Keywords

How curious a land is this,—how full of untold story, of tragedy and laughter, and the rich legacy of human life; shadowed with a tragic past, and big with future promise! This is the Black Belt of Georgia. Dougherty County is the west end of the Black Belt, and men once called it the Egypt of the Confederacy. It is full of historic interest.—W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk

1 Introduction

In a growing number of cities, suburbs, and small towns across the United States, community groups and entrepreneurs are developing innovative approaches to producing food and in so doing they are fashioning various ways that consumers can relate to producers (Hodgson et al. 2011). Concrete activities connecting people to production characterize contemporary urban agriculture, and scholars are conceptualizing and describing these practices, using various methods and towards various ends. Much, if not all, of this work is motivated by questions of food equity and food justice that draw attention to how both the dominant food system and alternative food movements often perpetuate the disparities that exist in broader society (e.g., Alkon and Agyeman 2011; Gottlieb and Joshi 2010).

Food justice is a comprehensive concept, highlighting inequities that exist throughout the food system, from production through distribution and consumption to waste management. However, much of the food planning literature focuses on access and consumption-related disparities. Discussions about ‘food deserts,’ for example, have proliferated scholarship and public policy (Raja and Yadav 2008). Yet, this dominant narrative falls short in several ways. It masks the reasons why disparities exist in the first place. Deserts are healthy ecologies—food disparities are by design (Food Equity Scholars 2022). The narrative also transforms residents—largely in low-income communities and communities of color—into passive actors awaiting (planning or policy) salvation. For example, Black or African American populations are often described in their role of consumers with limited access to good food (or, worse, as people with poor eating behaviors), rather than in their full roles as farmers or entrepreneurs that drive the U.S. food system. Importantly, this discourse fails to recognize the historic work of Black farmers and Black civic organizations in strengthening communities’ food systems, as well as transforming food systems policy nationally (White 2018). To be sure, the food systems challenges in low-income communities and communities of color are many—but, these challenges, we argue cannot be understood or alleviated without understanding the ways in which communities act as agents of transformation in their own right.

We further contend that this dominant narrative of the relationship between Black communities and food systems is reproduced even in discussions of urban agriculture with its exclusive focus on production. Many discussions around the benefits of urban farms and community gardens in low-income communities and communities of color focus on how they can address ‘food deserts’ and be tied with education programs to improve the eating behaviors of residents (Horst et al. 2017, this volume, Chap. 6). To encourage a narrative shift, we employ a broad definition of urban agriculture that includes policies, programs, projects and infrastructure in urban centers that foster connections between producers and consumers in both urban and rural areas. Beyond urban farms and community gardens, urban agriculture would also include related processing and marketing activities and physical infrastructure such as food hubs. This expanded definition may be important for understanding the benefits and limitations of urban agriculture in “urban areas” or “urban counties” that have relatively lower density and rural character, for example in some areas of the United States South.

This uneven account of food systems planning, especially around urban agriculture, in Black southern communities may stem from a disproportionate focus on urban centers in the Northeast and Midwest in much of the food systems planning literature to date. Even when other regions are the focus of national conversations on food systems, for example the South, the emphasis continues to be on food deserts and diet-related diseases, reinscribing a focus on consumption, nutrition and health. Black communities, particularly in the South, have a wide array of insights and imaginative visions for alternative realities, yet too often their contributions and needs are unrecognized and their work underfunded. Black-led organizations and institutions are often working with limited budgets and limited public support to fight against the systemic and historic challenges vulnerable producers of color face. These critical food systems actors provide important analyses and insights on the intersection of racial justice and food systems. These voices tend to be absent or sparse in national conversations on food systems, yet they hold key insights that would build a better food system for everyone.

This chapter focuses on the example of one historic organization that has led transformative work in the South to connect Black producers and Black consumers and transform a community food system. In outlining the historical context and contemporary challenges and barriers associated with developing a food hub in Albany, Georgia, this chapter seeks to amplify the voices of Black farmers and their allies leading food work; better understand the key challenges associated with developing and maintaining food infrastructure within a racial justice framework; and locate the roots of food systems planning as much deeper, more expansive, and more socially just than popularly defined. This chapter aims to lift up a more racially and geographically inclusive narrative, history, and roots in this work in hopes of lending to much more racially just imaginations for the future of community food systems and local government planning.

2 Research Approach and Methods of Data Collection

This chapter documents and analyzes on-the-ground community-led food systems planning practice through a case study of Albany, Georgia, focusing on the work of a nonprofit organization (Southwest Georgia Project). The case study spans events, practices, and policies adopted from 1967 to 2022. The empirical component of the case study uses a mixed-methods approach, relying on multiple sources of mostly qualitative data. These analyses include transcripts of 16 semi-structured interviews with community advocates and local government officials, archival data, and site visits to Albany by one author. The paper also draws on self-reflections of one co-author who has decades of experience in steering and implementing community-based food work in Albany, and more broadly in rural Georgia.

The Albany case study emerged from a larger participatory action research project, Growing Food Connections, which critically examines the role of local government planning and policy in connecting farmers engaged in small- and medium-sized agriculture with low-income customers (Raja et al. 2018). As part of the Growing Food Connections project, the research team identified two types of communities (counties) nationwide: Communities of Innovation and Communities of Opportunity in the United States. Communities of Innovation are places that are already using local government planning and policy to strengthen food systems. Communities of Opportunity were defined by the research team as places that have the greatest potential for positive transformation in their food system.

Albany (and its surrounding county, Dougherty) was a Community of Opportunity in the Growing Food Connections initiative. Briefly, Communities of Opportunity are places that are agriculturally rich yet remain food insecure and, importantly, where local actors display motivation to transform their food systems. Communities of Opportunity were selected through a multi-stage process. Initially, all counties in the contiguous United States were ranked (n = 3000), by census region, based on an index of quantitative variables that measure agricultural potential and food insecurity using Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Next, local governments of counties that ranked high in the paradoxical condition of agriculture potential and low food security were invited to apply to become a Community of Opportunity in the Growing Food Connections project. The selection process included a qualitative assessment (which included an interview by the Growing Food Connections team of researchers and national advisors) to gauge the extent to which the community stakeholders in a potential Community of Opportunity were committed to work collaboratively to strengthen food systems. Following the multi-step process, eight Communities of Opportunity, four urban and four rural counties, were selected across four U.S. census regions. Dougherty County, Georgia, where Albany is located, was selected as an urban Community of Opportunity in the southern region of the United States.

The primary empirical method for documenting experiences in Albany and Dougherty County was through open-ended interviews, field observations, and participation in community meetings. Baseline interviews were conducted by researchers with individuals in Albany and Dougherty County in spring 2015, with follow-up interviews conducted in summer 2017. Interviews were conducted with staff of civic organizations, planning staff, political leaders, and food systems stakeholders including farmers, anti-hunger advocates, and retailers. Interview questions probed individuals representing these groups about the state of the food system in Albany and Dougherty County, and their views on the limits and possibilities of local government planning and policy in strengthening the food system to serve small- and medium-sized farmers and food insecure residents in Albany and Dougherty County. Interview questions also probed for the degree to which different stakeholders were engaged in various stages of planning and policy decision-making. Most interviews were conducted in person by the corresponding author (some were conducted by phone or by a research team member); all interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed, and coded using NVivo software. Additionally, the interviews from 2015 to 2017 were supplemented by reflections by a co-author who has experienced guiding and implementing community-rooted food systems work in Southwest Georgia. The authors have also made repeat visit to the city-county to gauge qualitatively the ways in which community leaders are advocating for food justice.

3 Case Study: Albany, Georgia

At Albany, in the heart of the Black Belt, we stop. Two hundred miles south of Atlanta, two hundred miles west of the Atlantic, and one hundred miles north of the Great Gulf lies Dougherty County, with ten thousand Negroes and two thousand whites. The Flint River winds down from Andersonville, and, turning suddenly at Albany, the county seat, hurries on to join the Chattahoochee and the sea… For a radius of hundred miles about Albany, stretched a great fertile land, luxuriant with forests of pine, oak, ash, hickory, and poplar; hot with the sun and damp with the rich black swampland; and here the cornerstone of the Cotton Kingdom was laid.—W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk

In the classic 1903 book The Souls of Black Folk, African American sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois chronicles his journey through the Black Belt region of the United States South. The term “Black Belt” originally referred to a rich, dark-soil, cotton-growing region of Alabama occupied by slaveholders in the 1820s and 1830s. Over time the term has come to refer to a more generalized designation for the landscape of primarily cotton agriculture and majority African American population across the Gulf South. Du Bois sought to describe African American life and culture in the “heart of the Black Belt” by focusing upon the Southwest Georgia county of Dougherty and the county seat of Albany. Among the many characteristics of the landscape that intrigued the scholar was the function of the city as an urban center for all of the surrounding region that is more rural in character. Du Bois acknowledged the region as not only a center of Black population, but also as central in the cotton plantation agriculture of the United States.

The fortunes of Albany, Georgia, are intricately linked with those of the local and global agricultural system and the Black freedom movement. The term “Black freedom movement” generally refers to an umbrella term for the Black organizations, institutions, and figures involved with struggles for Black civil rights in housing, transportation, education, labor, voting rights, culture, agriculture, and more throughout the twentieth century in particular, but across American history more broadly. The term recasts distinctive movements, particularly the civil rights movements of the 1950s and 1960s, as part of a historical, ongoing movement for Black freedom in the United States and globally.Footnote 1

Historically, Albany gained prominence as an agricultural trade center for commodity crops like cotton and pecans. The surrounding region was dominated by cotton plantation agriculture in the nineteenth century. Albany’s strategic location on the Flint River led to its prominence as a market center for shipment of goods. This economic prosperity relied on the unpaid labor of African Americans as enslaved persons, sharecroppers, and tenant farmers. Pecan farming was introduced in the region in the late 1800s, and by 1905, several thousand trees were in cultivation throughout the city and county. Georgia quickly became the leading producer of pecans in the country, with much of the business centered around the Albany area. By the 1920s, with the decline of cotton production caused by the boll weevil, pecans became the area’s leading cash crop. In 1922, the Albany District Pecan Growers’ Exchange opened its factory building and warehouse, and pecans became a major Albany product, leading to the city’s informal claim as the pecan capital of the world. Over the course of the twentieth century, as technological advancements changed the nature of agriculture, the city sought to diversify its industrial base.

Albany garnered national attention during the civil rights movement of the 1960s, as the city was the focus of a major campaign to challenge racial segregation and discrimination in the South. Indeed, community food leaders connect their work on food justice in Albany to their larger efforts for political justice, dignity, and freedom. In November 1961, residents of Albany launched an ambitious campaign to eliminate segregation in all facets of local life and secure equal educational and economic opportunities for all citizens. The movement captured national attention one month later when local leaders invited Martin Luther King, Jr. to join the protest. The protests in Albany were also unique in that they involved a broad intergenerational cross-section of the local community, unlike other civil rights demonstrations of the time that mainly involved college students. Despite King’s involvement, the movement failed to secure concessions from local officials and was consequently deemed unsuccessful by many observers. In recent years, new reflections have identified the Albany movement as a formative learning experience for Dr. King and other civil rights organizers. The campaign has also been credited with speeding up the ultimate desegregation of Albany’s public facilities which occurred a year following the movement’s conclusion in August 1962.

Albany’s rich legacies of community organizing for social justice extend to the present-day work on agriculture and food systems, and intersect in ways that offer promising opportunities to revitalize the city through its food system. Today, agriculture drives much of the city’s commercial and industrial activities. Albany is the regional economic hub for agri-businesses and some of its major employers are food processors. At the time when research for the Growing Food Connections initiative began (2012), food products made in Albany included: Kroger brand products by Tara Foods; Combos and goodness knows by Mars Chocolate North America; pecans by Sunnyland Farms; and beer, malt beverages and ciders by MillerCoors. The city is surrounded by large plantations, cypress swamps and quail reserves. Some agricultural land is located within or adjacent to the city limits and consists of actively managed and productive pecan orchards. The area sits on top of one of the most productive water recharge areas in the world, the Floridan aquifer. Important surface water resources in the area, including Lake Seminole and the Flint and Chattahoochee Rivers, support agricultural activities.

While Albany is rich in natural resources and agricultural potential, many of its residents are economically insecure and its overall population is deeply divided along lines of race. Albany’s 2010 population was 77,434 followed by a drop to 69,647 people in 2020 (U.S. Census Bureau 2020, ACS 5-year estimates). The city is majority Black: About 75% of the city’s residents identify as Black or African American (U.S. Census Bureau 2020, ACS 5-year estimates). Economic challenges persist in the city. Nearly 30% of the city’s population lives below the poverty line (U.S. Census Bureau 2020, ACS 5-year estimates), and about a similar percentage of the population between the ages of 18 and 64 did not have health insurance coverage in 2019 (significantly higher than the rates in the country, around 8%). Economic and health challenges are disproportionately impact Black residents. The poverty rate for Black residents (33.8% of all Black residents for whom poverty was determined) is more than double the rate for White residents (14.1%) (U.S. Census Bureau 2020, ACS 5-year estimates). Similarly, the unemployment rate among Black residents is 13%, more than quadruple the unemployment rate of 3% among White residents (U.S. Census Bureau 2020, ACS 5-year estimates). The median household income of $38,826 for city residents overall also masks significant racial disparities: the median household income for White householders is $56,011, significantly higher than the median household income for Black householders of $32,104 (U.S. Census Bureau 2020, ACS 5-year estimates).

Food insecurity, not surprisingly, follows suit: about 27.6% of households and about half of households with children under 18 rely on public food assistance to meet their food needs (U.S. Census Bureau 2020, ACS 5-year estimates). The food retail environment is dominated by restaurants, and supermarkets redline low-income neighborhoods, seriously affecting the area’s incidence of diet-related diseases. Several grocery stores in the city have closed in recent years, reducing the availability and accessibility of healthy foods for the county’s most vulnerable residents. There is a concentration of grocery stores on the west side of Albany, and a relative absence of grocery stores on the city’s east and south sides, where there is a predominance of convenience stores with processed foods. Limited public transit service and poor walking conditions in various areas of the city create additional barriers to healthy food accessibility for residents. Residents in nearly 13% of occupied housing units in the city do not have access to a car (U.S. Census Bureau 2020, ACS 5-year estimates). While Albany Transit System operates a fixed-route bus system and paratransit services, respondents report that transit service is often infrequent and inconvenient. These structural factors impact acute and chronic health conditions in the city, which made national headlines when it was especially hard hit in the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Many Black-led organizations in the region, and in particular the representatives of the Southwest Georgia Project for Community Education, are aiming to rebuild a socially, economically, and spatially fractured food system from the ground up. Today, several school and community gardens and a handful of urban farms dot the city, converting blighted vacant urban land to productive use; a farmers’ market operates in a public park; a mobile market transports fresh produce to underserved neighborhoods; and a regional food hub is being planned inside a former grocery store. These and other incremental transformations connect a disjointed food system and encourage public dialogue about the state of the local food system. These narratives are in some ways familiar: grassroots-led initiatives aimed at promoting urban revitalization in cities experiencing depopulation, poverty, unemployment, vacancy and economic restructuring. Viewed through a narrow lens, it would be easy to lump the efforts in Albany as part of new movements toward urban agriculture and urban revitalization. However, the extensive history and deep roots of many of the organizations leading this work in Albany offers a unique lens into the historic origins, goals, and significance of these more recent projects, broadening our understanding of the goals of urban agriculture and the potential role of local government in food systems planning.

3.1 Food Planning and Community Empowerment: Evolution of Southwest Georgia Project

Founded in 1961 by Charles and Shirley Sherrod—civil rights leaders with records of organizing educational and agricultural initiatives, particularly focused on collective and cooperative farming—the Southwest Georgia Project for Community Education (Southwest Georgia Project) aims to educate, engage, and empower residents in the region through advocacy and community organizing around human rights and social justice issues, including food and agriculture. The Southwest Georgia Project has offered technical assistance to rural and urban farmers, helped to form southern rural women’s support groups, shaped a regional community food network, organized voter registration drives, been an advocate for housing rights, and established a woman-owned tour company that both celebrates local cultural heritage and trains women in documentary skills. Southwest Georgia Project was formally incorporated in 1971 as a product of the civil rights movement, to empower Black families in Southwest Georgia. Throughout its history, the organization has been an advocate for social justice through grassroots organizing among adult and youth in the small cities and towns of the region. The organization builds on the strengths and aspirations of families by providing technical support to organize local community advocacy groups, help individuals and families combat Black land loss, assist with voter education and registration drives, impact economic development through the establishment of cooperative and food businesses that thrive through partnerships with existing processing facilities.

In recent years, Southwest Georgia Project has partnered with the local school systems and developed teaching gardens at every elementary school in Albany and Dougherty County, established direct to consumer farmers markets in collaboration with Friends of Tift Park, created a farm to daycare curriculum for childcare centers, provided nutrition education to the most vulnerable in collaboration with public health departments, and supported family farmers through training, outreach and assistance. With funding from a 2013 United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Farm to School Program implementation grant, Southwest Georgia Project launched a farm-to-school program to increase the supply of fresh, locally grown food in schools. Southwest Georgia Project worked closely with the Dougherty County School System’s School Nutrition Services department to implement the program. The program has enabled several schools in the county to serve local foods, plant school gardens, and invite farmers to talk to students. Dougherty County School System has stated a farm-to-school goal of purchasing 20% of the produce served from farms within 100 miles of the county. A major barrier to program expansion is the absence of processing infrastructure for small and mid-sized farmers in the region. Despite this challenge, school district officials and community partners continue to pursue opportunities to support local farmers and the local food economy while simultaneously promoting healthy eating among students. Community advocates envision the farm-to-school program as a key component of a regional food system anchored by small farmers and food entrepreneurs.

Southwest Georgia Project has been planning a regional food hub in the city of Albany for the development of urban food infrastructure for years. The food hub aims to provide aggregation, processing, and distribution facilities for small farmers in Dougherty County and surrounding counties to clean, process, package, and ship their crops for consumption. Organizers aim for the venue to be a space for residents to buy fresh produce directly from local farmers, increasing healthy food options in Albany and fostering connections between farmers and consumers. Organizers imagine it to be a multi-purpose venue that will be designed according to the needs of the community. The food hub is designed to create jobs, within the facility but also on farms, as the provision of a large market and processing equipment will offer incentives to increasing farming activity. A food hub would support and scale up other local efforts to connect farmers and consumers, including farm-to-school programs, farmers’ markets, and outreach and technical assistance to minority farmers. The project could also employ out of work persons for processing labor, create value-added businesses, serve as a training site for ongoing certification and business management courses, and provide fresh produce in underserved areas. The organization’s efforts received a major boost in 2015, with the donation of a former Winn-Dixie grocery store building in Albany. The 47,000-square-foot building, valued at $2.35 million, sits on 3.9 acres of land. Southwest Georgia Project anticipates the food hub could serve at least 100 farmers from Dougherty County and surrounding counties for use as a processing facility and market to sell their produce. The food hub will also include retail vending and community meeting spaces.

Through the idea of a regional food hub, Southwest Georgia Project is working to change the city’s food system by creating a sustainable and economically viable model of urban agriculture, providing economic opportunities for Black farmers to advocate for land use and food policy that meet community members’ needs. Southwest Georgia Project leadership and staff view food not only as nourishment but also as a starting point for community education and organizing, economic growth, and racial healing. They note that many Black women in the region own land and rarely have an opportunity to learn or experience the importance of civic engagement, or to recognize their own value and power to effect change. Staff also express concerns about the negative perceptions of many residents in the Albany area toward rural areas and farming activities. Southwest Georgia Project organizes Black farmers and their allies to voice their concerns and raise their awareness of community food systems by introducing new opportunities and spaces for producing, processing, distributing and marketing healthful foods. The organization connects vulnerable consumers with local farms and local food through farm-to-school programs, farmers’ markets, and community gardens, nurturing their understanding of themselves as individuals and community members connected to land and the source of their food and community history.

Southwest Georgia Project’s regional food hub project is also a critical opportunity for local government to simultaneously strengthen agricultural viability and food security in Dougherty County. The non-profit organization has approached local government officials on several occasions to request a property tax exemption on the building in order to divert limited funds away from paying property taxes and towards covering many of the capital improvements that are required to transform the former grocery store building in a space for the aggregation, processing, and distribution of crops for up to 100 farmers from surrounding counties. However, the local government has denied these repeated requests, despite precedent for extending financial incentives to recruit and retain other companies to the area. One community actor explained policy recalcitrance as follows:

We are trying to build a food hub. And we’re struggling to try to raise money for the building the food hub will be located in. Which will bring jobs to the area, as well as provide food here in the city, where there’s some food security issues. And they’re insisting on charging taxes, on a building that’s empty. Not trying to help us in any way, to get this project up and running. They’ll spend money with other companies, with many years of tax incentives that don’t, in some cases, provide as many jobs as you would think. But no effort to try to assist us with trying to get this up and running where it helps the community, it helps the county, helps the city, in many, many ways.

Even today, seven years after the initial idea for the site, Southwest Georgia Project is still working to establish the hub. Local government can support the development of the regional food hub and other community food infrastructure through direct investment, public loans, and tax incentives that help finance these significant improvements. While these projects entail physical infrastructure development such as the construction or rehabilitation of large abandoned or underutilized buildings, they also require specialized equipment such as refrigerated trucks. There are other ways that local government can support the regional food hub project and food infrastructure development in the county, such as programs to educate stakeholders, offer business development and technical assistance, and connect local producers. Southwest Georgia Project has identified the need for business development assistance, as well as offered opportunities for local government to purchase or co-own the building with their organization. The building is over 47,000-square-feet, but Southwest Georgia Project only needs about a third of this space for the food hub—the remaining space could be used to house grocery stores or other food retail outlets, creating an opportunity for local government to alleviate food insecurity.

4 Lessons from a Historical Lens on Food Planning in Albany

Southwest Georgia Project has always viewed agriculture, including urban agriculture activities, to be about human rights, racial justice and self-determination. In Black communities, food systems work is often much more than just meeting market demands—it is rooted in countering dispossession, building power, reclaiming culture, improving health conditions, growing economic opportunities, and dreaming and reclaiming alternate realities. Food hubs are one way that Black farmers and their allies in Southwest Georgia are reclaiming ownership over their food system in ways that centers racial justice, self-determination, and dignity.

It is impossible to consider racial justice without considering and understanding the dynamic and complicated history of a U.S. agricultural system birthed from exploitation, domination, and the destruction of entire populations. Food systems work is about much more than food—it is deeply connected to the myriad of ways communities of color experience injustice. In this context, the history of New Communities Land Trust in Southwest Georgia is incredibly important to note. As one of the first community land trusts in the United States, New Communities was born out of violent attacks against Black people who were working to build power and register Black people to vote during the civil rights movement. Black people faced a tremendous amount of violence, including the destruction or loss of homes and land as a result of participating in or even affiliating with voter registration and civil rights movement work. Black farmers, many whose deeds were in jeopardy for simply offering their homes as meeting places, were particularly vulnerable as well. A founding member of New Communities Land Trust described the context in which the organization developed as follows:

As we were working in the civil rights movement here in this area, not just, you know, in Albany but Sumter County, Lee County, Baker County, Worth County, Terrell County, all of these counties around, one of the things that was consistent was that Black people who decided to participate in the movement would be asked to leave the land they were living on because they were living on land owned by White farmers. So, in 1968, we attempted to try to come up with a solution to that. We had several people who went to Israel to study the kibbutz, to look at how they were resettling people, and the whole idea was to build a community for people and create a whole community from education to health, you know. We had charrettes back when they came back with the information they had and started meeting and started to create an organization that we called New Communities. We had charrettes. And people, it was really empowering because people could actually have a chance to think and dream about the kind of place they wanted to create.

In response to the loss of homes and the fragile economic condition of Black farmers, a planning committee of civil rights organizations throughout the South (including the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Federation of Southern Cooperatives) met and created an organizational plan that involved individual homestead leases and cooperative farming leases. The group, called New Communities, purchased over 6000 acres of land in Lee County, adjacent to Dougherty County (Shirley Sherrod, the leader of Southwest Georgia Project, was a core member of the New Communities Land Trust). By 1980, after repeated droughts and active discrimination on the part of the USDA Farmers Home Administration, New Communities faced foreclosure:

We started farming and we were making, we could make enough money to actually pay the notes on the land. We couldn’t implement the plans but we could hold onto the land and expand the farming operation. Things were going pretty good in that direction, but then we ran into droughts around, I think it was around ‘76 we had a drought. We were not getting any federal money, no loans or anything to farm. And then we had a second-year drought. So the farm manager and my husband went to the local Farmers Home Administration, that’s what we called it back then, to get an application to apply for an emergency loan, something all farmers were doing. And the county supervisor said you’ll get a loan here over my dead body. So the only way we could actually get an application, they had to send three people from the national office to come down and go with us to get an application. So we were in a three-year battle just to get an emergency loan. And if you’re farming, three years without the proper input and you’re having droughts, just was like a death blow to us. And that was intended, that was the intention. But one thing with Farmers Home, once they get a lien on, once you, well, in order to get the loan, you have to give a lien on all available assets. So even though we had assets worth more than four million dollars, we had to give them a lien on everything. Then they could really make late loans, you know, they did all the typical things you’ve heard that they’ve done to farmers to put them out of business. That’s what they did to us. And in 1985, we lost everything.

However, the work and legacy of New Communities continued, and eventually, the organization shepherded by Shirley and Charles Sherrod won $13 million as part of the Pigford v. Glickman lawsuit settlement. Today, New Communities has used part of the settlement money to purchase a 1600-acre former plantation at Cypress Ponds in Dougherty County, they call Resora, reclaiming the vision of New Communities as a farming collective that struggling Black farmers could join to pool their efforts for the common good. As this publication goes to press, New Communities at Cypress Ponds, Resora, Southwest Georgia Project, and other related efforts have coalesced under The Sherrod Institute, whose “mission is to develop more accessible and community-oriented food systems, while increasing opportunities for historically under-served families and farms and building a sustainable movement toward a more just society.” Again, agriculture and food systems are understood and implemented as a lever for broader social transformation.

5 Toward a Restorative Planning Ethic

As described in the preceding case, the food systems planning of Black-led organizations and institutions can transform how we understand the goals and activities of food infrastructure and food policy, such as food hubs. This broader conception of food systems is often historically rooted in broader timeframes, enabling these vital food systems actors to simultaneously recall past discrimination and harm and imagine alternative future realities and possibilities. This broader conception and timeline of food systems work also requires a revision of the role of local government in food systems planning. An essential question emerges: How should planners in public institutions restore relationships and rebuild capacity after harm has been done to communities? A serious engagement with this question directs us toward what Schweitzer (2016) calls a “restorative planning ethic,” in which planners in public institutions have a role in healing relationships within the political community based on public memory that may prompt social and institutional transformation toward fuller inclusion across social, economic and cultural difference. In Albany, Georgia, planners can play their part by working towards reparative land and budgetary allocations, as well as infrastructure development activities, that enhance the self-determination of Black growers, both urban and rural, and facilitate more connections between them. In a food system and economy that exploits and harms Black workers, Black-owned and Black-led food cooperatives and food hubs can be generative alternatives that counter barriers to entry and access into the food system while furthering goals of self-determination. To dismantle structural inequity and create racially equitable food outcomes for all, local planners and policymakers must address challenges Black farmers and other farmers of color face around land security, USDA discrimination, access to capital and resources, education and training, and marketplace inequities.

Restorative planning is simultaneously future oriented and historically informed, informed by an understanding that there is often a thin line between the past and the present. It is the responsibility of planners to help shape not only the future visions of communities, but also account for their past. Whether intentional or unintentional, planners create narratives about places and too often these narratives are ahistorical or mask the root causes of inequities. For example, descriptions or narratives of low-income neighborhoods without supermarkets as “food deserts,” not only ignore the presence of other food retail outlets in neighborhoods, but also do not reveal anything about how and why these communities do not have supermarkets. These ahistorical narratives too often perpetuate the idea that current conditions are the consequence of the actions of current residents. Importantly, although all planning practice is future oriented, visions of the future do not always envision Black futures. Restorative planning aims to improve access and opportunity by building pathways for ownership and self-determination, which entails acknowledging and accounting for harm that has been done to communities. In the context of Southwest Georgia, restorative planning takes seriously healing, particularly racial healing, as a goal of ethical planning practice.

As we have seen in this chapter, community members’ discourse and action around urban agriculture introduces an alternative means of evaluating the very nature of what constitutes community and economic development—one that emerges from the grass roots, not from the top down. The framework for evaluation they present through their discourse centers Black farmers and Black communities as constituents with voices that matter, and it acknowledges the racialized social system we live in, outlining initial steps toward local government planning and policymaking that is truly just and oriented to those they serve.

In expanding the frame within which we see urban agriculture as a policy decision, planning and policy practitioners and scholars may find ourselves with a new series of questions about local government decisions more broadly: What is the history that has brought us to this moment? How can we learn more about that history from those who have lived it? What does this activity or space represent for the community closest to it? Who gets to make the decisions here, and how do power and race inform the answer to that question? In the case of Albany, a city built through and upon systems and practices of slavery and sharecropping, asking such critical questions invariably brings us, one way or another, to the question of racism. Yet, local government planners, policymakers, and decision makers are generally unwilling to acknowledge or account for how race and racism structure every aspect of planning and development policy and practice, and of space and the environment more broadly. In this setting, Black-led community organizations act as storehouses of history and memory and bring people together with the land in order to plan for Black futures.