On a scorching August day in Southside Richmond, beneath a wooden pergola at Sankofa Community Orchard, Duron Chavis finds a bit of shade and respite from decades of figurative mountain moving in the name of food and social justice, climate resilience and Black liberation. 

“This is a place of peace and a healing space,” Chavis said of the 5 acre tract of city-owned land Sankofa occupies. “This is our playground where we experiment with everything from renewable energy, stormwater management, regenerative agriculture; this is our oasis.”

The agricultural practices Chavis and a dedicated team of volunteers use at Sankofa reflect the advent of an agricultural movement centered on uplifting the work and challenges of Black farmers and earth workers nationwide. The media has highlighted important issues like food deserts in majority-Black neighborhoods and discriminatory lending practices that block Black farmers from success. Underneath it all is a push for access to and ownership of land.

In the span of the 20th century, Black families lost 90% of the land they owned, approximately 16 million acres. Though the economic impacts of those losses are staggering, they aren’t incalculable: a study released earlier this year by the American Bar Association found their cumulative value was $326 billion.

Growing forward: Facing historic and modern challenges, Virginia’s black farmers look to bolster ranks and grow their communities

Even that, the organization reported, was a conservative estimate based on county-level census data from 17 states that contained the bulk of Black acreage, including Virginia. That land loss, and the inability to pass the land on to future generations of Black people, undergird America’s present-day wealth gap. 

Today, white Americans “make 73 percent more in annual income, are nearly two times more likely to own their homes, hold ten times more wealth, and are 28 times more likely to become millionaires than Black Americans,” RAND Corporation researchers found in May. 

Chavis and other area Black farmers joined with the Massachusetts-based Agrarian Land Trust last year in a series of efforts to return land to the hands of African Americans in central Virginia. Among the group was Renard Turner, owner and operator of Louisa County’s Vanguard Ranch and a celebrated agricultural leader, and fifth-generation Orange County farmer and agricultural educator Michael Carter, Jr. Along with Chavis and others, both men are founding board members of the Central Virginia Agrarian Commons, which is overseen by the Agrarian Land Trust. 

The Agrarian Land Trust helped broker an 80-acre land donation to the Commons as part of what Chavis called “an act of reparative justice.” 

“Basically, a white woman who grew up in Amelia and didn’t have any kids wanted to make sure her land went back to Black people, because it had been a plantation where people were enslaved,” he explained. 

That white woman, Callie Walker, gave the 80 acres of land she inherited from her family because, she stated on the group’s website, her ownership of it was “a responsibility and a calling to find others who will nurture the land itself, the food it can grow and the people it can feed.” 

The trust has overseen other acquisitions as well, including the purchase of 5 acres of land in Petersburg, which the Central Virginia Agrarian Commons is now leasing at low or no cost to Black agriculturists like Natasha Crawford of Healing Hope Urban Gardens and Tyrone Cherry of Petersburg Oasis CommUNITY Farm, whose efforts to grow food, expand green space and educate youth offer major benefits to the region, Chavis said.

All of this is “land-based reparations, and a model for other organizations to follow,” Chavis said. “One of the biggest impasses for Black and brown people farming is lack of land and lack of capital to buy it. So we are removing those barriers from the equation.” There are more parcels available for anyone who wants to get their hands dirty. 

The Central Virginia Agrarian Commons’ work will be highlighted at this year’s milestone Happily Natural Day, a festival Chavis founded 20 years ago to celebrate African diasporic culture, holistic health and Black beauty in a world dominated by Eurocentric beauty standards. This year’s festival, which will run Aug. 25 to 27, will include a guided tour of four Black-owned urban farms in central Virginia, panel discussions on racial, social and land justice work in the region and beyond, at least 40 local vendors and a performance by Hip Hop pioneers Dead Prez. The festival will conclude Sunday with Another Black and Beautiful Brunch at Sankofa Orchard, featuring a vegan feast prepared with community-grown foods and activities including yoga, art, and live music.

With a basket of glistening purple eggplants that he probably picked in view on a nearby table, Chavis says Happily Natural Day is a “best of” celebration of his and other Black agriculturalists’ ongoing work, like the 12-week Central Virginia Urban Farm Fellowship, which is designed to foster more Black and Hispanic growers. Brook Road Youth Farm is another endeavor, helmed by a youth training program that offers mindfulness exercises, culinary arts experiences, workforce development and more. Up next: a Happily Natural food truck, which will turn the produce that they grow into ready-to-eat meals and food products and provide opportunities for Black chefs and entrepreneurs to partner while building their skills.

Policy-wise, Chavis sees a need for state funds to flow to efforts to fight the effects of climate change in formerly redlined neighborhoods, the often majority-minority communities that are disproportionately impacted by a steadily-warming planet. 

“We see more adverse health effects in these communities, we see urban heat islands, we see questionable impacts on water sources and flooding,” said Chavis. “All of these issues need further study and funding for solutions statewide, especially in the frontline communities where we work. These spaces and residents are taking the brunt of it.”

Out with the green, in with the heat

The work of Chavis and other Black agriculturalists is crucial because it is rooted in equity and returning that which was lost. Black people, newly freed from slavery, were promised 40 acres and a mule by the American government, a promise that never materialized and perhaps was never sincere in the first place. Modern-day efforts to repair that and other historic wrongs are more than admirable; they are necessary and represent the very best of who we can be, collectively.