After scooping up the James Beard award for Emerging Leadership in June 2024, Christa Barfield told the audience at the Lyric Opera of Chicago: “Agriculture is the culture.” These are words the founder of FarmerJawn lives by.
Barfield started gardening in the backyard of her Philadelphia row home, growing herbs in a 24-square-foot greenhouse, before she built her agriculture business, which now includes a 128-acre farm that’s the largest Black woman–owned food producer in the country, and is currently transitioning to regenerative organic practices.
FarmerJawn is many things: the farm, which spans three counties in Pennsylvania; a farm shop in West Chester, Pennsylvania, less than an hour’s drive from Philly; and a community-based organization aimed at empowering underserved communities to get involved in regenerative organic food production, while supplying those living in food deserts with fresh produce. The business also has plans to open a “CornerJawn” — a reimagined corner store filled with healthy, organic food — in the Philly neighborhood of Kensington.
Through FarmerJawn, Barfield is creating meaningful change in the world of agriculture, fueled by her belief that “the food grown closest to us is the food that’s best for us.” The James Beard winner’s influence is also felt far beyond the Philadelphia region, as she serves on the board of directors at the Rodale Institute.
In July 2024, Barfield sat down with The Rooted Journal to talk about her work with FarmerJawn, how urban farming can and should be done, and her plans to inspire more people to become farmers as a recipient of the USDA’s Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities.
THE ROOTED JOURNAL We’re talking soon after your win at the 2024 James Beard Awards. Congratulations! What does it mean to you?
Christa Barfield The James Beard Awards don’t often speak to the origins of food, so for me it’s really a reminder for people that where food comes from matters. That’s always been a message of mine. You should know where your tomatoes come from. They taste different and better when you do.
I really love that I get to be a reminder for people of just knowing where their food comes from, knowing that there’s a person who cares about how it was grown, and, even more so, about the nutrition of the item that these chefs are taking and creating something beautiful with. It’s a reminder that food is medicine and we need to care about the producers of not just the meals, but the ingredients as well.
TRJ It’s true, many people forget that there’s a whole process that happens before our food even gets into the kitchen. Speaking of origin stories, how did FarmerJawn come about?
CB I worked in healthcare for 10 years and ultimately it ended up being not healthy for me. The irony of walking into a healthcare facility every single day, not taking care of my own health, led me to be like, “Christa, enough is enough. Now it’s time for you to go on a different journey.” I had no idea what that journey was going to be, but I knew I needed to resign.
In January 2018, I quit my job, turned 30, and got on a plane to Martinique. It was my first time traveling alone and outside the country. I got on that plane, and my life changed. At my first Airbnb, every morning, my host made me cups of tea using herbs that I watched him pick from his backyard. The second Airbnb I stayed in was owned by Black farmers, and I was greeted with coconuts that they had just freshly picked and were making cocktails out of. These people were interacting with food that they grew, and that’s how you ate. If you didn’t grow your own food or have a hand in it or know your farmer, then you did not eat. That was a revelation for me.
After I got home, I said, “I’m going to be a farmer.” A very good friend gifted me a little hobby greenhouse and I lived in a very tiny row home in Germantown, Philadelphia, so that took up about 30% of the backyard. I started with some egg cartons and soil, throwing seeds in and watering. I just figured it out. I had no formal training. I never even grew a houseplant as a child, so this was all very new territory for me. But I was determined, and I decided that I was going to have a say in what my life looked like and take care of my own health in a much better way, even if it was just by having tea from herbs that I grew in my backyard.
Ultimately, it turned into a lot more. That 24-square-foot greenhouse I started with has grown into 128 acres across three counties in Pennsylvania, making us the largest Black-owned food producer in the state.
TRJ There’s a myth that farming in urban areas can’t be done. What do you say to that?
CB A majority of people live in urban communities. That’s why we need to grow food in urban communities. And there are still people living in suburban and rural areas, so obviously we need to have food growing in those places as well. Currently, the food that we’re primarily eating, whether it’s from grocery stores or restaurants, is from 1,500 to 3,000 miles away. We have the power to do better. We have the natural resources, and we have the land. I really want to see us improve in that regard.
So, what has FarmerJawn been able to do, and what market have we made? In the short four years that we’ve been in existence, I would say that we’ve given hope to people that you can actually have control over your food system — regardless of the scale of farming — and that you can also run a viable agricultural business. It’s not enough to just be a farmer; you need to know how to run a business as well.
I have the experience of being an urban farmer, and I also have the experience of being more ruralish. Most farmers don’t have that insight and come from rural areas, like the large farmers out in Pennsylvania’s Lancaster County. When you mention urban farming, they say it’s impossible to make that work. They can’t see it. And then there are smaller farmers that want to get a piece of land. When you talk to them about, like, driving a tractor, it’s just daunting to them. I’m trying to help figure out a middle ground between them. Because both farmers — no matter the size of the land they’re farming — have something to share. We all are fighting the same type of pests; you have to fight harlequin beetles on a half-acre of land the same way you would on 30 acres of land. I’m trying to help find the common ground between these different types of farmers, while recognizing that the food grown closest to us is the food that’s best for us.
TRJ What is FarmerJawn doing to be a model for other farming businesses when it comes to regenerative practices?
CB The bottom line is that we allow the soil to take care of itself by giving it room and space. We don’t do too much. We don’t make too much fuss. The majority of the first year-and-a-half of the healing process for every piece of land I go on is without equipment. For other pieces of land, we have to till in the beginning to get to the seeds so that they can germinate and die off. At the same time, there is a balance between business and doing what’s best for the soil. Typically, people go with production over people. While that could be smart from an economical standpoint, it’s not for the health of the soil and its nutrient density in the long run. So FarmerJawn really does focus on making sure that our soil is happy. Anywhere we go, we want to make the spaces better than when we got them.
We’re also mindful of our water usage, focusing on soil moisture retention versus just always trying to add more water, and giving the microbes a happy place to flourish, as well as the pollinators, and biodiversity. We just added chickens to our farm, so we’re happy to be incorporating that. And we have a robust composting program with a lot of members of the community; businesses like landscape companies and horse farms in the area come and deliver all their manure to us, that we turn into amazing compost.
It also comes down to how we treat our team. With regenerative practices, people always think about the land and the soil, but it’s also about how you take care of your people. I pride myself on encouraging wellness, and I believe we have a very high retention rate of people not missing days of work simply because they love what they do. They believe that they’re part of a bigger mission, so people take off when they need to but if they don’t need to, then they’re at work. I’m really happy to see people on this healing journey with me.
TRJ FarmerJawn is a recipient of the USDA’s Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities. How does FarmerJawn plan to use the grant to get people excited about growing food on a local level?
CB One of the things that we’re discussing right now is FarmerJawn’s apprenticeship and pre-apprenticeship program. That’s definitely going to be the focus, and it connects back to my vision for urban agriculture specifically. I realize that training people is one thing, and training them to be entrepreneurs is really what my focus had been. But not everybody wants to be an entrepreneur; there’s also a great need for skilled people who want to work for other people. So I was realizing, we could train all these people who have an interest in being farmers, but then it’s like, where do they work? Where are the jobs? The problem is that we need more food production closer to people.
We have about 40,000 empty lots throughout Philadelphia. About 10,000 of those are owned by the city, so that means we have some lots that we could choose from. Now we just need to be able to erect farms there, then hire people so that each community can have their own local farmer. That’s how I envision it so that we can actually begin to see an increase in local food production and provide jobs for folks. There’s plenty of money in our budget to be able to give somebody a living wage to be a neighborhood farmer for a community.
TRJ Tell me about how FarmerJawn is working to inspire younger people to get into agriculture.
CB I was really happy to be the commencement speaker this year for W.B. Saul High School, Philadelphia’s agricultural high school. It was a great honor of mine to be able to look out at these kids, mostly Black and brown, who have an interest in agriculture. But the truth is that once they leave high school, many of them will go on to college, but most of them are not going to keep up with their agriculture major. And it’s really just because it’s like, where are the jobs? They may think, I don’t want to live two hours away from a major metro. Can I be in the mix and still love agriculture and still contribute to a regenerative food system? That’s the direction that I’m going in because I truly believe it’s possible.
There are people who have an interest in agriculture at all ages, but never look at it as a viable career path. They think, I don’t want to take a 50% pay cut just so I can go play in soil. That’s where we’re changing people’s minds around what it means to be a farmer, and what it looks like to be a farmer. I take great pride in showing up to spaces just looking great. I’m a city girl. I like being dressed. I like all the things that negate what people typically see as a farmer. We look good. We smell good. I love that my nails are clean. We’re changing what farming looks like.
