Featured Organization: Black Food Fund

How does Black Food Fund partner with others to catalyze systems change? 

We recognize that collaboration is critical to catalyzing systems change. The Black Food Fund is a part of an ecosystem of Black-led organizations including the Black Oregon Land Trust, Black Food Sovereignty Coalition, Black Futures Farm, and Mudbone Grown and Scrapberry Farm, all of which are working to support Black-led food systems transformation in Oregon and across the Pacific Northwest. Each of our organizations focuses on different, though often overlapping, components of the work, and we collaborate to build synergy among our efforts. 

How has COVID-19 impacted your community and how has Black Food Fund responded?

The COVID-19 pandemic, and the resulting economic recession, have had a devastating impact on our communities. Black, Indigenous, and other people of color (BIPOC), who are more likely to engage in frontline, essential work and have unequal access to health care, represent a disproportionate number of Covid-19 cases.  In addition, working folks who are not paid living wages and who are disproportionately BIPOC, have borne the brunt of the economic recession. Unemployment and food insecurity levels have increased significantly. From the onset, we have seen folks in the community step up and fill in gaps caused by the pandemic. Across our region, BIPOC-led farms and mutual aid efforts are playing a critical role in meeting the immediate needs of families facing food insecurity. In addition, there are several local, state, and federal relief efforts, such as the Black Resilience Fund, the $62 million Oregon CARES Fund for Black Relief and Resiliency, Oregon Worker Relief Fund, and USDA Farm to Families, that are helping individuals, families, and businesses weather the global health pandemic and consequent recession. Several of these have used a targeted approach to get vital funding to the people who need it most. For example, The Oregon Worker Relief Fund has provided temporary disaster relief to Oregonians with financial need and who are excluded from the federal unemployment insurance program due to their immigration status. The Oregon CARES Fund for Black Relief and Resiliency, which was designed and led by Black leaders for the Black community, provides cash grants to Black individuals, Black-owned businesses, and Black-led nonprofit organizations who have experienced financial adversity due to COVID-19. 

Trillions of dollars are being devoted to relief and recovery — which is absolutely necessary and needed. However, we also want to see resources devoted to meaningful investments in systemic change, the kind that would build Black power and ownership within our regional food system. The Black Food Fund’s focus is not on recovery of a system that is inherently racist but rather on co-creating regional food economies centered in racial justice and reflective of the people driving the shift. 
  
Over the past few months, the country has seen ongoing protests around systemic anti-Black racism. Systemic racism is not new, but there are more conversations happening around dismantling racism at the local, regional and national levels. How does Black Food Fund work to create a more equitable and explicitly anti-racist food system?  

The pandemic has exacerbated existing inequities. In Oregon, and across the Pacific Northwest, systemic racism has long impacted Black folks’ ability to steward land, produce healthy, culturally relevant food for our communities, and generate generational wealth to pass on to our children. In Oregon, racist exclusion laws, which were built into the state constitution to create a “white utopia,” prevented Black people from living in the state and acquiring land. Black farmers and food entrepreneurs have faced over a hundred years of anti-black exclusion, oppression, extraction, and divestment, including discrimination in accessing credit, loans, resources, and markets. In Oregon and Washington, currently Black agricultural land ownership is less than .1%. In spite of these inequities, Black food systems leaders continue to develop innovative solutions that hold great potential for building collectively held wealth, assets, and community-based ownership.  
 
As Black food systems leaders, we continue to work towards the structural changes that have long been the focal point of our efforts. It is critical that we advance systemic change and build new models of interdependency to fuel transformative, Black-led change in our regional food system. We are responding to this moment in ways that will contribute to building just and resilient regional food economies that support ecological land stewardship, racial justice, and economic opportunity. The Black Food Fund supports long-term investment in the regional food system we are looking to build, addressing key issues related to land justice, climate resiliency, and economic opportunity for Black land stewards and food entrepreneurs. These efforts will build wealth, self-determination, and resiliency for Black communities. 
 
Our efforts are focused on three main strategies: land justice, restorative capital, and climate resilience. Through the land justice strategy, contributions support Black farmers in acquiring farmland via our sister-organization, the Black Oregon Land Trust. The Black Food Fund prioritizes land access approaches that include communal stewardship, local control, and diversified ownership. Through the restorative capital component, philanthropic investments enable Black farmers and Black owned food enterprises to purchase new equipment and finance infrastructure developments necessary to launch, sustain and scale up their businesses. Through the climate resilience strategy, we enable producers to adopt and scale practices that drawn down carbon, increase soil health, and improve water quality and biodiversity. 

The pandemic has caused many regulations to be loosened and new partnerships to be formed. Of the changes you have seen and made, which would you like to maintain moving forward? Are you seeing steps that food systems leaders can take to ensure lasting change?

In response to the uprisings for racial justice, we’ve seeing unprecedented materials, resources, and funds being shifted to match the power that continues to be built by BIPOC food systems leaders, people with lived experience who are closest to the problems and best positioned to shape solutions. This is the primary change we would like to see sustained moving forward. Direct investments in efforts like the Black Food Fund, that are working to fuel Black-led food systems transformation.