Uplifting Black Land Stewardship

Gathering Homeland is a Texas-based project that centers ancestral wisdom and collective care rooted in Black agrarianism. We support family land retention and land stewardship through storytelling, education, resource sharing, and promoting ecological principles.

We prioritize rural Black family land retention because through various means, such as discrimination, terrorism, unjust partition sales, and adverse possession to name a few, Black folks continue to lose land. Loss of farmland contributes to food apartheid, gentrification, and adverse climate conditions. Much of the land at risk is in culturally significant rural communities across Texas and throughout the South in many communities that are considered to be Freedom Colonies.

We uplift urban and rural Black land stewardship to aid in the efforts to feed and care for communities that may have limited access to land and locally grown produce and plant medicine. According to the USDA, Black people make up only 2% of farmers and have lost 90% of land since 1910. Black farmers face lack of access to capital, culturally relevant trainings and skill building opportunities, and lack of access to resources while being challenged by climate change and an aging farmer population.

As a response to these barriers we aim to decrease Black land loss and nurture a resilient community of support for Black cultivators and land stewards throughout our state.