"We've always been focused on bringing rural farm products to our urban communities," said Ashley Smith, founder and CEO of Black Soil KY. She said her work is inspired by Lexington's Black hamlets, rural settlements within Fayette county which were hubs of Black life and community.
Smith said Black Soil KY brings "the increased population of those living in urban communities back into what often is a two-to-three-generation removed connection to the land and agriculture."
The organization aims to address both rural and urban food insecurity by empowering Black farmers, who face significant barriers in the agriculture sector.
"Oftentimes, farmers or folks desiring to farm become discouraged because the information is just so convoluted," said Smith.
The agriculture industry's regulatory hoops, while powerful tools to protect the public and enforce good practices, can often be hard to navigate for newcomers without pre-established connections to the industry. But Smith sees a future where the loss of generational knowledge can be bridged with horizontal knowledge sharing.
That's part of the purpose of Black Soil Kentucky's inaugural State of the Soil Conference, held last week at the Summit in Lexington. The event attracted attendees from 19 states, plus D.C. and Canada.
Tuesday's keynote speaker, Dr. Bill Releford, is the owner of Bloom Ranch in Los Angeles. Releford is a physician specializing in diabetic amputation prevention, and said it was his 35-year career treating high-risk populations that led him to pursue agriculture.
"The 99-cent hamburger is a real weapon of mass destruction," said Releford. "Cheap food has killed more people than any war. 400,000 people will die annually from obesity. Another 400,000 will die from diabetes and heart attacks and strokes. Another 400,000 from all the other complications related to bad eating."
Releford says he noticed a clear trend in his practice; his healthiest patients were the ones eating five colors of fruit and veggies a day, whether purposefully or not.
"They didn't say it, but it was almost like they were in a fraternity or sorority. They were talking the same talk. They would say, 'I had some collard greens,' or 'I picked some tomatoes from my backyard,' and I got to a point where I could almost look at a patient and say, 'How's your garden?'"
Smith's vision is much the same; she said, while farming provides much-needed food, directly addressing food insecurity and malnutrition, it also offers much more.
"Farming is a vehicle of intervention," said Smith. "It is a tool of social change and it is a resource for not only the people served at the table, but we're able to strengthen the health of our soil as we're strengthening the health of our farmers."
Black Soil KY offers tools and resources to help farmers, agribusinesses, and consumers by providing educational workshops, on-farm experiences, and outreach programs.