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Dennis Hutson has found ways to use less water in one of the most drought-stricken areas of the US.
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At his TAC farm in the San Joaquin Valley, CA, Hutson is training people of color to farm sustainably.
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As of 2021, only 1.4% of US farmers were Black or of mixed race.
Dennis Hutson has played many roles in his life: pastor, United States Air Force chaplain, and devoted husband and father of three – just to name a few.
But it wasn’t until he co-purchased 60 acres of land in Allensworth, California, that he felt he had fulfilled his ultimate destiny.
A Black-led agricultural revolution over 100 years in the making
Allensworth is the first Black-based and controlled town in California.
Founded by Allen Allensworth, an escaped slave in 1908. He traveled throughout the eastern and midwestern US advocating self-help programs that would give Black people the chance to become socially and economically self-sufficient.
“Allensworth believed that black people are meant to help each other — to pull each other into a higher station in life,” Hutson told Business Insider.
The way he sees it, Hutson’s destiny is to carry on Allensworth’s legacy through farming. He is running a teaching program on TAC Farm, a program he founded with his sister and her husband on the land they bought together.
Through the program, Hutson hopes to offer Black farmers, indigenous farmers, and other farmers hands-on experience in organic and sustainable practices.
“I thought, this is a way to achieve the purpose that this town was created for,” Hutson said.
The racial gap was closed
Research has shown that farming provides a substantial economic opportunity for Black Americans to build net worth and generational wealth.
But research has also found it significant racial differences in farmland ownership, in part because discriminatory practices by the USDA and lending organizations, that farmers are deprived of equal access to the loans, grants, and crop insurance necessary to sustain or grow their operations.
As late as 2021, only 1.4% for farmers in the United States who were Black or of mixed race – a significant decrease from 14% about 100 years ago, according to McKinsey & Company.
A better way to do things
Hutson moved to Allensworth in July 2017 – right after the 2012-2016 drought, one of the most severe in California history.
The San Joaquin Valley, an eight-county stretch in central and southern California where Allensworth is located, was hit hard, which is why Hutson said he knew he had to pursue sustainable practices for TAC Farm.
“Otherwise, you’re just adding to the problem instead of helping to solve it,” he said.
To that end, the TAC farm has adopted more efficient drip irrigation methods, which also helps reduce manpower and conserve water, Hutson said.
The plant farm also covers crops, which are not necessarily intended for harvest, but instead protect and enrich the soil for future harvest crops. In addition, healthy soil can retain moisture longer, so it doesn’t need as much water.
A few years ago, Hutson began replacing the alfalfa, which required irrigation six to seven times per season, with cover crop oats.
“I planted oats and I depended on rain for irrigation. With the rivers of the atmosphere this year, I had a bountiful harvest,” he said. It’s sustainable practices like these that could help TAC Farm survive the uncertain future of US farming.
Over the next few years, the California Department of Water Resources estimates that the state could lose up to 10% of their water supplies by 2040, and economists predict that the central San Joaquin Valley will draw nearly half a million acres farmland out of production.
It is also these sustainable practices that Hutson wants to pass on to other farmers of color.
Cultivating the next generation of Black regenerative farmers in Southern California
Hutson’s TAC Innovation and Teaching Farm program has recruited about six farmers of color from all over the Central Valley and Southern California, he told BI.
To spread the word, TAC Farm partnered with several other organizations in the state—including African American Farmers of California, Crop Swap LA, and the Compton Community Garden.
Participants will get access to a small piece of land on TAC Farm for two and a half years, and then they can sell the crops they grow to local cooperatives, Hutson said. The program will also help participants apply for loans.
Hutson said most people don’t realize how expensive agriculture is. For example, the Massey-Ferguson 4700 4-wheel drive tractor he bought with a grant in 2020 cost $46,000.
This program will give students a more realistic view of what it takes to start a successful farm from the ground up.
“After the cost of land, the second biggest obstacle is finding a source of water – especially in the Central Valley,” he said. “More and more, that means drilling a well.”
Before Hutson asked for a loan from the bank, he noted: “The bank told me, ‘We can’t give you one until you have a water source.’ So, I had to drill a well in 2009 — it’s only 720 feet deep, and it was over $120,000. It probably costs twice that now. things.”
Hutson hopes that the sustainable practices he has learned and designed over the past decade can lead to a new revolution in minority-owned and minority-led sustainable agriculture in California.
“They can say, ‘We made this with our hands.'”
Read the original article on Business Insider
