The Black Farmers Market, a group of African American farmers, returns to Baltimore this Saturday, November 20, 2004 at 8:00 a.m. at historic St. Frances Academy located at 501 East Chase Street.
Led by Savanah E. Williams from the South of the Ferry Farm in Virginia in cooperation with The Southern Extension Cooperative of South Carolina, the farmers will arrive with a truckload of vegetables and pecans grown in Virginia and South Carolina.
The Black Farmers Market is an annual effort aimed at offering small businesses a venue to sell their produce. It is an opportunity for Black Catholics and Black farmers to practice the principle of ujaama meaning collective economics. The purpose of this cooperative effort is for Black farmers to ?stay in business and to hold onto their family farms.? Having taken place in cities like Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., the Black Farmers Market now comes to Baltimore, where African American organizations and churches support African American farmers.
Affiliates including the St. Frances Academy and Community Outreach Center, Christopher Place, the Oblate Sisters of Providence and the Office of African American Catholic Ministries of the Archdiocese of Baltimore join together to sponsor this event. The theme of this year’s event is, “All God’s Children Got to Eat”.
In time for Thanksgiving, African American farmers from the south will sell nutritional foods including cabbage, collard greens, turnip greens, mustard greens, sweet potatoes, pecans, roasted peanuts and sugar cane.
For more information, please contact Therese Wilson Favors in the Office of African American Catholic Ministries at 410-625-8472.