Queer Farmers Are Working to Transform Our Food Systems — and Paying a Price

The journey that led Anita Adalja, a 42-year-old queer South Asian farmer, to enter the agricultural field began when they were 25, living in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Adalja worked as a social worker in supportive housing, trying to finish graduate school, and felt like they were in over their head. Along with their coworkers, they would often go to the roof of the supportive housing building, just to get away for a moment and take a break. Eventually, they cooked up the idea of having a small urban farm up there. “It was this really incredible way of connecting with the people who lived in the supportive housing,” Adalja said. “They could come out on the roof and work alongside us. And we just started creating these really amazing connections. And I was able to see growing food and working together as this really great connector and a way of community building. And it just kind of changed everything for me.”

The National Young Farmer Survey shows that 63.5 percent of young farmers in the U.S. are not cis men and 24.2 percent identify with some type of queer identity. This is a huge shift from the older farming community, most of whom are white cis men. (There is no data available on their sexuality.) Adalja is part of a generation of young, queer farmers of color working to transform farming communities — with odds often stacked against them.

Soon after their first farming experience, Adalja left New York and moved to Santa Cruz, California, to do a farming apprenticeship. “I spent time there learning farming, because I didn’t have that experience, but I knew that this is something that ignited something in me around community building around food,” they said. Eventually, they went on to work at various nonprofit farms, urban farms and larger production-scale farms in Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, California and New Mexico. Today, they run their own queer trans BIPOC farm in Albuquerque called Ashokra, where they focus on growing okra. “We’re really trying to create a space for queer, trans farmworkers to come and have a space where we can take refuge and, like, show up as our full, authentic selves and kind of farm in a way that I didn’t have the ability to working on these farms across the country,” they said. “It was hard, it was difficult. It was a beautiful experience for me, and really healing in a lot of ways, but also very harmful in a lot of ways too.”

Adalja describes working on various farms — often owned by cisgender white people — as an exercise in having to fit themselves into a mold, working beyond their physical means to prove themself, having to laugh along to sexist and racist jokes, enduring sexual harassment and more. “A lot of things under white supremacy, culture of production and capitalism and like, the more work you do … Like trying to fit in this mold. It was incredibly difficult,” they said. The mental health impacts of having to hide their identity, deal with constant racism and homophobia, and anxiety about their safety, were massive. Adalja is not alone in this experience.

A study by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign found that LGBTQ+ people involved in farm work are “over three times more likely to experience depression and suicidal intent and about two and a half times more likely to experience anxiety than the general population.” About 72 percent of respondents were experiencing symptoms of mild to severe depression, 70 percent experiencing mild to severe anxiety and 52 percent were at significant risk of suicide. Moreover, the study found that more respondents appeared to have depressive or anxiety symptoms than had been medically diagnosed for these disorders.

“I never would show up as my full self,” Adjala said, describing experiences of living in trailer parks that had Confederate flags flying near the farms they worked on. While they could not hide the fact that they are Brown, their queerness was something they could conceal. It was isolating and had a huge impact on their mental health.

“If you’re working with this crew of people, that’s who you see every single day, and if you don’t feel known, and you don’t feel like you can share, it has huge impacts on that isolation and that feeling of belonging,” Adalja said. “For me that really impacts my sense of self and my ability to just show up in a space.”

Moreover, they described situations where they did not have access to a bathroom, and often had to find a spot by the tree line to relieve themself when needed, adding an extra layer of anxiety regarding their safety as the only queer person of color in the space.

Ashlee Johnson-Geisse, 34, is a Black lesbian farmer in Hayward, California. She currently runs Brown Girl Farms — a Black-led, queer, multigenerational farm — along with her wife Jen. She often feels frustrated by her work not being taken seriously, or the day-to-day sexism that she faces. As an interracial lesbian couple, simple trips to the hardware store or the engine repair store often feel scary and exhausting, Johnson-Geisse said. “There’s a lot of stares and looks, and a lot of sexism within various stores. I often do not feel invited or welcomed into stores we frequent. If we need work done here at the farm, from tree work to repairs, we are often met with disbelief that we established the farm,” she said. “As a Black woman, I am often looked at with disbelief that someone who looks like me could own their own farm. I’ve even been asked financial questions about our home.” The negative interactions have compounded over time.

As an interracial lesbian couple, simple trips to the hardware store or the engine repair store often feel scary and exhausting.

In addition, feeling like she has to prove herself and list her credentials when interacting with customers, especially if they are white, has left Johnson-Geisse feeling like she’s not taken seriously as a farmer. She’s had white people ask her what her background is when it comes to farming or where she studied.

“I often feel the fight-or-flight state of mind when trying to do something simple like go to the agriculture supply store. It’s an added layer of stress and anxiety that is constantly running in the background or foreground depending on the situation, on top of the stressors of farming.”

Factors such as lack of time off, especially during busy seasons; lack of health insurance; and stigma around seeking mental health care are some of the barriers that queer farmers have faced when trying to seek help for their mental health.

Many farmworkers in the U.S. do not have access to regular, affordable health care, often lacking coverage through their employers or public programs, and they do not earn enough money to pay for health insurance. Only 56 percent of farmworkers report having health insurance. A study also found that farmworkers across the country have had difficulty accessing health care in the U.S. because it was too expensive.

While unions can be useful in organizing for better working conditions, including affordable health care, farmers remain excluded from the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, which does not afford them protections against getting fired for joining or organizing a labor union. Some states, such as California, have enacted legislation around this to protect the unionization rights for farmworkers, but this is not widespread across the country.

Camille Braswell, 24, is a Black queer farmer and education coordinator at Rock Steady Farm in Millerton, New York. They consider themselves lucky that Rock Steady provides paid time off, because in their experience, many smaller farms do not. They say that Rock Steady has also been incredibly supportive in helping them get Medicaid, but for a long time during their work as a farmer, they did not have any insurance, and often had to choose between paying for mental health services out of pocket or saving that money for a potential physical health injury that is very likely as a farmer.

“Every morning I would wake up and be gripped by this deeply intense anxiety if I felt any kind of twinge in my body, if my elbow felt even the slightest bit off, if my knee felt a little creaky or a little stiff, if my hamstrings felt tight at any point. I found myself gripped by this intense brain scattering anxiety of ‘what if I get hurt?’” Braswell said. “I don’t have insurance right now, and I know for a fact I cannot afford to go [seek care]. I was paying for all of my mental health services out of pocket. I’m strapped.”

“As a Black woman, I am often looked at with disbelief that someone who looks like me could own their own farm.”

The work is also often so intensive that they do not have the time to take hours away from the farm to access therapy and other resources, a sentiment that Adalja echoed. “I worked on farms where we were working six days, at least 12 hours a day. When would I be going to access these resources?” Adalja said. “If you’re a farmworker, you don’t have the luxury of taking time off, there’s no sick time, and you’re not able to leave the farm and come back and have a therapy session or access resources somewhere,” they added.

“Farming is also very physical and hard on your body and feeling pains and aches after a long farm day can leave you feeling mentally exhausted as well,” agreed Johnson-Geisse.

Even when access to therapy has been possible for Braswell, therapists who are able to understand the specific circumstances of being a queer Black farmer have been difficult to find. They described an instance when car troubles left them stuck in a big storm with their coworker in the rural town their farm is in. When a big truck with Blue Lives Matter and “I love Cops” stickers pulled up to help them, they found themselves unconsciously “un-queering” themselves. “My coworker’s taking their earrings off, we’re taking our jewelry off. We’re taking pins off my jacket I had on because it was giving gay. We both immediately start doing this,” they said.

Another time, they had a slow leak in their tire and went to a local shop to get it fixed, but immediately realized that this was an unsafe situation for them. “I think something that being a Black person in this country does for you is you get really good at being able to figure out when someone is treating you badly just generally because they’re rude, and when someone’s treating you badly because you’re Black. And my spidey senses were tingling in that way,” they said. They ended up leaving and had a hard time going to another place to get their car fixed because of the anxiety this situation left them with.

Braswell has found it hard to explain such situations to therapists that they have seen. In a small rural town, they have found it hard to even find therapists of color and often end up doing virtual sessions with someone far away, who takes Medicaid.

“I end up spending a lot of time explaining certain elements of, like, what it means to be a queer Black person living where I live, right? The therapist will see Millerton, and they’re like, where is that? Is that somewhere upstate?” Braswell said. Just because they tell a therapist that they are a farmer, that does not necessarily translate to them understanding the minutiae of their life as a Black queer farmer in a predominantly white area.

It’s not all bad though. Being a farmer has had many positive impacts on their lives, all three agreed.

“Owning our farm and being able to take a walk in the flower field or work on a planting project, especially if I need to process hard feelings, helps my mental health tremendously,” said Johnson-Geisse.

Adalja said that their goal is to live in a worker-centered farming future where productivity is not linked to success. “Like productivity can look like laughter, right? Or it can look like community, care and connections you’re making. It doesn’t have to be how much your yield is.”

Despite the barriers for people like them in farming, they keep being drawn back to it. “We can just show up how we want to be and are held in that way by the land.… It’s in my blood at this point,” Adalja said, “I love telling time and marking time by the seasons and by the plants, and by how the sun feels. The sun will feel different in July than it feels in September, and it’s a really, really beautiful way to live and spend time.”