This is an interview with Christa Núñez about issues of food access in Tompkins County. Local resources mentioned by her will be added to the Resources page.

Julia Amos (Interviewer):
Well, I was thinking just to start as an introduction, I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the learning farm and Khuba international since you're involved in both of those.

Christa Núñez:
Sure. We can even talk about CCMCAN Cooperative Media, since the media is connected to the two of those as well. They kind of form a triumvirate of forces around land justice. Do you just want me to talk about them?

Interviewer:
Yeah, it would be nice to hear what your involvement in all of those is, and how you're involved in our local food system through them.

Núñez:
Sure. So, I'll start with the learning farm. It's teaching people agriculture on a teaching farm, where we grow a number of food crops primarily focused on perennials, but also many vegetables, fruits, and annuals in there as well. We provide food to the community and through a sort of home delivery as well as a U-pick for community members to come, harvest food and learn about how to grow their own food and how to access land. We also educate youth through our after-school and summer programming. It's just an outdoor nature and farm-focused education curriculum that we've developed to really help young people engage and feel comfortable on the land and as vital parts of our food system; that's the Learning Farm.

Núñez:
Khuba International is the nonprofit arm of the partnership and we fundraise to purchase land for mission farmers who have been separated from land through systemic racism and oppression and are looking to create new lives as stewards of land and farmers. And we also have the Quarter Acre for the People project, which is a Khuba International project. And we also have a literacy initiative called Ubuntu Library where we distribute a book a month to young people grades K through 12 to grow home libraries with a focus on students that don't have high quality reading materials at home that adequately reflect the beauty of their culture. We provide those books along the lines of gardening and farming, social justice, and environment and climate education.

Núñez:
And let's see, we also have the Farming for Freedom Trail initiative within Khuba, where we connect farmers of color to one another and provide information to tourists who want to support and get to know BIPOCBlack, Indigenous, People of Color farmers in the area. It's a tourist trail that's launching later this summer with a website and there'll be yearly freedom path event where visitors can visit each of the farms and get their path dance, and basically have a party and have food and dance music and inspiration festivity once a year where all the farms come together and do that for the community. And the equitable and edible farm school is our school initiative where we develop farm infrastructure at local elementary schools, and middle and high schools will be in the future, but right now we've develop it on elementary schools. And so we have hoop houses and chicken coops and we do farm and garden and equity education within the school to support students learning in food systems and nutrition and you know, land and environment stewardship.

Núñez:
And then, last but not least is the CAN Cooperative Media, which is the media arm of the partnership where we support school districts in their media needs, helping students tell stories. And we also create documentaries and other short form video projects that highlight the lives of farmers and people who are new to land and farming and basically help uplift untold stories in our community.

Interviewer:
Awesome. Yeah. So you're clearly very involved in both our local food system in general and also in community outreach. So I wanted to talk a little bit about food insecurity and food sovereignty here in Tompkins county. According to feeding America, almost 12,000 people here in Tomkins county are food insecure,Food insecurity is when someone cannot reliably access the food they need. and parts of the city of Ithaca are also categorized as a food desertA food desert is an area where it is hard to get healthy, affordable food. Food deserts are defined by many different criteria depending on the research being done. according to the USDA. I was wondering about your take on why these issues of food access are so prevalent in our community.

Núñez:
Why they're so prevalent, the reasons why?

Interviewer:
Yeah.

Núñez:
Yeah. Well, I think the simple answer is racism. There's been a long history in the United States and in New York state, and in upstate New York in particular that people of color have been systemically separated, redlined, and excluded from land ownership and have been forced into urban areas, and have been forced out of neighborhoods that have been able to create wealth for other groups. And whenever you separate people, groups of people from land, you separate them from the ability to feed themselves in a dignity-affirming way. And you control what they eat, how they can access food to consolidate further how [inaudible] into the hands of the few and you make it challenging for people to have agency. People then are going to have really growing disparities of food access as a result of segregation where you're empowering few and disenfranchising many and those types of insecurities, food being one of them, but also education, employment, and housing are also categories of, human life that are impacted by those practices. But the answer is just racism. How government and business and banking, and housing entities, real estate entities, have been locked up for a number of centuries around how Black people can live and where they can live.

Interviewer:
Mm-Hmm, Yeah. That's a really important point. I was wondering what, what sort of governmental or societal changes would you like- What would you hope to see change in the near future, when it comes to improving access to those things and fighting disenfranchisement in general?

Núñez:
Yeah. I'd like to see more of an investment in land governance in communities of color, in poor communities. I'd like the programs and projects that government have instituted around housing to shift to being more land gifting to impoverished communities. So rather than siloing people into terrible substandard housing in urban areas, I like the government and other entities to focus on how to give land access, food, growing land, access to communities that are at food risk.

Interviewer:
What do you feel that individuals should be doing to affect change in their communities when it comes to helping others improve access and helping our food system in general?

Núñez:
Yeah. Individuals can do a lot. I think sometimes we, as individuals think that our hands are tied because there's only so much that a single person can do, but coalitions of like-minded people who are focused on land justice can do a lot. I think there's a myriad of things that could happen. One of which is voting; really getting to the polls and voting for people with an agenda of equity and inclusion around land access and housing and food would be primary, and not just sort of the major candidates who seem to be liberal or progressive, but really candidates who have a clear agenda that's been identified to help poor people access land and property, and really having clear goals and plans for making it easier for, people to become farmers if they wish to be farmers. And in succession planning and other projects within our state to connect poor people with land.

Núñez:
I think another one is for people who own land, gift it to aspiring farmers of color, or create a succession plan that would provide for land governance for BIPOC people with the land that you'd be passing on. If you don't own land, you could come together with others who want to make a difference in this... to make a plan together on how we will work on and support a community based agenda, around food justice, and land justice in your area. Together groups of people, again, can be very powerful in creating programs and opportunities for people. If we put our heads together, we're much more effective than we are alone.

Interviewer:
That's a really good point. I also wanted to ask about food deserts specifically. Some people have used the term food desert to determine places where they feel new grocery stores and food related businesses should be introduced. Other sources I've found have said that the concept of food deserts in general is flawed because it overlooks smaller community resources. And, and that sort of just introducing grocery stores is, is ineffective in a lot of places. So I was wondering what do you think of the concept of food deserts and when it comes to approaching places where there's less access to food, like, what do you feel is the best approach?

Núñez:
Yeah, I think food desert is kind of a misnomer because the word desert seems like it's sort of natural occurrence. I think we do ourselves a disservice when we don't attribute the circumstances to their origins and really make connections of they came about; it didn't just happen. It's food apartheid. It's basically separating people based on race many times, and along financial lines; separating poor people and people of color from food sources has been intentional. So the idea of hoarding food or food apartheid seems more appropriate to me or, you know, food segregation. I think we're more familiar with the word segregation in this country than apartheid, which was a South African name for that system. But you know, in the states we're used to segregation. So, call it what you will, but it's something that we should understand where it comes from.

Núñez:
So if we're going to solve the problem it was created because of racism and we have to solve it through reparations that are race based, because you can't really solve a problem without really attacking it head on and approaching it from the [inaudible]. And then I think the best ways to take getting food to people is to allow them to grow it and have control of how it's grown themselves. It's really, for me, the only answer. So putting grocery stores in urban areas is a temporary solution, and I think if it can be done, it should be done because people are living in, or are forced to live in urban areas because of the systems that I spoke about earlier, then yes, grocery stores are a necessity, so people can actually eat while we find our way out of what has been caused by Black segregation, redlining, and systemic urbanization. Also just the cost-- my very intelligent daughter is sitting with me just stated-- dealing with the cost of food has a lot to do with how it's grown, where it's grown; distribution models. And so again, getting people on land, getting community with one another in a much more direct relationship with how food is grown and where, and how they're obtaining it is the clear answer of of how to make more food available to people who are food insecure.

Interviewer: I think that's a really great point. And you've been very involved in multiple projects that are focused on improving people's involvement with how food is grown and their personal access to those sort of things. How do you feel that your experiences with those different forms of community engagement have changed or shaped your perspective on issues of food access?

Núñez:
Yeah, that's a great question. I think that connection with community members who are engaged [inaudible] is an immense blessing and a gift and I believe that all of my opinions and thoughts about this have been informed by community members working in food justice. And I've garnered knowledge and deepened my understanding of food systems through talking with and getting input from, and guidance from my colleagues in this realm when we get together, have our feasts and our spaces where we have conversations; we have gatherings and workshops. And we are constantly learning from each other, and I learn all the time just by talking to the people who collaborate with, I learned from the folks at Youth Farm project. I learn from the folks at Groundswell. I learn from the folks at Children's Garden. I'm learning constantly from people at CCE, and Global Development. And I'm learning constantly from the local farmers that I work with at Rocky Acres Community Farm and working with [inaudible] farm and West Haven farm. There's a number of local farms we work closely with-- Rootwork Herbals; the BIPOC community garden. Those are all folks that we are linked with and that we hear from, and that we are enriched by, in our knowledge of these things.

Interviewer:
Yeah. I'll have to link all of those when I put this transcript together. I think those were all of my structured questions, but is there anything else about our local food system or food access that maybe I left out that-- yeah, is there anything else that you feel that people should know?

Núñez:
No, I think you asked great questions. I think I got it all out. Thank you so much.

Interviewer:
Thank you. I appreciate you taking the time to do this.