FOOD JUSTICE: SERVED FRESH FROM COMMUNITY FARMS

Inspired by Black Rootz and Go Grow With Love in London // Photography by Arpita Shah // Poetry by Zena Edwards // Exhibited with Photo Fringe at ONCA Gallery in Brighton and on Buildhollywood billboards across North London

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‘TINCTURE’

Words by Hot Poet Zena Edwards
Photography by Arpita Shah
Inspired by Black Rootz and Go Grow With Love

And, in a community garden in North London
sumptuous, fecund soil sends a charge of good energy through the soles
of a brown-skinned barefoot baby, learning that dirt is not just dirt.
“Women who lead with the land” plant light fragrant Cho Cho, milky Soursop,
magenta fire skinned Dragon Fruit, cream fleshed Sweet Potato, Cane.

The Women who leaven kitchen scraps for sprouting
Sun-earth root vegetables speak gently with lilting patois tongue
with love, encouragement to the soil. To patiently restore ritual practice,
they pray: Come, seed and grain, fruit, root! Bulk in body
against these colder climes, push through!

And they work the land some more for a generation
of melanated microbiomes, young and disoriented crashing along concrete pavements –
city worn, and in confusion. In need, of cultural fusion.  Unification: slow calming Caribbean tradition with the conflicting existence
of a fast-paced race to assemble a whole face in a strange land,
on land estranged. So the women say – It’s all Earth! Reclaim! Work this land with us, with love!

Return the children to soil, to humus, dark bark, clay and bone,
mycobacterium vaccae – good bacteria feeding mycelia- nature’s social media,
ancient broadcasting of hidden histories of home seed, grain, fruit and root
before colonial botanists began blowing up the cornerstones of culture,
balanced boulders of Indigenous backbones. Wisdom brought by boat, by foot
hidden in the Dreadlocks and braids of Men Indigenes who protect and heal.

Earth’s insight in the breast milk of Mother Storytellers who listen to the speaking scent of land
to the crumbling of soil between fingers, hold it to the nostrils of teens
to teach their taste buds the beginning. “Open young eyes to what you have never seen:
a purple tomato or a grape with a seed, or a scotch bonnet hanging from the vine.
And, when the streetlights pop on, there are koras, violas
and the precious patter of Djembe drums playing in a grow tunnel in North London, singing

in Latina and creole in the cactus house, incanting the tincture of cultural resilience.
And in the autumn dusk, a drop of Chinese sorghum, sweet cane
iron, magnesium, potassium rich, is placed on the lips of baby Isiah.
And he smiles in rapture with so much oxygen and women’s laughter
and the soft words of Elders warming the chilled air,
who deftly de-pulp sacred seeds, fifty generations strong, from orange pumpkin melba.

Miraculous seeds, to be handed to the next in line,
so they can eat their culture, be nourished by its soil strong song,
making sure they are brave to plant in winter and ready for harvest,
in a future of growing food that has already come.

ABOUT THIS STORY

Two growing projects are tending to injustices in the food system.

Sandra Salazar D’eca founded Go Grow With Love in Tottenham and Enfield, to support women of African and Caribbean heritage in nurturing a reciprocal relationship with local land.

In Haringey, Paulette Henry, Pamela Shor and their team are empowering communities to grow their own. Black Rootz is the UK’s first multigenerational, Black-led growing enterprise, reconnecting Londoners with seed, ancestral knowledge and earth.

This holistic approach cultivates more than crops; by rooting BPOC people to the land, Sandra, Paulette and Pamela are growing grassroots solutions for racial equality, land reparations and food sovereignty.

“We grow food because we are part of the earth and the earth is part of us. Our ancestors taught us to protect the land, and we all have a duty to future generations to live in balance with nature.”
Pamela Shor, Black Rootz

HEAR FROM OUR CONTRIBUTORS

“Being able to connect food with communities allows them to understand heritage, allows them to understand power, it allows us to share. ”

– Pamela Shor, Black Rootz

Hear from the women using ancestral food growing to cultivate communities, with love, in London:

Regenerative Conversation: Black-led Community Farming

ONE THING YOU CAN DO

Get your hands dirty

If you are local to these incredible projects, you can support by signing up to volunteer with Black Rootz or Go Grow With Love.

Cultivate change

If you’re inspired by this story from further afield, we have partnered with The Landworkers’ Alliance, who offer pathways for becoming part of an agroecological system that furthers social and environmental justice.