Reflections on My Time as the Cynthia and Robert S. Lawrence Fellow

Darriel Harris, PhD
October, 2021–March, 2024

My time as a fellow—a true privilege—was primarily spent learning about the harms of industrial food animal production in eastern North Carolina and the Delmarva region, and helping food policy councils address organizational and governance issues.

When I began the fellowship, I was already aware that Black families in North Carolina are losing land at alarming rates, and that industrial food animal production (IFAP) operations are polluting rivers and streams and contaminating well water and fisheries. Through the fellowship, I learned of additional harms endured by the mostly low income and racial minority communities located near these operations. For example, IFAP operations legally spray over 8 million gallons of hog urine and feces into the air annually. On a visit to eastern North Carolina, I saw some of this spraying, felt the resulting mist outside a community member’s home, and smelled the odor in the air, and then later my clothes. Following community members’ lead, we developed a two-fold plan of action. The first agenda item is to work with North Carolina churches to engage congregations in civil actions against the IFAP harms. The second agenda item is to conduct in-depth interviews of people experiencing numerous harms so they can share their grievances and provide documentation that can be used in academic and popular publications.

Simultaneously, my prior work with food policy councils (FPCs) expanded, and I was tasked with helping to conceptualize a community of practice cohort focused on making racial equity a major component of FPCs. This required working with partners from around the country to think through what such a program would entail, what components were essential, and how best to convey information and approach discussions. Some of this work was new to me: As regularly one of only a few African-Americans in professional settings, I’ve led and participated in countless race-based programs and initiatives, but I’d never worked in a multi-cultural setting where the task was to educate mostly white Americans on ways to ensure their policies and practices do the least harm to racial minorities and to empower those with less power.  This work included traveling to Jackson, Mississippi, for an in-person convening, where we explored the present and historic work of liberation in a key southern city.  Additionally, I conducted research on racial considerations during the formation of regional food policy councils, which I plan to publish in the near future.