Sowing Seeds of Sovereignty: A Qualitative Exploration of Chapter Leader Experiences Who Belong to an African, Caribbean, and Black Women ’s Agriculture Advocacy Collective

AbstractAfrican, Caribbean, and Black (ACB) populations are disproportionately impacted by food insecurity since the COVID-19 pandemic, with reports including limited access to healthy, affordable, and available food resulting in the exacerbation of existing health disparities and poorer living conditions and environments. Many interventions addressing food insecurity among ACB populations incorporate downstream models that emphasize consumer-level solutions (e.g., food donation or assistance programs). While useful for developing short-term solutions, these approaches do not meaningfully engage broader structures and root-causes —and, in many ways, reify existing inequities among these populations. Missing from mainstream dialogue is how food insecurity inequities at the individual level are often generated at higher structural levels and the unique assets of a targeted community or population to grow/distribute their own food and restore frayed transnational cultural foodways. This paper documents a case study of an international, Black women-led agriculture education collective headquartered in the South-Central region of the United States. Drawing on in-depth interviews with affiliate chapter leaders in the Unite d States, US Virgin Islands, and Africa (n = 22), the research investigates how chapter leaders describe unique opportunities and barriers to farming and developing food insecurity solutions. Emergent themes from the data analysis were: (1) diasporically li...
Source: Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities - Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: research