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Farming And Racial Politics; Music And Vegan Cooking

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(Earth Eats theme music, composed by Erin Tobey and performed by Erin and Matt Tobey)

KAYTE YOUNG: From WFIU in Bloomington Indiana, I'm Kayte Young and this is Earth Eats. 

NIC GARZA: There is an alarming amount of people that will say like, "I don't care if you're white, black, brown or purple, you can start a farm, it just means growing seeds." And that's not true. 

KAYTE YOUNG: This week on our show we talk with local young growers at Outlier Farmstead who insist that farming is political. And we meet Dani Debuto of the band Zeta. He's got a passion for vegan food. He feeds the audience at shows, his band on the road, and during the pandemic he's taught online cooking classes. All that and more coming up in the next hour here on Earth Eats, stay with us. 

(Music)

KAYTE YOUNG:  Earth Eats is produced from the campus of Indiana University in Bloomington Indiana. We wish to acknowledge and honor the indigenous communities native to this region and recognize that Indiana University is built on indigenous homelands and resources. We recognize the Miami, Delaware, Potawatomi, and Shawnee people as past, present, and future caretakers of this land. 

(Music)

Let's go to Renee Reed for Earth Eats news. Hello Renee.

RENEE REED: Hello Kayte.

Employees of a New York City produce market reached an agreement with management ending a weeklong strike in late January. Hunts Point Market is the world's largest wholesale produce market according to the Food and Environment Reporting Network or FERN. It's located in the south Bronx which was an early epicenter of COVID-19 including hundreds of cases traced to the market itself. Lead by Teamsters Local 202 the strike highlights growing outcry from essential food industry workers. 

The pandemic has brought increased attention to labor practices across the food industry, from meat packers and distributors to cooks, cashiers, servers and delivery drivers. November saw strikes from truck drivers in New York's Hudson Valley and drivers and warehouse workers in Fargo North Dakota. Both groups said their employers were not doing enough to protect them from contracting COVID-19. 

The agreement reached at Hunts Point Market is seen as a victory for the union and includes the biggest raise ever won from Local 202's bargaining unit. 

A congressional subcommittee has launched an investigation into worker safety violations at meatpacking plants. Harvest Public Media's Dana Cronin reports.

DANA CRONIN: The select subcommittee on the coronavirus crisis has sent letters to the three largest meatpacking plant companies JBS, Smithfield, and Tyson, as well as the Occupational Safety and Health Administration which the committee alleges was too hands-off in its covid safety response. Illinois democratic congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi is a member of the subcommittee. 

RAJA KRISHNAMOORTHI: Because the Trump administration was so lax in its oversight a lot of people unnecessarily got sick and a lot of people died, and we cannot tolerate that any longer. 

DANA CRONIN: In email statements representatives from JBS and Smithfield say they've invested millions of dollars in safety measures and have implemented health protections for their workers. I'm Dana Cronin, Harvest Public Media. 

RENEE REED: Some states are seeing increased interest in the use of cover crops, thanks to program's designed to promote their use. Cover crops are planted to help soil and prevent weeds. In the last five years Illinois and Iowa have implemented programs that provide crop insurance discounts for every acre of cover crops. This year in Illinois the $50,000 acre allotment was met within 24 hours. Chris Reynolds is with American Farmland Trust and helped launch the program in Illinois. He says the goal is to change farmers' perceptions of cover crops. 

CHRIS REYNOLDS: We want farmers to not think of cover crops as something they may have an issue with when they take out crop insurance but rather how cover crops can actually make their cropland more resilient and hopefully lead to less crop insurance claims. 

RENEE REED: Reynolds says he’s been in talks with federal agencies about how to expand the program nationwide. He says the program has a lot of potential especially under the new Biden administration. Thanks to Toby Foster and Harvest Public Media's Dana Cronin for those reports. For Earth Eats news I'm Renee Reed. 

(Earth Eats news theme composed by Erin Tobey and performed by Erin and Matt Tobey) 

(Music)

Over the past two years our community has faced a great deal of controversy surrounding our local farmers' markets. A member of Identity Europa a white nationalist group rebranded as the American Identity Movement was selling produce at our largest farmers' market run by the City of Bloomington. This revelation led to protests, boycotts, community conversations and trainings on racism and white supremacy, a temporary market shutdown, increased security, and a splinter in our local food producers community. As a result new markets have formed in town including the People's Cooperative Market with racial justice at the core of its mission and other markets. Some of them attempting to avoid the controversy all together. 

In July of 2020 a social media post caught my attention. It was from Nic Garza of Outlier Farmstead, who described himself as one of the only Hispanic Latino farm owners in Bloomington. He wrote, "Farming is political." 

Nic went on to say, "Farming as we know it is a product of black and indigenous knowledge and practice, from ancient techniques from modern models from George Washington Carver, and Booker T. Watley. Throughout this country's history land has been stolen from these people or outright burned and destroyed." 

Nic notes that black, indigenous and people of color or BIPOC are "Most likely born with generational wealth or land. This is absolutely necessary to address especially as a farmer and as a human being. There is so much work to be done in acknowledging this history and righting these wrongs." 

Seeing these words I knew I wanted to talk to Nic Garza, so I made a plan to visit Outlier Farmstead out on Leonard Springs Road in Southwest Bloomington. 

(Sound of car door closing and footsteps)

MARIE O’NEILL: How are you? 

KAYTE YOUNG: I'm good! 

[VOICE OVER] Nic Garza and Marie O'Neill greeted me with face masks in the driveway. 

NIC GARZA: My name is Nic, Nic Garza. I run Outlier Farmstead. 

MARIE O’NEILL: And my name is Marie O'Neill and the same goes for me, I guess. 

KAYTE YOUNG [VOICE OVER]: We began with a tour of their farm. 

NIC GARZA: We kind of started off under the guise of like a market garden, row cropping annuals pretty much throughout. And then halfway through we kind of considered that we maybe we wanna move towards a perennial system. And it's been tough to do that, they take a while to establish and this first year we're just trying to get established pretty readily. 

KAYTE YOUNG [INTERVIEWING]: Can you talk a little bit about what kind of crops are annuals just for people who maybe aren't as familiar with growing as you are?

NIC GARZA: Yeah, yeah, of course. Lettuce, squash, chard, beets, onions, are all really annuals. If they die back in the winter then they're really only useful for that one season. A perennial plant relies on a dense root system that allows it to come back up in the springtime and perennially forever, if it's well taken care of. 

So we have some native hazels back there and that was kind of what started the whole drive towards a more perennial system. We constructed swales and berms and planted out one of them, the elders, and two of them the cucumbers, and cucumbers aren't working that well. But it's just that trial of learning that we're grateful to be able to have, and not really faced huge consequences on it, this is really a hobby farm for us right now. 

KAYTE YOUNG: What are swales and berms? 

NIC GARZA: Yeah, swales and berms are ditches with piles on the side essentially to mitigate water flow and erosion. We sourced compost from a local farmer who is USDA organic, and he couldn't use that compost because the certifier didn't let him. And so we got that compost second hand from him and set up about 10 different beds. And we had a huge rain event in March like a week or two after we set the beds up and everything just washed away. And it was the day after that we decided that we need to find a way to mitigate that. 

KAYTE YOUNG: I just love the word swales. 

NIC GARZA: It's a beautiful word yeah, and they work really well. When it rains, before we had that rain catchment system over there, everything would find its way down here. And it holds water for quite a long time and from the past couple days rain event you might still find water in that far south swale just standing there and slowly being leeched out as the other plants east of it beyond it need it. I think that's incredible. 

KAYTE YOUNG: Right, right, yeah. 

NIC GARZA: Like I said I mean everything here is experimental and I think that that's part of what draws us to farming, it's so niche and there's so many things to think about all the time. It's like navigating a maze or a labyrinth, and it's just been really rewarding to find out what works and what doesn't. 

A good example of that is intercropping, and you can intercrop lettuce and onions you know at the same time; you can put them in rows together and they should be able to grow together but that's all based on timing and if you don't get the timing right then maybe the lettuce will grow too quickly and shade out the onions. And then the whole thing fails. We got that right a couple times and we also got that wrong a few times. 

A wrong example would be our kale and beets, the kale was too far along when we put it in with the beets. It grew up and just kind of shaded out, like little trees, the beets. And kind of stunted their growth pretty bad. And that's just something that we have to try again next year. 

We drew from Charles Doting whose a popular organic farmer in the U.K. He multisows certain crops which means that when you propagate them in a tray, in an individual cell tray, you for example beets you would put about four to five seeds in there and you'd get like a little cluster of small seedlings and you put that in the ground. And as they grow the swelling at the top of the tap root pushes them apart and you can selectively harvest the biggest ones and then that gives the remaining few a chance to grow in and fill that space. 

We're still sorting out what works and what doesn't work with that. Like just yesterday we sowed rutabaga or swede and it took a bit of reading to figure out if that's something that we should multisow or not and then we ended up not doing it. But yeah, just another example of the intricacy of this kind of farming. 

Everything here was just pasture grass and low-quality weeds in March-ish. And we were able to go out it was like Brownsburg which is like 40 minutes rural southeast of us to meet a man that was selling billboards from a friend that put up billboards. And we got maybe six of them for maybe $20 each. And it had worked out kind of perfectly because they're used, they're kinda weathered, everything has already degraded by the time that they've been standing up in the sun for so long. We use them to smother out weeds and kinda break clear ground. Over here we had a tarp sitting for about three maybe four weeks and it's just pure rich soil and after that we went through and cover cropped it and laid the straw down to kind of hold moisture. 

KAYTE YOUNG: It seems so good because they're large so it's just a one-time deal, you're not like piecing together a bunch of pieces. And they're so heavy they probably really last a long time. 

NIC GARZA: Yeah I think they're 15 mil and they're 14 x 48 which makes our beds a strange length, but it's worked out perfectly. We've got a couple more out front still and we like to keep 2-3 tarps down at all times just to as new projects come up, as we anticipate what's gonna happen next year and all that. Yeah. 

KAYTE YOUNG: Yeah that's awesome, I love it. Especially when it's like an inexpensive and recycled thing. 

NIC GARZA: Yeah, and that's a huge thing while farming while young; 85% of everything we have is used. And most of it's local, some of it we went out to Indy to get, but it's really just that game of finding what you can, what is available to you and what is affordable to you. This whole farm has been quite a bit less than $3,000 to get started. 

KAYTE YOUNG [NARRATING]: Nic and Marie are quick to point out though that the cost of land can get in the way for many farming startups. They did not purchase land at the outset, and they have a lease agreement that allows them to keep costs low. If you're just joining us, my guests today are Nic Garza and Marie O'Neill of Outlier Farmstead. After a short break we'll continue our conversation and hear about starting a new farm as a global pandemic sets in. Stay with us. 

(Music)

I'm Kayte Young, you're listening to Earth Eats and we're talking with Nic Garza and Marie O'Neill. They are young growers and owners of Outlier Farmstead in Bloomington Indiana. 

[TO NIC] Is this your first year?

NIC GARZA: Yes, absolutely. 

KAYTE YOUNG: Like, this spring? 

NIC GARZA: Yeah and actually covid kinda got us. We had a pretty elaborate marketing plan and how we were gonna go about it and once everything started shutting down we had to pivot and just figure out what to do. That hurt us quite a bit. 

It was interesting to see how emotions played into that. When we sowed seeds in March and April we sowed a lot of seeds. We grew a lot of produce and in late April, early May we just weren't selling it. It was complicated to work out food donations to people because access is now strange, how to proceed with that is a bit difficult. And so I took that kind of personally and it made me sad. And so I dialed back how much we were starting and now we're vending at the People's Market and we're vending at a neighborhood market and opening our own market and now we would be selling more if we had more, now. 

KAYTE YOUNG: [Chuckles] Yeah, again, getting that balance right. 

NIC GARZA: We didn't really have any experience growing probably 75% of the crops that we're growing now. And it kinda shows everything is experimental. We're dealing with five different pest issues simultaneously on just our squash. 

KAYTE YOUNG: Oh yeah I totally understand that. I no longer grow anything in the squash family because I can't handle the heartbreak. 

NIC GARZA: It is heartbreak, it's real heartbreak. 

MARIE O’NEILL: One night you'll go to bed and everything will be fine and the next morning you'll wake up and three of your plants are just like wilted to death. 

NIC GARZA: Something I found interesting about that is our friend Steven from Rising Moon who lives maybe 10 minutes south does not have these issues with squash pests. He's fine. He has a little stripped cucumber beetle and that's it. And so his squash are looking perfect. 

KAYTE YOUNG: Wow, that's so interesting. 

NIC GARZA: Yeah. 

We came from Northwest Indiana. And we had some experience growing food there. We worked on a farm for about a year and a very rich glacial sandy loom soil. And a lot of things worked in that that don't work here and vice versa. This ground is pretty tough, it has a lot of compaction issues. We had to till it once after that it was a mixture of cover cropping, buck wheat radish to loosen up and aerate the soil and then going through and using a garden fork to manually aerate all the vegs before we planted them. And that was not something that we had to do in Northwest Indiana. 

KAYTE YOUNG: The peppers look gorgeous though I will say. They look really happy. 

NIC GARZA: Yeah they worked out pretty well. 

KAYTE YOUNG: So you're either thinking of or definitely moving towards not having any of these annual crops, or maybe just cutting down on them and building up the perennials? 

NIC GARZA: Yeah the latter, definitely. There's a place in my heart for annuals. Like people like eating onions, and beets and chards, 

KAYTE YOUNG: And peppers

NIC GARZA: And peppers and tomatoes, but I know that it would be more environmentally sound to move towards a perennial system and to share that in our community. And so we've been doing pretty constant research about which plants that are native to Indiana have edible qualities to them and how can we incorporate that. 

This land was previously a deer farm of all things, which I didn't know could exist or should exist. It was actually that historical pasturing of this land that led to our soil being eutrophicated, very unnaturally high in nutrients which I don't think many people would think of as a real problem but it definitely affected the growth of our crops in ways that we didn't really expect in terms of the weeds that we have, the pressure that we have, and growth habit. For example our peppers grew to be very leafy and not produce much fruit because the nitrogen levels were just so high from all of that pasturing over the past 60 years on this land. 

KAYTE YOUNG: But there were deer being pastured? 

NIC GARZA: Yeah, there were deer...

KAYTE YOUNG: For what reasons? For food? 

NIC GARZA: Kind of for ego. This guy decided to raise deer to kind of invent a trophy deer that he could then have people come out to stay here. And then from here they would haul the deer into an enclosed preserve and then kill the deer and then like mount it. 

KAYTE YOUNG: Okay. 

NIC GARZA: Yeah. 

KAYTE YOUNG: No sense trying to understand that. 

NIC GARZA: Yeah... not really. 

KAYTE YOUNG [VOICE OVER]: We checked out the high tunnel, the toolshed and the site for their farm stand. Then we approached a fenced area attached to the main outbuilding. 

MARIE O’NEILL: This is where we keep our chickens. Right now we have 11 chickens, 2 roosters, there they are coming out. They're all barred rock except for Jammy Shell who is a rooster who we got from a woman in the area who didn't want another rooster. Yeah they love us probably because we spend so much time with them because they lived in our house for way too long cause we didn't have a setup outside. So they're so friendly is what everyone tells me when they come out here. 

Yeah I'd say my experience more than Nic's is limited with chickens. So I didn't know like what a friendly chicken was versus an unfriendly chicken, but apparently ours is the best. What can I say? 

KAYTE YOUNG: Okay so they're black and white kind of speckled striped looking with a little bit of red cone on their faces. 

(Chicken clucking)

NIC GARZA: If we have any issue with having chickens it's that we don't have enough, honestly. We have 11 more on the way. One of my goals for having birds is to be able to rotationally graze them and work land while also being an endless source of joy and entertainment. They're great. 

KAYTE YOUNG [VOICE OVER]: Along the side of the building were seed starting trays. 

NIC GARZA: Couple of trays of native plants that I was able to source seed from. I really care about implementing native plants and I realized that I hadn't been implementing that since between like March and May. So I decided to start some that have some edible properties to them and it's a whole different game to germinate a native seed or plant. Many of them require stratification a period of set, pulled, wet dormancy, so that might mean storing them in sand in the fridge, a bit of water, for a month or two months depending on the seed. Some might require scarification which is manually rubbing with sandpaper or disintegrating with sulfuric acid, the outer layer of a seed. You'd use that for bigger and heftier seeds with a casing like pawpaw or persimmon or Kentucky Coffee Tree. And past the flora we do have a native passionflower that occurs along the Ohio river, so it's not quite been naturalized as far up north but we are growing a handful of those and we have some primrose, some pasture thistle and some New Jersey Tea which we're excited about. 

KAYTE YOUNG [VOICE OVER]: After the tour we set up in the garage a good distance apart to talk about what drew me to their farm in the first place. It was a social media post about farming being political. And how many farmers just don't want to go there. 

NIC GARZA: A wonderful anecdote that came to my mind is the farmer that I worked for in Northwest Indiana refused to get a windmill on his farm, although he was very interested in renewable energy because windmills have too much political context to them. 

There is this overlying fear, I think,  throughout farmers or business owners where they don't want to split up their customer base, they don't wanna speak about issues. I'm part of a few groups on Facebook for farming, farm owners, all that, and there is an alarming amount of people that will say like, "I don't care if you're white, brown, black, or purple, you can start a farm it just means growing seeds." And that's not true. 

Black and indigenous people are historically and systemically currently prevented from accessing land. And although to most it might not be as painstakingly obvious as their land being burned or like pillaged or reclaimed, it's now a more subtle system of whose helped and who isn't. 

In the early 20th century when farming blew up to a scale of mass proportion loans were needed. You had to have a loan to compete in that market. Loans were denied to black people or other people of color systemically. And that hasn't gone away. 

And most recently we see it in the covid farmer assistance program or package, a program that rolled out by the USDA in March or April of this year to provide some kind of financial relief for famers that had to pivot that experienced losses in the market. You see it there too that that was also systemically denied to young farmers, farmers of color, vulnerable and underprivileged communities. 

It's such an unsustainable thing and anyway you look at it really the average age of a farmer is steadily just rising up and up and up. And there's not help for young people that wanna farm, it's hard. It's really hard. 

KAYTE YOUNG [VOICE OVER]: We talked about some of the difficulties in our community farmers' markets and I asked Nic and Marie where they were selling their produce. They mentioned an informal neighborhood setup in a market that started in early 2020 called the People's Cooperative Market. 

NIC GARZA: The People's Market was just a godsend really for us. It took a bit for us to get kind of registered with it, kind of like actually start vending because of covid because everything was so up in the air and frazzley. The People's Market is a wonderful organization that works hard to address racial injustice and food systems in our community. And they advertise to buy sponsored boxes for local community members pretty much like a CSA share that is provided to people in need. And they go about organizing it, collecting it, delivering it, distributing it. It's so much work. 

We have the option of providing a $5 bundle, a $10 bundle, or a $15 box, or a $30 box. Those $5 and $10 bundles can then be combined when need be to create a $15 box or even a $30 box. And they sort all that out. On our end it's as easy as we have 10 bunches of $10 bundles and we put that in, and they take care of the rest. That's hugely important to small farmers, to people that don't have a leg up already, to maybe two young people that just moved here. Like that makes the difference, that inclusivity, those values mean a lot to us. 

KAYTE YOUNG [INTERVIEWING]: I think some people might say, "I'm just a farmer I'm not an activist, why does my food have to be political, can't I just grow it and sell it?" What is the connection between food and justice or food and racial justice, because that's really been what's been stirring around in our community quite a bit. 

NIC GARZA: So who can grow food and who can access food are the two key points in how food is political and how food is a measure of justice and why that matters. I would imagine that as a white farmer seeing an absence of farmers of color isn't a very pressing thing to you because that is what everyone knows. You have to go out of your way and put yourself in someone else's shoes to notice that and notice that that is a problem. 

I think that as a farmer asking yourself why you started growing food. Most farmers might say to provide food to my community, I think that that needs to be reevaluated by many people and reconsidered. Because if that was true and I'm not saying it's not, then there's a lot of work that needs to be done and a lot of things that need to be acknowledged for that to happen. There are many many many folks that can't access a farmers' market, that can't afford the price of food that is raised locally and sustainably. And I think that's where... they're directly tied into that and they can't really escape that. 

KAYTE YOUNG [VOICE OVER]: We talked about the farmstead they're putting together onsite with a few other farmers and what it can mean for our community to have multiple markets and locations all around town instead of just one central location. They also mentioned an idea for connecting with schools starting first with a Montessori school in town. 

NIC GARZA: Kind of forming like a collective contract, kind of like an infant food hub to make a contract that instead of relying on one farmer requires a collective of farmers to raise a produce to a specific standard to be able to obtain contracts like that. Local food hasn't really made its way into schools around here I don't think, I know Marie knows more about that. 

MARIE O’NEILL: I did some research on institutions purchasing local food in Indiana, and I mean the highest response rate was from schools specifically K-12 schools in Indiana, but more specifically in Monroe County. And while schools might be purchasing 10% of their food locally and that might mean either that it was grown locally or that it was processed locally there's still that 90% that's going elsewhere out of the state. And I think it's just interesting people's perceptions of Indiana as this agricultural state and yet 90% of our state comes from outside of the state. 

KAYTE YOUNG [TO MARIE]: I do know that IU has definitely made a bigger commitment to purchasing local food and in my opinion that makes a huge difference because it's such a big institution. And so if a farmer can count on selling a certain amount of butternut squash every fall, they can grow that amount and know that they're not taking that risk. And it can really support local farming to have something that big. 

MARIE O’NEILL: To have a guarantee. IU they purchase millions of dollars of food every year, 10% of that is so much money, or 20% of that is so much money. 

KAYTE YOUNG: And they have the infrastructure to be able to make something like that actually work. I think the public schools it's probably harder because it would be another job put on probably the same number of people to figure out how to get these local contracts. 

[VOICE OVER] We talked about issues of justice in food production and justice in food access and how those paths don't always meet. Something we've addressed on this food recently. And I had another question for Nic about the farm's social media presence. 

[INTERVIEWING] When you posted things about like something that you're growing it wasn't just "Hey look at our pepper crop!" or whatever, you were really like offering some education about growing methods. There was something recently about irrigating the tomatoes and why it was beneficial. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about how your ideas of how you use social media in that way. 

NIC GARZA: Yeah, that information is scarce. A lot of the information might be curated towards home growers and not really like these semi commercial market gardeners. And it's just been hard for me to find that information readily available and I'd like to provide it. That scarcity of information has led to a lot of mistakes on our farm, and I would love for that to be an example that could help other people rather than something that we conceal. We just notice that a lot of farms would like to highlight the best of the best of what's going on on their farm, and that is not our reality of that at all and I think that that needs to be shared. 

KAYTE YOUNG: Even just like how to cure garlic or the importance of curing, or what is curing garlic, like it's another level of getting to know where your food comes from and getting to know you as a farmer, what your practices are, what you're learning. Like I just think it makes a lot of sense. It's very generous to share the knowledge and it has these other functions as well, and builds a connection. 

MARIE O’NEILL: I was thinking about this when I was going through Goodwill and I saw maybe like a poster or something with a seashell and it said like, "You never know how many friends you have until you have a beach house" And I also thought of the in terms of this farm, I didn't know how many people wanted that connection to the land and to farm until we started this and then all of my friends kind of came out of the rafters and were like, "Hey if you need any help, like I'd love to help you. I really wanna get my hands on." Which is really wonderful, and I think a lot of Nic's social media posts connecting people with us. And yeah it's been really wonderful, the community support we've gotten. 

KAYTE YOUNG: It just also seems like it's another kind of demonstration of food is never just food, it's all these other things. 

NIC GARZA: Yeah it's been... to communicate in a socially distanced world has been very cool for me because I am very introverted. I am like socially anxious all the time, severely. I don't have to think about the tone of my voice, I have a lot of time to think about what exactly I'm saying and that's been really cool for us. 

KAYTE YOUNG: Well is there anything else you guys wanted to add or more you wanted to say about any of the topics that we kind of touched on and jumped around? 

NIC GARZA: Yeah so I'm 22 and Marie is just turning 21 and when we tried to start this project, the idea was kind of conceived in a different community up north. We did not get a good reception at all. It was like almost entirely people saying, "You're not ready to farm, don't farm." 

MARIE O’NEILL: "What's your fallback?" 

NIC GARZA: "What's your fallback? Get someone to invest in you." And that was really negative and a complete hindrance. And we didn't really let it stop us, but it would've been nice to have a more accepting and encouraging environment than that. And that's something that I would love to help curate. And so I'd like to say, if anyone has any questions about how we were able to do any of this please reach out, it would make my day. 

KAYTE YOUNG: I've been speaking with Nic Garza and Marie O'Neill of Outlier Farmstead in Bloomington Indiana. Find ways to connect at Earth Eats dot org. 

After a quick break we have a story about a musician with a passion for vegan cooking. Stay with us. 

Kayte Young here, this is Earth Eats. Our next story comes to us from producer Toby Foster. 

(Drum rolling)

DANI DEBUTO: I have to say that I learn from people that taught me with love, and I appreciate that, so I just try to do the same. 

(Rock music) 

TOBY FOSTER: Dani Debuto is a founding member of Zeta, a collective art piece that started in Venezuela in 2003 and whose members currently reside in south Florida. Zeta is primarily known for their musical aspect which you can hear playing in the background now. As a band they combine hardcore punk with polyrhythmic Afro-Caribbean percussion and elements of 70's era psychedelia. But they also express themselves through film, design, and even food. 

The first time I saw them I immediately knew they were doing something new and exciting and was struck by the intensity of the music, their stage presence and the fact that they had cooked enough vegan mac and cheese for the 300 people in attendance. 

DANI DEBUTO: Well I'm Dani. I play in a band called Zeta. And I'm a vegan cooker, vegan lover, I'm a vegan food creator. Originally from Venezuela and we been like living in the United States the last four to five years or so. 

TOBY FOSTER: I asked Dani a little bit about the group's evolution and about how food and veganism became so important to them. The band spent a lot of time traveling and was introduced to a DIY culture that changed the way that they thought about their art and their lifestyles. 

DANI DEBUTO: You know it wasn't music the thing that got us like moving and always like taking us out our conversation and taking us to all these different countries where we find all these like movements and voices, moving forward, through different ways, of what we already like being taught. 

TOBY FOSTER: In their travels Zeta was inspired by bands in places like Mexico and Argentina who are making their own merch and adopting a vegan plant-based diet. 

DANI DEBUTO: Not many people know about the way to feed yourself without using any animal in it like wow, mind blown. 

TOBY FOSTER: Before the pandemic the band spent most of their time on tour and Dani took it upon himself to keep the band well fed. Sometimes the band will play six or seven shows a week for months at a time so they rely on cooking and eating well to stay healthy and energetic. 

DANI DEBUTO: You can try to get yourself feeling the right things to be like full of energy, very like wake up and up for going on 6 hours on a band, get to a show, do a load in, load out, be able to play, that needs a lot of your energy. And also the fact of stop at a rest area, a big parking lot, any like whatever park on the way, like oh this is cute, and we have already our stuff, there's our stuff and we kind of like relax and bond and whatever, walk a little bit. We prep something there. You know like just the moment of making community with your friends. 

TOBY FOSTER: Even the band members who might not have shared Dani's initial enthusiasm for cooking on the road are onboard now. And Dani is happy to accommodate their special requests. Dani says that sometimes when the band needs extra energy or clarity, say before a recording session, they'll ask him to prepare only raw foods for the day. 

DANI DEBUTO: And they are like (snaps fingers) I got you. 100% because they know, they feel it already. 

TOBY FOSTER: Dani also regularly feeds the crowds that comes to their shows. Even on tour he can usually willing to lend him their kitchen for the afternoon. If not, he'll make something that doesn't require cooking. He told me he does this both to try to expose people to plant based cooking and also to create an inviting and inclusive atmosphere at the shows. 

DANI DEBUTO: I have to say that I learn from people that taught me with love, and I appreciate that and so I just try to do the same. Show with example, I think that's the a good way to get into like all the like plant based deal and how to like feed yourself and going through that path and exploring there you will see like wow there's like so many things that you can learn about food. 

TOBY FOSTER: Since the pandemic has put a stop to any live shows, Dani decided about six months ago to start teaching online cooking classes over zoom. Each month Dani makes a menu of four courses and the class meets once a week and cooks one item from the menu. If you like me love scrolling through pictures of delicious looking food, you can follow his Instagram account at PlantBasedCookingWithDani. Recent menu items include Venezuelan pan de jamon, Vegan shawarma, a tofu banh mi sandwich and coconut ceviche served in a hollowed-out pineapple. 
DANI DEBUTO: So when shows appear we were like that meme of like John Travolta watching like, okay so... what we supposed to do now? So yeah we start like kind of like reinventing ourself in music and different activities and all my friends they were like, "Dani you have to do something with food." 

So I was like well what about like making some vegan cooking lessons online via Zoom and find a way to let the people know in advance what they need so it's not just like me cooking and you just like watch me there and being at the end at the program like, "Oh my god that looks so good I'm so hungry right now. " And you go to your kitchen and you have like whatever bread and things and so I was like what about like make a class where the people have the ingredients already, so they cook at the same time and at the end when I show what we made they have the same thing at their end. 

TOBY FOSTER: A friend helped Dani get organized and come up with a menu. He posted about it on Instagram it wasn't long before people started signing up. 

DANI DEBUTO: I had to open another one and another one and have it like different time schedules and I start my classes. And where I grow this many like month menu of four plates that we make one per week, one day, it's like a two-time, three-hour session of cooking and hanging and talking and explaining what we're doing there and how and all the facts that comes within. Has been amazing you know. 

I use a couple of cameras. So I have another friend that is also connected on the zoom meeting and he controls the camera because I have one camera for me to talk and another camera that is like on a zoom where I'm like cutting and like working the stuff with my hands and that's it. 

TOBY FOSTER: We also talked about how much we missed sharing food with friends and how the classes have been helping to fill that void. 

DANI DEBUTO: Be sure that some people has been like yo, I mean this is my time a week where I met with more people. I feel like I'm like hanging with a group of people at the end we're sharing like all these knowledge and I got to eat a lot. So yeah honestly with the whole situation that we're going through I think it has been like very like useful for me and for the people like getting involved. 

TOBY FOSTER: I asked Dani if he wants to continue to do the classes after the pandemic is over and maybe even start doing them on the road in person. 

DANI DEBUTO: 100%. Honestly it's a project that it's a baby and it's like learning and forming itself with the actual practice of it. We doing it weekly and all of that so. When that time of playing live and touring again comes back I'm sure the solution will come within. Like how to keep doing the classes, the places, the way we book the tour, being able to make the classes while on tour, but yeah for sure. That will be a fire content. 

TOBY FOSTER: My guest today was Dani Debuto. You can find out more about Zeta at Join Zeta dot com. If you wanna see pictures of Dani's food and maybe even sign up for a class yourself, check him out on Instagram at PlantBasedCookingWithDani. That's Dani spelled D-A-N-I. 

DANI DEBUTO: Thank you for reaching out, I'm very like grateful to communicate and help or whatever, add whatever positive into the conversation. 

TOBY FOSTER: I'm leave you with a bit more of their music. 

(Zeta music plays)

(Earth Eats theme music, composed by Erin Tobey and performed by Erin and Matt Tobey)

KAYTE YOUNG: That story comes to us from producer Toby Foster. Find out more about Zeta and Dani's cooking classes on our website, Earth Eats dot org. 

That's it for our show this week, thanks for listening. We'll see you next time. 

RENEE REED: Get freshest the food news each week, subscribe to the Earth Eats Digest. It's a weekly note packed with food notes and recipes, right in your inbox. Go to Earth Eats dot org to sign up.  

RENEE REED: The Earth Eats team includes Eobon Binder, Spencer Bowman, Mark Chilla, Toby Foster, Abraham Hill, Payton Knobeloch, Josephine McRobbie, Harvest Public Media and me, Renee Reed.   

KAYTE YOUNG: Special thanks this week to Nic Garza, Maria O'Neill, and Dani Debuto. 

RENEE REED: Our theme music is composed by Erin Tobey and performed by Erin and Matt Tobey. Additional music on the show comes to us from Toby Foster and the artists at Universal Productions Music. Earth Eats is produced and edited by Kayte Young and our executive producer is John Bailey.

Nic Garza with arm around Marie O'Neill, both smiling at camera,  standing at gate to expansive garden, green grass, trees and blue sky in the background.

In their first year as farm owners, Nic Garza and Marie O'Neill are learning what works best on this particular plot of land. (Kayte Young/WFIU)

"There is an alarming amount of people that will say 'I don't care if you're white, black, brown or purple, you can start a farm--it just means growing seeds.' and that is not true."

This week on our show, we talk with local young growers, Nic Garza and Marie O'Neill at Outlier Farmstead who insist that farming is political. 

And we meet Dani Debuto, of the Latin punk band, Zeta. He’s got a passion for vegan food--he feeds the audience at shows, his band on the road, and during the pandemic he taught online cooking classes. Read more

Farming Is Political

Over the past two years our community has faced a great deal of controversy surrounding our local farmers’ markets. A member of Identity Evropa, a white nationalist group (rebranded as the American Identity Movement) was vending at The Bloomington Community Farmers’ Market. This revelation led to protests, boycotts, community conversations and trainings on racism and white supremacy, a temporary market shut down, increased security and a splintering in our local food-producers’ community.

As a result, new markets have formed in town, including the People’s Cooperative Market, with racial justice at the core of its mission, and other markets--some attempting to avoid the controversy, altogether.

In July of 2020 a social media post caught my attention. It was from Nic Garza of Outlier Farmstead, who described himself as one of the only Hispanic/Latino farm owners in Bloomington. 

He wrote: 

Farming is political. 

Nic went on to say:

Farming, as we know it, is a product of Black and Indigenous knowledge and practice, from ancient techniques to modern models from George Washington Carver and Booker T. Whatley. Throughout this country's history, land has been stolen from these people or outright burned and destroyed. 

BIPOC are most likely not born with generational wealth or land. This is absolutely necessary to address especially as a farmer and as a human being.

There is so much work to be done in acknowledging this history and righting these wrongs.

Seeing these words, I knew I wanted to talk to Nic Garza. So I made a plan to visit Outlier Farmstead, out on Leonard Springs Road in Southwest Bloomington. I met with Nic Garza and Marie O'Neill. They gave me a tour of their farm and we talked about their farming practices, dreams for the future, and why they see an inextricable link between farming and racial politics. 

Read More:

Americans of color are largely excluded from producing and eating fresh food: A conversation with Leah Penniman, author of the new book Farming While Black- The Counter

Bloomington 2019: 'The Year of the Farmers' Market Controversy'-Limestone Post

The untold history of CSA (on Booker T. Whatley)-Glynwood Center for Regional Food and Farming 

George Washington Carver cared about sustainable farming before it was cool-Vox

USDA's Covid Relief Will Leave Out Farmers Most Impacted by Crisis-National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition

Stories On This Episode

Venezuelan Musician Shares Love of Vegan Cooking With the World

Dani Debuto, in a black apron, sprinkles salt over a dish on a table with a pile of flat bread and other food and wine. Two women on either side of him, look on, smiling.

When the band tours, Dani Debuto cooks vegan food for fans and the band. The pandemic pushed him to find new ways to spread the love.

More Farmers Are Planting Cover Crops Thanks To State Incentive Programs

Ground level view of harvested corn crop, with possible cover crop coming up

Some states are seeing increased interest in the use of cover crops, thanks to programs designed to promote their use. Cover crops are planted to help soil and prevent weeds.

Produce Market Strike Latest in Series of Food-Industry Related Labor Disputes

Boxes of produce stacked in a warehouse at a dock or opening to the building

Hunts Point market is located in the South Bronx, which was an early epicenter of COVID-19, including hundreds of cases traced to the market itself.

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