When the time came for Gale Livingstone to buy farmland, the familiarity and prestige of Prince George’s County called. It was consequential, majority-Black and it used to be home for Livingstone, 50, a Largo High graduate who is known as “Farmer Gale.”
After about a year of searching for land while driving around the county and writing letters inquiring about plots for sale, she would eventually “luck up” on 53-plus acres in Upper Marlboro that were once prime tobacco farming land in another era of the county.
It’s been hard since. The pandemic added fresh stress, and new debt left Livingstone with doubts about the choice to launch Deep Roots Farm. Still, she wanted to farm. “I feel like if I’m going to work like this and I’m going to grow this food, I want my people to be eating the food,” Livingstone said.
Her hardships — struggling to find and buy land without generational wealth, extensive credit history and limited land — are among the reasons only 1 in 6 farmers in Prince George’s County is Black when nearly 2 in 3 county residents are. Even here, Black farmers don’t see their locs or shades of melanin represented in a space where archetypes range from portly White men in overalls to slim and bearded White hipsters in plaid.
Click here to read the rest of the article written by Lateshia Beachum over at The Washington Post
