“After enslavement, there’s supposed to be 40 acres and a mule, but it never happened,” Mason says, referring to an unfulfilled promise made to freed slaves after the Civil War. Suddenly, the people that they had enslaved were not being enslaved, but [Southern farmers] basically did everything they could to keep that kind of dynamic going.”
When you need to plant, you need to plant,” Mason says. “So if you’re off a season, and you don’t get your little bit of money, you’re behind.“ In 1999, a federal judge ruled that the USDA had systematically denied loans to Black farmers and awarded a group of Black farmers more than $1 billion in damages. In 2010, a second $1.25 billion settlement was awarded to Black farmers and their families. And in the summer of 2024, the Biden-Harris administration established the Inflation Reduction Act’s Discrimination Financial Assistance Program, which provided $2.2 billion in reparative funds to 43,000 farmers and ranchers who faced discrimination in federal loan programs.
DISCOVERING SOMETHING SPECIAL
Conventionally rice involves continuously flooding fields. “The soil can’t breathe, the roots can’t breathe,” says Lee. “[Rice] learned to survive in water. It does not thrive in water.” grown Furthermore, conventionally grown rice “is a menace because of the amount of methane that is released from all of the water and the flooded fields,” Mason says. Rice production accounts for around 8% of global methane emissions. SRI production can reduce that amount by nearly half because SRI farming requires much less water and doesn’t use agrichemicals. It’s healthier for plants and soil, and it’s more productive. “Just by creating more distance in your rows and by not flooding the fields, you could basically have double and triple the yields,” says Levine. Mason and about a dozen Black farmers at Jubilee Justice are currently testing different varieties of rice. The process is slow. Because the farm is organic, they don’t use herbicides, and they’ve struggled to control weeds. But Mason believes her work demands holding herself and her partners to a high standard.
“It happens through not giving Black farmers loans when white folks get a loan,” Mason says. And even when Black farmers are approved for loans, “they have to jump through way more hoops.” Mason says Black farmers often receive their loan payments late, which can force them to skip growing seasons and lead to overcollateralization, meaning the collateral they provide to receive a loan is worth more than the loan itself. In farming, “everything happens when it needs to happen.
Shortly after starting Jubilee Justice, Mason connected with Caryl Levine, co-founder of Lotus Foods, a California- based organic specialty rice company at the forefront of the SRI movement. Lotus Foods had been working with researchers at Cornell University’s SRI International Network and Resources Center to help farmers develop SRI practices in Asia and Africa. “By changing how rice has grown, we learned that we could have social, environmental, and economic impacts,” Levine says, noting that sustainable farming has helped keep families together because men no longer need to leave rural communities to earn money. “We thought, ‘Oh my God, it doesn’t get better than that.’ It really goes beyond organic and beyond any mission alignment and impact that we ever thought we could achieve.” Levine and her partner Ken Lee were looking for U.S. farmers to work with. “I knew it was something special,” Mason says. “She explained to me the system of rice intensification, why it’s good for the planet, and why it’s good for the people.”
“When I think about spirit, I think about the sanctity of life. I think about how all life is deeply interconnected,” Mason says. “We’re responsible for each other. And as we start to understand that responsibility — that an ecosystem is larger than myself, larger than my own family, larger than the people that I know and love — and we open up our circle of care, [we understand] that there is a huge responsibility here.” As Mason works toward Jubilee Justice’s mission — to heal both humans and the land — she thinks about people like Charles and Shirley Sherrod, who started the first community land trust to support Black farmers in the 1960s. She thinks of her grandparents and her parents, too. “My mom instilled in her four children, ‘Do something about what’s wrong,’” she says. “That’s the DNA I come from.”
“By changing how rice has grown, we learned that we could have social, environmental, and economic impacts,” Levine says, noting that sustainable farming has helped keep families together because men no longer need to leave rural communities to earn money.
Visit JUBILEEJUSTICE.ORG to learn more.
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ISSUE 02
FIELDS OF CHANGE
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