The return of black farming

Ecowatch -According to the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, black farmers in the U.S. owned about 15 million acres of land in 1920. By 1997 the acreage had dropped 87 percent to around 2 million.

But a movement to preserve the cultural heritage and growing practices of black farmers and to support more diverse agriculture has been sprouting in the Southeast. There's always been a group of black farmers who have worked outside the dominant, chemical-heavy food system, said Jones, often because they couldn't afford all the extra inputs. Many have been farming the same parcel "organically" for generations, even before that term entered the vernacular.