Podcast
Edible Activist
Hosted by Melissa L. Jones · EN
Edible Activist is a podcast that feeds you empowering narratives and perspectives from the voices of emerging black people and people of color in food and agriculture who are stewarding the land, healing communities, and advocating for food justice and economic power across the globe. Hosted by Melissa L. Jones, she interviews a diverse group of everyday growers, farmers, entrepreneurs, artists, and other extraordinary individuals, who exemplify activism in their own edible way!
12episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
#192: The Lowcountry Table with Amethyst Ganaway
2d ago01:04:01Tap to summarizeEvery part of the animal. Every part of the story. Amethyst Ganaway grew up in Charleston, South Carolina, where food and land were never separate — fresh seafood, garden vegetables from neighbors, and what you were eating tomorrow was already part of today's conversation. In this episode, the chef, food writer, and cultural archivist takes us inside her Gullah Geechee heritage, how leaving South Carolina and working in restaurant kitchens brought her into whole animal cooking, and why she wants Black people to come to Charleston not with heaviness, but with pride. Amethyst also gets into the disconnect between chefs and farmers, what gets lost when Black food traditions get repackaged without context, and the story behind her forthcoming book From tha Roota to tha Toota — written entirely in her own voice, on her own terms.
Transcribe →#191: When the Pulpit Meets the Soil: The Church as a Food Hub
2w ago00:57:51Tap to summarizeIn this episode Melissa L. Jones welcomes back Pastor Heber Brown III — founder of the Black Church Food Security Network — eleven years into a movement now spanning 300 congregations. He does not come to celebrate. He comes to tell the truth. They go deep on what it really takes to activate a Black church around food sovereignty, why he refused to hand Black data to a PWI, and what we stand to lose if our generation does not step up before the elders who carry living memories of Black self sufficiency are gone. Pastor Brown also shares what he is building next — a refocused Black church census with Morgan State University, Freedom School inside Sunday school and a succession plan rooted in abundance. He is not stepping back. He is planting seeds for what comes next.
Transcribe →#190: The Community Creates the Market: Brooklyn Supported Agriculture
Apr 700:42:28Tap to summarizeThe community creates the market! For Chef Mu that is not a tagline -- it is what he witnesses every time he shows up. In this episode, Melissa L. Jones sits down with Mustafa Abdul Rahim -- known as Chef Mu — culinary professional, food justice advocate, Chopped finalist, and market manager for Brooklyn Supported Agriculture, a Black-led worker-owned food cooperative rooted in the heart of Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, celebrating 10 years of impact. Chef Mu speaks candidly about what it means to build a food system that puts people first — from a sliding scale model that considers wealth not just income, to showing up as a "veg tender" who knows his community by name. He challenges the way we think about where our food comes from, who profits from it, and why the most radical thing you can do is choose differently.
Transcribe →#189: Nana Kumi: The Land Remembers
Mar 2400:42:07Tap to summarizeThe land remembers. And Nana listening. In this episode, Melissa L. Jones sits down with Nana Kumi, a queer Black southern artist, filmmaker, herbalist, and land steward from Natchez, Mississippi — and project director of Spirit in Our Roots, an art-based land initiative uplifting Black growers and land stewards across Mississippi and Louisiana. Nana's work lives at the intersection of ancestral technology, plant medicine, and Black southern imagination, creating visual and spiritual landscapes that invite rest, memory, and radical dreaming. Nana takes us through a childhood in rural Natchez where imagination became survival, to a career in New York that Covid cracked wide open, to coming home to the land and the ancestors waiting there. She speaks to the memory held in soil, in water, in trees, and in the plants that guide her creative work in ways she is still learning to name. This one is medicine.
Transcribe →#188: Growing Resilience in the South with Sade Meeks
Mar 1600:43:47Tap to summarizeSome of the most powerful lessons come from the most ordinary moments — a grandmother's garden, a Sunday dinner table, a bowl of grits. Melissa L. Jones is joined by Sade Meeks, dietitian, storyteller, and founder of GRITS (Growing Resilience in the South), recording live from Jackson, Mississippi. Sade's journey is one of homecoming — from standing on a booster seat to watch her mama cook, to crying in a California coffee shop realizing her purpose was back home in the South. Together, they explore why Black Southern food has never been the problem, how Sunday dinner is a form of medicine, and what it means to build a movement out of the stories our elders are still living to tell — including Sade's grandmother, whose century of living — and the stories she carried — are at the very heart of this work.
Transcribe →#187: Designing a Just Food Future with Dr. Celeste Davis
Nov 2400:46:10Tap to summarizeHost Melissa L. Jones sits down with Dr. Celeste Davis—public health educator, design strategist, and director of the Public Health Scholars Program at American University—for a thoughtful conversation on how food justice, public health, and community power shape one another in today’s shifting landscape. Through her path as a bridge-builder, Dr. Celeste shares why food justice is rooted in dignity, culture, policy, labor, land, and the structures that determine who gets to thrive. She reflects on the possibilities and limits of policy, the importance of local action, and how design thinking and empathy can create systems that feel liberatory rather than transactional. Grounded in her work with emerging public health leaders, she offers a hopeful vision for collectively designing a more just and community-centered future.
Transcribe →#186: From Lineage to Land: Umi’s Journey of Ancestral Farming
Nov 1200:38:10Tap to summarizeReturning-generation farmer and community herbalist Bianca “Umi” Anthony shares how she’s reclaiming seven acres of her family’s 1950s land in rural Bertie County, NC—reviving legacy, building Seed of Life Farm, and raising her three kids “no screens” while they learn to grow. We talk medicinal herbs and cut flowers, creating a healing space for community retreats, the realities of solo stewardship and mentorship, and why a deer fence and basic infrastructure matter for the first growing season. Umi invites listeners into a vision of generational healing rooted in the soil.
Transcribe →#185: Nurturing Our Seeds: Detroit Roots, Community Power
Nov 600:45:48Tap to summarizeErin Cole, founder of Nurturing Our Seeds in Detroit, shares how a porch-side safety moment on Helen Street—mowing vacant lots for elders—grew from a first flower patch into mustard and turnip greens, and ultimately a neighborhood farm and seed-saving hub. We dig into living soil, herb-based compost teas, seed starting as food sovereignty as they supply transplants to 14 Black farms and save okra seed with the Ujamaa Seed Cooperative, and adapting to climate chaos with part-shade cucumbers. We also talk land access and how the Detroit Black Farmer Land Fund strengthens community control—plus Erin’s quest to breed a hot pink okra.
Transcribe →#184: SWAP: Fashioning Environmental Justice with Zsameria Rayford
Oct 1300:44:09Tap to summarizeFrom living-room swaps to a decade of citywide pop-ups, Zsameria Rayford’s SWAP DC → SWAP Universe shows how style and sustainability move together. This episode digs into the operational backbone, the ethos, and the outcomes—thousands of pounds of textiles kept out of landfills while neighbors trade clothing, plants, books, and ideas. We connect circular fashion to health and land stewardship and outline replicable models for your own community swap. A clear, on-the-ground example of the community-rooted change celebrated on Edible Activist.
Transcribe →#183: SiStained8: From Kitchen Scraps to Living Soil
Sep 2900:47:25Tap to summarizeNajwa Womack, founder of SiStained8 in Washington, D.C., traces her path from early nature moments to teaching compost as the art of growing soil. She defines composting in plain language, explains essentials like source-separated organics and feedstock, and tackles common myths about smell and time. Najwa connects kitchen scraps to city-scale solutions—cutting landfill methane, strengthening local soil and food, and reducing flood risk. She shares simple ways to begin at home, in schools, and with community drop-offs, outlines a vision for more three-bin and tumbler sites, and reflects on her work as a U.S. Composting Council Advocate of Compost, where national policy meets neighborhood impact.
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