Healing the trauma of Black land loss through regenerative rice production
Konda Mason is co-founder and president of Jubilee Justice, a non-profit dedicated to regenerative agriculture, racial justice, cooperative practices, and healing the wounds of Black American land loss and racism. They are in the fourth year of a rice-growing program, the system of rice intensification (SRI), a dry-land technique for growing rice that’s healthy for land and consumers and efficient and productive for farmers. They have built a mill and are actively working toward a vertically integrated business model to provide domestic, regeneratively produced rice varieties.
Shownotes
2’26 how Jubilee Justice started
3’04 land, race, money, and spirit
6’26 the idea of creating a cohort of Black farmers to provide US grown rice
7’30 what SRI –– the system of rice intensification –– looks like
10’22 how they control weeds using cover crops and hay
15’32 rice is one of the main staple crops in the world and plays a big role in methane emissions. by using dryland rice farming they emit less methane
17’25 different varieties of rice
18’26 built a mill
19’02 Black farmers throughout the Southeastern US
20’10 rice loves heat and has thrived in the South for centuries
22’09 Arkansas is currently the rice capital of the US
23’00 rice as part of regenerative agriculture
24’22 using no-till methods as much as possible
25’42 the process of learning, trial and error, and experimentation
27’34 the economic reasons for having a mill
28’34 figuring out how to do cooperatives
32’36 the sad state of Black farm land ownership today
33’50 there are no cell phones recording racism in rural America
37’00 how we treat the land and how we treat each other are the same…it’s regeneration or exploitation, not both
39’25 healing from history as well as looking forward
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