Alexandria's Inglewood Farm transfers 17 acres to non-profit that helps Black farmers

A new day has dawned for Jubilee Justice after the Keller Family, owners of Inglewood Farm, transferred ownership of 17 acres to the non-profit that helps Black farmers become more self-sufficient through cooperative economics and promotes healthy living.

Elisabeth Keller, who retired in 2023 as president of Inglewood Farm, said that it’s very important to her, given Inglewood’s history as a plantation where Black people were enslaved and where Black farmers were sharecroppers, that its legacy now be one that is of service to Black farmers.

Jubilee Justice has been in operation for four years at Inglewood. In that time. it has expanded from its original objective of growing rice using the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) method, said founder and president Konda Mason. They successfully grew 18 varieties of rice using the SRI method in a rice experiment they started in 2020.

Then in 2023, they added a solar-powered Rice Mill that was deeded to Jubilee Justice by Inglewood Farm. The mill is operated by the non-profit and Black farmers who are part of the Jubilee Justice collective and use the SRI method to grow rice. It is the first of its kind in the southeast.

Mason said she didn’t think she was going to have to build a mill but did so after finding out it was the mills that made the lion’s share of the money.

“I was like, ‘The farmers need to keep that money in their pockets,’” she said. “And so building a mill was absolutely not on my radar at the beginning, so that was a huge undertaking.”

Upon Keller’s retirement, Jubilee Justice took over Inglewood Farm’s organic vegetable growing operation.

Keller said they started growing organic vegetables more than 10 years ago because they “have a big commitment to growing healthy, delicious, nutritious food for the community and making it available to as many people as possible.”

“We reached out to Jubilee Justice to ask if they had interest in continuing growing vegetables for market,” Keller said. “Of course, they were already growing rice and had the rice project. They considered it and said, ‘Yes, we'll do it and we would like to be very connected to the community as well.’”

On Saturday, Jubilee Justice held its first farmers market. Starting in April, Jubilee Justice will host one on the first Saturday of each month, Mason said.

They are also working on some projects involving farmers across the state whom they want to support in any way they can, she said. One of the things Mason has found since being here is that there is a lack of markets and places where Black and Brown farmers can sell their food. They also lack access to infrastructure like refrigeration.

“There's just a lot of gaps and what we are working on is looking at all of that and seeing if we could play a role with that, perhaps, in a bigger way,” she said.

A news release from Jubilee Justice states they also plan to offer youth programming and farm workshops.

Mason came to Louisiana from California in 2020 and leased two acres at Inglewood Farm to see if they could grow rice in the South using the SRI method.

The SRI method is a more sustainable and environmentally friendly way of growing rice that farmers in Asia and Africa use, Mason said in a 2020 Town Talk article. The method much better suited for small farmers and is linked to what is known as "regenerative agriculture.”

Mason said they wanted to create a group of farmers throughout the South to grow rice in this way, particularly for Lotus Foods, a California based company that imports rice from small family farms from across the world.

Mason started growing rice because of her relationship with Lotus Foods, and she wanted to grow rice for them.

“It's so exciting for us to have the rice growing here. Of course, that’s the new thing for this farm,” said Keller. “To know that they're doing this to benefit other farmers across the South feels so meaningful. Again, Inglewood can be a place where they're trying new things. And also, because the method of farming that they're doing and experimenting with is so good for the soil and for the environment.”

This article originally appeared on Alexandria Town Talk: Alexandria's Inglewood Farm transfers 17 acres to non-profit Jubilee Justice