The Richmond Food Justice Alliance (RFJA) Mosby Farmers' Market

Established in 2019, the Richmond Food Justice Alliance (RFJA) was created to combat rising food insecurity in communities living in Richmond, Virginia. The RJFA is a part of the Richmond Food Justice Corridor and is a community-led organization led by Arthur “Art” Burton, a sixth-generation farmer and fellow member of the Richmond community. The RFJA stretches across 4.6 miles of Richmond from Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School to St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, completely centered in the East End of the city. One of the places the RFJA operates from is the Mosby Farmers’ Market. To combat issues with food insecurity in Richmond’s largest food desert, the RFJA works with families, local farms, farmers' markets, and local government to help members overcome food insecurity through education, sustainability practice, and community-building through food, culture, and history.

The RFJA is a small yet spread-out, community-focused organization in Richmond designed to bring food justice and food education for Black residents and other marginalized communities in the City of Richmond, Virginia. There are a few locations throughout Richmond in which the RFJA conducts its operations. The Market at Mosby, located in the East End of Richmond and named after the neighborhood it resides in, has been revitalized as a green community space that hosts a farmers' market. This is an important site that helps the RFJA interact with its community members face-to-face. A large role of RFJA is to not only provide affordable local produce to those in Richmond, but also provide education on food justice, health equity, and urban agriculture. This gives Richmond City residents the information they need to know about food and history, as well as help foster a close community with their neighbors.

Arthur “Art” Burton is the principal project manager of the RFJA. One of the four farm sites that works directly with RFJA is his family farm, called the Emancipation Project, which is a plot of land that was purchased by Burton's forefathers. Burton's plot of land began with his great-great-grandfather’s emancipation from slavery after living and working on the Curles Neck Plantation, located between State Route 5 and the north bank of the James River in the Varina district of Henrico[1] . Burton's knowledge about farming has been passed down through his family and goes directly into the work he does. The land is a part of Burton’s legacy and extended community, with generations of friends, neighbors, community members, and family residing on and buried on the plot. This land is not only a major contributor to food justice efforts in Richmond, but it also holds a legacy and a sacredness that is special to Burton, his family, and other members of the community. The food grown and harvested on the Emancipation Project farm can be found featured in the Mosby Farmers’ Market and in the hands of community members, allowing the ground, rich with cultural history, to give back to the community who lives on it. Burton has done plenty of other activism and food equity work within Richmond, having given a TedxTalk and organizing other projects, such as the Kinfolk Community Garden, through his social justice coalition and business called Community Unity in Action.[7] He is an important leader in local community food justice efforts in Richmond.

Combating the problem of food insecurity means identifying what issues led to the problem, who is affected, and what can be done to alleviate the problem. The City of Richmond’s population is just over 46% Black according to the US Census in 2021, and in 2020, Feed America reported that 14% of Richmond City’s residents were food insecure.[2] Three factors that contribute to food insecurity are "unemployment, poverty, and income shocks."[3] Across the country, these issues are linked to structural racism, which "permeates systems of education, housing, employment, health care, and criminal justice, impacting resource distribution and access to opportunity" for Black people and other people of color.[4] The RFJA works directly to combat the impact that inadequate food access has on neighborhoods of Black folks in Richmond, with the Food Justice Corridor including all impacted residents in Richmond's largest food desert. Richmond is a place that is just as impacted by structural racism and discriminatory government policy as many other urban areas in the United States. Understanding this part of Richmond’s history offers the chance to empower residents to create change for the better in their home, and helps to call attention to these issues in surrounding areas.

Since Richmond is centuries old, its long history contributes to the current state of people who experience food insecurity. However the RFJA has done several things in the Food Justice Corridor that have helped bring equity to the area's constituents. The RFJA partnered with Richmond City Health District (RCHD) to compile strategies for combating food insecurity in February of 2020, in a report titled “F.E.E.D the Culture” (the acronym is Feed, Empower, Engage, Develop).[5] This report lists specific requests that will combat issues with local food insecurity depending on the needs from each distinct neighborhood. It also lists rationale and strategies that the government leaders can use in their future planning. Within the document are descriptive explanations of each neighborhood's specific issues and solutions to those issues. The RCHD collected information over an eight-month period, compiled successful food policies from around the country, and had Harvard University and Johns Hopkins University experts examine the effectiveness of these policies to see if they would potentially work in Richmond City. The "F.E.E.D the Culture" project was successful and is one of the many diverse projects that the RFJA will do in the future.

The Market at Mosby is a green space and a center of hope in the middle of Richmond’s public housing. Created through partnering with Mosby residents, there has been tremendous support from the community as well as from the F.E.E.D the Culture project. The RFJA celebrated the one-year anniversary of the Market at Mosby with their partners, supporters, and community on social media, where they share new projects, tips on growing and gardening, and blog posts that discuss events relevant to the community. Their engagement in real time with community members is seen just as well through these social media accounts, which promote their mission and their impact on families across the Richmond City area. As Richmond residents continue to harvest, learn, and grow, the RFJA will help to create a brighter and greener future. The RFJA’s mission is to “educate sustainability & self-efficacy with [their] neighbors through culturally relevant & representative agriculture.”[6] This mission is reflective of the needs of many people in our country, and their work will continue to provide for those who need it.

^[1] David, Riley, director. Black Space Matters: Art Burton of Kinfolk Community Garden. YouTube, 1 Apr. 2022, https://youtu.be/lc9ZFvtngwg. Accessed 30 Nov. 2022.

^[3] Feeding America. “Overall (All Ages) Hunger & Poverty in Richmond City County, Virginia: Map the Meal Gap.” Overall (all ages) Hunger & Poverty in the United States, 2020. https://map.feedingamerica.org/county/2018/overall/virginia/county/richmond-city.

^[4] Lynch EE, Malcoe LH, Laurent SE, Richardson J, Mitchell BC, Meier HCS. The legacy of structural racism: Associations between historic redlining, current mortgage lending, and health. SSM Popul Health. 2021 Apr 20;14:100793. doi: 10.1016/j.ssmph.2021.100793. PMID: 33997243; PMCID: PMC8099638.

^[5] Richmond Food Justice Alliance & Richmond City Health District. “F.E.E.D the Culture: Community Strategies for Food Justice in Richmond Report.” Google Drive, Feb. 2020, https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RFtDIGaIaPCUTdTvNtdPxM5xg6-3i4zA/view.

^[6] Richmond Food Justice, 2022. “Richmond Food Justice.” https://www.richmondfoodjustice.org/.

^[2] United States Census Bureau. “U.S Census Bureau QuickFacts: Richmond City, Virginia,” 2020. https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/richmondcityvirginia/RHI225221.

^[7] OpenGovUs: Open Government Data in the US. Community Unity in Action, Virginia Business Entities. September 5th, 2019. Accessed December 2nd, 2022. https://opengovus.com/virginia-business/08482143.