Farming while Black

Black Outdoors

March 29

Travelling around rural Canada, I often meet Black people working the land. They weed. They plant. They harvest. Crops like grapes, apples and beans. The Black people are farm labourers. Finding Black farmers in Canada is as rare as a fertile mule.

The labourers are hired on the Seasonal Agriculture Workers Program (SWAP), from the Caribbean, and Central and South America. They arrive in Canada each May and leave in October. They are cheap labour; easy to hire and easier to fire. I have met agricultural labourers who have worked in Canada for almost 20 years – one season at a time. Under SWAP they are ineligible for citizenship.

The racialisation of farming is stark in Canada: White farmers own the land; Black and brown labourers work the land.

The National Farmers Union is "Canada's national farm organization committed to family farmers," according to its website. It recently started a BIPOC Working Group, which aims to increase the number of Black, Indigenous and people of colour in farming.

It must be said that farming is part of the settler-colonial complex in Canada. The plants and animals on a typical Canadian farm are not native to the country, but arrived with the White settlers in their ships of colonialism. The farm crops grow on stolen Indigenous land. The long history of Black farmers in Canada is tied to the legacies of settler-colonialism and slavery. Some of the Black farmers were enslaved, some were free.

There were generations of free Black farmers who once owned the land that they worked. Here, I am thinking of the Black rural communities that once stretched out across the country in the 1800s. In Ontario it was the Black communities in places like Guelph, Windsor and Collingwood. They were Black farmers on the east coast, in the middle of the country on the Prairies, and on the west coast.

So, what happened to the Black farmers?

They were gradually pushed out of farming due to the usual. In other words, racism. They had no access to credit or loans to improve the farms, to buy the seeds and supplies, or transport crops to market. Yet, despite these barriers some Black farmers thrived, and others managed to eke out a living. However, when the farm land became valuable to White people, speculators and government policies worked together to remove the Black farmers. The same pressure in the USA means that there is a 90 per cent drop in the number of Black farmers. In Canada the drop is closer to 99.99 per cent.

Today, most Black farmers in Canada operate urban farms. For example, in Toronto these include Akachi Farms, Lucky Bug Farm, and Black Creek Community Farm. These urban farms grow culturally-appropriate herbs, fruits and vegetables for the community.

Rural family farm ownership remains as white as the snow in Canada. To create access to rural farm ownership, Black farmers need government support in the form of land grants. It is the same kind of support that was given to White farmers.