(soft dramatic music) - [Narrator] Here in Indiana, climate change is making the already difficult job of farming, even tougher.

Intense flooding and frequent droughts are part of the irregular weather patterns Hoosier farmers are struggling to navigate.

One group of farmers are especially vulnerable to the effects of climate change, Black farmers.

- Hi, I am Lauren McAllister.

- I'm Brett Volpp.

We're at 3 Flock Farm, it's our farm.

- In Ellettsville.

- [Narrator] The farm started with a wedding gift from the couple's friends.

- So we asked people to give us plants and trees and animals.

And then our friend Maryanne did.

- They raised Jacob's sheep - [Lauren] And Jacob sheep have variety.

Some have two horns, some have four horns.

And so you'll notice some of ours have that variety where there's horns at the top and on the sides.

It's the tails that get me.

Do you see that little rotation?

It's too much.

- [Narrator] They also grow a variety of produce utilizing regenerative and sustainable farming techniques.

- Oh, my sweet potatoes.

Oh, look at my strawberries.

Look honey, there's actual flowers this year.

So I did like a casting of collards here in this grass.

I mean in this straw, just for funsies.

We'll see.

You can make a little hole in the straw.

- [Narrator] Lauren is currently experimenting with growing mushrooms in spent grain, a waste product acquired from nearby breweries.

- After they make the delicious beer, we go and pick up the grain and it decompose.

I mean, you can tell, look how disgusting that is.

That's great.

This is waste to the brewer and gold to a farmer.

- [Narrator] She believes that exploring new methods of growing and diversifying the foods they produce, is an essential step in mitigating the damage climate change might bring.

- Last year, one of the blueberry farms in Indiana had zero blueberries.

Zero, because the shift in temperature happened so quickly.

And so I think big long rows and big harvest may not be possible unless we do succession, which is an interesting issue, right?

So if I only had blueberries and I lost my entire blueberry crop, what does that mean for my farm?

We're gonna have to diversify.

- [Narrator] Lauren is charismatic and her passion for farming is contagious.

And she's unapologetic in her condemnation of corporate greed, blaming corporate farms for perpetuating climate change.

Factory farms are very different from small family farms like 3 Flock.

The term factory farm or corporate farm refers to large scale agricultural production centers, also known as concentrated animal feeding operations.

The profit-driven production methods of factory farming often lead to excessive waste and animal cruelty.

Factory farms contribute to air and water pollution.

According to a study published by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, factory farms are responsible for 14.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions annually.

- I think small farming is the way because it's just more fun.

I think it's makes more sense for everybody to start growing their own food, but more importantly, sharing it amongst each other.

When we create economies between individuals, as opposed to with corporations, we're always gonna mitigate climate change, because corporations are the biggest perpetuators, criminals.

They're the ones that are creating the climate change crisis.

- [Narrator] She's keenly aware of the historic challenges Black farmers have faced and how that legacy shapes the present day reality for farmers like her.

- In Indiana, there are 80, eight zero, Black farmers.

So 80 out of 99,000 is a very small number.

And often people say to me, well, there just aren't a lot of Black farmers.

There aren't a lot of farmers of color.

So then you have to ask yourself, what did we do with them?

There's a real emphasis on the idea that farming is done on a tractor by a white guy and his family.

When in fact, farming did not begin like that in this country.

It was done specifically by enslaved people.

There was an intention to break the line of farming for Black people.

So it's not just that Black farmers were enslaved and then subject to violence even after they were theoretically freed.

It's that underneath all of that, there were policies and procedures by the federal government that were constantly segregating Black farmers and giving them less.

These segregating points continue.

- [Narrator] Black farmers have faced a vortex of destructive, social and political forces in the United States, from systemic racism at the USDA, to mob violence, which has a pernicious history.

In Indiana, during the 1830s, a vigilante movement known as the white caps developed in Corydon Indiana.

As white capping spread across the United States, the movement attracted white supremacists who used mob violence to expel Blacks from their land.

The 1920s saw the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in Indiana.

At its peak in 1923, 30% of native-born Indiana men were members of the KKK.

Around 1920, just prior to the Klan's rise, Black farm ownership had reached its peak in the US.

But since then, Black Americans have lost over 13 million acres of farmland.

- Growing our own food means that we're going to continue to exist.

I didn't realize that existence was resistance until I really started researching about why being alive and being Black meant that we're resisting capitalistic white supremacist systems.

- [Narrator] There's one place in Indiana where the line of Black farming has not been broken.

Lyle's Station is located in southern Indiana.

It's been called the last remaining historic Black settlement in Indiana.

Lyle's station was settled in the 1840s and named in 1866 to honor Joshua Lyles, a free Black man who migrated to Indiana during the 1830s.

We met with Denise Greer Jamerson.

- So Lyles Station is the last remaining African American settlement in Indiana.

I grew up here in Lyles Station and I grew up in a community, a community, a family.

If it wasn't family, it is family.

- Along with her husband, John Jamerson and son De Anthony, Denise is the co-founder of Legacy Taste of the Garden.

She also helps manage her father's farm.

- Dad still farms around the family, Greer Farms.

We still farm around a 100, 150 acres of soybeans.

He just basically dales in the soybeans and then for legacy taste of the Garden, we do produce.

Awesome.

- [Narrator] Denise's father, Norman Greer, has been recognized as one of the last Black farmers working family land that predates the Civil War.

The Greer's legacy in farming has been extensively documented and a soil sample from the Greer family land is on display at the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC.

Norman Greer has faced many challenges during his 60 plus years in farming.

- The government controls shit, that's what it is.

'cause they wanna sit back and make all the money off of you and you keep working like a damn fool.

All this stuff up in that White House ain't no good.

You can't live off no subsidy.

You need to get a good price for our product.

That's what we need.

And to where we can make a living out of it without having to scramble around.

You know, it ain't no good.

That's why I'm about ready to hang it up.

- [Narrator] On top of all those issues, Denise told us that climate change has become a growing concern in Lyle's Station.

- You know, probably a couple of years ago, the whole state of Indiana didn't get crops out because of the rain.

I mean, and it got past the time for them to plant, like dad planted and then he replanted.

In the past years, people get their whole strawberry crops wiped out by rain or whatever.

So the climate change is real.

I mean, in our world it's real, you know, and we have to, like I said, we kind of have to find innovative ways to deal with climate change.

- [Narrator] And while there are resources available to help farmers fight against the effects of climate change, Denise told us that decades of systemic racism has made some Black farmers skeptical of asking government agencies for assistance.

- You asked and you don't get.

So who got time to keep asking?

When I'm in the season, just like with dad, when he's ready to go, he's ready to go.

Imagine how much more our family legacy could be, if he wouldn't have got knocked off of his feet.

So yes, the systematic racism has affected and that is one of the main, another reason why I'm doing what I'm doing.

- Systemic racism isn't Denise's only concern.

Her husband John, told us about a strange incident that had recently occurred.

A car ran onto the family's land, destroying their produce stand and crashing into an old schoolhouse they've been refurbishing.

- It's just a lot of damage, a lot of work to redo everything.

- [Narrator] When you add climate change to the long list of obstacles Black farmers face, the future might look pretty bleak.

But back in Ellisville, farmer, Lauren McAllister doesn't see it that way.

She views farming as an act of liberation for people and the planet.

- I think growing food is a way to get some of the power back.

Even enslaved people had their own gardens, so they worked all day long without any pay, without any gratitude, without anybody saying thank you, and they still went out afterwards and grew their own food.

That can happen now.

I really wanna encourage people to view the past as something that we can learn from, but also to look around now for the Black and brown and indigenous producers of color who are working in this moment that they can invest in, that they can partner with, and really collaborate on how to imagine a world in which there's more farming and less exploitation.

- [Narrator] For more across Indiana stories, go to wfyi.org/acrossindiana.

(rooster crowing)