What is one practice you’re cultivating that’s connected to the Black food sovereignty and liberation movement?

The work I’m involved in starts in Richmond, Virginia, specifically in formerly redlined neighborhoods. I focus on developing regenerative, alternative agricultural spaces to increase community agency and access to healthy food. These neighborhoods face some of the most explicit challenges of environmental justice.

Over the years, pollution has concentrated in the soil, whether from homes built with asbestos, mercury, and lead-based paint, or from buildings that have been torn down. Many of these neighborhoods are also positioned in proximity to major highways, where pollution from cars and trucks is prevalent, or they are downwind from harmful industries like battery smelting plants and chemical factories. Black communities were intentionally partitioned off into areas that weren’t the healthiest in terms of the environment.

In response, I’ve been working to develop urban agricultural training spaces with remediated soil to grow food that’s safe. While a community garden is important, it’s insufficient to grow on the scale necessary to truly feed our community. Therefore, we use the community garden as a training space, an entryway into a larger practice of market farming and grander community farming.

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Did someone teach you this practice, or did you cultivate it on your own?

I got into this work through relationships with Black farmers. I started working with them at our annual Happily Natural Day Festival, where they were vendors selling produce and value-added products. They became my mentors. I would later aggregate their produce and sell it in the hood. If you sit with a farmer for six hours a week, you’re going to talk about growing. I learned a lot by listening and engaging in investigative dialogue with those farmers between 2008 and 2012.

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Are there any ancestors or elders whose wisdom you draw from in your practice?

Every summer, every Saturday, I would connect with elder Black farmers and aggregate their produce for sale to the community. We would talk about everything from the difference between hybrid and GMO crops to when to plant, how to build healthy soil, and growing food instead of lawns. We also discussed their experiences with biological warfare and the Vietnam War, among many other topics. In the course of these conversations, we talked about issues with soil in the city. That’s where I first learned about farming as a tool for Black liberation. Later, I learned how to mitigate the pollution prevalent in urban soils through soil remediation—a practice of cleansing the soil.

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Duron’s Steps to Remediate Soil for Thriving Garden Training Spaces

• Conduct a soil test to assess the level of contamination of the soil you plan to steward.
• Cover the growing area with high-quality geotextile fabric to block contact with contaminated soil and create a safe foundation for planting.
• Decide on your growing system (rows, raised beds, or boxed beds) to safely define and organize your planting training areas.
• Layer 2 to 3 sheets of cardboard over the geotextile fabric, then cover it with branches or wood chips to build a protective, plantable foundation.
• Add a growing medium like compost or a mix of compost and topsoil.
• Build your raised bed at least 12 inches high to give crops, especially root vegetables, enough space for healthy root development. 
• Once you’ve built these garden training spaces, use them to teach. Welcome your community into those learnings—so that, in time, they may carry these seeds of knowledge into the wider fields of peri-urban and rural life.