Agri-Cultural Justice from California’s Central Valley to the Mississippi Delta

Erica Kohl-Arenas
American Studies
UC Davis

In collaboration with Myrna Martinez-Nateras of the Pan Valley Institute (PVI) in Fresno, California, this project connects immigrant, refugee, and Indigenous women culture keepers from Central Valley agricultural communities with cultural organizers in agricultural communities in the Mississippi Delta through the Mississippi Center for Cultural Production. California’s Central Valley is home to some of the wealthiest agricultural producers in the world and counties with the highest levels of food insecurity in the country. Mississippi, the birthplace of a cotton industry that built unprecedented wealth for white growers on the backs of enslaved Black peoples, is what has been called ‘the hungriest state in the nation.’ These contradictory relationships are no accident, and the two regions of wealth production and dispossession are not disconnected. They are the product of intertwined geographies of capital, labor, and political power that have produced serious harm and trauma among those who have harvested the nation’s agricultural wealth. Each region is simultaneously organized by enduring movements for agricultural justice, care, repair, and healing. Based on over 25 years of research partnership, we aim to bring together leading agri-culture organizers from each region who are building more equitable, caring forms of food production and culture.