Liv Lufkin, American University
Cite as: Lufkin, Liv. 2025. “Agriculture as Resistance: Deconstructing Colonialism Through Food and Farming”. Food-Fueled, 2, e00011. https://doi.org/10.57912/28908044.
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Introduction
Human life is fundamentally intertwined with food. It nourishes us, connects us to the land, and ties us to generations past. But food is not just a source of sustenance. It serves as a powerful act of resistance. To share a meal is to affirm our humanity, our culture, and our bond with the earth. Through farming and food cultivation, people have long resisted colonialism, oppression, and the forces that seek to sever their ties to the land. As civil rights leader Malcolm X said, “Land is the basis of all independence. Land is the basis of freedom, justice, and equality,” (Malcom X 1963). The connection to land and food is central in the struggle for food sovereignty and cultural preservation. From small-scale farmers to Indigenous peoples resisting occupation, food and farming practices serve as acts of defiance against the systems and actors that seek to oppress and erase them.
Food is often used as a way to resist colonial conquest and oppression, while simultaneously serving as a vital means of healing and sustenance. Farming and the cultivation of food sustain an intimate connection to the land, which is a relationship that imperial and colonial regimes have historically sought to sever. While marginalized peoples across the globe face diverse forms of oppression, maintaining a connection to the land is central to preserving food sovereignty, protecting cultural heritage, and, in some cases, resisting occupation and genocide. This essay explores the ways in which food and agricultural practices have historically served as forms of resistance, healing, and cultural preservation for communities affected by colonialism and imperialism, highlighting food as both a symbol and tool for resilience in the face of oppression.
History of Black Farming
The historical connection that Black Americans have to the land, beyond their experiences of slavery and sharecropping, is often overlooked or intentionally ignored. For much of the early twentieth century, the majority of Black Americans lived in the agrarian South, where they maintained close relationships with the land. bell hooks, in Touching the Earth, reflects on this connection, writing, “Living close to nature, black folks were able to cultivate a spirit of wonder and reverence for life. Growing food to sustain life and flowers to please the soul, they were able to make a connection with the earth that was ongoing and life-affirming. They were witnesses to beauty” (hooks 2002, 21). This relationship with nature was not simply a method of survival but also a source of joy and awe.
Even before Abolition, enslaved Black people resisted in subtle yet powerful ways. Slave ships arrived in the “New World” carrying human cargo as well as African food staples, seeds, root vegetables, and livestock. These supplies were primarily intended to feed the crew but were also incorporated into the plantation economy. Enslaved people, drawing on their agricultural expertise, utilized the crops and knowledge they brought with them, which blended with Indigenous agricultural practices (White 2018). Oral histories across Suriname, Cayenne, and Brazilian states of Amapá, Pará and Maranhão recount the story of an enslaved African woman who braided rice seeds in her hair before being forced across the Middle passage, introducing African rice as a crop in the Americas. West African Rice was bought in bulk to feed the enslaved on the journey to the New World. Leftover grains were then used by New World Africans in provisional gardens as subsistence (Carney 2020). These narratives challenge Western accounts of European navigators and colonists as actors of seed dispersal. Food and farming were not only methods of survival but also acts of defiance against the system of enslavement.
Enslaved people were often provided insufficient food on plantations, leading them to forage for wild edibles, hunt, fish, and cultivate their own gardens. These “slave gardens” or provision grounds became essential for maintaining some degree of autonomy and food security. Enslaved people grew a variety of crops, including rice, squash, yams, sweet potatoes, peas, and other staples. These gardens, planted and tended by enslaved individuals during their few hours of rest, served as independent production grounds and can be understood as a form of resistance to the oppressive plantation system. In some cases, gardens could be used to barter and exchange goods, creating informal markets within the community (White 2018).
Black farming as resistance can also be traced back to the period following slavery, continuing through the Reconstruction era and into the Jim Crow period. During Jim Crow, certain Black communities formed what were known as Black settlement towns, freedom villages, freedmen’s settlements, or freedom colonies (White 2018). These communities were created by formerly enslaved individuals and their descendants who sought to escape the exploitative conditions of sharecropping and tenant farming by settling on unclaimed land and building successful family farms. A substantial body of scholarship highlights how these all-Black towns provided a refuge from the oppressive systems of slavery and Jim Crow. In the 1960s, when plantation owners evicted tenant farmers and sharecroppers for demanding higher wages and to prevent them from organizing, Black farmers established “Strike Town” and “Freedom Town” in Mississippi as further acts of resistance (White 2018).
The Great Migration saw a massive influx of Black Americans into industrial cities in the West and North, seeking access to the promise of non-agricultural work, higher wages, educational opportunities, and freedom from racial violence and harassment (Harvard 2024). The resettlement of six million people fundamentally altered every aspect of their lives, including community practices and relationship to the body. The sudden estrangement from their environment, particularly the disconnection from the ability to grow food, be in nature, and “mediate the starkness of poverty with the splendor of nature” (hooks 2008, 22), led to a profound dissonance between mind and body. Additionally, the shift in how the body was regarded—as a mere tool rather than a vessel—further exacerbated this disconnect. As hooks writes, “The way the body was represented became more important than the body itself. It did not matter if the body was well, only that it appeared well” (2008, 22). This altered relationship to both nature and the body contributed to a larger crisis of identity and well-being, creating a psychological and cultural rupture that continues to resonate.
This estrangement is compounded by the erasure of Black people’s deep connection to land and agriculture. Not only has the traditional bond between Black communities and the environment been severed, but the narrative of white people as the stewards of the land has silenced Black expertise and love for the earth. Leah Penniman, a food sovereignty activist and co-founder of Soul Fire Farm, critiques the whitewashing of environmental and agricultural movements, noting, “[T]he only consistent story I’d seen or been told about Black people and the land was about slavery and sharecropping, about coercion and brutality and misery and sorrow” (2018, 3). This erasure ignores centuries of Black agricultural practices rooted in agroecology, long before the forced migration to the “New World.” Dr. George Washington Carver revived “Organic Farming,” an African-Indigenous system developed over generations in the US in the early 1900s. Another Tuskegee professor, Booker T. Whatley, was one of the inventors of community supported agriculture (CSA), a system that is used widely today. Fannie Lou Hamer, one of the most powerful voices of the civil rights movements, worked with the National Council of Negro Women and others to help organize food cooperatives and make landownership attainable for Black farmers in the Mississippi Delta. Penniman explains the essential role that Black farmers took within the civil rights movement: coordinating campaigns for desegregation and against voter suppression, as well as providing food, housing, and bail to organizers. Denying this history not only distorts the truth but deepens the disconnect, reinforcing harmful images. As Penniman writes, “When we as Black people are bombarded with messages that our only place of belonging on land is as slaves, performing dangerous and backbreaking menial labor, to learn of our true and noble history as farmers and ecological stewards is deeply healing” (Penniman 2018, 3). Penniman expresses the joy and liberation that she, and members of her community, have experienced when reconnecting with the land. For her, acknowledging her ancestral ties to farming and to the land was not a process of continued oppression, but of liberation. Reclaiming this history serves to honor Black communities for their contributions and resilience while challenging dominant narratives that continue to marginalize their rightful connection to the land and its stewardship.
Healing
Both hooks and Penniman link the struggle of Black liberation and ecological movements as perpendicular movements. In their experience, many Black people see ecology as divorced from the struggle to end racism, when in fact these movements and their success are highly interconnected. Penniman addresses this issue in her own life, stating, “I felt that I had to choose between ‘my people’ and the Earth, that my dual loyalties were pulling me apart and negating my inherent right to belong,” (2018, 2). Connecting these movements situates food sovereignty as an important issue within Black communities and identifies the driving forces behind racism and ecological destruction as overlapping and reinforcing.
hooks invites Wendell Berry into this conversation in her essay, Touching the Earth (2008). As Wendell Berry reminds us, “Only by restoring the broken connections can we be healed” (2002, 40). Renewing the relationship with earth is a way to remember ancestors and restore sacredness to land and body. Penniman agrees with connecting relationships to land and farming, writing, “To farm while black is an act of defiance against white supremacy and a means to honor the agricultural ingenuity of our ancestors” (2018, 8). By bridging the gap between Black liberation and ecological movements, both hooks and Penniman highlight the transformative power of reconnecting with the land as a means of healing, resistance, and reclaiming ancestral wisdom.
Dispossession and isolation are struggles that resonate globally, impacting numerous communities under the dominance of white supremacist states. bell hooks examines the shared relationship between Black people and Indigenous peoples, particularly in their reverence for the land, highlighting the connections between their experiences of land loss and resistance.
hooks explains, “African settlers in Florida taught the Creek Nation run aways, the “Seminoles,” methods for rice cultivation. Native peoples taught recently arrived black folks all about the many uses of corn (The hotwater cornbread we grew up eating came to our black Southern diet from the world of the Indian). Sharing the reverence for the earth, black and red people helped one another remember that, despite the white man’s ways, the land belonged to everyone.” (2002, 21). Food brings together community, in reverence to the land, intentionally fostering connections with the human, and non-human, acting as a method of both survival and resistance.
Indigenous Access to Food
Many Indigenous peoples in North America relied on bison for sustenance and cultural practices. In Canada and the United States, millions of bison were massacred by encroaching settlers and soldiers. Core to this policy was the idea that engineered starvation would serve as leverage to suppress the resistance of indigenous populations (Feir et al. 2022). The intentional destruction of the bison population aimed to starve Indigenous peoples, forcing them to settle on reserves. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, colonial policies such as the Indian Act, Homesteading Act, and Pass System further restricted Indigenous access to land, food, and water, contributing to widespread malnutrition and starvation, particularly in response to Indigenous resistance to settler expansion (Levkoe et al. 2024).
Foraging, hunting, and fishing were prohibited on reserves, forcing reliance on inadequate government rations and leading to widespread malnutrition and starvation. The use of food and resources as tools of control was part of a broader effort to undermine Indigenous identity and self-determination, a legacy that continues today through ongoing issues like boil-water advisories and environmental degradation caused by industries like mining and oil extraction (Levkoe et al. 2024). These ongoing dispossession tactics have had devastating effects on Indigenous health and food security.
Food as a Weapon of War
Forced starvation has been a tool of colonialism and warfare for many centuries. It is one of the most brutal ways to attack the food sovereignty of a community or people. Starvation methods include blockades, water deprivation, food system destruction, and the general destruction of civil infrastructure. Starvation often leads to forced mass internal displacement and forced migration. A core element of genocide includes food militarization and weaponization, a tactic that has been used by Canada and the United States to exterminate, dispossess, and control Indigenous populations (Fakhri 2024).
The Report of the Special Rapporteur on the right to food stands out on its admission that the genocide in Gaza is changing international law as we know it (Fahkri 2024). Written by Michael Fahkri, an accomplished human rights and environmental lawyer and released in July 2024, it establishes the relationship between the right to food and starvation prevention, rooting these ideas in Gaza with the goal of fostering Palestinian food sovereignty and Palestinian liberation. Fahkri explains that famines are a political problem and are human made, meaning they are both predictable and preventable. Starvation campaigns are campaigns seeking power over land, and are used as a technique for displacement, dispossession, and occupation.
The Palestinian liberation struggle highlights how starvation is inherently a human rights issue. Food sovereignty represents the ability of communities and Indigenous Peoples to control how they grow, prepare, share, and consume food, reflecting their deep connection to land and water. The more power is shared equitably within a food system, the greater the likelihood that everyone will have access to sufficient food. Similarly, when people’s relationship with land and water is rooted in care and reciprocity, it fosters the creation of stronger, more caring relationships between individuals and communities.
For Indigenous people resisting settler colonialism, control over land often means control over life. In their struggle against Zionist settler colonialism, Palestinians have long worked towards establishing a resistance economy. This idea emerged during the early years of the struggle towards liberation and became a vital component of the First Intifada. Victory gardens were grassroot initiatives focused on small-scale agriculture at the household and neighborhood levels that fueled the uprising (Nimer 2024). During this period, cooperatives like “The Shed” also emerged. Located in Beit Sahour, The Shed supplied seeds, tools, and insecticides at cost to Palestinians in nearby areas. Due to initiatives like these, it is estimated that more than 500,000 trees were planted across Palestine between 1987 and 1989 (King 2007). At the time, Yitzhak Rabin, the Prime Minister, was so enraged by these efforts that he ordered the army to impose curfews on Palestinian villages during harvest season, causing their crops to rot in the fields (Nimer 2024). These projects emphasized a rejection of the colonial condition as an act of social and political resistance.
Until October 2023, Gaza was largely shaped by urban sprawl, leaving few rural areas available for agriculture. Despite this, Gaza’s ability to produce 44% of its food in a predominantly urban environment was an impressive feat, as urban areas typically struggle to meet their food and water needs without a surrounding rural landscape, even in normal conditions (Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics 2023). Without the resourcefulness of Palestinians extracting gas and fertilizer from waste and utilizing rooftops for crop cultivation, food insecurity in the region would have been even more dire.
The challenges of promoting food sovereignty must be recognized in the context of ongoing genocide and open warfare. Regenerative agricultural practices that aim to restore soil fertility are unable to take hold, as Israeli forces frequently target and destroy the few remaining agricultural zones in Gaza. By June 2024, the Israeli assault had already wiped out 75% of Gaza’s agricultural land. While similar destruction of trees and orchards occurs in the West Bank, the scale of devastation in Gaza, driven by the ongoing genocide, has reached unprecedented levels (Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics 2023). Food sovereignty should not be seen as a “cure all” for all the harms of settler colonialism. Instead, its role is to create conditions that enable resistance, confrontation, and the reduction of further damage to Palestinian livelihoods.
Conclusion
The destruction of food systems in Gaza and Canada are merely examples of a broader effort of land dispossession and capitalist accumulation. By severing Indigenous peoples’ ties to their food systems, settlers and colonial powers have sought to dominate both the land and the people dependent on it. Food sovereignty movements, in turn, work to reclaim the right to self-determination, emphasizing the importance of building global networks of solidarity. The fight for food sovereignty is deeply intertwined with larger struggles for land, justice, and self-determination. Drawing connections between Palestine, Canada, and the U.S. highlights the shared colonial dynamics and global struggles for justice and self-determination, urging us to critically assess the role of food and farming in these movements and hold governments accountable.
Food sovereignty is not just a concern for those affected by colonialism or imperialism; it is a global issue with far-reaching implications for every community. Wendell Berry in The Pleasures of Eating emphasizes the connection between food, culture, and the environment. He urges people to rethink their relationship with what they eat, particularly the “passive American consumer” (1990). Critiquing modern industrial agriculture, Berry highlights the detachment of individuals from the sources of their food, advocating for a return to more local, sustainable food systems. Berry writes that, “Eating is an agricultural act,” (1990) suggesting that every choice we make is tied to the land and its care. Food is not simply a commodity but a cultural and ethical issue. He argues that the pleasure of eating is inextricably tied to understanding the labor, history, and care that goes into producing food. To foster a more harmonious and sustainable relationship with both the land and one another, we must support international food sovereignty movements, building a global coalition of advocates.
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