The following is a transcript of the video above, from our webinar on “Remaking the Economy: Black Food Sovereignty, Community Stories.” View the full webinar here.

Julian Miller: I think the most important thing about the Black food sovereignty movement at this point is the evolution away from a capitalist mindset of farming, moving toward this idea of collectivism and creating economic independence among Black communities, and building real food sovereignty to capture wealth for the uplifting and advancement of poor Black communities. I’m from Mississippi, and we have extraordinarily talented, capable, experienced Black farmers who are doing well for themselves. But what happens is, because of the difficulty in developing new markets—particularly around food security, around the individual market, among other things—they’re not thinking of this as a mindset. They’re thinking about this being a thousand points of light, as opposed to thinking collectively: how can we work together to captain this market for our own communities?

I think you’re seeing a new generation of farmers and food justice advocates, these amazing people I’m so grateful to work with and partner with, who have a mindset of actually taking the risk [of] trying to develop those markets, and developing those markets that other farmers who are more experienced may not want to tackle, but are willing to do for the greater good, for the purpose of building and having real food sovereignty and economic independence in our communities.