Part of University’s fall Honors Colloquium
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| Food justice activist Leah Penniman |
Leah Penniman, a Black Kreyol farmer, author and food justice
activist, will present virtually at the 2022 University of Rhode Island Honors Colloquium, Tuesday, Dec. 6, on “Uprooting Racism and Seeding
Sovereignty in the Food System.”
Penniman is co-director and farm manager of Soul Fire Farm in New York. A self-described soil nerd, Penniman co-founded Soul Fire Farm in 2010 with the mission to “end racism in the food system and reclaim our ancestral connection to the land.”
As Soul Fire
Farm’s co-executive director and farm director, she leads a team that
facilitates food sovereignty programs including farmer training for Black and
Brown people, domestic and international organizing toward equity in the food
system, and a subsidized farm food distribution program for communities living
under food apartheid (lack of food access in communities).
Penniman’s talk will be delivered virtually (only) as part of the
fall Honors Colloquium, “Just Good Food,” which
will be streamed live (video links are available the day of each event at the
link above).
A farmer since 1996, she trained domestically at Many Hands Organic Farm and Farm School (Barre, Massachusetts) and abroad with farmers in Ghana, Haiti and Mexico. She holds a master’s in science education and a B.A. in environmental science and international development from Clark University and taught high school biology and environmental science for 17 years.
Her work
and that of Soul Fire Farm has been recognized by the Fulbright Program and
with a Soros Racial Justice Fellowship and James Beard Leadership Award, among
others. Penniman has also authored Farming While Black: Soul Fire
Farm’s Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land and the
upcoming Black Earth Wisdom: Soulful Conversations with Black
Environmentalists, which she describes as “love songs for the land
and her people.”
Follow Penniman’s work at @soulfirefarm on Facebook, Twitter and
Instagram.
The URI Honors Colloquium is the University’s premier lecture series. Hosted by the University’s Honors Program, this university-wide educational forum is free and open to the public. This year’s lecture series has brought several experts to URI to examine local and global food systems, examining ways to create equitable, sustainable and resilient food systems.
One
more speaker remains on this fall’s colloquium schedule: Ricardo Salvador (Dec.
13), Union of Concerned Scientists. Learn more about the fall colloquium.
