Welcome to the Land, Food, and Freedom Journal. We envision this journal as an apex of collectively curated efforts to reclaim space, togetherness, kinship, intellectual rigor, healthy debate, and creative expansiveness in all imaginable ways toward Black food sovereignty and liberation. This space is for the dear farmers, loving land stewards, growers, earth lovers, activists, academics, freedom fighters (we hope that’s all of you), artists, intellectuals, street scholars, organizers, cultural workers, culinary artists, and community members. This space is for every one of you, in between and beyond.
This is a space to cultivate. This journal is by us, for all of us worldwide. Beautiful Blackness is deliciously multitudinous in all its glory. Disabled, queer, trans, working class, formerly incarcerated, rural folk, city folk, country kin, hetero, same-gender loving, cis, gender-nonconforming, elders, wise council members, young people, students, teachers. We invite all of you to join us and bring your whole magical selves. Let us dig in together, root ourselves in our love for our people and the planet, and boldly reaffirm our collective commitment to build and protect a sustainable, whole, and healthy community.
This is a space for comrades. Movement building—and seeing ourselves and our work inside of a broader movement—is essential for us to achieve our liberatory aims. Movement entails a critique and an organized effort to build leadership and organize people to confront the systems that harm us. To experience liberation, we need our own systems designed to nourish us.
All are welcome and necessary here for this fight for a sustainable future. In Black Earth Wisdom: Soulful Conversations with Black Environmentalists, Savi Horne affirms,
Land is intentionally first in the name of the journal because it is the lifeblood to us all. While food is the throughline and freedom is our aim, land is the portal and pathway toward liberation. Land is the source, the center, the connective link, and the genesis of all we seek and aim to solve. We give deep gratitude and understand land as a vital organ and essential member of our beloved community: From regenerative solutions that combat anthropogenic climate disasters; to remedying food and stress-related health conditions; to quality housing; to cooperative economies; to bountiful plant medicine; to saving seeds; to nourishing meals. Remembering land and “re-membering,” as Alexis Pauline Gumbs teaches, is vital.
As we journey through this portal toward freedom, let us always remember to center the land, prioritize harmony, and continue to restore our connection and relationship. The Land, Food, and Freedom Journal is the latest extension of our Blackademics work and an homage to this re-membering. We also launched The Agroecology Center in partnership with land grant institutions to establish a praxis for our re-membering.
We understand agroecology as essential to our local work toward food sovereignty, including the agroecological principles around farming with nature (as opposed to against), our interest in climate resilience, our deep belief in the brilliance and importance of local knowledge, sound science, and movement building inside of a global struggle.
LAND is intentionally first in the name of the journal because it is THE LIFEBLOOD TO US ALL. While food is the throughline and freedom is our aim, land is the portal and pathway toward liberation.
Food sovereignty is unquestionably a powerful framework for organizing responses to the dysfunctional global agrifood system. Linking local, democratic control and decision making to the foundational economic activity of all societies—producing and eating food—is a powerful agent of change on many levels. (Amin et al., 2011).
Agroecology helps us understand how to invest in regenerative principles and not operate from a place of extraction. This work is in deep partnership with trusted academics and academic institutions, and our work with Blackademics is a commitment to a different praxis—an ideological approach and application of a regenerative and symbiotic relationship among activists, academics, and farmers. We are rooted in healthy, symbiotic relationships. The healthier our relationships, the healthier our scholarship, the healthier our movement, all for the sake of the health of our communities on the land.
As we journey through this portal toward freedom, LET US ALWAYS REMEMBER TO CENTER THE LAND, PRIORITIZE HARMONY, AND CONTINUE TO RESTORE OUR CONNECTION AND RELATIONSHIP.
