What You Do To The Planet, You Do To Yourself

Danielle Nierenberg

Danielle Nierenberg

Ten years into a career in healthcare administration, Christa Barfield realized she needed to make a change. She was feeling burnt out about her work-life balance, but she knew she still wanted her work to be focused around health and health access.

So she resigned from her day job and, within the past five years or so, has launched the 128-acre farm FarmerJawn in the Philadelphia area and the organization CornerJawn, a corner-store concept that reimagines those convenient neighborhood stops as places to access nutrient-dense produce in urban neighborhoods.

“I want people to see (how) the quality of food relates back to their health,” Christa told me on the Food Talk podcast this summer. With CornerJawn, she said, “What I want to do is create a shopping experience where you're actually learning what this particular crop…is going to do for you and can do for your body.”

With her urban farming and food justice work, she seeks to raise awareness around the challenges that Black and Brown farmers face, push for regenerative agriculture practices that connect us to the land, and highlight the intersections between environmental health and people’s nutritional health. 

“It's not just about nutrient density. It's definitely important, but the food is also going to taste better because we care for the soil,” she says. “It's about how it's grown.” 

Barfield has made a huge impact in a short time. She is the recipient of the 2024 Leadership Award from the James Beard Foundation. And during our conversation on the podcast, she pointed out an important truth that I think we’d all do well to remind ourselves:

“How you eat now isn’t just about you,” she says. “Food is about lineage. It’s about everyone in your bloodline before you and the ones that are coming after you.”

This is true across every aspect of the food system. The way farmers treated soils a generation ago influences how healthy they are today. The way we approach food production and access today will directly shape how our food and climate systems look for our kids and grandkids.

Of course, this is not new information—the interconnectedness of the well-being of people and animals and the land is central to Indigenous knowledge systems and baked into modern organic and regenerative food movements. As we’ve discussed before, healthy soils equal healthy foods.

“I think that folks are realizing that what you do to the planet, you do to yourself,” Matthew Dillon, the Co-CEO of the Organic Trade Association (OTA), told me on another episode of Food Talk this year. “I want us to think about organic not just as an investment in any given season, but an investment in the future generations.”

The OTA, which aims to promote and protect the organic industry, represents over 10,000 organic businesses and farmers across 50 states through direct membership and their Farmers Advisory Council. And yes, it’s true that transitioning to organic may require a mindset shift and investments in time and money for some conventional farmers—but creating a holistic, diversified farm plan pays off economically and environmentally, Dillon says.

“Most farmers I know love that challenge,” he says. “They're driven by that curiosity to figure out how to optimize their ecosystems to work for them instead of against them.”

Like many folks in both rural and urban areas, organic farmers are feeling or may soon feel the effects of tariffs, federal funding reductions, and staffing cuts at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. But despite these economic pressures, Dillon says, the organic marketplace grew at a rate of 5.2 percent compared to growth of 2.5 percent seen in the overall market.

My personal takeaway from this is hugely optimistic: To me, this highlights the power of citizen eaters! When nourishing, planet-forward, sustainably grown foods are available and economically accessible, people want to eat them and feed them to their families. When convenient stores like CornerJawn are stocked with regenerative, local produce that was grown with soil health in mind, people do the right thing for their bodies and the planet.

I’m so excited to talk with both Christa Barfield and Matthew Dillon—and 300+ more inspiring food advocates and artists—in a few weeks at Food Tank’s Summits during Climate Week NYC! All our in-person events are sold out, but it’s not too late to snag a livestream ticket to participate in these urgent conversations from wherever you live. CLICK HERE for more information.

How do we continue spreading this movement in our own communities? Email me at danielle@foodtank.com and share stories of folks in your neighborhoods who are connecting the dots between urban food production, social justice, and economic access. Let’s build a better, more delicious world where everyone can shop with soil health in mind!

(Danielle Nierenberg is the President of Food Tank and can be reached at danielle@foodtank.com)