele and his wife, Efuru, established the Food For Thought Organic Farm in Louisiana, which was the only African American owned certified operation in the state. Dr. Bandele has also served on the National Organic Standards Board.
Sha’Von Terrell
A rising and inspiring voice in the Black Food and Land Sovereignty community, Sha’Von Terrell is a child of the Deep South, freedom dreamer, and a strategic food systems planner specializing in food and land sovereignty.
She is the granddaughter of former farmers who have undergone economic exploitation, environmental racism, and spiritual devastation through systems of oppression. Therefore, Sha’Von’s passion is rooted in Black self-determination, collective organizing, and reclaiming our right to agriculture.
As the Deputy Director with the Black Church Food Security Network, Sha'Von manages a local market that steers thousands of dollars and support toward Black farmers and small business owners. Additionally, she travels the country organizing and consulting with anchor institutions, such as colleges, universities, churches, and grassroots organizations. Through this work, she advances local self-reliance in the food system.
She holds a Masters of City and Regional Planning from Morgan State University and a Bachelor of Science in Political Science from Tuskegee University.
Eric Jackson
Eric Jackson is an organizer, educator, and filmmaker, humbly serving as the visionary and a co-founder of Black Yield Institute, committed to building a movement toward Black Land and Food Sovereignty in Baltimore. Currently, he and his team, are committed to a 1.25 acre urban agriculture operation and building a cooperatively-owned grocery store in South Baltimore, while also conducting Black-led research, facilitating political education, and organizing an action network.
Eric has over a decade of experience working in and with communities operating programming and helping people to build power and address a myriad of issues, including food inequities. A Baltimore native from the Cherry Hill Community, Eric is the recipient of numerous awards and a public speaker who has presented hundreds of addresses and workshops to diverse groups about food sovereignty, building power, and establishing strong organizations to address complex social issues, specific to people of African Descent. He is affirmed in and secured this work through the love of his family and friends, especially the brilliance of his Queen, Diara, and four children, Oryan, Erian, Amir, & Kamau!
Chef Wanda Blake– Business Owner, Food Operations and Chef
Wanda’s cooking apprenticeship started in her mother’s kitchen and continued in the kitchens of great aunts, aunties, grandmas, and the mothers of her friends. In 2015, she launched Wanda’s Cooking as a pop-up restaurant event in Oakland and San Francisco, California. The first Popup “Sunday Cooks and Church Ladies”, was in memory of Sunday dinners at grandma’s house. Wanda’s Cooking is the result of hard work, expressing food through culinary history, and perseverance. “I launched Wanda’s Cooking because it gives me the opportunity to express my culture through food – tell the story behind the lives of the people.” The opportunity to source fresh produce directly from African American Farmers has been an added pulse. The use of fresh Corn to make Maque Choux (fried Corn) or fresh Black Eyed Peas for a Black-Eyed Pea Chili and the Sweet Potato Cornbread. Wanda is a native to San Francisco with family roots in Stamps/Lewisville, Arkansas. Currently, Wanda’s Cooking website has an online Pantry where you can purchase Pepper Chowchow – A Southern condiment used to enhance the flavor of food. Follow Wanda on her website, and social Media.
Mr. Will Scott
Mr. Will Scott, Jr. started hi life in agriculture working the fields from an early age. His grandfather was a sharecropper and his father picked grapes and cotton in the Central Valley. After 30 years working as an engineer for Pacific Bell and Telephone Company, Mr. Scott retired and returned to the family farm. Today, he is the President of the African American Farmers of California, has completed a TED talk, has opened a demonstration farm which serves as a testing area for training and growing Southern-style produce. He generously donated acreage and services as a technical resource for the West Fresno Resource Center for its federally funded Sweet Potato Project.
Adamaah Craig
Adamaah Craig is an Astrologer, Trained Organic Farmer, Yoruba Priestess, and inducted "Sacred Woman" of Queen Afua's SMAI TAWI Center. At present, she conducts Astrology workshops in the DMV, and works to send Agriculturalist from the US to work with farmers in developing countries to transfer technical knowledge thereby improving their production and yield. Find her on IG at @astro.noir.
Mikhael “Magik” Ali
Mikhael “Magik” Ali is a wholistic health practitioner, plant-based chef, community activist, and a worker-owner of Mandela Grocery Cooperative. Mikhael advocates for natural healing through spiritual practices and living an alkaline plant-based lifestyle. Mikhael travels around the world learning indigenous methods of natural healing and spirituality. His continued studies are applied to his daily life and shared globally to help the advancement of humanity. Mikhael’s personal business “Xklusive Magik” is a crystal health business dedicated towards using spiritual science and crystal technology for natural healing. His other focus includes his alkaline plant-based food service called “Black Seed Cuisine," and traveling around the globe to continue the resurgence of ancient spiritual application into the modern world culture!!!!