Transcript
Speaker: um They've had a lot of issues with with weeds like Palmer amaranth becoming resistant to Roundup. And so that has led to them using different chemicals such as dicamba to control um control these broadleaf weeds.
Speaker: um And so I think... it you know the The delta is almost the epitome of where chemical agriculture has led, um which is you know now you're in a situation where you have you know the dicamba herbicide being sprayed aerially over thousands of acres um you know with drift, leading to to damage of other farmers' fields. Luke Freeman is the program manager at the Center for Arkansas Farms and Food.
Speaker: He helps farmers access resources about organic agriculture through the Transition to Organic Partnership Program, or TOP, which, full disclosure, also funds this podcast.
Speaker: Luke lives in Fayetteville, located in the northwestern corner of Arkansas. But right now he's talking about the Arkansas Delta, the region of flat, fertile lands covering the eastern side of the state alongside the Mississippi River.
Speaker: Today, we're talking about a dream of organic farming in the Delta. Welcome to the Taproot Project. So it's just, it's a very different, it's a unique situation where I am in Northwest Arkansas and we get a lot of traction. a lot of farmers ah who, if they're not certified organic are interested, maybe they're certified naturally grown. And so there's definitely, you know, a history of organic farming people aligned with those values in Northwest Arkansas.
Speaker: It is completely different in the Delta. which, you know, the the Delta, because it's such prime agricultural soil, um has been...
Speaker: cropped ah very intensively and also has led to you know large row crop farms, especially ah with consolidation of farms in the 80s.
Speaker: The farm crisis, essentially, you went from i mean fairly large farms to consolidation of even larger farms. um You know, row crops, including corn, soy, ah rice, cotton used to be bigger. It's not as big as it used to be, but there's still cotton production in the Delta.
Speaker: And I think when people think of, you know, agriculture in the South, the delta would fit that picture perfectly. um and And in some ways, and I mean, I have i have family who farm out there. So ah i feel a little sympathetic to the the farmers in terms of they're not in control at the end of the day. um you know, a lot of these farmers are just trying to keep farming. And this is in some ways what what they feel like they have to do.
Speaker: but Everything has led to the Delta kind of feeling like a agricultural wasteland in terms of, you know, degraded soils, um you know, nothing else being able to grow. um It's a very productive soil, but um
Speaker: and there's a cost. I should say that. Enter Martin Blocker. Martin is a farmer. He grew up in the Delta in a county that borders Mississippi.
Speaker: He now lives just outside the town of Elaine in Phillips County, Arkansas. Phillips County is in the heart of the Delta. 60% of the population is Black, and it is one of the poorest counties in the state.
Speaker: And Martin knows from firsthand experience that the land can grow beautiful food. ah It's really kind of hard to grow organic, to become organic when got chemicals surrounding you and you plant your crop and you don't get as hard as chance a chance to obviously cause the chemical burn your crop up.
Speaker: And we have a hard time when people get angry with you about, want to discuss the issue about killing the crops. We have no peach trees no more. We have no apple trees no more. All it's gone.
Speaker: Then it just killed the whole, the whole region. It's dead. We used to pick apples, peaches, tomatoes, and all that. They spray, and it kills your stuff for miles and miles because the diacom drips.
Speaker: Kills your land. Kills your land. Just grow the crops. Martin is currently farming and selling to individuals in the area. He farms using organic principles, but his dream is to establish a certified organic farm in Phillips County, surrounded by thousands of acres of conventional cropland. He's been told it's impossible, but the fact that all the agriculture around him is conventionally grown is exactly why Martin wants to grow certified organic produce. For him and many other residents of Phillips County,
Speaker: herbicides and pesticides are personal and my daddy worked on the farm and all the children that worked on the farm with all them would work and would round on and what so they're working on not not your family farm but other on other farmers lands is that right yeah okay even if they'd be farming anywhere around that area Well, that chemical can drift when the wind blows, downshift, you don't have a chance. Roundup was a dangerous chemical that a lot of guys inhaled, and a lot of them ended up being sick behind it.
Speaker: And they died. All my daddy's friends, my daddy, all them that worked with that Roundup, they didn't leave alone. And so that's why I don't like that chemical. you know But it's been a hard battle for fighting them about it because they get angry.
Speaker: But I feel that it should it should be done right. You know, because I can't win. and I can't win or make money if they destroy my car.
Speaker: The they Martin talks about here are the people farming the land around him. Most of these farmers run large conventional operations. It's a multidimensional issue.
Speaker: As Luke pointed out, there are structural and economic incentives for farmers to grow conventionally. And you'll hear from Martin how those systemic factors play out on an interpersonal level.
Speaker: Martin's dream of an organic farm has been shared and supported by others in the Elaine community as a possible way for the community to heal. Content warning. There's about to be a description of white supremacist violence.
Speaker: For over a hundred years, Elaine has been trying to recover. In 1919, the town was the site of a massacre, possibly the deadliest racial conflict in US history.
Speaker: A group of black farmers and landowners started organizing for better prices for their cotton. During a meeting on September 30th, 1919, they were attacked by a group of local white men.
Speaker: When they retaliated, word spread that there was an insurrection against white residents in Phillips County. Mobs of white men descended on a lane, including 500 soldiers sent by the governor, and they killed indiscriminately.
Speaker: No official death count was ever taken, but estimates range from 200 1,000 people murdered. I'm glossing over the details because the massacre is not the central story of this episode, but it is important context for the dream of an organic farm.
Speaker: Descendants of the massacre claim land was stolen from their families in the aftermath, and evidence does show a sharp decline in Black land ownership in Phillips County between 1910 and 1920.
Speaker: If those claims are true, a lot of the land that once belonged to Elaine's Black residents is now part of the conventional farming operations surrounding the community. Organic agriculture was identified as a potential path towards healing for Elaine residents, as a way of reclaiming autonomy over physical health, reclaiming land, and de generating income.
Speaker: But the tense cultural climate around spraying and allegations of land theft makes it a difficult issue to get behind publicly, and Martin has struggled to find allies.
Speaker: One of Martin's supporters is Jennifer Hadlock. She's a white attorney and community researcher based in New York who started working with descendants of the massacre to find evidence of land theft.
Speaker: She's still involved in the community, but her work has shifted to supporting the organic farm. I talked to Jennifer and Martin on the phone at the end of October. I'll share the rest of that conversation now.
Speaker: Well, maybe that's a good place to start, actually. Tell me about your home. Tell me about what it was like growing up in Elaine. And yeah, I'm interested if you have any like memories of of your connection to the land.
Speaker: Yes, I got a great deal with memories. I remember growing up ah in Snow Lake, Arkansas. And we would plant gardens, would plant acres of gardens, we'd grow peas, we had a big farm.
Speaker: And that's how was growing up at home, my grandma, my granddaddy. We weighed chickens, weighed hogs, cow did hit cows, cows. I mean, we we had enough crop to feed everybody around in the community.
Speaker: So Jennifer, can you tell tell us about your connection to to Phillips County and how how you came to be sitting there with with Martin now? Sure. um i was invited by people who are descendants of the Elaine massacre, which happened in 1919 in Phillips County, Arkansas, just a little south of Memphis across the river from where later Emmett Till was murdered.
Speaker: It's um the blackest county in Arkansas. And they wanted me to do some research about land theft that happened around the time of the massacre.
Speaker: And in doing that, I saw how really there's still a slow massacre happening with the pesticides because people are still dying.
Speaker: It's just a slower way of, of killing people off by concentrating all this chemical stuff. And there's, um, a food, I guess we're not supposed to say desert anymore food, apartheid apartheid in the area of the dollar general is the grocery store.
Speaker: And it was very important to Martin that people have access to fresh vegetables and that we grow vegetables and to show how people, like he said, in his community were all fed before. Couldn't it be that way again? Because people have to leave and people keep getting a cancer and dying and um it's really killing the area.
Speaker: And so, so your, um initial sort of draw to the county was to research land theft and you're still involved because, correct me if this paraphrasing is incorrect, but you see the way that maybe the the land theft or the results of that land theft is still impacting the community there.
Speaker: Is that right? Yes. Yeah. Yes. And we're trying to, I'm trying to support Martin's efforts to grow organic or to grow without pesticides. Yeah. um You know, getting, just growing without The chemicals is one step, getting organic certification as a whole nother challenge. Yeah.
Speaker: And when, when we first mentioned this at a farmer conference that happens in hot springs, people said, oh, you should move. m That it would be close to impossible. So his dedication to this motivated by his family is really powerful. And I want to make sure that he succeeds. He does have a good thumb. I see how he grows things. about I mean, it's just amazing.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah, Martin, tell me about um tell me about what you're growing and um yeah and who's helping you do it.
Speaker: Well, got a couple of people helping me, but mostly I do a lot on my own. I've been growing wilder minerals. I've been growing butter beans, oak creed.
Speaker: or camelops, ah
Speaker: purple whole peas, cucumbers, variety of things that are listed in the vegetables product that would be be very good to be organic.
Speaker: So you're already growing. Have you seen the the crops that you're growing um been affected by by chemical drift? Can you like visually see that or taste it and in the food that you're growing now?
Speaker: Now, sometimes you can see it, you can see it in it. Because once that chemical hit it, it kills it. So that's over with. Yeah. You won't get a chance to harvest it. Yeah. Yeah. Like the leaves on the tree, when the wintertime comes, they lose their will to live and the leaves will fall off of them. So that's what that plant do when the chemical gets hit it.
Speaker: and They lose it with a little. a So that's what I've been seeing. Yeah. Tomatoes whistle up, hey lo they lose days where to live.
Speaker: dont it's It's a hard thing trying trying to get people to see it. You know?
Speaker: Yeah. Like it caused a big problem when you speak on it. It caused a big problem like you're stirring up stuff. Yeah. Yeah. You've mentioned that a few times. um Can you say more about how, like, where, where are you trying to talk about um growing organic or without chemicals and, and what sort of reception are you getting and and from who?
Speaker: And Lakeview, I get it from Lakeview. I get it from Lakeview. Some of the surrounding, some around there. ah round away i Around there where I live. Okay. Yep. And I, I, you know, I, I, I'm in a position Well, I try to let him let some means I don't bring up.
Speaker: You know, what I wouldn't want to cause no problem for where I live it, but. Have you found any any surprising allies and in your efforts? Or do you see that there anybody anybody's mind is changing as you've been persistent in this?
Speaker: Speaking for the better or worse. oh Oh, for the better. Yeah. Do you find Very few. Very few. Very few. Okay. was Take count all over my hand.
Speaker: But it's a very few. But some. Some people who I'm surprised that theyre they want to support Martin and what he's talking about. And they might think that he's right, but they don't see how it's possible.
Speaker: And he made it seem that it might be possible. Mm-hmm. and say work with me. We can bring a change. I'm already back in trying to plant, trying to deal with different different things that is the head of my heart. And I, sometimes I feel I don't know which way to go or which step to make.
Speaker: I'm at a standstill, you know. I always wish I can be blessed to get my own spot of land and break out on my own. And I know I can make it better.
Speaker: You tell me you're going plant organic, plant organic. Don't plant soybeans.
Speaker: You know, I'm just telling you the truth, man. I'm just tired. And I'm hurt about it. My heart's been heavy. All this year my heart been heavy. It takes farms and stuff to run a farm.
Speaker: It takes time to grow organic. it You just don't go up and I can't get them understand you just don't go up one day go plant a crop and say it's organic. why does it feel important to you to be certified organic and not just grow with organic practices?
Speaker: Well, I feel that People will be more healthy if you go organic. and With all this chemical and this food and stuff. And when you eat the food, later on it cause cancer.
Speaker: Yeah, I 100% feel it's very important to become organic. Yeah. Everybody in a America can become organic. The neighbor's on the street, the neighbor behind me, all us need to go with organic.
Speaker: We're killing the land and don't even know it. And we got rich land. We own rich land. But once you put that chemical on, we ain't got enough that land to score that. I think one thing is that people are starting to use the term regenerative here. And that's not defined.
Speaker: And so it means very different things. to When you say people, do you mean like the conventional farmers in the area? The conventional farmers in the area are going to use that term. And so i think that's why it's a little worrisome for people to just say, oh, I'm using organic practices. Well, what does that mean if you're not certified? Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. I mean, hopefully there people are being honest. I'm not saying that they're not. It's just... because we're seeing that with the regenerative word, it's questionable, I think.
Speaker: Do you have a a sense of what needs to happen for it to be possible for you to farm organically? Yes.
Speaker: um Clean the land up. Yeah. And we can move forward. Until we clean the land up, We're going to still fighting. We're going to be just like a truck stuck in the mud spending our time.
Speaker: And I'm tired of getting stuck. I want to move forward.
Speaker: That's a morbid sense. I do think the top program being a little bit more accessible to us on the east side of Arkansas would be, I mean, it's great that this event is happening tomorrow, but it's really not about organic. We're going ask organic questions. Yeah. ah But Most things are happening on the northwest corner, which definitely needs support. And we're all for them getting, but um I don't know if that's true in other states in the Midwest where there's like certain parts of the state where it's easier to be organic or there's more support for organic. And and we've loved the support that we've gotten from CAF has been wonderful. um
Speaker: But yeah, it's just, we're kind of isolated over here. Yeah. Yeah. But it's just hard to get people who understand the process because there's so few people here that have done it.
Speaker: And people get mixed information and they need to make money. so But also Martin grew up with his grandparents and his parents using certain practices of farming that he does when he's growing things.
Speaker: Um, like he uses the fish guts. Um, I don't know, for some of the other things that you do that. Fish guts and, uh, we used to chicken manure. All these things that not got chemicals in them.
Speaker: And we used to fish eggs. We used to use them. lot of stuff like that we would use mostly uh, get eggs from the buffaloes.
Speaker: We would put them in the ground and that's great soil. Buffalo fish. Buffalo fish. Oh, okay. That dragled and connect them in the gri plant your pain You collect your seeds.
Speaker: See, there's new things I learned. I didn't even know that. But so that kind of stuff, is it okay to use it now when it's hard to know how contaminated the water is, how contaminated the fish are from all the chemicals?
Speaker: Yeah. right in a year Many years can pass now. Things ain't like what it used to be. Yeah. And yet that's better fertilizer than the current whatever fertilizer people are using. More natural versions of things. Yeah.
Speaker: Martin, do you do you feel like there are um other people in your community who also have the memories of of farming in that way? or are you do you feel sort of like you are one of the like remaining keepers of of this kind of agricultural practices? I'm one of the main keepers. ah Some of em them don't talk about it, they don't focus on it, but I always had that in me from day one. That's how I he and kept my green thumb long as I done kept it. you know
Speaker: But I don't have many people to do it anymore. Yeah, but you have your little nieces and nephews that live behind you that you're teaching them. about Yeah, I'm teaching them. My niece and nephew, I'm teaching them how to grow. then And I'm teaching them, and I let them plant them a couple rows of peas.
Speaker: I let them plant some watermelon on them. And they're back yard and show them how to do it and how to chop it. in are they a agreed Are they excited about it? Oh yeah. No, they love it.
Speaker: They came out and picked peas with me. That's the thing you're teaching a child how to feed, how to feed yourself. He'll feed himself for a lifetime. We are headed back to those days again.
Speaker: We're going to have to get the chicken back on the yard. We're going to have to probably get a pig on the yard, the way inflation got. Yeah. No, we're going to have to get the sweet potatoes, everything, and can it like my grandmama used to do. They can everything.
Speaker: Can okra, they can peas, soup. They can it. That's what they call the old landmark. That's the tile I gave. Let's go back to the old landmark where we used to take the peaches and then can them and make pear preserve, make jelly.
Speaker: Go back to where we used to grow stuff. Old landmark. That's why I called it the old landmark. Go back to where we used to grow and stuff and make a change.
Speaker: Yeah. when When a lot of stuff to kill off our crops, you know. I know it can be done because I've done it. I was raised up doing it.
Speaker: Yeah. My mama had eight boys, a five boys, and three girls. Two second twins in the year part. wow are they Are they supportive of your farming dreams?
Speaker: Oh, yes. Yeah. Yes, most definitely, most definitely. Yeah.
Speaker: How did you first meet Martin and Jennifer? Yeah, so early on when we were announcing the top program, Jennifer was very interested. She was one of the early contacts where she was asking, know, how could we provide support?
Speaker: We were brainstorming ideas. She was talking about the the difficulties of organic farming in the Delta. What was your reaction to to her initial reaching out?
Speaker: Yeah, that's a steep hill you're climbing. That's my reaction. More power to you. ah that's i don't know. I could be a little jaded.
Speaker: ah And I just, i and I know the difficulties of um even just simply trying to grow specialty crops.
Speaker: vegetable crops in the Delta. um There are difficulties just with that, with all the the drift, all the dicamba drift, um let alone you know trying to grow organically and pursue certification. Yeah, there are just a lot of structural barriers and roadblocks.
Speaker: What goes into getting certified organic that that is hard in that region or would be hard in that region? The main issue is is drift um from herbicides. As I mentioned, dicamba will be sprayed aerially.
Speaker: And so, you know, as an organic farmer, you're not just worried about your crops themselves being damaged by that herbicide, um but you're also concerned about there being herbicide residue on your produce that would disqualify that produce from being certified organic. It's part of kind of ah the process to ensure organic integrity where, you know, crops may and can be tested.
Speaker: so an organic farmer risks putting putting all this effort into an organic crop that they might experience yield loss because of herbicide drift or their certification might be um invalidated because of herbicide drift. And this is something, i mean, beyond their control.
Speaker: Within... within Organic practice, there is ah a concept of having buffer zones around a farm to protect the organic farm from, from say, neighboring conventional farms.
Speaker: um where yes, there there might be there might be a drift and so farmers would you know maybe plant a ah windbreak ah of of trees or some kind of perennial that could somehow you know stop that that drift from a neighboring farm.
Speaker: But when when the herbicide is sprayed by airplanes, And when the herbicide, it will it will volatilize. I mean, it'll become a vapor and it can it can drift for miles and settle on a crop.
Speaker: It is nearly impossible to establish buffer zones in that circumstance. and And I mean, there's even been talk about growing organic crops in high tunnels. But once that dicamba volatilizes, it can just be pulled in, um you know, through the ventilation system.
Speaker: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Martin and Jennifer have talked ah a lot about the um like actual danger of trying to advocate for organic in that part of the state. Is that something that you see in your own work? Or like can you can you speak to that at all of like what you've seen around the culture of of um yeah have like pesticide use and spraying?
Speaker: ah Can you explain the nature of the danger they're talking about? Yeah, they're talking about um social ostracization and then also threats.
Speaker: Threats on Martin's life.
Speaker: I can see that. I know that, i mean, there was even someone killed ah because of the debate around regulating dicamba.
Speaker: um These issues become very heated because... Honestly, there's a lot of money on the line for agriculture in the Delta.
Speaker: um This is something, it is not my world. I i don't know all the ins and outs, but i i completely believe that.
Speaker: Arkansas is still a very agricultural state. Agriculture is our kind of number one economic driver. And so because of that, Agriculture policy gets very political.
Speaker: and And the people who can control agricultural policy just have a lot of power in the state. And so i can completely understand how once you start advocating for organic production in that area, you know what that means is somehow kind of controlling um current production,
Speaker: which you have just, you know, very powerful people wanting things to stay the way they are.
Speaker: Martin, I'll ask you maybe to describe, this is a a dreaming question, but sounds like you're a dreamer. So um I'm wondering if, you know, and in in the the future that you're fighting for, can you can you describe what your your hometown is like in 50 years? It's frightening.
Speaker: It's frightening just because when we see it now.
Speaker: got some difficulties here. And that's why I say it's frightening. But if you're, when your niece and nephew are grown, do you, what would you hope that it would look like? Well, when they grown, I hope it'll be that better, you Yeah. And what would it look like? It's going to be good when I teach them, when I install them, what I'm going install in them, because I'm going to install them, I'm going get to go install them how to work, how to grow their crops.
Speaker: I'm not going to leave them forsaken. Hopefully we'll be made it back to the old landmarks the next 50 years. I might not be here to see it. But I'm going to leave something behind in them for them be able to see it.
Speaker: Thank you to Martin and Jennifer and Luke for their time and for trusting me with this story. The Taproot Project is produced by me, Kate Cowie-Haskell.
Speaker: The Taproot Project is an initiative of the Midwest Transition to Organic Partnership Program, a project funded by the USDA National Organic Program to support transitioning in organic producers with mentorship and technical assistance and to grow the greater organic community.
Speaker: You can learn more at organictransition.org.
