Peaches Not Speeches
How Black Yield Institute makes revolutionizing food systems juicy and delicious
Volunteer farming sessions at the Black Yield Farm in the Mount Clare neighborhood of Baltimore.
Peaches Not Speeches
How Black Yield Institute makes revolutionizing food systems juicy and delicious
Volunteer farming sessions at the Black Yield Farm in the Mount Clare neighborhood of Baltimore.
Peaches Not Speeches
How Black Yield Institute makes revolutionizing food systems juicy and delicious
Volunteer farming sessions at the Black Yield Farm in the Mount Clare neighborhood of Baltimore.
Every month, Black Yield Institute attracts hundreds of people from South Baltimore to the bold work of forging a new food economy. What’s the draw? It usually starts with handing someone a peach.
Every month, Black Yield Institute attracts hundreds of people from South Baltimore to the bold work of forging a new food economy. What’s the draw? It usually starts with handing someone a peach.
When you see the weariness of working-class people in today’s America, “peaches not speeches,” are the best point of entry, as Black Yield Institute’s co-Founder and Servant-Director Eric Jackson puts it. You have to offer people something that makes their load lighter and their day sweeter. It’s something Black Yield calls “sensory organizing,” which invites people into the work of changing the systems that impact their lives, by first tapping into something that makes them feel good, like a fresh peach.
Peaches are scarce in South Baltimore, as are most fruits and vegetables. For the most part, the three predominantly Black neighborhoods that Black Yield serves (Cherry Hill, Curtis Bay, and Mount Clare) have no major supermarkets. People buy their groceries from liquor stores, gas stations, and convenience stores, which often carry four types of malt liquor but few to no veggies. When people talk about food deserts or food apartheid (where access to healthy food differs sharply across racial lines) they are talking about places like Cherry Hill.
When you see the weariness of working-class people in today’s America, “peaches not speeches,” are the best point of entry, as Black Yield Institute’s co-Founder and Servant-Director Eric Jackson puts it. You have to offer people something that makes their load lighter and their day sweeter. It’s something Black Yield calls “sensory organizing,” which invites people into the work of changing the systems that impact their lives, by first tapping into something that makes them feel good, like a fresh peach.
Peaches are scarce in South Baltimore, as are most fruits and vegetables. For the most part, the three predominantly Black neighborhoods that Black Yield serves (Cherry Hill, Curtis Bay, and Mount Clare) have no major supermarkets. People buy their groceries from liquor stores, gas stations, and convenience stores, which often carry four types of malt liquor but few to no veggies. When people talk about food deserts or food apartheid (where access to healthy food differs sharply across racial lines) they are talking about places like Cherry Hill.
Mama Reverend Annie Chambers, a community activist and organizer in public housing in Baltimore City, speaking in support of the organization and against the Housing Authority and its decision to separate BYI from the Cherry Hill Urban Community Garden.
Over the years, some well-meaning people from outside the community have offered residents food boxes containing canned spinach or unfamiliar vegetables, like fennel, that locals don’t know how to prepare - most sourced from non-organic, industrial farms. Black Yield, whose leadership hails from the neighborhood and still lives there, offers items like fresh collards and turnip greens - beloved foods that have been a part of traditional Black cuisine for generations - sourced from local farmers, including many Black-owned farms. And it offers them at below-market prices.
Food may be the entry point—but it is just the start. Over the past 10 years, Black Yield has distributed more than 165,000 pounds of organic produce, and in that time, the organization has also hosted more than 675 events, workshops, trainings, and lectures. Community members can access everything from open mics and social gatherings, to workshops on political education and food systems, to classes on cooking and nutrition, to training on how to organize a protest or campaign.
Over the years, some well-meaning people from outside the community have offered residents food boxes containing canned spinach or unfamiliar vegetables, like fennel, that locals don’t know how to prepare - most sourced from non-organic, industrial farms. Black Yield, whose leadership hails from the neighborhood and still lives there, offers items like fresh collards and turnip greens - beloved foods that have been a part of traditional Black cuisine for generations - sourced from local farmers, including many Black-owned farms. And it offers them at below-market prices.
Food may be the entry point—but it is just the start. Over the past 10 years, Black Yield has distributed more than 165,000 pounds of organic produce, and in that time, the organization has also hosted more than 675 events, workshops, trainings, and lectures. Community members can access everything from open mics and social gatherings, to workshops on political education and food systems, to classes on cooking and nutrition, to training on how to organize a protest or campaign.
Event called "Food As Memory," hosted during the Cherry Hill Marketplace that is held every Saturday. Exploring the connection between food, sacred family recipes, and memory via discussions, communal art, and a food demonstration.
Most recently, Black Yield worked with Baltimore City Councilmember Phylicia Porter and her team on a Community Healthy Food Act. If passed, it would establish the city’s intent to expand access to organic food, in part through subsidizing refrigerators for corner stores and other local retailers, enabling them to stock fruits and vegetables. All told, Black Yield has engaged more than 4,000 volunteers and 43 paid staff and contractors to reach more than 13,000 people.
Why not just stick to feeding people fresh, organic food? Black Yield recognizes that for everyone to have access to healthy food, solving food distribution is not enough. The fractures that disconnect people from the land, good health, and each other affect almost everyone in the country, and, by design, they run particularly deep in places like South Baltimore. If you’re Black in America, you are 2 to 3 times more likely to live in a food desert than if you are white, and the disparities on nearly every other indicator of health and well-being aren’t much better.
Most recently, Black Yield worked with Baltimore City Councilmember Phylicia Porter and her team on a Community Healthy Food Act. If passed, it would establish the city’s intent to expand access to organic food, in part through subsidizing refrigerators for corner stores and other local retailers, enabling them to stock fruits and vegetables. All told, Black Yield has engaged more than 4,000 volunteers and 43 paid staff and contractors to reach more than 13,000 people.
Why not just stick to feeding people fresh, organic food? Black Yield recognizes that for everyone to have access to healthy food, solving food distribution is not enough. The fractures that disconnect people from the land, good health, and each other affect almost everyone in the country, and, by design, they run particularly deep in places like South Baltimore. If you’re Black in America, you are 2 to 3 times more likely to live in a food desert than if you are white, and the disparities on nearly every other indicator of health and well-being aren’t much better.
“Apartheid is about separation. Black Yield is about suturing”, says Eric.
“Apartheid is about separation. Black Yield is about suturing”, says Eric.
Transitioning to a food system that works in harmony with people requires ordinary people to practice doing three things: 1) exercising cooperative, community control of food systems: from land acquisition and management, to food cultivation and manufacturing, to the culture around food itself; 2) organizing and advocating for policy and system change; and 3) working in harmony with each other, despite the conflict that can arise from generational trauma and grief.
Number three is a big one for social change organizations right now, as the sector navigates historic levels of conflict and churn. Eric notes, “You can have all good food that is grown by Black people in ecologically sound ways, but if Black people are still at odds with each other, you will fall short. How we build together in a liberatory way is just as important as liberation itself.”
Black Yield has rigorous trainings to help people show up well together, and it has kind but clear systems for accountability. For example, someone who is chronically late will be required to serve elders and be on time in order to learn that skill. Someone who overworks to the point of burnout will be sent home for two weeks. Says Eric, “when you are in community with people, friction is inevitable. Fractures are optional. We have to build the skills to say, ‘I don’t like what you just said, but I still love you. I need a day’. Black Yield asks its constituents, ‘what kind of relationships would we have if we decided to have the world we wanted?’ Black Yield encourages people to not just answer the question, but really practice it.
When it works, Black Yield succeeds in its highest aim, giving Black folks in a U.S. urban center like Baltimore, what Maroon, Palenque, and Quilombo communities gave enslaved Africans who had escaped hill countries across the Americas: a liberated zone in which to practice and eventually reclaim their self-determination and their physical, mental, and spiritual survival. Today, equipped with their own land to grow food, and a methodology that keeps community engagement vibrant and harmonious, their work is growing at a steady pace, one peach at a time.
Learn more about Black Yield Institute.
Transitioning to a food system that works in harmony with people requires ordinary people to practice doing three things: 1) exercising cooperative, community control of food systems: from land acquisition and management, to food cultivation and manufacturing, to the culture around food itself; 2) organizing and advocating for policy and system change; and 3) working in harmony with each other, despite the conflict that can arise from generational trauma and grief.
Number three is a big one for social change organizations right now, as the sector navigates historic levels of conflict and churn. Eric notes, “You can have all good food that is grown by Black people in ecologically sound ways, but if Black people are still at odds with each other, you will fall short. How we build together in a liberatory way is just as important as liberation itself.”
Black Yield has rigorous trainings to help people show up well together, and it has kind but clear systems for accountability. For example, someone who is chronically late will be required to serve elders and be on time in order to learn that skill. Someone who overworks to the point of burnout will be sent home for two weeks. Says Eric, “when you are in community with people, friction is inevitable. Fractures are optional. We have to build the skills to say, ‘I don’t like what you just said, but I still love you. I need a day’. Black Yield asks its constituents, ‘what kind of relationships would we have if we decided to have the world we wanted?’ Black Yield encourages people to not just answer the question, but really practice it.
When it works, Black Yield succeeds in its highest aim, giving Black folks in a U.S. urban center like Baltimore, what Maroon, Palenque, and Quilombo communities gave enslaved Africans who had escaped hill countries across the Americas: a liberated zone in which to practice and eventually reclaim their self-determination and their physical, mental, and spiritual survival. Today, equipped with their own land to grow food, and a methodology that keeps community engagement vibrant and harmonious, their work is growing at a steady pace, one peach at a time.
Learn more about Black Yield Institute.