Black Farmer Encourages Others

Clarenda Stanley owns Green Heffa Farms, a tea and herbal-blend business that she named after her grandmother. Based in North Carolina, Stanley is a descendant of black farmers, but family members questioned her decision to grow herbal crops. Despite a settlement by the USDA for discrimination against Black farmers, Stanley still faced obstacles while establishing her own farm. Many black farmers share her experience. Studies have shown paths toward supporting black-owned farms that go beyond personal growth. According to Stanley, she wants to approach farming as “being reparative, in the sense that it’s reconnecting us to the land and doing it through medicinal plants, which before there were all these pharmaceuticals that’s what we’d use, that’s what we’d turn to.” Read more HERE.