🕸️ Chapter 3: Anti-Black Racism and White Supremacy
17 3.3: Case Study 3.1
Barriers to funding for Black farmers
Author: Kishon Warmington
Trigger warning: This case shares examples of gatekeeping, institutional and structural racism, the influence of capitalism and colonization of land on farming practices and disparities in generational wealth and generational knowledge
Being a first-generation Black farmer has been plagued with many obstacles. I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to have access to purchase my farm in which I reside on 78 acres, 45 minutes away from the nearest big city.
When I first started farming, I knew that I wanted to give my community access to culturally acceptable food and food that was not sprayed with chemicals or overly medicated. I knew that I wanted to become a goat farmer because the access to fresh goat meat has been getting harder and harder. Goat meat is still not recognized in most governmental regulations as consumable.
Because of this, there was very little information or research done for the goat market. It was quickly evident to me that Canada has not considered having culturally appropriate food for our community. I even had other Caucasian farmers that tried to tell me that there was no market in goats. The irony of this is that goat meat is one of the most consumed meats around the world.
It has been a struggle building my farm as I have had to learn everything from my own experience. There is no funding or grants for goat farming, no access to information, and any mentorship is modelled after the sheep market. Although sheep and goats are similar in some aspects, they are greatly different in management.
I remember sitting in a program where everyone but myself were Caucasian farmers and there was a discussion about funding in which they had identified that they had extra funding that they had to use. They were trying to navigate how they could use it amongst each other. Although I was in the room and could benefit from the funding I was excluded from the conversation since they were trying to keep it among themselves.
This really opened my eyes and made me realize how funding for Black people needs to be specifically allocated because general funding was not designed for our community. It also is hard to farm culturally appropriate foods for our community when there is lack of resources to help us succeed.