Black farmers in Wisconsin are growing their legacy

Three years ago, Artemis Provisions & Cheese Founder Kingsley Gobourne faced a dilemma that would entirely reshape his business.

As demand for fresh, local foods soared during the pandemic, Gobourne, a Black farmer in Mount Horeb, took on a colossal order for 110 whole chickens. He tapped Menominee-based farmer Donovan Hardy to help fill the order, but a last-minute cancellation left the two farmers with a truckload of frozen birds and no plan for storing or selling them.

“My heart was sinking, I was feeling nauseous,” says Gobourne, “and [Hardy] was almost in tears.”

In a moment of entrepreneurial grit, they turned to their community with a last-ditch effort to salvage the chickens. Gobourne and Hardy bought the biggest plastic tubs they could find, filled each tub with the ingredients for a wet brine and soaked the birds overnight.

“The next day, I got my neighbor’s grill. I got our grill and our smoker, and we seasoned that chicken with jerk and started smoking chickens,” says Gobourne, who founded Artemis as a food box program at the onset of the pandemic. It now provides meat and cheese products to major retailers across the state, and a Mount Horeb storefront opened​​ in June.

Gobourne’s quick thinking, combined with community support, allowed him to sell all 110 fully cooked, jerk-seasoned, smoked chickens for more than twice the price he’d expected from the original order. The crisis induced a pivot in Gobourne’s business, allowing him to continue purveying fresh ingredients while satiating a hunger for culturally relevant, locally sourced foods.

Gobourne and Hardy are among Wisconsin’s growing population of Black farmers and food producers contributing to the state’s agricultural landscape. Since 2002, the number of Black farmers in Wisconsin has increased close to threefold, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data. Nationwide, Black farmers saw growth between 2012-2017, but data reported a significant decline in the 2022 Census of Agriculture. Black farmers make up only 1.2% of the 3.4 million producers in the U.S. (as of 2022) after decades of being systematically shut out from loans and federal subsidies. In Wisconsin, Black farmers make up just .01% of all farmers.

This small but mighty contingent of farmers is the modern torchbearer for a rich legacy of Black farmers in Wisconsin that dates back to a time before statehood. Early Black farming settlements that endured — like the ones found in Vernon County’s Cheyenne Valley and Grant County’s Pleasant Ridge — set the table for today’s Black farmers, who have dedicated their efforts to feeding others and teaching people how to steward the land in hopes of nurturing healthy, vibrant communities.

Wisconsin's Hidden Farming History

In the 19th century, Black settlers in both Cheyenne Valley and Pleasant Ridge harnessed the power of cooperative agriculture and economics to sustain their families and build new communities from the ground up. Many Black settlers were freed or had escaped slaveholding states before the Civil War. According to the Vernon County Historical Society, Cheyenne Valley, located west of the city of Hillsboro, was the largest Black farming settlement in Wisconsin, with nearly 150 Black community members at its peak.

At the Pleasant Ridge settlement, Charles and Isaac Shepard were among the earliest residents, arriving in Wisconsin as newly freed men in 1848. They worked for a man named William Horner, who bought 1,000 acres of land without the knowledge or labor to work it. Eventually, the two brothers saved enough to buy 200 acres of their own land, according to the Wisconsin Historical Society.

“It’s a give and take. Horner needed their labor, and this was a way for the Shepard brothers to get land, independence and autonomy on their own,” says Christy Clark-Pujara, an associate professor of history and Afro-American studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. “They were just removed from bondage, so they don’t have the resources — you don’t leave the institution of slavery with anything except your knowledge and intellect — and so they parlay that into land for themselves.”

Black families in these settlements successfully produced corn, rye, sauerkraut, pork and more while they collectively watched and tended to each other’s land. Many worked in tandem with white immigrants, pooling their resources to finish farming duties, buy tools, clear the land of trees and build roads, cabins and schools. By 1895, Pleasant Ridge’s Black settlers owned a combined total of over 700 acres of land, according to Zachary Cooper’s 1977 book “Black Settlers in Rural Wisconsin.”

While many Black settlers in Cheyenne Valley and Pleasant Ridge found independence and autonomy, the reality was (and still is) that they were Black people living in a territory that was explicitly racist in its composition, says Clark-Pujara.

“There is economic cooperation and social nicety between Black and white farmers in Wisconsin. And there is political, economic and social marginalization and discrimination as well,” Clark-Pujara says, adding that early Black settlers lacked full citizenship rights like voting, and this affected their ability to make informed governing decisions about their settlements. By 1863, the Wisconsin Assembly even considered prohibiting Black immigration into the state after receiving dozens of petitions from white people to do so, according to Cooper’s book. This marginalization made it difficult for Black farming communities to flourish beyond Pleasant Ridge and Cheyenne Valley.

Still, even in the face of violent racism, “they demonstrated collective agency and community resilience … working toward and practicing freedom,” writes Monica White, associate professor of environmental justice at UW–Madison and author of “Freedom Farmers: Agricultural Resistance and the Black Freedom Movement.” “Freedom to participate in a political process, to engage an economic model that was collaborative and fair, and to exchange ideas with others who share their goals.”

Plowing Through Prejudice

Early Black settlers in Madison, on the other hand, saw a more volatile side of being Black agrarians in a predominantly white space. Notley Henderson, one of Dane County’s earliest Black settlers, purchased land on Madison’s southside in the 1880s, according to Muriel Simms’ book “Settlin’: Stories of Madison’s Early African American Families.” Henderson’s son Allen helped establish the family’s farm and managed the land with his two sons. Nearly 50 years later, in 1927, a white man killed Allen Henderson and his son Walter because the man reportedly thought he heard a member of the Henderson family say something negative about white people, Simms notes in “Settlin.’ ” The tragedy forced the Henderson family to close the farm and sell their land.

This specter of racism loomed for Black farmers throughout the country well into the 20th century. In the years following World War II, Black farmers were routinely denied farming subsidies from the USDA, and many were displaced by New Deal federal agencies like the Resettlement Administration, which relocated Black and brown farmers to planned federal communities. ​According to a study published by the American Economic Association, the value of Black land loss from 1920 to 1997 is estimated at $326 billion.

Some Black farmers in Wisconsin battled this state-sanctioned displacement, and farming settlements declined as younger generations fled to big cities like Milwaukee and Chicago.

Reviving Their Roots

The legacy of Wisconsin’s early Black farming settlements continues to inspire a resurgence of Black producers in Dane County, who aim to recover connections to the land and their shared histories.

Yusuf Bin-Rella of ​TradeRoots calls this “making community.”

“We’re from a long lineage of farmers, and the primary reason we were stolen [from Africa] is because we were good at agriculture,” Bin-Rella says. Through TradeRoots, Bin-Rella invites people to nurture their agricultural roots. He also showcases history through unique crops and cooking demonstrations.

Bin-Rella and his collective of Black and brown farmers and chefs manage multiple demonstration gardens, including an Afro-diasporic teaching plot at Allen Centennial Garden, where they grow heirloom Black vegetables like fish peppers, Hill Country Red okra, finder millet, Candle Fire okra and multiple varieties of collard greens. In 2023, TradeRoots launched a free community-supported agriculture food box created by and for Black and Indigenous communities.

Black-led nonprofit Urban Triage also demonstrates sustainable farming practices to Madison’s Black community and works to heal long-held trauma that many have faced while working the land. Ruthanna Hutton-Okpalaeke leads Urban Triage’s agricultural programs from an incubator farm at the Farley Center for Peace, Justice & Sustainability in Verona. She manages farmland, hosts farm business development and specialty crop workshops, and helps families jump-start their home gardens.

Hutton-Okpalaeke grew up catching garden snakes and fireflies while snacking on tomatoes and mulberries grown in her father’s garden in Green Lake County. Before joining Urban Triage, she was a Peace Corps member, practicing cooperative farming techniques in Cameroon. She says her goal today is to share those techniques and connect more people to the land.

“We really are just trying to make sure that our Black community has the opportunity to get their hands in the dirt, learn how to grow and support our Black farmers,” Hutton-Okpalaeke says.

Farming as Freedom

Madison native Alex Booker founded Booker Botanicals in 2020 as a gardening consultancy and eventually grew the business into his own small farm in Black Earth.

He says Booker Botanicals was his response to Madison’s burgeoning Black liberation movement, which grew after the 2020 uprising following the police-involved murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.

“My purpose in the revolution is being able to have fresh, healthy produce and food and medicine for our community and being able to teach those life skills to [them],” ​he says, adding that Madison has always felt like a place where Black people were tolerated, not celebrated.

“If you don’t have control of your own food sources, if we’re always relying on the system to feed and shelter and water us, then there’s only so much we can push back on,” Booker says. “There’s only so much we can speak up for.”

Since 2020, Booker has provided fresh produce to Black families and chefs and created space for Black and brown community members to reconnect with their food. He’s hosted events like the popular “Farm 2 Table” brunch and fellowshipped with other Black people over common ingredients like collard greens and okra, swapping stories about each other’s first time eating cornbread sopped in “potlikker” (the broth left over from making collard greens) or frying green tomatoes from a grandparent’s garden. Those are the cultural and liberating experiences Booker set out to foster.

“I viewed [Booker Botanicals] as an oasis, where we [were] able to come as a community and connect to each other through the land and through food,” says Booker, who now serves as the manager of local nonprofit Rooted’s Badger Rock Neighborhood Center. “Reconnecting with those experiences and being able to have intergenerational conversations … is really important [for] find[ing] the similarities amongst all of us.”

Booker says he learned a lot while running Booker Botanicals but closed the business in 2023 to do more research. He hopes to narrow his focus, potentially to herbal medicine, and open a new agriculture business in the future.

Barriers to Success

April Yancer, who works with Wisconsin's Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection, or DATCP, says that many young farmers and farmers of color struggle with finding land, building strong networks with fellow farmers, and accessing the local and state food markets.

As DATCP’s Farm to School and Institution specialist, Yancer works with farmers through the Local Food Purchase Assistance (LFPA) program and Wisconsin Farm to School Initiatives, which create educational opportunities for farmers to network. This year, DATCP’s “Direct-to-Farmer” grant program contracted with 125 farmers to purchase and distribute their products. Yancer says over 90% of those grant recipients self-identify as socially disadvantaged or historically underserved.

As for land access, Madison-area Black farmers have a hard time finding long-term leases that will accommodate them as their operations expand. Longtime practicing organic farmer Robert Pierce says this continues to be a major challenge for him, and that he’s often forced to leave land he’s spent time and resources developing.

“I’ve been running around for 25 to 30 years, putting together people’s lands and getting kicked off of [them], and building some more people’s land and getting kicked off of that,” says Pierce, adding that he’s had to move his farm multiple times due to short-term leases and urban encroachment. Today, Pierce’s Half the 40 Acres Farm operates in Fitchburg in collaboration with Groundswell Conservancy, a local nonprofit that provides new farmers and farmers of color access to community land and protects farmland in Dane County while providing training and entrepreneurial opportunities.

George Reistad, a business development specialist for the city of Madison, says that many of the Black farmers he’s worked with struggle with access to land and long-term land tenure. Post-industrial cities like Detroit and Milwaukee often have more vacant lots available to use as urban farms and community gardens. But Madison’s land is largely accounted for, and vacant land is going fast.

“There is a very high demand for land. It’s expensive,” says Reistad, who previously worked as the city’s food policy director. “There are many farmers here, especially Black and brown farmers, where the capital that’s required puts them at a disadvantage, especially if you can’t access that credit through a lender.”

This sentiment underscores the ongoing obstacles faced by Black farmers across the country. Although the 1999 landmark class action case Pigford v. Glickman — which alleged the USDA racially discriminated in its lending practices — sought to break down the systematic discrimination endured by Black farmers, many still confront barriers to accessing essential financial resources for purchasing land.

Pierce says he’s watched many farmers of color be denied aid and, in response, has worked with different groups on farm bills and encouraged Black farmers to research what they need to know to qualify for loans. Ultimately, he says, Black and brown farmers often don’t receive the same information and support provided to white farmers. An ​NPR analysis of 2022 USDA loan data backs these assertions, finding that Black farmers still experience the highest rate of rejection from loans compared to any other racial group. Even as the USDA tries to mend its fraught relationship with Black and brown farmers through targeted aid, its efforts still have major constraints.

In one 2021 example, a federal judge in Wisconsin halted a $4 billion USDA loan relief program for socially disadvantaged farmers. White farmers, who challenged the policy in court, claimed the program was discriminatory. However, their arguments did not acknowledge how the program might remedy historic cycles of debt and loan discrimination that burden farmers of color.

Creating Community

Despite the lack of financial support over the years, Pierce says he remains dedicated to taking care of his community through farming. Against the odds, he’s been a mainstay in Madison’s agricultural scene, starting his first food market in the late 1990s (after over a decade at the Dane County Farmers’ Market) by installing vegetable stands in liquor stores and gas stations around South Madison. In 2001, Pierce became the manager of the South Madison Farmers’ Market, now located at the Madison Labor Temple. Since then, Pierce has provided schools, pantries and restaurants with fresh organic produce like blue potatoes and collard greens, and he offers sage mentorship to local farmers looking to follow in his footsteps.

“It was always known that you could come down to the South Madison Farmers’ Market and they’ll let you know I’ve let people in and then trained them how to work in markets,” says Pierce.

Beyond feeding his community, much of Pierce’s work involves preparing the next generation of farmers. Through the nonprofit Neighborhood Food Solutions, Pierce leads youth programs and an urban agriculture program to create economic opportunities for formerly incarcerated people.

Many of the producers in this space host workshops and group meetings because, as Yancer says, building professional networks and finding mentors in agriculture can be integral to young and new farmers.

“We’re really trying to break those relationship barriers, build those relationships up and help people feel comfortable asking the questions they need to ask,” Yancer says.

For example, networking with fellow farmers has become a lifeline for Gobourne of Artemis Provisions & Cheese.

“We have friends and individuals who support us and allow us to borrow their equipment and their knowledge to advance what we’re doing,” says Gobourne, who grew up in a farming community in Lafayette County, where he worked on beef and dairy farms and tended to his family’s kitchen garden.

“It has been just a godsend,” he says.

To Gobourne, farming has always had a unique way of bringing people together, and he continues to witness that same communal spirit to this day. Pierce, Booker, Bin-Rella and Hutton-Okpalaeke all say they’ve seen farming similarly affect people. Whether helping someone start their own personal garden or teaching them about the legacy of Black farmers in America, there is a thirst for connection, community and agency. The movement of Black farmers throughout the Madison area is recovering a profound connection to the land and cultivating a path forward for the next generation.

“We are agricultural people. We were brought here because of our expertise in agriculture,” says Booker. “It’s in our blood. It’s a part of who we are.”

Kynala Phillips is a writer based in Kansas City, Missouri. Born and raised in Madison, Phillips studied journalism at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY.

This article originally appeared in the July 2024 issue of Madison Magazine with the headline “Tending Roots.” Subscribe today .

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