Urban Agriculture and Food Justice Take Root in New Haven

Farmer D sees in urban agriculture the revolutionary potential to ensure that all communities are able to eat fresh, nutritious produce, and one of Root Life’s first campaigns was to find ways to bring a typically rural practice to an urban environment. “If you take a farm of acres and acres and map it on a city, it’s the size of a whole neighborhood. But even though the space in that neighborhood is shared by many different people, there are still ways to grow there. People in the community might [each] be paying a different landlord or mortgage, but the community can have a lot of collective productivity in shared spaces. In a way, it might be better than a traditional farm, because there are all these hands to share the work and to connect to a common goal.”

Although the growing and tending of plants are usually the focus of a community garden, for Farmer D, the “community” aspect is equally essential. “We all need to know how to grow our food, learn more about what we put into our bodies, and better appreciate the people who feed us.” The dozens of raised beds in New Haven’s Armory community garden show that philosophy at work, with kale and collard greens waving in the breeze as neighbors walk by and exchange cordial words.

It was with community in mind that Farmer D cofounded his next project, Love Fed New Haven, a food sovereignty organization in New Haven, along with Raven Blake. Love Fed’s mission is to restore means and production of food to the hands of the community in order to give them broader power over what they eat. To that end, their flagship initiative is their home farm program, in which New Haven residents are provided with a raised-bed garden, seedlings, and ongoing education and technical skills to support increased food sovereignty through home agriculture. The organization has installed over 60 growing beds this year. “Love Fed allowed me to see what Root Life could be on a larger scale. As a nonprofit, it allows for funding for things to happen and to do what I was already doing, but on a much larger scale.” The organization has since added educational initiatives and programming, a CSA program, and several community gardens to its activities.

Farmer D’s most recent endeavor is Root Life Organic Media, a media company designed to “highlight sustainable lifestyles in general, including not just agriculture, but anything sustainability related – even sustainable architecture!” Beyond sustainability, its mission is to honor communities long left out of broad narratives about agriculture by highlighting underrepresented or misrepresented communities in the media. “We’re giving them the opportunity and training to tell those stories in a real way and in an organic way,” Farmer D says, “organic, meaning nothing added beyond the raw footage. I’m highlighting real things, real services, and what it means to live sustainably and push the earth forward in a positive way.” Through documentaries, including his current project, Grow Green: A Documentary On CT Agri(Culture), custom-made social media, and other means, Farmer D highlights local, sustainable, and organic initiatives, making his community healthier, one day at a time.

His versatile set of skills has enabled Farmer D to thrive in the pandemic; despite this year’s hurdles, his business has been expanding. He credits “the amount of energy around living healthy, no matter where you’re at,” for the surge of new interest in his offerings. “There’s been an influx of people wanting to have workshops, coming around the community gardens, and donating.” Health is clearly on the mind of New Haveners, he says. “There’s a lot of value in eating healthy and living in a healthy way. People want to take things into their own hands. In the city, people have to work less [due to COVID-19] – for better or for worse – but this is something they can control, and that can improve their way of living.” It’s an exciting time to start a garden and to help others start theirs.