In this episode of Compost, Cotton & Cornrows, Dominique Drakeford sits with Christa Barfield, aka FarmerJawn - regenerative agriculture powerhouse, James Beard Award winner, and founder of the largest Black woman-owned regenerative farm in the United States. From managing 128 acres across Pennsylvania to building markets for heritage crops like Nigerian spinach, Christa breaks down what sustainability actually means when you remove the romance and face the reality: profitability. She unpacks why true longevity in farming requires economic power, why undercapitalization is one of the biggest threats to land stewardship and how her company’s decision-making is rooted in a three-pillar framework of environmental, social and physical health. This is a masterclass in building systems that nourishes financial legacy and wellbeing.

Together, they explore regeneration as a lifestyle ethic from letting soil rest to letting ourselves rest. We unpack how “Food is Medicine” is an overused slogan in mainstream agricultural spaces, but for Christa, it’s a real strategy for public health transformation. Christa shares hard-won wisdom on funding pathways, building a protective business trinity (lawyer, accountant, insurance), navigating spaces where you’re the only one and why she’s done being “poor and popular.” The conversation stretches into lineage, land inheritance, family wealth models and her bold new pay-what-you-wish corner store designed to restore dignity and nutrition access in one of Philadelphia’s most underserved neighborhoods. This episode is a financial sustainability blueprint!

https://www.farmerjawn.co/

Compost, Cotton & Cornrows: the space where Black & Afro-Indigenous Vanguards are redefining sustainability through storytelling!

@Compost_Cotton_Cornrows

In this episode of Compost, Cotton & Cornrows, host Dominique Drakeford sits with Heather McTeer Toney, executive director of the Beyond Petrochemicals campaign, 2025 Forbes Sustainability Leader, former mayor of Greenville Mississippi and former Regional Administrator for EPA Region 4. Together they explore what sustainability looks like when it begins with Black life, cultural memory and lived experience rather than policy jargon or extractive frameworks. Drawing from Heather’s leadership in cultural organizing, this conversation reframes environmentalism as something deeply familiar and rooted in the stewardship and wisdom of people who have always lived closest to the land.

From petrochemicals and plastics to fast fashion, beauty culture and agriculture, Dominique and Heather unpack how industries built on extraction continue to harm Black and brown communities while selling convenience as progress. Heather traces the lineage from plantations to petrochemical corridors, challenges loud definitions of wealth and calls for a quieter, more intentional vision of luxury grounded in health, longevity and collective care. This episode is both a reckoning and a love letter, reminding us that storytelling is our most underutilized renewable energy source. This is a joyous call to action to listen differently, consume intentionally and claim our role as architects of the futures we deserve.

https://www.beyondpetrochemicals.org/

Compost, Cotton & Cornrows: the space where Black & Afro-Indigenous Vanguards are redefining sustainability through storytelling!

@Compost_Cotton_Cornrows

In this episode of Compost, Cotton & Cornrows, Dominique Drakeford sits with Latham Thomas, renowned birth justice advocate, cultural theorist and founder of Mama Glow, a global maternal health and education platform transforming how birth, healing and care are practiced across communities worldwide. Known for pioneering a model of birth work rooted in Black feminism, spirituality and justice, Latham has shaped a generation of care workers. Together, they reframe sustainability as a living principle: regeneration grounded in lineage, community and the moral intelligence of Black women.

What follows is a powerful meditation on care as resistance. Latham names how carceral systems - medicine, media, immigration enforcement and state violence extract from Black bodies while denying dignity and why refusing the spectacle of Black pain is itself an act of protection. Drawing from Black matriarchy, Afrofuturism and ancestral technologies, she offers a blueprint for building futures that cannot be destroyed because they are encoded, relational and quietly revolutionary. This episode is an invitation to slow down and build with intention. She unapologetically reminds us to remember that Black women have always set the moral and spiritual standard for what survival, sustainability and freedom truly mean.

https://mamaglowfoundation.org/

Compost, Cotton & Cornrows: the space where Black & Afro-Indigenous Vanguards are redefining sustainability through storytelling!

@Compost_Cotton_Cornrows