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Plants & Farm StoriesJan 30, 2023
3 Black Innovators Who Changed Agricultural History
The contributions of Black Americans to agriculture in the United States are innumerable. In honor of Black History Month, we’re focusing on farmers, botanists and horticulturists who changed history—and gave the farmers of today everything from crop rotation to refrigerated trucks.
Images courtesy of the Library of Congress
George Washington Carver
If you remember one thing from elementary school teachings on George Washington Carver, it’s probably that he created a whole lot of Peanut products—more than 300, actually!1
But his contributions to the agricultural industry went way beyond that. Carver was an agricultural chemist and inventor who helped to revolutionize the agricultural economy of the South during a time when it was largely dependent on Cotton. This single-crop planting had left the fields in the Deep South depleted and eroded.
As the Director of Agricultural Research at Tuskegee University, Carver set out to help Black sharecroppers by studying and experimenting with soil management. He found that planting Peanuts, Soybeans, and Sweet Potatoes restored nitrogen in the soil, making it healthier and more productive. Eventually, these crops and his findings on regenerating soil through the nitrogen cycle, using compost and crop rotation changed the whole agriculture industry in the South.2
As Regenerative Organic Certified® farmers ourselves, we use crop rotation, compost and nitrogen fixation today and are grateful for Carver’s research.
Images courtesy of Hennepin County Library and US Patent 2,475,841
Frederick McKinley Jones
If you’re interested in inventors, there are few more fascinating than Frederick McKinley Jones. By the end of his life, Jones had over 60 patents spanning numerous fields—but one of his most notable was the invention of refrigerated trucks. Jones is credited with changing the way we consume food nationwide. His advances in refrigeration (sold through his company called Thermo King) were applied not just to trucks, but boats, planes and boxcars so people could enjoy crops from other states, frozen foods and even receive medical shipments that weren’t possible to transport before.3
Image courtesy of the National Black Farmers Association
John W. Boyd Jr.
Given the work he’s done with the National Black Farmers Association, this list would be incomplete without John W. Boyd, Jr. As a fourth-generational farmer and civil rights activist, he’s one of the most influential African Americans in agriculture today.
Boyd founded the National Black Farmers Association in 1995 after encountering discrimination from the US Department of Agriculture (and meeting several other Black farmers who shared his experiences). Black farmers were being denied access to loans and subsidies provided by the government, and many Black farmers lost their farms and homes because of it. He spent decades advocating for Black farmers on Capitol Hill. After a tremendous lobbying effort, the 2008 Farm Bill was signed into legislation giving Black farmers $1.15 billion to resolve their outstanding cases.4
- [1] Carver Peanut Product. Tuskegee University. www.tuskegee.edu. https://www.tuskegee.edu/support-tu/george-washington-carver/carver-peanut-products. Accessed January 25, 2023.
- [2] The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica. George Washington Carver | Biography & Accomplishments. In: Encyclopædia Britannica. ; 2019. https://www.britannica.com/biography/George-Washington-Carver.
- [3] How One Man’s Invention Changed Food Access World-Wide. Usda.gov. Published 2017. https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2012/02/21/how-one-mans-invention-changed-food-access-world-wide.
- [4] National Black Farmers Association. https://www.blackfarmers.org/about.
- Accessed January 25, 2023.