Why one woman plants crops to fight oppression

By Maya Eaglin, NBC News

Eva Dickerson has spent her life thinking about food. Not just about what to eat, but more specifically what it means to have access to food, to groceries and space to grow crops. 

“Food access might ask why there isn’t a grocery store in someone’s neighborhood,” Dickerson, 26, said, “but food apartheid might ask who planned neighborhoods so that some people have groceries in their neighborhoods and some people don’t.”

These questions form the basis of Dickerson’s work as a farmer and activist. She’s currently living in Thailand as a fellow for Princeton in Asia and spends her time teaching children how to farm as she tends to community gardens and harvests produce for her local community. She describes her mission as working toward “food sovereignty” and against “food apartheid.” 

The term “’food access’ doesn’t really direct us toward understanding complex systems of power like colonialism, white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism,” Dickerson said. “’Food sovereignty,’ however, does, and means having every person on earth be able to access all parts of the food system in a way that is self-determined and honors them as human beings without infringing on and impeding someone else’s access to that part of the food system. 

“‘Food apartheid’ is just a more precise way to describe the ways that systems of oppression manifest in our food system so that your relation to power literally determines your ability to feed yourself or get a good job or practice the foodways that your culture supports.” 

Read about Dickerson’s activism.

Many Black Americans have a fraught relationship with farming because of slavery.

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