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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

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