Jo Ann Baumgartner
- Dennis Hutson has found ways to use less water in one of the most drought-stricken places in the US.
- At his TAC Farm in San Joaquin Valley, CA, Hutson is training people of color to farm sustainably.
- As recently as 2021, just 1.4% of farmers in the US were Black or mixed race.
Dennis Hutson has played many roles in his life: pastor, US Air Force chaplain, and devoted husband and father of three — to name a few.
But it wasn't until he co-bought 60 acres of land in Allensworth, California, that he felt he'd fulfilled his ultimate destiny.
A Black-led agricultural revolution over 100 years in the making
Allensworth is the first Black-founded and -governed town in California.
Allen Allensworth, an escaped slave, founded it in 1908. He traveled throughout the eastern and midwestern US advocating for self-help programs that would give Black people a chance at social and economic self-sufficiency.
"Allensworth believed Black people are meant to help one another — to pull one another into a higher station of life," Hutson told Business Insider.
Dennis Hutson
The way he sees it, Hutson's destiny is to carry on Allensworth's legacy through farming. He's launching a teaching program on TAC Farm, which he co-founded with his sister and her husband on the land they bought together.
Through the program, Hutson hopes to offer Black farmers, indigenous farmers, and other farmers of color hands-on experience in organic and sustainable practices.
"I thought, this is a way to realize the purpose on which this town was discovered," Hutson said.
Closing the racial gap
Research has found that farming offers Black Americans a substantial economic opportunity to build net worth and generational wealth.
But research has also found that significant racial disparities in farmland ownership, in part due to discriminatory practices by the USDA and lending organizations, have deprived farmers of color equal access to the loans, grants, and crop insurance necessary to sustain or grow their operations.
As recently as 2021, only 1.4% of farmers in the US were Black or of mixed race — a significant decline from 14% about 100 years ago, according to McKinsey & Company.
A better way of doing things
Hutson moved to Allensworth in July of 2017 — right after the 2012-2016 drought, one of the most severe in California's history.
San Joaquin Valley, a stretch of eight counties in central and southern California and where Allensworth is located, was hit especially hard, which is why Hutson said he knew he would have to lean into sustainable practices for TAC Farm.
"Otherwise, you're just adding to the problem instead of helping to solve it," he said.
Dennis Hutson
To that end, TAC farm has adopted more efficient drip irrigation methods, which help reduce manpower while also conserving water, Hutson said.
The farm also plants cover crops, which aren't necessarily intended for harvest, but instead protect and enrich the soil for future harvest crops. Moreover, healthy soil can retain moisture longer, so it doesn't require as much water.
A few years ago, Hutson began replacing the alfalfa, which required irrigating six to seven times per season, with the cover crop oats.
"I planted oats and relied on rains for irrigation. With this year's atmospheric rivers, I had an abundant harvest," he said. It's sustainable practices like these that could help TAC Farm survive in the face of the US's uncertain farming future.
Over the next several decades, California's Department of Water Resources estimates that the state could lose up to 10% of its water supplies by 2040, and economists predict the central San Joaquin Valley will need to pull nearly half a million acres of farmland out of production.
It's also these sustainable practices that Hutson ultimately wants to pass on to other farmers of color.
Cultivating the next generation of Black regenerative farmers in Southern California
Hutson's TAC Innovation and Teaching Farm program has recruited approximately six farmers of color from across the Central Valley and Southern California, he told BI.
In order to spread the word, TAC Farm partnered with a number of other organizations in the state — including African American Farmers of California, Crop Swap LA, and the Compton Community Garden.
Participants will get access to a small plot of land on TAC Farm for two and a half years, and can then sell the crops they grow to local co-ops, Hutson said. The program will also help participants apply for loans.
Hutson said most people don't realize how expensive agriculture is. For example, the Massey-Ferguson 4700 4-wheel drive tractor he purchased with a grant in 2020 cost $46,000.
This program will equip students with a more realistic mindset about what it takes to start a successful farm from the ground up.
"After land cost, the second big hurdle is finding a water source — especially in the Central Valley," he said. "More and more, that means drilling a well."
Before Hutson asked for a loan from the bank, he noted: "The bank said to me, 'We can't give you one until you have a water source.' So, I had to have a well drilled in 2009 — it's just 720 feet deep, and it was over $120,000. It probably costs twice that now. He added that's "not even taking into account equipment — tractors, implements, all those kinds of things."
Hutson hopes the sustainable practices he's learned and designed over the last decade can usher in a new revolution of minority-owned and led sustainable agriculture in California.
"They can say, 'We did this with our hands.'"