Eating Rights (Food Inequities) w/ Ashley C. Ford & Jamiah E. Hargins

And then just just see her helping you in the garden. Yes, yes, there are many times, you know, she finds her own philosophies from the garden to She's like, when we're upset about something, She's like, Daddy, maybe we go to the garden. You know, she understands how the mental health plays into it. Like she'll explore foods. She discovered that you can eat some of these caloru seeds just directly, so she goes for it right away. I didn't even know it. You know,

children can teach us oh so much. What's up, everybody. I'm Gammy and this is positively gamp. Every week I try to have fraw and in depth conversation with inspirational people pushing for change on everything from aging, relationships, politics, wellness, to the current issues facing the black community. In this episode, we're going to be discussing food inequities in the inner cities and communities and in our schools. This week's guests

are Jemaiah E. Hargans and Ashley C. Board. Jemaiah is an entrepreneur and founder of Crop Swap l A. Crop Swap unites gardeners across Los Angeles to grow and share their extra produce with each other and the community. Beside him, we have Ashley. She is a writer, host, and educator. Her memoir Somebody's Daughter will be out on June one, and you can check out the lovely piece she wrote on Vice President and let Kamala Harris that is in

the November edition of L magazine. Ashley is the host of the podcast The Chronicles of Now and co host of the HBO podcast Lovecraft Country Radio. Without Lovecraft Country, I wouldn't know what was going on in love Craft. Let me just tell you, Lovecraft is one of my favorite shows. But you know, I really really needed your help, and I didn't even realize. In the beginning. I was fine, but then as things went on, I was like, wait

a minute, there's there's a lot going on here. There's a lot of meaningful stuff going on here that I think I'm missing, So thank you guys for that. And I have to tell you that when the show returns, we will have to have you back on. I'll be back ever you want me to come back, Gammy. It could be about Lovecraft country or yellow sweaters. I'll be back to have a conversation with you. Thank you so much for saying that. I have so much fun making

that podcast. Absolutely well, welcome both of you to positively gam But I want to just ask how are you both doing during the pandemic. Let's start with you, Jamaya. How's it going for you? It's going, It's going okay. Actually, you know, I've learned a lot about overcoming challenges in this pandemic. To be honest, I've been learning the practice

of finding solutions in this pandemic. They seem to come up every day in some new form, new challenges, internal, external, related to the business, related to life, and really the only true lesson is on how to be creative and how to keep going. So that's what I've been focusing on, and that's the strain of strength for me. Awesome, what about you, Ashley? I love imagine Maiah first of all, I really love what you said because I feel similarly

in that quarantine. I have been, you know, both privileged and lucky enough to continue to work and to continue to be okay. My family has some of members have contracted COVID, but so far everybody has made it. Everybody's recovering, everybody's doing okay. For me, this has been a real practice in imagination and in my own belief in the power of imagination, because I definitely believed in the power of imagination, but this proved to me how much that

one thing can change things all around you, inside and out. Yeah, so true, so true. Well, let's dive right in because structural racism, these issues have been ongoing for us for generations, and I think that now really they're being accentuated in the pandemic. And I feel like because of the the deadly violence that we have had to deal with almost on a daily basis, police brutality has taken center stage.

But we cannot we cannot lose sight of those other issues that are debatably have a more subtle effect on the community, but just as important, like the inequities and accessing quality education, housing, quality healthcare. And then what we really want to discuss today is poor access to nutritional foods. And I think Jamiah, that's where you really come in, because access to food has been unequal in America for a long long time before the pandemic, but this has

just deepened the problem. So Jemaiah, you're on a mission to use gardening as a way to weed out systemic racism. And let me just stop for a minute and just say the reason how I found Jemiah was I saw a wonderful piece that you did on Spectrum one with Giselle Fernandez, and I was like, I have got to talk to this young man, because what you're doing is amazing. So tell me how this even came about. Oh well,

thank you so much. And I have to say, it's in the spirit of our ancestors that I am here today. And I know that not just from my own DNA tests and finding out that my ancestors were some of the founders of the concept of share cropping back in the Iberian Peninsula and in the Moorish more civilizations, but also in my more recent family. My grandmother she used

to grow food for her family. They had like seven or eight kids, you know, up in Fresnel, California, doing what they could with animals and pigs, and it was just you know, in their blood and in their kind of work ethic to create for themselves and to sustain for and by themselves. You know. So that's that's what set me up. That's what I had on day one. You know, I don't I don't even know you know, how I can ask to be blessed for more than

that in terms of this mission for food. But then you know, flashed forward in my life and it came to a point in Chicago in college when community engagement was really important to me. There was a community garden of families, some newer to this this country that were immigrants, others that were more recently added, and all of these people loved good food, loved community, and introduced me to that concept of urban engagement through food. That shows me

where all the inequities came from. Because the folks who were attracted to that movement tended to be low income, tended to not have property they owned, and they tended to not have jobs on paper per se. And so that opens up so many categories of of improving in our society. And it starts with food. So but but this is the thing for me because you you're you graduated from Columbia University, right, and weren't you working on

Wall Street or something? That how did you get from Wall Street to having a garden to what what what I'm assumed was probably more financially beneficial to you and your family? So you're moving back to l a and starting a garden like what? Well, you know, And and I was I was a trader, That's correct. I was a trader with stocks, bonds, futures, options, mutual funds, and options on futures. Now here's the thing about race in trading, right,

because we're going to connect all the dots. I did not earn a lot of money as a trader because I was brought in super low. So you know, if that financial incentive even had been there, still the cultural aspect of in that of in that that financial industry is still really there. Like the the chauvinistic white male dominant space nevertheless, irrespective of how smart or capable you

can be, is still the dominant influence. And so you know, I did what I could for a few years and then actually what happened was my my wife then girlfriend, we decided to sell everything we own and moved to Brazil to work for a social enterprise at that point, so I got some international experience again, you know, learning Portuguese, but it was actually really useful in learning how a social enterprise operated, because now my organization, cropswop l A,

operates like a social enterprise. They say this term triple bottom line, the idea that you can create economic value while helping the environment, while helping people, and that's what we aim to do. So really valuable insight on how people operate in different contexts, and then how we can redefine our our culture frankly inside out in this moment of vulnerability that it's in, in this moment of opportunity that we have. So you live in the West Adams

area of l A. Right, Yeah that's right. And so in your backyard you just decided to start a garden. Yeah that's right. So I have a three year old daughter, and the idea was she was so beautiful and perfect when she came out. I couldn't imagine incrementally poisoning her throughout her life until she's no longer as beautiful. In the same way that I think about trading you know, when you trade on a stock, the stock has one uptick if you bought it already had a downtick if

you sold it. And it's the same thing with the food and anything else that's influencing our body. Have an uptick if we put in our body that's healthy and nutrient rich, and if we have a downtick if we just had to get some fast food on the way somewhere.

So my thing is with this movement, let's plug in that food exactly where the institutions already exist, like those restaurants, those chefs where folks are already rushing, you know, slipping our our lettuce in there, you know, slipping our tomatoes over here, and get people used to this really great food and then eventually that's what they'll get used to and crave on their own. Because it's really it's really sad.

And I know from my own experience in Baltimore that and you talk about it, you know, food deserts in the inner city. There's just they don't have access to healthy, nutritious food. And I know that my sister was actually involved in getting a community garden started in one of the areas in in Park Heights, which is a depressed area, one of the depressed areas in Baltimore City. And she says,

now that they are community gardens all over. What about you, Ashley, have has that been your experience where you live because you live in Indiana, right, I live in Indiana, and I you know, I spent about six years and living in Brooklyn, and before that it was twenty seven years in Indiana. So the Midwest is where I've been for the majority of my life. And I gotta tell you, I grew up not in any kind of inner city, Okay, Like I lived on the edges of a suburb. My

school was a county new school. It was all black, but it was a county school. Technically. We were in the country. And when I graduated from high school, I would say from the time I was eleven until the time I was eighteen, we lost every grocery store within a mile of my mom's house. Every single grocery store was gone. If we needed to get groceries, we had to drive about ten to fifteen miles away to find

the Kroger or something like that. They eventually got a Walmart, of course, which is what happens all the local grocery stores are gone and the Walmart comes through um or the big box stores come in. But up until that time we groceries. Going to the grocery store wasn't like a real We had to be ready to go. Everybody had to be in the car and able to go. My mom was a single parent before kids didn't have

a lot of time. I grew up in the kind of food desert where it was so much easier for my mom after work to stop by Arby's, then to stop by a grocery store anything to get things to cook. And then also where would she find the time to cook? And I as an adult, as I got older, I've learned so much about my body by learning how to feed my body because I had I had no real idea what my body needed or how to feed it.

And even going to doctors about things like having polycystic ovary syndrome and finding out that so many young girls have polycystic ovary syndrome because of the hormones in their food.

And it's one of the saddest you know, like things that have to explain to somebody, like you gave with the wrong milk when they were up until they were eight, and now you have a nine year old who's getting a minstrual cycle and growing bless and having all of these things happening, and it's incredibly sad to have that happen to your body. And I don't I'm like you, Dory, I don't ever want to see that happen to anybody else again. I know that it is happening right now.

But whatever we can do to mitigate that, I'm in. I'm trying to make sure we protect these kids and protect people's health and their bodies. And you actually call it food apartheid, Jamia, talk about that. How you use that terminology, Jamaiah, Sure. Yeah. A lot of times we hear the term food desert, and it's used as kind of an excuse. That's that's all it is. People say, oh, it's a food desert, there's nothing there. It's like a

natural occurring thing. It's a desert. We use that analogy and everyone feels metaphorically comfortable, but in truth, it's an intentional design by you know, folks who are like everything else, you know, those who control the food grocery stores or the policies on what can be where, like the zoning also down to the policies of what you can grow

and where you can sell it. For instance, what we're doing cross falk l A is called truck gardening, where we'll grow it in one place, the front yard, and we'll sell it in a different place, like a market. So it's got to be registered there. But it's a way to leverage real estate that we don't own, kind of like a shared sharecropping system. And you know, that's that's what we have to do in order to take care of ourselves in a system that won't care for us.

I love that terminology. I love the thought in that because I think the same thing. Deserts are naturally occurring, they're just part of the thing, and food deserts are not. They are by design. It's one purpose. The other thing I want to talk about too, is that people always are trying to make it seem like buying organically, Yeah, isn't not expensive. I don't understand. It absolutely is more expensive,

and they're paying you. You you have to pay extra for them to not put pesticides on your food exactly. It's crazy. And that's the irony because when you really grow the food in the nutrient rich fashion, it actually has a longer shelf life than anything else out there. So you know that we're gonna end up doing the total opposite. Please keep doing what you're doing, Jamaa. We need to we need to spread this on. But I think the other thing that people need to understand, just

very briefly is everything. Everything doesn't need to be organic. Right. They're particularly foods and vegetables that have a skin on it that you're not going to eat the skin. You don't need to buy organic bananas, you don't need to buy organic oranges. So I will say that is what we've been that's what we've been told. But in truth, if it's pesticide use, it's all through the plant, it's all through the flesh, the inner parts of anything, not

just on the outside. They may spray it, yeah, they may spray it from the outside, but it seeps into the soils, it seeps in through the roots, through the skins. It's absolutely on the inside of every fruit that is used. It's not organic. Oh my goodness. Okay, so I'm getting out false information. It's okay, it's okay. We're learning together, and that's that's the point. Yeah. Well, truly, if we go back four generations and our families what what did

they know about food? They were also misinformed and melt poorly treated in the food aspect of life. And you know, so we have to we have to advance so that our kids and our grandkids, your kids, my daughter's kids one day no way better than we do today learning about hormones and the nutritional factor of what's in food and how it affects your body over the long term. With such an education, I didn't realize, and I know that my mother didn't realize. She's like, you know, we're

just trying to feed these kids. You know what most parents are thinking about, and you don't think about the fact that these companies might be putting things into your food that over time will harm your children or and will have longstanding consequences in their bodies. And that's one one of the issues too, that is is really so such a challenge for us in the black community to

just understand and learned about nutrition. Because when I was in Baltimore and a member of my church, it was Macedonia Baptist Church, and I became a member of the food ministry and we we had a food bank, and so we helped deliver food to the community, and when we would be packaging up the bags and people would come through the lines too, and they could get whatever

they wanted that we had. It was really really surprising some of the fresh vegetables that particularly the younger people, the younger women, did not want, and they didn't understand how to prepare it, things like fresh green. That was really shocking to me because I was like, are they just not used to seeing them fresh so they didn't know what they are? They used to seeing him in a can or I didn't understand that they they were just passed by all the beautiful fresh spinage and kel

and collards and ye. Maya might be able to answer that better than I can, but I think they from experience, I didn't know that that's what greens looked like. I was really confused that breens, that greens didn't come with baking on them. I'm gonna just be rare. I didn't know that that was please shump in, Please shump in on that, because that was that was really challenging. That was really challenging. Well, it's it's a fascinating antidote because

education comes from many forms. Part of it is how we're raised based on what we have around and have available. And then part of it is systemic, and that is to say, you know that there aren't many kinds of vegetables at the grocery store in the first place. I know somebody, you know in my neighborhood who's got two hundred types of tomatoes on demand, Like that's how it ought to be. So, you know, part of it is

education we are raised with. The other part of it is exposure now that we're here, so you know, those indigenous foods, those seeds from our ancestors, those that we still have an heirloom and access, that's what we need to be gaining access to. That's what we're trying with crosswop l A. You know, getting those foods has a nutrient advantage oftentimes. For instance, I had this red corn that has more protein than a regular yellow corn, and

it's just because it's a different variety. Is it took the same time to grow, same energy and space and all I did have to eat it and put it into my face. Yeah, and people are looking like what is this now, I've never I've never seen red corn. I had family members and you know when I went to college is when I really started trying different foods. And a big part of the reason why I was able to do that was because I had my food card on campus and there were different fresh options for

food around campus. They weren't necessarily great, but they were more than I had ever had access to. I grew up going to my friends houses, and if my friends parents had like fresh fruit and a bowl on a table or something like that, I was like, they're rich, Like you have to be rich for that to have

fresh fruit. That's what I genuinely thought. And so when I go to college, I'm coming back home and then you know, buying things at the grocery store and trying to get my grandma and my mom and my cousins to try it. Like seriously, guys, pomegranate seems they're so good, and my never, how do you even open this? You

know what I mean? I can get them out and being able to show them that like introducing people to things like in my family, like to be have a car attoum, things like that like that people would just never thought to pick up or mess with at the grocery store. And people can be really really resistant to trying new things. It's it's amazing to me. It's amazing

to me, like we just weren't raised like that. I guess that's the one thing that I can attributed it to is that just my mother was always well my mother. Let's just be clear. My mother wasn't a great cook anyway, but she would. But the one thing she did was she was always trying to experiment and bring us new foods to try because she felt like, you have to eat three times a day, three hundred and sixty five days, you know, and she didn't want to be bored your mom.

So she definitely had the right idea. Even though she wasn't a great cook, she definitely had the right idea. And she was more interested in nutrition than she was in flavor, and you can be interested in both, is what I'm figuring out at this point in my life. I agree, Ashley, let's talk about what's what's going on with you and this lunch debt that you Yeah, the lunch debt situation is so interesting to me because essentially

what happened was that I saw a tweet. I saw a tweet from a politician who was saying that kids don't want a free lunch that they want dignity, and I thought that was insane. I thought it was not just but also grossly inaccurate. As a kid who grew up on um, free and reduced lunch programs in school, I remember what it was like. And I never felt a lack of dignity because my single mother had to fill out a form that helped me get a meal in the middle of the day. That never felt like

I am not a dignified person. I felt like I am a kid and I want to eat like any child would. And I was never made to feel bad about that in my community where that was actually pretty common. But then I got accepted into a gifted program, and as part of that gifted program, I got shipped to a different school a couple of times a week. And it was a school that was predominantly white, and it was a school that was predominantly wealthy, and the lunch staff there had no idea what to do when it

was time for me to eat lunch. It's like everything broke down when they realized they had a student who needed who was on free or reduced lunch, and that I was not actually going to be paying them money for my lunch that day, and it was the first time I ever felt any kind of shame around the fact that I needed to eat and I did not come from money. It was the first time that happened.

And seeing this tweet from this politician talking about kids wanting dignity more than they wanted to eat in the middle of the day rang so false that I felt like I had to do something and talk about what I saw happening. So so they actually, I'm confused, they sent you to another school that didn't provide the free lunch. They provided that they provided it because they were part

of the district. They just hadn't ever had a student who needed it until I showed up, and so they had no idea how to help me in that moment. And they were so concerned with the fact that I didn't have this dollar in ten cents for my lunch that like they pulled out a red binder like the lunch lady and held up the whole line to pull out a red binder and look up what she needed to do, because what she really thought she was a

you don't have money, then you don't get lunch. And that wasn't the case for me, and it was a big deal, and it really like it became a really shameful moment and through like seeing this tweet and being like, this is ridiculous, and you know, I then found out that there was such a thing as student lunch debt, that kids across the country were being punished because they were eating lunch like they could no longer. There were schools where they could no longer turn kids away and

say that you can't have lunch. So instead of saying you can't have lunch, they started a debt for the child, like a debt account, and if the debt isn't paid, then they can tell you that you can't have lunch or they have to offer you an alternative lunch. An alternative lunch doesn't have to be anything. For some of these schools, an alternative lunch for a kid were two slices of white bread and a old piece of cheese.

And then they weren't allowed to have a milk. They could have water from a faucet and people and the lunch the lunch staff would give them cup like basically like you get a cup and you get this cold cheese sandwich. And if that's not enough to sustain you for the rest of your school day, then too bad, talk to your parents. It There were kids who were being not allowed to go to dances because they had lunch debt. Can't go to prom because you have lunch debt.

There were kids who I found out we're being told they weren't going to be allowed to walk at graduation because they still owed a lunch debt. And the idea disgusted me so much that I'm just the kind of person where I don't really like to complain online unless I also offer, like some way for people to do something about what we're upset about, or about what I'm

upset about. So I just said, hey, why don't you call your local school and see what these lunch debts are if you have a school that has lunch debt, and pay them off. Because a lot of times the amount that it took to pay off these lunch debts, like we're thinking about, you know, man, kids not being able to eat, kids not being able to go to their homecomings and dances, and not being able to graduate,

this must be big debt. These debts ranged anywhere from five to fifty dollars, and so you know, people took it seriously, Like I mean, so many people, I think we're sounded by the idea that there is such a thing as a lunch debt that they called just being curious and found these debts and just started paying them off. And the next thing I knew, it was a movement going across Twitter, going across social media where people were saying, Hey, let's call a local school today and take care of

these lunch debts. Schools were reaching out to me and saying that somebody left my name, but they shown up with a check and set it down and said, I want to pay off all the lunch debt at this school.

And it wasn't expect from me, but it was just the idea had spread so far that by the end of it, as far as I could track, over the past years that this has been happening, you probably paid off across the country over three hundred thousand dollars in lunch debts um with students so that they can just be a student, be a kid, like every kid should be allowed to be. Wow, I never heard of that. I don't. I don't know if we have like lunch

debt in in Maryland. That that's interesting. We didn't have it. You know, I called local schools when I was living in Brooklyn. I called immediately to all the schools around me, and they were quick to say, every child here gets the meal, every child get the mail, and they do not have lunch debt. It was it depends on the school, it depends on the district. Got it. Wow? Yes, but

it was terrifying. I mean it was the idea that we could put children, children run into debt because they eat a meal in the middle of their school day is not only heartbreaking, I think about these kids who are already thinking of themselves as saddled with debt. With debt, and debt is a means to control, like scarcity as

an idea is a means to control. When you were talking a little bit earlier about people helping each other in community and finding these things, you know, before I left New York, one of the things that I noticed was there are a couple of churches in my neighborhood, and the lines for their food bank options we're getting just I mean wrapped around the block. The voting lines were wrapped around the block, but before that, the food bank lines were wrapped around the block, over and over

and over. And you know, one time, I one of my neighbors sat one of those boxes outside my door just in case I needed it, and I took it inside and I opened it to see what was inside, and one of the first things I saw was a letter from a politician essentially saying you got this box because of me. And it really messed with me, because I think that's when it came home that this is

the same thing that we're doing to these kids. It's already getting them into the scarcity mindset so that they really don't think about the fact that they are worth more and that their value is so far beyond something as insidious as a lunch debt. I just have to say when when politicians use food as power that directly it's not moral. It is true. Food is power, and you still can use it that way, but don't do

it that way. Food has been used as a weapon through slavery and until and then since, and if we can turn it around and use food as a tool for liberation, then will eliminate that as a weapon of choice altogether. And school debt has obviously been a real problem, and in California, Governor knew Some signed the law in twenty nineteen that mandates that all students, all students are entitled to a school lunch, whether they have the funds

to pay or not. If this is new to you, because it was new to me that that is, one of the things that you can do is you can call your local schools and find out if something like this even exists. You know what, you know, it's really cool, Gammy. One of the best things that came out of this for me. There were quite a few people who I've

interacted with online. I don't know in real life, but like, those are just the interactions we've had who let me know that even though they don't have children, they join their local school boards to make sure that when these decisions are made there in the room and they get

to express what people really want to see. Nobody wants to see a child hungry, and nobody wants to see a district, definitely not a school district, attempt to punish a parent via their child, which a lot of times this is well, why don't the parents just pay it off? And it's like, how could that be the child's problem? How can we possibly make that a child's problem, whether or not their parents have the interests or the resources,

because that's really what it comes down to. Either their parents don't have the resources or they have a parent who doesn't have the interest, and that both situations are sad, but we are not going to solve them by having hungry children in school. We're not to solve it by having kids who can't learn because they can't think because

their stomachs are rumbling. Right, Okay, So tell me about starting your garden and how that evolved into cropswap l A. Yeah, well, I have to say my garden started off really small

and it expanded because I realized what was possible. That's exactly what's happening with cross fop l A. It was just a few gardeners who were sharing their extra things and having what we were calling crop swaps in my backyard every month, and that evolved into a farmer's market that we open and you know then free food we were given during COVID to give away to the community. And now our goal and our true objective, is to grow food on unused spaces. So that can be front yards.

A lot of front yards in Los Angeles just being waste in with grass and space. It can be concrete spaces like a parking lot or a driveway that's being unused. We know how to grow food on tables and trays that's high nutrient rich and amazing, and so we're doing that and we're putting agreements together right now around town as well as larger scale projects. So we're hoping to convert a large empty space into a park and agriculture space. So my goal really is, you know, to scale up,

just as nature does as it scales down. There's something in the Daal that says that the little is just as important as the big, and that's how I think this movement can move. You know, I think I want to get even a little bit more basic than that, Jamiah, because you really have to know what you're doing. Because my mother was a master gardener, okay, and she had

a beautiful flower garden and vegetables. And it's funny because when she passed, like she she had everything like a all plotted out how we were supposed to maintain the garden and all of that. It's all written down, it was all in in like a blueprint. We were not able to follow that because nobody was as passionate about it as she was. But my sister who has taken over that property, she does, she does do a bit, and she has become a master gardener, But she doesn't.

I'm sorry, Karen, you don't compare to mommy, but she has done better than than most of us. But you you really do have to have some knowledge and understanding about how to grow things. How did you get that? Like did you just learn from your grandmother or did you take a course or are your neighbors coming together and sharing information about Oh this works and that doesn't work. I mean, like simple things like the what is it that you that helps feed the soil? What is it?

Com posts? Yeah, com posting, Like the first time my sister tried that, like there was a bunch of mice in there that scared her to death because she wasn't doing it right. You know, I mean, I guess our containers were wrong or something, But you know, I mean like that really takes some some investigation, I would say, and some dedication, Thank you, thank you. It takes some trial and air for sure. For my journey, it all began intellectually with with botany because how plants work is

fascinating to me. How they can just take sunlight, and take this water and take this earth, and somehow you have fruit and life from it and would and structure. You know. It's fascinating. And so I've always been looking into retiring and becoming a botanist one day, and when all this opportunity came up, I've just been delving even deeper into you know, why plants do certain things for the purpose of growing food. Also, you know, sharing with

people like fascinating things. Why certain flowers or certain colors and they open at certain times of the day. You know. I love that stuff. And then the real use of it in our culture, almost like the return to nature. Everybody wants that right now. They've been kind of wanting it for a while, and that's where the passion comes from technically than the trial and error of like doing it. For sure, I got mice in my compost right now. I think that's why I laughed. That's the whole thing

about a compost. I'm like, I don't know if I yeah, there's a better way to do it than we're doing it right now. But but professionally, when we get going, I do have to say, jemayah though, that really the way you talk about it though, it it makes me want to dream a bigger dream for myself in terms of what might be possible and what I can do and how and I can help people. Like even now I'm like, yo, prop swap Indie, we can make this

app like we could make this work. I'm thinking about all the land around here, and I'm like, now, wait a damn minute, I know I can put some tomatoes something like, and just talking about it and having the option like, it's like, what you're doing to me is you're changing a mindset and a perception about what can be possible, not just in terms of how we feed ourselves, but then also how we come together in community and

share with one another. Now, it's that it's that idea of not just like having the like anybody like grow crops and be like, yeah, I have all these crops and all this power, but then acknowledging the shared responsibility to your neighbors and to the people who live among you. It's like, it's not that I've never thought of that before, but I've never I don't think I really believed it could work the way it's working for crops Wop. I think I doubted it. Thank you and it's not your fault.

It's not your fault for doubting it. We've been fed a false sense of scarcity in this country. There's a false sense of scarcity with food and nature. That's it's that's untrue. In truth, what we have is abundance in nature. It gives so much. One apple tree will give you way more than you want for like three seasons, and you'll be like, someone, please take the take the damn apples,

and so like. Feeding off of that abundance creates a job opportunities for people, So there's an economic sustainability aspects to it all, and everyone ends up being happy. So all it needed was a couple of dots to be connected. But first for a couple of dots to be disconnected in our society, we needed it all to break and fall apart. This whole um supply chain crisis with food that comes up every time there's a lockdown. You know that's a real issue. And meanwhile, the only food we

may have available is not the best food. So here we go a chance to connect the correct dots, and I'm really excited to be sharing that. Thank you. So let me let me ask you this to to Mike, because I think about, Okay, in the pandemic, people are losing, you know, their jobs, so they don't have a lot of money right to even go to the supermarket to shop. You're not working. But what you do have is time, right,

you have time. How do you start your own garden that would end up filling some of the void that you have as far as your lack of food for your own family, right, because you you don't have to have because I'm thinking, okay, well everybody doesn't even have a yard, but there is some gardening that you can do, right, like rooftop and you know, on your decks, and so can you do more than grow just herbs though, because

you always hear people talking about a herb garden. But if you're talking about being able to garden, to grow food to supplement, let's just say to start to supplement what you can't buy in the grocery store. Because economically it might actually be helpful for you to grow you to start growing your own food, right, not just more helpful, but economically, that's right, it's so many, so many ways. Economically it multiplies itself and depends on what you're growing,

you could replant it and eat it again. Yeah. So what is what is something that that you would suggest that somebody start with. Would it be would it be some kind of greens or lettuce or sweet potatoes? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, I love those. All those are good options. They're all easy to grow. Really sweet potato super easy to grow. And you don't need a garden for that. You can do that in a pot. Yeah, there's a way to do it in like a crate. But I think you know,

something to start out with could be like lettuces. And one thing that we're gonna be doing a crop swop l A is this vertical tower soon that has allowed allow you to grow on multiple levels and it just stands up on the wall somewhere waters itself. Something like that doesn't take a lot of space. We also have these trays, so people have a lot of options that they can get started with. But food wise, i'd say, you know, salads are things that grow fast and in

nutrient rich soil. It'll grow and harvest every single month, so watered well and well sunlight. But generally, I think you can also grow more than just leafy greens in these things, and and in your small spaces, things like beats. Beats are huge once they're really grown. Well, yeah, something chunky that you want to chop up and like crunch on. And you know other things that are that are viny, such as squashes. All they need to be done is plugged in and they go off and grow over there.

So you know, you can really take advantage of space like a balcony. I've seen people do that really well with heavy squashes hanging off those things. Pumpkins too, Pumpkins you can almost grow on accident, like you really get like you really almost can. Like with pumpkins you can. My friend of mine, Daniel jose Older, another writer, he threw some pumpkin seeds and hit in the corner of his backyard I think about a year and a half ago,

and he had huge pumpkins. He had thrown them into the corner and it's like like but like I was, like, pumpkins you can almost grow. You gotta watch them, but you can almost grow them on accident. Like there are quite a few things that I think we don't necessarily think of as like growing it and eating it. And then if you grow it, do you know how to prepare it? If you've always like bought it at the

store or something like that. But we are in the information page and there are people out there like Jamaya, and there are Tiktoker's, Instagrammers, Twitterers, YouTubers, all kinds of people foragers constantly showing people how to garden, how to take care of plants, how to prepare what they have in the garden, how to store what they have in the garden. Here in Indiana, I took a class learning how to can freeze um and dry food for like winters.

That you know, it's not anything I'm gonna need anytime soon, hopefully, but if I do, it feels good to know it's there. It feels good to know I can make my own apple butters or jams or or boos and store them for a long time. And I think that's another thing that people don't necessarily think of. It is like when you get that bounty, or even when you get a bounty from somebody else who's trying to get rid of

a little bit of their bounty. There are ways that like, you can make that fresh immediately, but there are also ways to preserve it in the long term that you can keep it for a really long time. And not only does that help from an economic standpoint, but it's also a really good way to make sure that you

know what's going into your troop. But that's again takes me back to crop Swap because I'm still thinking about inner city folks that may not have access to the Internet and you know, classes and all that kind of stuff. But at least at crop swap, you're there's a you know, you're interacting with face to face human beings who are able to you know, share and give you that information and tell you, oh, well, this is Callilu. I heard you talking about Callilou, you know, and this is how

you prepare it, you know that kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And we're also taking over front yards to manage them ourselves so that we can be economically in sync with the homeowner and make money together from their yard. Talk to me about that. How how did you incorporate or integrate economy with community so that there's some profitability going on? That's exactly right. Yeah, is a couple of like very narrow passageways we've been able to find to link all

this together. It's still true. It's like basically, you know, using these front yards we're gonna be offering to the homeowner a percentage of the percentage of the money we earned from the food there that they can take home

every month, and we'll pay the extra water. Because basically the system we're being we're gonna be installing is water recycling, using the same water hundreds of times before it's depleted just to grow food, and it'll it will also catch rainwater when it when it falls, so it's rainwater harvesting, rainwater recycling, aquaponics because it will have a fish elements to it that uses its fish pooped as a nitrate

to basically make the food healthier. And it'll be automated irrigation, so basically the food will just grow and our team will come by to harvest, maintain, package the goods, sell it,

and give the homeowner a statement of their income. I think, and I just want to add to that, these front yard installations, we're doing them on a sliding scale, so for folks that can afford to have it installed, they may, but for folks that can't, We've got some grant money right now, and we're gonna keep getting more grant money so that we can put these in clusters in low income communities, manage them efficiently ourselves and do it for people that need it themselves. And I have this concept

it's called local nutrient transfer. I was just getting ready to ask you about that. Ah, yeah, that's cool, thank you. Yeah, tell us about that that term, because that's a phrase that you kind of came up with, right, Yeah, the idea of keeping the local nutrient transfer idea of like keeping those nutrients that are under your exact feet into

your exact body. And that's the right that we should all claim because what will happen otherwise is we'll grow a bunch of good food and low income neighborhoods and sell it in the high income neighborhoods and call ourselves successful. But that's not success. Success is when our children, our grandmothers, are widows, are our people that need it get it from where they are and there's no economic excuse me, there's no environmental cost of transportation, and that works much better.

So so that's that's the goal. You don't make me holler, to be perfectly honest, It isn't been a couple of times sitting here where you're talking that I really want to say glory, and I didn't, but I felt it. I didn't say it, but I felt it. My goodness.

It's just the thought and the intentionality, to be perfectly honest, like that's what so many people want to do good, they really really do, but they get it in their mind that there's like an A and B to getting the good And the truth of the matter is it's always actually an A to Z, and you got to stop at B and think about what you're doing. You gotta stop at sea and thinking about what you're doing and is it helping the right people and is it still in line with the goals that you had at

the beginning. Just like that clarity of the trip from from inception of the idea to the result that the community actually sees is so hard to get right that it's like this is it's like a testimony. It's really like you're given a testimony. Yeah, and we we see and hear the passion that you you have about this crop swap and and just about the earth and growing and gardening. I feel like I'm missing something in my

own life, I really do. And you're a perfect example, Jemiyah of that when people kind of like struggling now and you always hear people talking about what is my purpose, you know, and not being able and not knowing what their purpose in life is. And I feel like, really, you have found your purpose. And it's a perfect example. I was one of those folks. Yeah. Really, Okay, Well, I'm sure you don't feel that way now. No, not in a way. I know exactly which direction to go.

You are a perfect example of how when you're doing something just for money, a lot of times it's just not fulfilling, you know. And yeah, and you are really a shining light of that. Thank you, so so congratulations for finding your purpose. Thank you. It was not easy and it was not quick, and a lot of people had to be patient with me along the way. Yeah. Now that Jill Biden is soon to be the First Lady, do you think that she would as an educator address any of these issues as far as food and for

the students. I certainly hope she does. I definitely hope she does. You know, I felt like when First Lady Michelle Obama was in the White House, and she really sort of led the charge for trying to get more nutritious foods into schools and also trying to get people to talk about gardening and how to like feed yourself in that way. I think that that would be a

fantastic notion for Dr Biden to continue. I don't see it being a thing that she wouldn't do, to be perfectly honest, Like, just knowing her track record and how she has been really vocal about the need for education in a variety of ways in this country, I think this would be such a great goal for her to put on her list as First Lady over the next

four to eight years. That would not only be I think like this really fantastic way to show a continuing care for this topic, it would also be a great way for the Biden administration in and of itself to show its commitment to the prog gress of black communities and definitely of lower income communities and places where these kinds of lessons are desperately needed. Absolutely, because we do need to make this clear that this is not just

a black issue. Yeah, it's an issue for anyone of you know, and that falls into the lower economics status. So as we wind down and we're gonna get ready to roll out of here, but I want to mention just a few organizations in the community that people can donate to or use as a resource for accessing food. Here in l A, we want to check out lunch

on Me by founder Larrea Gaston. Lunch on Me is a nonprofit dedicated to ending starvation while providing opportunities to enrich the mind, body, and spirit of l A's homeless community. And of course we cannot free get about Crop Swap l A. Moving on so Fire Farm in New York City. So Fire Farm is an Afro Indigenous centered community farm committed to a rooting racism and seating sovereignty in the food system. Shout out to my hometown in Baltimore, Maryland,

Macedonia Baptist Church. They have a food bank there. To find a local food bank in your area, you can go to Feeding America dot org. Any other things before we get to our when you like to know section, is there any other points that you all want to make before we end? Yeah, Jamiyah, I wanted to mention earlier in terms of reaching low income communities and getting good veggies there. We have a partnership with a crop

Swap app. That's an app where you can see a map where farmers are sitting and sending their cis a vegetable boxes directly into the city and you can buy at your doorstep. Okay, so is that something that we Okay because technologically challenged. It's cool. It's just an app, It's so, is it? It's an app? Like I can just go on my phone where the app store is and look out crops. Yeah, all one word. Check it out.

It's pretty eat, it's pretty user friendly. I downloaded it just to play with it a little bit because I knew we were going to be here today, and it is very user friendly. If it's something that people are interested in. Is there anything else that you think that we could do as a community to work towards changing the changing how we eat, changing food availability, nutritious food. What what is it that we can be doing as a community. Do you think there's one thing you can

do right away? We have a petition right now on petition dot org that is to convert a space that's currently concrete in front of a hides or permanent a building into agriculture and park land. So it's something that we're proposing with the Neighborhood Land Trust. We're in talks with the city council leadership and we're in talks with

the leadership at Kaiser Permanente. We've got about signatures already if anyone wants to go on and you can find the petition on petition dot org or on my Instagram link or somehow, we'll make sure you have that available and please sign that position. That's the first thing you can do. Any final points for you, Ashley. It's almost weird to bring him up, but Guy Fiery Flavor Town restaurant owner. One of the things he says that I really desperately agree with is that it is so important

to teach your kids how to cook. It is so important to teach them how to feed themselves, because not only does that take some of the pressure off of you, but it also encourages them to be cognizant of what they put in their bodies, how they like food, the flavors that they like, and be able to prepare food for themselves. It is a huge skill that not enough young people, especially I think have, is that they don't know how to prepare food for themselves, and so they

feel like when they eat, it's all reactionary. It's just available, not necessarily what's good and what feels good to me. So it's a life skill. Teach kids how to cook, teach them about their bodies and how to pay attention to what's going in. Don't make it weird, don't make them feel like they're gonna get fat, you know, and use words like that, but just say, you know, does that feel good to you after you eat that? Does

it taste good? And does it feel good? And I never, nobody ever taught me to think about whether or not food felt good to my body. Yeah, good point, Actually, good point. Thank you for that. Both are doing some amazing things. I'm so glad to have talked to both of you. I'm telling you now it's time for the segment when you like to know where you answer three rapid fire questions with the first phrase it comes to your mind. So, Ashley, we're going to start with you.

What book or books are you reading right now? Oh my gosh, that's so wild, because I'm actually reading a book called Fearing the Black Body about fat phobia and where that comes from. And that's a big part of the nutrition conversation, I think, is that we need to talk about what feels good versus what you think is just going to make you look small. What about you, Jamiah, what are you reading right now? I'm reading power Nomics

by Claude Anderson. It's a book that discusses plan for Black America to align our assets and our our energies to move forward and improve. It's actually part of a book club that I helped start through through bro Capital. It's called the Black Men's Library. We just started it during the pandemic. We we're only reading books from Black men and African men for ourselves and learning about and spending time with ourselves to learn what's been done and tried in the past us and what we can do

and try in the future. So right now, it's a second series. The first one was Marcus Garvey's Philosophies and again now is Paronomics. The next is a really exciting one. It's called Neutracide, and neutracide is a discussion about how food is used as a poison as a weapon, and I can't wait to get to read about that. So that's the other Black Men's Library. Okay, Question number two, what's one thing you want to get off your chest? Ashley oh oh man, stuff I want to get off

my chip. I think the thing I most want to get off my chest is that a lot of what we're seeing in the country right now that we try to pass off as quote unquote craziness or chaos is actually emotional breakdowns that people are expressing. And that doesn't mean that they shouldn't be held accountable for their actions, but it does mean that, like, people don't just have to be crazy. Sometimes people are just expressing a world of pain and somebody's going to have to address it

at some point, hopefully. Then what about you, Jamiah? One thing you want to get off your chest. I want to get it off my chest that there are too many damn helicopters around Los Angeles. I don't know who's comfortable with that, who asked for that, who approved it? Why they're there? Do they know why they're up there? Is there enough happening down here for them to be up there? I actually feel you on that one too, because like by my house around where I live, there's

this helicopter that's they're all the time. Like, what are you looking for? We're in the mountains. What's going on, Ashley? What's a model you live by? Nobody can be summed up by the best or worst thing they've ever done. We're all a lot more than that. That's a good one. Say that again. Nobody can be summed up by the best or worst thing they've ever done. We're all made up of so much more than that, and we all make mistakes, every single person. If you're a human being,

you've made a mistake. If you're a human being, you're gonna make mistakes up until the day you die. The best thing you can do is learn how to give a good apology and process forgiveness within yourself so that you can offer it to others and try to do better the next time. Okay, when you know better, do better. What about you, Jamiah? What's the mottel you live by?

The phrase I live by that comes to mind is success is as dangerous as failure because at either point of the ladder, whether you're at the top or the bottom, it's shaky on either end. And so that just reminds me that when I feel successful, or if I feel like i've I've hit some challenges, to remind myself to put myself back in the middle and remember where I came from and what the goal is to to rebalance and to not expect anything from either six s or

failure because the outcome is truly indeterminate. Thank you both. What what a pleasure and what what an education it was to talk to both of you. It's been fantastic. Thank you, big pleasure you too. Thank you. Before we wrap up, please let the audience know where we can find you both on social media. Jemia you first, all right, So I'm Jamia Hargins and you can find me as Black Superdad on Instagram. I'm the only black Superdad with

no hashes or anything. And you can go to www dot crop swap l a dot com to learn more about our movement. Thank you. You can find me on Twitter at I smash Fizzle, on Instagram at smash Fizzle, or at my website which is just Ashley Seaford dot com. Thank you both. It's been a pleasure. So these are my takeaways from my conversation with Jemiah and Ashley. Number One, growing and planting your own garden can be healing for

the mind as well as the body. Use your creativity and imagination to find solutions for challenges and help you move forward. Number two, sometimes you just have to take a chance and try something new. You'll be surprised how foods that are good for you can taste good too. Number three, kids can't focus on learning if they're hungry. Teach your kids how to cook as a life skill so they learn how to take care of themselves and

their bodies. Number four turns out food debt is a real problem within the educational system and it shouldn't be. Reach out to your local schools to find out if this is a problem in your area and how you can help. Check out the West Adams Farmers Market, open every Sunday from nine to one on here in Los Angeles. Thanks for listening, everybody. If you're listening on Apple Podcasts, be sure to rate and review the episode. Follow me on my Instagram at gammy nars to share with me

your thoughts on the episode. I'm here, I'm talking, and I'm listening, and as always, folks, stay grateful. Positively gam is produced by Westbrook Audio Executive producers Adrian Vanfield, Narris, Jada Pinkett Smith, Amanda Brown, and Fallon jethro Co Executive producer sim Hoti, segment producer Ash Francis, Associate producer Erica Ron, editor and mixer Calvin Vailis. Positively GAM is in partnership with Art nineteen. It's at the Bot