Short Takes: Heber Brown III

Bio: Rev. Heber Brown III is pastor of Pleasant Hope Baptist Church in Baltimore. Brown, Aleya Fraser, and Darriel Harris started the Black Church Food Security Network to connect black churches in food deserts with black farmers and urban growers.

Website: blackchurchfoodsecurity.net

1. How did the Black Church Food Security Network get started? As a result of the uprising [following the death of Freddie Gray], many corner stores in the most impoverished neighborhoods in Baltimore were put out of commission. It was an unjust arrangement to have entire neighborhoods dependent on corner stores for their food before the uprising, but the uprising intensified that already strained and unjust social arrangement.

Aleya [Fraser] started to call her farmer friends and food distributors—African-American grocers in Philadelphia and D.C.—and they started moving food to Baltimore. We transformed my church into a food depot and distribution center. We would process food donations from all over, and then we would pile the food in our church bus and I would drive the food around to those communities that needed food. We would set up shop on the corner and give out the food. We did that for nearly three weeks, and we realized that we had the beginnings of an alternative food system. The name came later; the action came first.

2. Before the Black Church Food Security Network, you started a garden in your church’s front yard. Why? Whatever land that God gave you and whatever land your church sits on, you can use it to the glory of God, your church, and your community. Ministry can also mean what you do in the soil just as much as what you do in the sanctuary.

I started the garden five years ago because I noticed that in my pastoral visits to the hospital to tend to members who were sick, many of them were sick because of diet-related diseases. I wanted to do something more than pray. For many in my congregation, fresh food was nearby, but it was priced at a point that we couldn’t reach. We couldn’t make that a part of our regular grocery shopping. We got so frustrated by that dynamic that we started Maxine’s Garden. It’s very personal, in terms of what this means for our church.

3. How does food justice relate to other justice issues? When it comes to food, there is often a very narrow focus on nutrition. But for the communities that I’m in relationship with, focusing on nutrition is too narrow in trying to understand the complexity of neighborhoods that are under immense strain and burden. If you’re talking about a lack of nutrition for impoverished neighborhood, it’s often, yes, about lack of access to food, but it’s also about a community’s lack of access to jobs. So it’s not just food deserts, it’s a job desert. It’s neighborhoods that have low-quality schools, and these same neighborhoods have consistent bouts with police brutality. Just focusing on a “food desert” without recognizing the other indicators of health means that your solution is only going to [work] half as well.

4. Why is the network founded in the black church? It makes sense for us to be the Black Church Food Security Network because when black people can depend on no other institution, they can depend on the black church. Black churches are the last anchor institution in these communities that have been victimized by economic injustice and political abandonment. Historically, the black church is the most sustainable institution in black America. From the founding of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in the 1780s up until now, the black church has survived world wars, it has survived oppression, it has survived any number of economic downturns. It also has survived lynching and terrorism. The black church continues. Now, if that’s not the definition of sustainability, then I don’t know what is.

5. What would food security look like? We envision people, especially people of color, having access to the same quality of food and opportunities that more economically affluent communities enjoy. We envision a community that experiences not only food security, but food sovereignty. That’s different from security in that the local community owns the means by which the food is produced. It decreases dependency on big multinational corporations to feed us. In the communities where we work, grocery stores just don’t come, and the ones that were in the community, they left.

It’s not enough to have a better arrangement of dependency. We need to have ownership of the production. In a time when people are excited by and celebrating local food and local economies, we’re growing one right here in Baltimore.