WHY WE NEED LAND Written by Benu Amun-Ra
Without air, we can’t breathe. Without water, we’ll eventually die. Without land, to grow the food we need to eat, our survival is bleak. We are killing ourselves…literally. These are facts. Food is medicine. Another fact. Everything we need to survive comes from the relationships we establish on this planet we call home. In fact, I was taught at a young age that we are the embodiment of the Earth. We are made from the same materials, oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, phosphorus and like our planet we are 70 percent water. It’s why we make the best compost and return to the earth as fertile materials because we are not separate from our ‘mother.’ We are the land! It’s why we have such a strong connection to it and why some cultures will go to war over it. It’s why we continue to kill each other to possess it, instead of understanding that it’s always been a part of us and we a part of it. We need to change the way we look at ‘owning’ land. If you want to get religious, we were made to be ‘custodians’ of the land and the animals that live upon it as they are our family members too. We were meant to be ‘caretakers,’ but we got fired from that job long ago when we started looking at it as a limitless resource from which we can only profit. Do we really loathe ourselves so much to continue exploiting ourselves into utter self-destruction? I can understand why the youth feel that the future is a waste because we have taken so much that there will be nothing left for them. They have long been ‘woke’ to that fact and why the mental health crisis continues to rise. Back to land, back to us being in relationship with ourselves, which is this planet we call home. My whole life is tied to land. Both my parents are the products of slavery and are generational farmers. My father is African American, and my mother is South Korean. I am a farmer and a seed saver. I take pride in saying that statement. It defines a small part of me, but it also speaks volumes to the heritage that created me. I am grateful that I have come into the knowledge of my ancestors to see we’ve been led astray to think we were ever separate from the land. That
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December 2022 | Op-Ed
Indigenous wisdom of reciprocity and belonging is at the core of being a farmer and custodian of the soil. Which would explain why in just the United States alone, eighty percent of rented farmland (283 million acres, 30 percent of all farmland) is owned by those that use it in agricultural production but are not actively involved in farming.1 That’s a lot of land not to be connected to. A little backstory about my struggle with gaining access to grow and be with the land. My family held a small acre in Fort Collins, Colorado in an area known as Horsetooth Reservoir and Open Space. The land was located near Poudre Canyon and precisely across from one of the largest water resources in that area but there was an irony to this situation. In order for our farm to be viable we needed access to the main water line which was on the other side of the main road. That meant we had to pay for that water access by boring underneath the road, work with engineers, obtain permits, city approval along with community meetings with neighbors to give the ‘go ahead’ for the disruption it was going to cause. That would cost us more than what the land was actually valued at and with the increasing taxes due to property values going up caused by gentrification, our family wouldn’t be able to keep up. Once the pandemic hit in 2020, Fort Collins became one of the most coveted places to live in the western US and after a failed GoFundMe campaign to raise money to support our efforts, we were left with little choice but to sell it.2 My struggles as a woman of color, a single parent and the caregiver of an adult child that lives with multiple disabilities, I have seen my share of systemic ‘isms’ that perpetuate inequities. It is the purpose behind my advocacy and why I fervently am an agent of change. Farmers of color, immigrant farmers, and female farmers, who typically have smaller farms receive less government support than any other farmer. The 2018 Farm Bill continues to maintain discriminatory practices and in doing so, will inevitably fall short of structurally transforming the U.S. food system. It is my hope