Articles by Natasha Bowens

Natasha is a writer, an activist and an urban farmer-in-training who thinks food justice stands at the center of many issues for minority and low-income communities. She left her job in youth advocacy in Washington D.C. to travel the country in search of organic and urban farms sprouting up in food-insecure communities. She is blogging about her adventures, her farmer training and the topic of race and class in the food movement at Brown.Girl.Farming. You can most often find her on a bus or train with her three essentials: backpack, journal, and bug spray.

Featured Article

Earth ‘n’ Us, in Miami’s Little Haiti, has a plethora of turkeys and other animals running around. Photos: Natasha Bowens

This is the last installment of Natasha Bowens’ Color of Food series for Grist. She will continue to explore agriculture, race, and class on her blog, Brown.Girl.Farming.

I eagerly wandered up and down the streets of Miami’s Little Haiti looking for any sign of a farm. If you’re familiar with Little Haiti — or any neighborhood in Miami, really — you’re probably thinking that a farm is the last thing I was going to find. Then I knocked on the door of a typical Miami home, painted a sandy yellow with a red-tiled roof, walked through the sun room and the kitchen and ended up in a not-so-typical backyard. It was like climbing through the wardrobe into Narnia.

Emus are farmed for their meat — but stay away from the knifelike nail on their toes!Three turkeys were strutting around to Beethoven playing on a stereo, followed by an angry goose with his neck outstretched. Two large emus flashed their long eyelashes as they stared at me, the intruder.

I had been transp... Read more

Natasha Bowens Food and Agriculture

All Articles

Chicago has got it growing on

Growing Power’s Chicago outposts show that plants can be art as well as food, while Growing Home nurtures people whom society would throw away.

Natasha Bowens Cities
Postcard from the first annual Black Farmers and Urban Gardeners Conference

About 500 black farmers from the South, urban growers from the North, and food activists from all over gathered recently at Brooklyn College to discuss historical and lingering discrimination, food sovereignty, and more.

Natasha Bowens Food and Agriculture
Food justice: It's not black and white in Detroit

I recently spent two weeks in Detroit, working at Brother Nature Produce farm and watching how the city’s food-justice groups handle race and privilege.

Natasha Bowens Food and Agriculture
Hitting the Big Apple's food-justice buffet

New York City is jam-packed with urban farms, community gardens, and food-justice projects. Not all of them are what they seem, I've discovered, but one has stolen my heart.

Natasha Bowens Food and Agriculture