The Fermentation School

Nancy's talk will give readers an introduction to my new book, "Reaping What She Sows: How Women Are Fixing Our Broken Food System," from Melville House Publishing. 

My talk will give readers an introduction to my new book, "Reaping What She Sows: How Women Are Fixing Our Broken Food System," from Melville House Publishing. In it, I take readers on a journey through what I call the alternative, or "alt food system" of short, transparent supply chains and climate-friendly and regenerative farming and production methods. We'll meet the women producers are working to balance their humane practices (both toward workers and animals) and stewardship and healing of the land with regenerative food production. Their practices stand in stark opposition to the dominant long, opaque, extractive, and exploitative global supply chains of Big Food and Big Agriculture, and the handful of corporations that controls that system. 

I will describe post-Emancipation southern African American agricultural cooperatives and offer a glimpse at the highly successful cooperatives of the World War II U.S. government prison camps in which my family members were imprisoned. Both are models of food systems born of discrimination, and disadvantage that relied on mutual aid and the pooling of resources and skills. The characters in my book are all fearless, resourceful leaders in the movement to weave together local and regional supply chains of produce, grain, meat, poultry, and fish to feed and nourish their towns and regions. And they are all amazing.