Episode Description
DeVonne Jackson Perez left a decade in television production to become an urban farmer — and she has never looked back.
In this conversation, the founder of Good Ground Farm takes us from a childhood spent collecting worms and studying insects, to an illegal fire escape garden in Brooklyn during the pandemic, to a 17-acre farm in Argyle, New York, where she and her family are growing callaloo, heritage peppers, pink eye beans, and other Afro-Caribbean heritage crops that remain largely inaccessible to her community in Brooklyn.
DeVonne speaks to the soul of this work — the right to farm and who actually has access to it, what soil teaches us about reciprocity and grace, the food supply chain's deep lack of diversity, and why right now is the most important moment for Black, queer, and Indigenous farmers to get on the land.
In this conversation, the founder of Good Ground Farm takes us from a childhood spent collecting worms and studying insects, to an illegal fire escape garden in Brooklyn during the pandemic, to a 17-acre farm in Argyle, New York, where she and her family are growing callaloo, heritage peppers, pink eye beans, and other Afro-Caribbean heritage crops that remain largely inaccessible to her community in Brooklyn.
DeVonne speaks to the soul of this work — the right to farm and who actually has access to it, what soil teaches us about reciprocity and grace, the food supply chain's deep lack of diversity, and why right now is the most important moment for Black, queer, and Indigenous farmers to get on the land.