SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Beat the Prosecution, presented by Northern Virginia criminal defense and DUI lawyer Jonathan Katz, where we are here to regularly present you information and ideas for beating your prosecution as best as possible. Nothing on any of our media sources, such as our podcast or website, is legal advice. John Katz only provides legal advice to current clients or for individuals who have paid for a consultation. And now for your host, John Katz.

SPEAKER_01 0:30

Hello, everybody. This is John Katz. I'm a criminal defense and DUI defense lawyer in Fairfax, Northern Virginia. This is Beat the Prosecution. I've got a great guest today. This is the first time I'm communicating with her other than by text. Her name is Leah Penneman. How do I know about Leah Peniman? Well, I think she's shown up on my social media. And then I found out from my uh spiritual teacher Junya Suda, who she's close friends with too, who's uh I think that uh yeah, you can see her calligraphy back there. Namu myohorengeo, the essence of the Lotus Sutra done on rice paper. Leah has an amazing farm called Soulfire Farm, just about two or three miles from the beautiful peace pagoda of my peace teacher Junya Suda in Grafton, New York. And uh I think I've uh have partaken in the uh vegetable, some of the produce from Leah's farm, because I think she provides some of that to Jun San, and I've eaten over Jun San's place, and I got to look outside the farm there. And why do I, as a criminal and DUI defensor, want to have Leah Penneman on? Well, you know that for winning for criminal defendants, we have to do empowerment. We are often like David and Goliath. This is like the gladiator. We're often there are no rules that benefit the defendant. And when there are rules that benefit the defendant, they are not enforced well enough or evenly enough. With that, Leah, I ask you to introduce yourself.

SPEAKER_02 2:04

Hmm. Well, namu myoharenge kyo to you, kyo. All of your listeners, my name is Leah Penneman. I'm a farmer of 30 years and co-founder of Soulfire Farm on Mohican land in Grafton, New York, as you mentioned, just a mile and a half from the beautiful Grafton Peace Bakoda Napanto Myohoji. I'm also the author of Farming While Black, Black Earth Wisdom, and the forthcoming parenting book, Children of the Land. I'm a mother of two incredible children in their early 20s, Nishima and Emmett, a dedicated student of Mother Earth, of the soil, and I've dedicated my life to feeding the community, training farmers, and working towards food and land sovereignty. So thank you so much for having me here on the show.

SPEAKER_01 2:55

Thank you for mentioning your three books. This is the one that I have started reading. I'm sorry that I haven't finished it. Farming Wall Black. This is one of the most beautiful books I've ever seen. And probably the most beautiful paperback books. I mean, this is wonderful, beautiful paper and just the whole thing. Specifically, some of the things that have inspired me to talk to Leah is uh I didn't even know this until I started reading her book or started listening on uh maybe on podcasts or interviews recently, is this very idea, you know, the whole idea of seeds of empowerment, that there were these women in Africa who, just in case they got caught up in the slave trade, they would put seeds, they would braid seeds into their hair, talk about never giving up and never giving in, knowing that even if they were put into slavery, they would not let them, their identities, their histories, uh you know, be decimated, that they would build somehow a new life, if not well enough for their generation, for future generations. Also, Leah, you have spoken very openly about uh being a biracial child. My son is a biracial child also, and facing all sorts of hate and discrimination in Massachusetts. And uh you've talked about how you were with your husband and your two children weren't a part of Albany that uh uh I think you call it uh food apartheid, if I'm not mistaken. I think you said the FDA calls it uh uh what is it, food deserts, I forget, uh, where there are not enough opportunities for fresh uh fruits and vegetables. And I just ask you to, you know, start wherever you want, but I I just ask you to tell the audience about how have you been able to just not give up, give up, not just, you know, so many people when they're facing this kind of stuff, they turn to drugs, they turn to alcohol, they just don't even get out of bed. How did you just decide you are moving forward and you are not gonna let these hurdles be anything more than things that you jump over?

SPEAKER_02 4:55

Well, I appreciate that. You know, my three siblings, there's three of us siblings, uh, my wonderful uh junior sister Naima, my brother Alan, and we did grow up in a small rural town in central Massachusetts where we certainly confronted a lot of bigotry, uh, racial violence, and social exclusion. The three of us, fortunately, we all made it through that. Uh, we all turned to academics, we turned to the earth, and we turned to one another. We spent a lot of time playing in the forest, and we really felt that Mother Nature was truly our guardian and protector. And so, as for as long as I can remember, uh we we felt ourselves defenders of the earth in our, you know, in our elementary school minds, we we started a club called the Junior Colleges Kids Club, and we would go around and plant trees and pick up trash and recycle and uh try to get folks to uh to make decisions that were uh in accord with with and harmonize with the local ecosystem. And that has really carried forward. You know, my first summer job that I got in high school was organic farming. I got a job at the food project, which operates in Boston and the suburbs of Boston, and and and just absolutely fell in love with the elegant, simple goodness of what it is to put a seed in the ground, to pull out a carrot, and to feed the community. And the food that we grew at the food project served people who were survivors of domestic violence, uh folks who were survivors of poverty. So that's really when I understood that there could be an intersection between this care for the earth and care for social justice and human communities. And that was 30 years ago. I haven't, you know, missed a season of farming ever since. I've certainly done other things alongside. I was a public school teacher for 17 years, teaching environmental science. I've worked, you know, 10 years on other people's farms before we started Soulfire. But to jump ahead, you know, and I'll just give the high level, you know, the inspiration for Soulfire Farm was we were living in the south end of Albany. Jonah and my spouse, Jonah, and I and our children, Nishim and Emmett, were very, very young. And they're really, it was very difficult to get fresh food, you know, just a scarcity of supermarkets, farmers markets, community garden plots. And uh Karen Washington is the one who con uh coined the term food apartheid to describe this system of segregation where certain neighborhoods just don't have vegetables, usually along racial lines. And it was our neighbors who asked us to please start a farm for the people, knowing that both Joan and I had a farming background to please start a farm for the people. And we said, you know, shut our early 20s with all of the naive enthusiasm that goes along with it. We uh purchased 80 acres of vacant forested land. And you know, 20 years later, uh we have built a campus, uh, assembled an incredible team of hardworking farmers and educators, and and we grow food and we we feed the community, we train farmers, we um we rabble rouse for systems change at the state and national level. We have a national fellowship program. So there's so much that has grown out of that little seed that was planted in the south end of Albany. You know, and our ancestors, as you mentioned, they didn't give up, no matter what circumstance they faced, and I certainly have it a lot easier than they did. Uh, so who am I to give up? Um, even in the face of this fascist regime and climate change and all of these challenges, we have to just keep going. That's the only option.

SPEAKER_01 8:28

You know, Leah, I've heard so often as I was growing up, you know, uh, well, I'll start with this. When I would visit Jonah House in Baltimore, when uh Ramsey Clark and I were representing Phil Barrigan, Elizabeth Walls, Susan Crane, and Steve Kelly, after they were hammering on war planes to oppose the depleted uranium they fired. This was in 2000. I was sitting there having uh dinner with the uh with the folks at Jonah House, uh, which is a peace community, also, I guess an intentional community. Of course, the clients were in jail because they weren't ready to pay a penny to get out on bond. And I said to them, you know, I feel so mainstream when I'm around you folks, because yeah, I might uh have a very uh clear tongue, but I'm not about to uh go out and do a protest, you know, uh this of the type that's gonna block a driveway at the Pentagon just to get arrested or whatever. But by the same token, even though I think I'm pretty, you know, uh I'm not a rebel without a cause. Uh whatever, you know, I've got my causes. If it's rebellious to get to their fine, as long as within the law or not. But but what I what I'm going to hear is is that um I have heard, and maybe you've heard, please share this. Sometimes people have said to me, When in Rome, do as the Romans do. The other one is uh don't rock the boat. You know, what is the other one? Get along to I don't know, get to get along. I mean, have you gotten these kind of you know, these kind of uh uh you know suggestions? And and if so, you know, how do you react to them? I know how I do it, I just ignore it and keep going.

SPEAKER_02 10:03

Gandhi said, even if you were a minority of one, the truth is still the truth. Here Kaya Vote said you are not obligated to complete the task, but neither are you free to desist from it. Cornell West said, justice is what love looks like in public, right? And so we have our beautiful um teachers, our nonviolence teachers, our social justice teachers, our eco-defense teachers, that give us the messages that resonate with me. You know, I for not one moment have I ever considered giving up on justice. I mean, you look at the DNA of this country, this the European colonial imperial project, blowing apart mountaintops to mine minerals, attempting genocide against indigenous people, capturing 12 million African people from their homes and forcing them to into ships, only half of whom survived the journey. I mean, this is atrocious in the name of greed, hatred, and delusion, right? Those three poisons. And and and we say no. There's another way to live. You know, our ancestors have lived very different ways throughout time. There's lots of choicefulness in that. We've had societies that are made matrifocal, we've had societies that um that have a more pure form of democracy, societies based in gift economy, societies that have not driven any other species to extinction. So there's nothing inevitable about heteropatriarchy or colonization or capital, nothing inevitable. All these systems were created and I refuse to roll over and and allow the pillage of Mother Earth, the pillage of black and brown bodies, um, the pillage of of our very sense of of our most dear values, of the inherent worth and dignity of every person, including our tree people. You know, we we just can't. Who are we then? I I I want to be a good ancestor. I don't want my great-grandchildren to to um hesitate to say my name. You know, we want to be good ancestors, and that means we have to do everything we can to try to leave the world better than we found it.

SPEAKER_01 12:08

Well, please correct me if I'm wrong. You seem very optimistic in the way you approach things. You don't seem to be exclusionists. You seem to be someone that if Donald Trump, for instance, wanted to take a look at your uh farm, you'd give him a look. I mean, am I am I missing something there?

SPEAKER_02 12:23

Well, I appreciate optimism. You know, we've we've talked about this a lot because my children understandably are pretty worried about the climate, pretty worried about um the erosion of democracy, and are just like, well, what's the point? You know, and I would say hope is a discipline, it's not a feeling. You know, hope is a practice, and it's a very practical practice, you know, because for example, just taking the farm, you know, we were out there today, despite record-breaking heat coming in this week, we're out there planting anyway. And the pest and disease pressure is is really intense with climate change. You know, there's real reason to be scared and run away. But we keep planting and feeding people, and we do that because we know that even if we don't quote unquote win in the long run, like we might not, humanity might be doomed. Tomorrow, people will eat from this food, and pollinators will have a place to lay their eggs and to um suck nectar from the flowers, and the turtle has a um the mother turtle has a pond to swim in because we protect that pond. So there is less suffering tomorrow because of our hope as practice. And maybe we will win in the long run, we don't know, but if we quit, we absolutely will not, you know. So I to answer the first part of your question. And then the second part of your question, you know, is really a dharma question about sort of what do we do with the the most egregious um the folks who commit the most egregious, egregious, and heinous acts. And I will not claim to be a June son where I can, you know, embrace the Hitler, the permutations of Hitler on this earth, whom there are many. Um, but I will say that I have an aspiration to believe that there's a seed of good in everyone that can be grown with another with the right conditions. And I I do aim um I do have aims on the bodhisattva path, but I I have not arrived. I will have to say that if Donald Trump rolled up, it would be very difficult for me to um be kind.

SPEAKER_01 14:22

I I understand now. One of the things that motivated me here is I hear what you're saying about the capitalist system, but this thing about embracing and and you seem to have some sort of big umbrella or tent is that my understanding is that you you make it clear you got a James Beard Award. I mean, the James Beard Award is a great award tab, but I it's pretty much a mainstream society award, I think. And if I'm not mistaken, I think I once heard you on an on a podcast that was either presented by or uh sponsored by Deloitte, uh, if I'm not mistaken, or some other big uh company or accounting company.

SPEAKER_02 14:58

So I don't know who sponsors all the radio shows. I've definitely been on a lot of media, you know, New York Times and this, that, and the third, and received awards, you know, which is is always interesting. I I joke about it because I'm an introvert, believe it or not, and I will say no one gets into farming to um have notoriety at all. Usually you get into farming because you want to be left alone in the woods. And there is something that has turned out to be very important about our work which has garnered some attention, and so certainly I have showed up on those things. And so I will say that we're not purists. I don't think it's possible to be um, you know, living in the society we're all complicit. I pay my taxes, those taxes end up funding bombs that kill children. Right? I'm not I'm not a tax resister at this point, and part of that is is selfish because I want to not go to jail because I have children and I want to be there for me. You know, so we're all in the system, which doesn't mean that you don't also resist and try to transform the conditions of that system and critique that system. Um but yeah, we we do have uh certainly ethical screens for any money that we take, um, ethical screens for you know who we collaborate with and who uses our name. So I don't know about this finance company, but they may they might have been a sponsor of somebody's podcast that I was on, maybe.

SPEAKER_01 16:18

I I don't have any complaint about that. You know, look, in in my work, uh people are in a safe zone when they come into my office, no matter who they voted for, whether they listen to the music I like or listen to Musac Elevator Music. Uh, you know, it's a big umbrella for me. Uh, is your farm an organic farm?

SPEAKER_02 16:36

So we're certified naturally grown, which has higher standards than USDA organic. We are not USDA certified. And part of that is um one we do all direct to consumer, so CSA uh uh community supported agriculture. So we're not selling in the stores where we would need the label. But also, I'll say one of the farms that I worked at in Massachusetts as a young person, uh, Mendy Hands Organic Farm was part of the protest movement when the federal government took over organic from the states and watered down the standards. I was watching my mentors fight that. So I have a little um uh a little critique of the the federal organic standards now, which are pretty pretty lax. And so we actually chose a more of a peer-to-peer grassroots certification company to work with that matches our values.

SPEAKER_01 17:26

So it's one thing to become your own boss, whether it's for profit or not for profit, and to make a farm work, but you've gone much further than that, if I'm not mistaken. Uh you're uh at your farm, you're teaching people uh farming and and other uh and and self-empowerment generally throughout the year, and you're uh finding ways to provide your high-quality uh produce to even lower income people. Uh it's so it's one thing to survive and thrive economically, just starting your own uh business or farm, but how are you able to do it even uh beyond that? And to what extent are you helping the lower income people and how are you making that uh possible? Is it through donations, just through WIC? How is it happening?

SPEAKER_02 18:13

No, that's a great question. So this farm has had a few phases for the first decade. We were a family farm, sole proprietorship, and the way we operated was sliding scale. So we would sell the food and you would choose based on your income the range, you know, where in the range you would pay. And so the higher income folks would essentially subsidize the lower income folks. Um we broke even without paying ourselves with that model. We broke even on our inputs. But I was working uh public school teaching job for a few years of that. My spouse had a carpentry company uh doing natural building, and then he sold his company, you know. So in 2016, we formed a nonprofit organization, and then we also got started forming a co-op. So now we have these two different entities, and the nonprofit receives grants and donations, and that makes it possible to pay the staff, makes it possible to give away the food at no cost to people who need it the most in our community. So people apply on the honor system. It's mostly um, you know, folks living in in Albany, Trice Connectity area, a lot of immigrant families, uh families with an incarcerated loved one, families with children and elders. And so those folks do not pay for their food. They can make a donation, but they don't pay for their food. And then the students who come to our programs pay on a sliding scale. Some pay zero, you know, some will pay the full cost, most will pay somewhere in between. So we do rely very heavily on philanthropy in order to make the food distribution, the educational programs, and our other work um affordable for our community.

SPEAKER_01 19:50

Okay. Uh now, how romantic is it to be farming or not? Because if it's that hot out, I guess you don't just have the sun, but you know, what are you doing about the bugs?

SPEAKER_02 20:02

Yeah, I had a lot of bug spray and sunscreen and a big hat on today and an ice vest. Um, you know, romantic, it's funny you say that because I think a lot of people have an idea about going back to the land that's being very leisurely, and you sort of skip around with a basket and then you put beautiful flower petals in it and take a nap in the hammock. And I'm not saying we never have leisurely days, but farming is very hard work. It's very hard work. Even a nonprofit farm which has lower productivity standards than a commercial farm. You know, you're out there in all kinds of weather, as you noted, and the weather with climate chaos is getting more extreme. Um, heat sickness is a real problem, you know, and and to, you know, the farm workers who are working on commercial farm, especially our Mexican, Latino cousins, there's very high rates of of heat stroke and premature death from from those conditions. And so it's really not um we need to treat our essential workers as essential living beings, I would say. And farm, you know, it's not for everyone. I happen to really love it. I I cherish it. Um, and there are plenty of people who come to our programs, they try it for a week and they're like, oh, that's quite enough. Thank you very much. I'm gonna go back to an air-conditioned office, and that's fine too.

SPEAKER_01 21:18

I'm happy you you mentioned uh the uh the farm workers who live in misery or or are not much better than that. Uh related to that, and I do want to talk about this. What is the current situation about uh the rights and and living situation of migrant farm workers? And do you have any opinion about, you know, uh we'll we'll leave aside what what's been revealed about Cesar Chavez uh uh recently about his his his alleged uh sexual abuse, alleged or actual sexual abuse, but he he was uh you know very much counter to me, who wants wide open borders, and he was opposed to that. Because he felt that all that would do would be to uh reduce wages more. So I'm interested in talking about what is the current situation for migrant farm workers, farm workers in general, uh, what's the situation for um people who aren't U.S. citizens who are coming here on uh if there's still those farm worker programs, and and what needs to be done uh to you know be treating them fairly, just with working conditions, pay, and everything else.

SPEAKER_02 22:24

Absolutely. You know, well, I will say the experts on this, um, La Cosecha, very important organization, um the Imakalee farm workers, and so um checking out their calls to action is really important. Um, but as folks know, you know, agricultural labor in this country has never been fair. It started out with enslaved African people, and then after 1865, it turned into this uh there's a provision in the 13th Amendment which allows people to be enslaved if they've been convicted of a crime. And so there were a whole bunch of new uh black codes, these new laws put on the books that made it illegal to not have a job, uh, to be hanging around, so the vagrancy laws, the loitering laws, and then they would throw black people in jail and then lease them back to the plantations. And so slavery did continue, is it even to this day. A lot of the folks putting out fires and building furniture, you know, are incarcerated people working for pennies on the dollar. Then it turned into the um migrant guest worker programs, which we still have today, H2A. And still the majority of our food is grown by um folks who are underpaid, who aren't protected under the Fair Labor Standards Act or the National Labor Relations Act, so they're not having the right to a day off in seven. On small farms, there's no minimum wage, very lax child labor protections, um, poor access to medical care or transportation, able to go to a house of worship, rampant sexual abuse and wage theft. Because what happens with the H2A program is workers are coming from other countries and they're contracted to a particular farm. And if things don't work out of that farm, they have to leave the country. So there is a strong disincentive to report any abuses because you're gonna lose your job and your ability to stay in this country. So we really need to reform the visa system so that folks have the freedom of movement between farms and there's there's some competition introduced into there, and also uh, you know, reasonable work week, the right to a day off. You know, all of those basic protections that workers have, that ag workers are excluded from, need to be extended. I will say that, you know, I'm not an expert in in border policy, but uh I am appalled by the practice of detaining migrants, especially children. In fact, there was just a peace walk this past week where another Nepanze Miyohoji uh lay person, my my dear friend and our board chair, Taina Asili, went in Jun Sun's place to Texas, where there was a walk led by the survivors of Japanese internment during World War II, walking from a closed internment camp to a child detention facility on the border, chanting Namio Horangekyo and also singing um songs in Spanish, movement songs in Spanish. It's abortion. Um we we cannot be treating human beings um in this way. Everybody has the right to safety, to food, um, to shelter, and and this is something that that needs to be addressed for farm workers and migrants in general.

SPEAKER_01 25:32

So you mentioned some things we can do to help out. We can uh uh push our uh advocate to our uh lawmakers and to uh the people uh the executives signing off on the proposed laws to improve these conditions, and what can we do as consumers as far as hang out of our uh wallets and pocketbooks to help things? For instance, is there any way for us to know which of our food buying choices are going to go uh more to the uh uh food growers, food producers, and distributors uh who are treating their workers more fairly?

SPEAKER_02 26:07

I'm so glad you asked that. So there is the domestic fair trade alliance, which will certify certain foods as fair trade internally. Um, their footprint is not that large, and tragically, the Agricultural Justice Project, which was the other certifier, has just closed. Um, and so I think what I would really generally suggest when it comes to both environmental and human rights protections is if you can buy locally from farmers that you know who you can directly ask, directly talk to the workers, that's always best if you're able to do that. Otherwise, look out for the domestic fair trade label or any uh farm that is endorsed by migrant justice.

SPEAKER_01 26:48

So am I correct that merely because something claims to be organic, that doesn't necessarily mean that the workers are being treated right.

SPEAKER_02 26:55

No, not at all. There's absolutely no labor protections whatsoever included in the organic label, which is one of its uh weaknesses. In fact, you can have an organic label and be absolutely abhorrent to your workers, and nobody would know the difference. So that's um that's a big area that we need, we need to systematize the fair trade label and make sure that it is more universally adopted uh internal to the United States.

SPEAKER_01 27:21

It has been mentioned to me as a vegan that it's impossible to be totally uh not involved with killing animals when you eat, because even if you're well, let's say for instance, you're eating organic food that uh that there are all sorts of traps for uh for the mice and and everything else. And if it's non-organic, I guess that there's insecticides. So uh how how much am I as a vegan really uh still still helping to cause death to the animals uh that are run around the farm?

SPEAKER_02 27:49

I love this question, you know, and it's such a tender and and personal topic for people. You know, I also happen to be a vegetarian with some flexibility to honor people's uh indigenous culture when I'm invited into um ceremony. But I will say, as a farmer of 30 years, it is impossible not to take life. It's impossible. Um, especially, you know, even if you stick a fork into the ground to loosen up the soil so the carrots can grow, somebody probably died, you know, and there are certainly the yellow sticky traps we just put around because the cucumber beetles are out and you have to pull the potato bugs off the potatoes. I really advocate for us to think about harm reduction and balance. You know, indigenous communities around the world would almost universally ask themselves: is it necessary to take this life? How do I honor this life? How do I make sure I don't waste this life that I'm taking? Plants or animals, because plants are also sentient beings, I will argue. Um, we certainly see all the evidence of this if you look at Susan Simard's work and the ways they share and collaborate and communicate. So that line between plant and animal is a little bit arbitrary. But how do we how do we reciprocate and how do we use the nourishment we get by taking the life to make beauty in the world, to make justice and truth in the world? So I know on our farm we certainly try to reduce harm as much as possible, but sometimes an animal agriculture solution actually saves more lives. And so what I mean by this is, you know, we have some sheep out in the other field, and by having the sheep in the other field, we don't have to buy any fertilizers. And mining fertilizers from the earth causes its own kind of harm. They also very gently munch the grass versus having to mow it down, which is going to kill a lot of insects. They're not killing insects as they munch the grass, whereas the mower will, and mowers are of course used all you know all over the place. So sometimes it's not as simple as you know, no killing, even though I've taken my precepts. It's really how do we think about every life as precious and absolutely do everything we can to reduce the harm and make sure it's necessary and in balance with the whole ecosystem, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 30:05

Yes. Now, uh, when I had Miyoko Shinner on the show, perhaps you know about Miyoko.

SPEAKER_02 30:12

I don't, tell me.

SPEAKER_01 30:13

Uh she uh she found a Miyoko's creamery, which would make uh vegan uh dairy products, or there could be such things, not with them anymore. She said perhaps what you said, that uh right now it only about seven companies uh control a huge amount of uh our food choices. Uh is that true? And to what extent does that affect ownership of farms and the in the extent to which you can even have uh small farmers who are thriving financially when you have uh, I guess some of these huge uh hundreds of acres farms out there?

SPEAKER_02 30:49

Oh yeah, it's really tricky. There was some policies, I think it was at the early 80s, late 70s. I'm getting my history mixed up, but the the get bigger, get out, when the U.S. Department of Agriculture changed its subsidy structure to really focus on these commodity crops, you know, the soy, wheat, corn, sugar, uh, milk, took out the price floor and encouraged consolidation. And so it's been very, very hard. You know, small farmers that grow vegetables get a tiny slice of the budget from um from the farm bill, and we're all called specialty crops. So basically, everything that's healthy for you, all the fruits and vegetables and nuts, it's in this little sliver of specialty crops and all the ingredients that go into junk food, that's like the bulk of it. I read an article a couple of years ago that over 90% of small farmers rely on an outside income just to survive. So I say that not to be discouraging, but actually like don't feel bad if you're a small farmer that's that's struggling or has to have some agritourism or a value-added product. Um, there's certainly small farms or small to medium farms that make it. You know, I I think of uh Denison Farm, there are about 400 CSA members, which seems to be the threshold of direct to consumer that that allows you to be financially solvent without additional income. And and to put a little black history in that, you know, shout out to Booker T. Watley out of Tuskegee Institute who came up with this all this infrastructure for direct farmer-to-consumer marketing. Um, because when you put a middleman in there and you go wholesale, the farmer loses a lot. But the, you know, now pick your own is such an institution. We all go pick apples at the Apple, you know, or the CSA where you get a basket every week of the or bag of the food. These were all ideas that came out of the black farming community because they were excluded from the wholesale market. So they came up with strategies in order to uh bring food directly to the to the community and not have a middle person skimming off. And so that's usually how small farmers can make it is by tapping into those direct markets.

SPEAKER_01 32:53

And I think I heard you say in an interview that there is discrimination by the Department of Agriculture. Can you uh talk about that?

SPEAKER_02 33:03

Oof, there's so much. So I will I'll start with the legal case. So in 1999, Pigford v. Glickman resulted in the largest settlement at the time in US history, which was for black farmers who'd been discriminated against for generations by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, whose job it is to provide insurance, subsidies, loans, and grants to farmers to make sure that the nation can eat, and was giving all that those goodies to white farmers and not giving them to black farmers very explicitly. Part of this was because the distribution of funds was controlled at the county level. So the elected county agent, who was usually a white farmer, you know, would choose his buddies and not choose the black people, especially if they were attempting to register to vote or to upset the white supremacist social order. Um, there, you know, there's a bunch of research about this, but you know, the Office of Civil Rights, which was investigating these complaints, was also closed for a decade after the Reagan administration. So it's been a whole hot mess. And it continues to this day. In fact, um Soulfire Farm was part of a coalition that got legislation introduced at the federal level called the Justice for Black Farmers Act. Uh, Corey Booker was the author, Elizabeth Warren co-signed, some other senators co-signed. And this would have finished what Pigford v. Glickman did not finish, which was to uh relieve the debt burden of the black farmers who had to take out predatory loans when they didn't get the USDA subsidized loans, but still had this crushing debt. And it was actually it actually got passed under the Inflation Reduction Act. That provision got passed and money was starting to flow to the black farmers. Then Trump was elected and he shut the program down. Um which just must be so illegal because there was our it was contracts that anyway, uh so so those funds have have stopped. And and in fact, not only have they stopped, but the US Department of Agriculture has now closed all of its programs for socially disadvantaged farmers. So women, veterans, black people, indigenous people, all those programs are canceled. And even existing contracts under those programs where people had paid out and are supposed to be reimbursed by the government, canceled. So it's actually, you know, very regressive. We're kind of back beyond square one, where the federal government has reneged on all of its promises and has dismantled the programs that were established after this lawsuit settlement in uh 1999.

SPEAKER_01 35:46

Something that rings in my ears is your figure that only what is it, the 2% of the farms or 2% of the land is operated by non-white people? What is that 2% related to?

SPEAKER_02 35:57

Yeah, so that's the so there's two different statistics. So in the early 1900s, black people comprised about 14% of the nation's farm owners. Now it's about 1.5%. So that's a very steep decline, you know, again, because of the USDA discrimination and a number of other forces, including uh land grabbing by retirement funds. Uh so speaking of finance being complicit. And then another statistic is that if you look at the acreage of land, of farmable land in this country, it's about 95% white-owned. Though the USDA has also shut down collecting these statistics. And so we're not gonna know in the future until we get a new administration that hopefully reverses this, we're not gonna be able to track those trends. Um, but but uh black and brown land ownership has been declining and white land ownership has been increasing relative to one another over time.

SPEAKER_01 36:52

Black and brown ownership is still declining?

SPEAKER_02 36:54

Yes, it was still declining as of the last census.

SPEAKER_01 36:58

What can be done to reverse that?

SPEAKER_02 37:02

I will advocate for, and this was actually a provision in the Justice for Black Farmers Act, was to establish, you know, and this is not very radical. I have some more radical ideas, but the less radical idea it was to establish a fund to purchase farms that are at risk of going out of production, put them into a national commons where black farmers and brown farmers can lease to own at an affordable rate, subsidized rate. That was what was in the legislation. You know, I think high in the sky, like what I really dream of is I think we need to return this continent to indigenous governance and uh decommodify land altogether and find a way that everybody can share and have what they need, not based on um the Western capitalist enclosure scheme where you know an individual can hold the entire bundle of rights of fee simple land ownership, which is a uniquely European, even like British um conception of how land works that is not part of our indigenous history. Land has been held in common and Mother Earth has owned herself. There hasn't been that capacity. So there's sort of the in Buddhism, what do you say? You say the ultimate dimension and the historical dimension? In the historical dimension, we need the national, you know, land bank, and in the ultimate dimension, we need to not own land.

SPEAKER_01 38:32

Now, what are the main crops that are being grown on your farm right now? What type of um animal uh animals are being raised and for what purposes and what type of rotation do you do with all of that?

SPEAKER_02 38:47

Oh my goodness, the farm is so abundant right now. So it everything is very fecund around the solstice, and so it's just overflowing. So a few exciting, we grow over a hundred different things, well over a hundred, but I'll mention a few exciting areas on the farm. One is our we have a four-acre silvo pasture, which is an integration of an apple orchard with pasture for animals. So the trees are in rows 40 feet apart, and the animals rotationally graze in each paddock between the rows. So they fertilize the trees, they enjoy the shade and the dropped apples, um, and they get to enjoy all of the wonderful pasture in between and keep it nice and clipped. And so that has apples, currants, elderberries, willow, and there's um sheep there. There's lambs that are being raised for um halal slaughter for our Muslim community. There's also chickens for eggs rotating through. Another very exciting area on the farm is our milpa. Milpah is another way to say three sisters, and so our um indigenous community takes the lead on that. Um and so there's corn growing with beans, squash, tobacco, sunflowers, hummingbird, sage, and a whole all in a mosaic, not rows separated, but all in this beautiful collage. And the last one I'll mention, my favorite, because my mother is Haitian heritage, is the Jaden la coup. Jaden la coup is Haitian Creole for house garden. And it also is a polyculture where trees, shrubs, and herbs grow together in a terrace. And this time of year it is absolutely full of pollinators. There's hummingbirds and hummingbird moths and monarch butterflies and swallowtails and bumblebees, all enjoying uh the nectar of the beautiful Jaden Lacou. So uh those are three things. But we have we have hundreds of crops growing. Every kind of vegetable and fruit and uh mushroom and bees that you could think of to grow in upstate New York, we have it.

SPEAKER_01 40:51

Now, if I'm not mistaken, I think I have read that uh part of your uh your farms work to help empower uh what is what's the current correct word? People of color, black and brown people. Please help me out here.

SPEAKER_02 41:05

You know, people use different terms. Black and brown works, some people say BIPOC, some people say people of the global majority, but you know, it's okay.

SPEAKER_01 41:14

Okay. Uh to what extent then do your programs uh focus on people who are uh people of color or are you know mix it up with white people too, and and and what is what is the purpose for doing it that way?

SPEAKER_02 41:29

Oh well, we have all of the above. We have, I would say the majority of our programs are open to everyone, though we do make sure to reserve some tickets for Black, Indigenous, and people of color to those programs because those are the folks who are usually left behind and excluded in a country with a long history of racial injustice. We do have a few programs that are BIPOC only, namely our week-long farmer training, which happens four or five times a year. Um, but all the rest of our programs, we have tours, uh, volunteer days, you know, one-day workshops, online webinars, you know, are open to the general community. So we get quite a mix of folks. So it's it's a yes, and sometimes it's helpful to have a caucus space where you can really focus on the particular histories and conditions of your target uh population, and then other times it's wonderful to have a mixed community in that exchange. So we do both.

SPEAKER_01 42:21

So to what extent are there people who come over there and like you say, just say, okay, uh, I'm leaving early. I've gotten bit by enough bugs for today. And to what extent are the people who metamorphosize? Because I get a sense that some of what happens for the programs at your farm are like what happened at the uh trial or his college, at least when it was at Jerry Spence's ranch, where there were some people whose life had changed in only two or three days, doing psycho drama, storytelling, and just being able to open up to each other in a safe place where they knew the people weren't going to take advantage of that and uh dig into them for uh opening themselves up.

SPEAKER_02 42:55

Yeah, I would say by and large, you know, I can't say a hundred percent, but certainly almost universally when folks come to our programs, they talk about with tears in their eyes uh life-changing, transformative, eye-opening, you know, finally home, finally healed, finally understanding what life can be. It, you know, it really astounded me at first because I have a science background and people would come for the week. And of course, we teach the hard skills. You know, I would teach a soil chemistry class and feel really proud of my soil chemistry class. And then at the end, people would send these reflections of, you know, I was able to let go of this addictive habit or this violent relationship or this toxic job environment and you know, get my life on track in this whole other way. And I remember just being flabbergasted and like all we did was farm in my mind, right? It was all we but it's so much more. You know, I think we call ourselves the returning generation. So for our ancestors, the land was the scene of the crime. That's where the slavery, the sharecropping, You know, people ran away from the red clays of Georgia to escape the violence of the clan and the white caps and um went to the urban north and and really to disambiguate the oppression that happened on the land from the land herself, and to come home to the land in a new way is healing generational trauma. It's healing exile. And so there's a lot. Yes, we're farming, um, but we're also coming home to ourselves. And I I see that time and again uh in a way that now it feels undeniable. You know, uh we've we have I think this year we'll reach a millionth, the millionth person who's come through a program. Wow. All of our programs, you know, our our week-long immersions are about a thousand people who've gone through, but if you count all of our classes and workshops and all of that, a million people, you know, and um it's it's really something, you know. I it I it was never intended to be this way, but the way that we've moved year after year is whatever the community needs and asks us for. We see if we can meet that need. It's never been me or or anyone on the team saying, you know what, this community really could use. Even our educational program started with with folks reaching out to the farm saying, Can I come and learn? I would like to come and learn. And then things grew bit by bit. So, in a way, the farm is its own being. In in uh African traditional religion, we call an orisha, is a deity. Uh, and so I think of Soulfire Farm as its own orisha that we are in service to. We are not controlling it, we are in service to.

SPEAKER_01 45:45

You have answered my question about how how the benefits of the people visiting the farm continue, and that is wonderful. You have mentioned indigenous people. To what extent are indigenous people involved with your farm?

SPEAKER_02 46:01

Hmm, so I mean, there are some folks on our team who are indigenous, though none of them are indigenous to this area. So this is Mohican, ancestrally uh Mohican land, and also intersects with Mohawk land to an extent as well. So we've over the past eight years or so, we've we've developed a close friendship with some folks at the Stockbridge Muncie Mohican Nation, which is headquartered in Bowler, Wisconsin, though there are tribal members who live and work in the area increasingly, but it's it's really just a few. And so that friendship was very organic over time. You know, we um have done a number of projects with them. We helped stop the E37 pipeline, which would have desecrated their central fire on Skodak Island. We also do seed exchange, and so there's a number of Mohican crops that we grow here at the farm where they they actually thrive better than they do in Wisconsin because it's they're the homeland of the crops. But we do that seed keeping and then all the proceeds from selling any seeds from Soulfire Farm go to the Mohican demonstration farm in Wisconsin. But most exciting is a project that we collaborated with Jun Sun on. Um, Junya Suda Anjuson of the Grafton Peace Pagoda, our our shared uh teacher and beloved Buddhist nun who uh just turned 78 years old. Um Happy birthday, Jun Sun. But she has had a long dream that the land on Crandall Road, which was once belonging to Hank Hazleton, would be returned to the Mohegan nation. And without getting into all the twists and turns, she asked me a couple of years ago to manage that project, which was not an easy feat because there were a number of parties who had different ideas about what could and should happen and and all of that. But the long story short is that I and we were able to um gather some donations to purchase the land at below market rate and hold it um in trust until it could be given to the Mohican nation. And we completed that uh return of land last year and marked it with a peacewalk, a peace, a prayer pilgrimage all throughout the capital region, visiting Mohican sacred sites, including Papscony Island, including the Mohican um hot, the warm springs in New Lebanon, um, including all along the Hudson River and Stockbridge itself, the the Mohican Miles exhibit. So we did this prayer pilgrimage with members of the nation, uh, members of Nepanze Miyhoji, the Soulfire Farm community, and it was absolutely so beautiful. And and of course, we ended at the the land. So there's 250 acres of land back that has been given to uh the nation. Not given to it's theirs, but you know what I mean, given back to them.

SPEAKER_01 48:59

So that is wonderful. Well, since I'm a criminal defense lawyer, to what extent are there uh inmates and former inmates that are finding uh positive ways to work with the land? Not I'm not talking about the people. Well, please also address you know the extent to which the whole prison industry is is having people uh working on the land for pennies as well.

SPEAKER_02 49:23

That part. So I will say um, you know, we've we've gone in ebbs and flows about how much work we're doing with incarcerated people. Um, most recently, this is actually also with June Sun, I went down to Ulster County Correctional Facility because the um residents there who were incarcerated wanted to put a peace pole in their garden. And so we went down to do some speeches and prayers and things and meet these were senior men, um elders. And um, it was so amazing. One of them gave a speech, and I unbeknownst to me, because I was going more on the peace pagoda side of things, he pulls out farming while black, it's all tattered and covered in mud, with tears in his eyes, and says, This book is the reason we started this garden. Wow, and you, Leah, you know, you, the author of this book, is the reason we started, and they had a beautiful garden and they were growing food for themselves, but also bless their hearts. They were giving food away to the community, even though they're the ones who are really in the most dire straits, they were giving half of their produce away to the community. Um, and so from time to time, we've been able to go and you know offer some classes in uh in agriculture and food, which are always very much appreciated. Um, there's also a juvenile detention facility. I was just talking to someone who works there last week, and they wanted um, they have a garden there that's optional, you know. But for the kids who complete this uh garden skills checklist, they wanted us to deliver these certificates of completion for them and and honor them in that way. They thought that'd be really meaningful because they're using Farming Wall Black as their curriculum. So we're making a plan for how we'll do this graduation ceremony for the garden club at this detention. And I, for the record, I don't think children should be in detention facilities, but uh we want to be able to support them in um in having a small bit of light in their days as they uh navigate the system.

SPEAKER_01 51:21

So to what extent are the programs at your farm and does any of the do any of the activities of the farm involve stories and storytelling?

SPEAKER_02 51:32

Oh, everything. Everything we are wired to learn from stories. You know, when I start the very first workshop of every immersion, we go down into the Jaden Lakou, which I mentioned is the polyculture of trees and herbs. And we start a story. I won't tell the whole thing because we're short on time, but um the story is of grandmother Pine longing to be tall and how she learns to collaborate with mycorrhizal fungi to receive the nutrients of the rocks and to share her sugars from photosynthesis so both of them can thrive, and then all of the collaborations and mutualisms in the forest that come out of that. Now, that could be a very dry lecture, but we do it as a folk tale, and I will tell you, you can hear a pin drop. It's like we are wired for stories, and so we do so much storytelling, um, stories we make up, stories from our ancestral traditions, stories in the form of uh uh hip-hop cipher, you know, in order to enrich the ways that we learn with and from one another.

SPEAKER_01 52:40

Wonderful. Where does the uh name Soulfire Farm come from?

SPEAKER_02 52:44

So we were doing a naming contest for the farm where we crowdsource names and we didn't like any of them, so we were feeling a little bit sad and unsure what to do. And we put on some reggae music and Lee Scratch Perry's song Soulfire came on, and my spouse Jonah said, That's it. And I said, You're absolutely right, that's it, because Soulfire speaks to the spiritual motivation behind everything we do, the sacred behind everything we do, and the the fire, the passion, the commitment, the determination that allows us to keep moving forward to do what is very hard work in the world.

SPEAKER_01 53:32

Wonderful. Well, I knew I would have a lot I would want to talk to you about, and there's so much more. And when I get to meet you in person, I get to talk to even more.

SPEAKER_02 53:40

But maybe I'll see you on the Peace Pagoda for one of the ceremonies.

SPEAKER_01 53:44

I was last there last September. Um, I would like, I forgot to ask you to tell everyone what is your URL or URLs, and where can people give uh donations to your nonprofit or nonprofits, followed by please share with everybody anything you haven't already said that you would like to say or would like to emphasize you already have said.

SPEAKER_02 54:08

Oh, thank you so much. Well, you can uh find us at soulfirefarm.org or on social media at soulfirefarm, all one word. And we are looking for, you know, it's an anti-DEI moment right now, and so we're facing some budget constraints that are pretty serious. And so we are looking for 50 new monthly sustainers and their prizes. Uh, so definitely if that's within your capacity at any level, um, we would love that. And we'd also love you to join us for one of our upcoming events. You can find that all at soulfirefarm.org. And the last thing I will say is I'll quote um one of my favorite poets, Irsa Daly Ward, who said, I know where joy comes from, how to make it. I was raised pulling food from the earth.

SPEAKER_01 55:00

Wonderful. Well, maybe there's a chance you can ask one more question, which is this the name of the show is Beat the Prosecution. Do you have any suggestions to criminal defendants, criminal defensors, inmates, or anyone else in the criminal justice system to help them get justice and to help society?

SPEAKER_02 55:21

Hmm. I think that everyone who's caught up in the system needs to remember that they are a sacred being. So in Europe cosmology, we believe that everyone has Ori, and Ori is the spark of God inside of you. You are a sacred being. And don't let the situation that you're in convince you that you don't have worth. If we stick together and we believe in the inherent worth of each person, which is the core teaching of the Lotus Sutra, you are sacred. I bow to you. Then we'll be able to get through and build a world of fairness.

SPEAKER_01 55:55

What a great way to conclude. Everyone is a sacred being. I agree 100%. Thank you so much, Leah Peniman. Leah Penan, find her at soulfile far soulfirefarm.org. This is John Katz of Beat the Prosecution. I am a criminal defense and DUI defense lawyer in Fairfax, Northern Virginia. This is Beat the Prosecution because there really is no other way. Stand by, Leah, please.

SPEAKER_00 56:24

Thank you for listening to this week's episode from Beat the Prosecution. This is a regular podcast giving people a leg up against police investigations and prosecutions. Nothing discussed on our media sources, such as our podcast or website, is legal advice. John Katz only provides legal advice to current clients or to individuals who have paid for a consultation. We welcome you contacting us via email at infobeatheprosecution.com by calling our office at 703 383 1100 or texting us at 571 406 7268.