The Recall Is the Warning. The Food System Is the Story.

Essence asked, “Well, What Can We Eat?” Sister, start with what our grandmothers knew: know your food, know who grows it, and know who makes the rules that govern it.

OpEd | WANDA

Before another food recall convinces you that there is nothing left to eat, come back to the table for a minute. Because when Essence asks, “Well, What Can We Eat?” I hear more than a question about jalapeños.

I hear fatigue. We are trying to stretch grocery dollars while prices test our patience. We are reading labels. Feeding babies. Caring for parents. Managing high blood pressure and diabetes in our families. Trying to decipher what is “healthy” this week. And then here comes another notification telling us to search the refrigerator and throw something away. It is enough to make anybody want to interrogate a bell pepper. But fear cannot be our food strategy.

Agency can.

And this summer, one of the most practical things we can do is something our communities have done for generations: Get closer to the people who grow our food.

• Go to the farmers market.

• Find a Black farmer.

• Join a CSA.

• Ask the farmer what is growing right now.

• Buy the greens that came out of the soil this week.

Learn when okra, tomatoes, peppers, beans, melons, peaches, squash, and leafy greens are actually in season where you live. Take your children with you.

And when you can, intentionally put some of your grocery dollars into the hands of Black farmers, especially Black women farmers. That is another way of voting with your fork.

Not because small farms are magically immune from food-safety risks. They are not.

But buying locally can shorten the distance between eater and grower. It can give us an opportunity to ask questions directly about how food was grown, handled, and harvested. And it can allow more of our food dollars to circulate among producers and communities we want to see thrive. The timing could not be more appropriate.

The United Nations has designated 2026 the International Year of the Woman Farmer, recognizing women's essential roles throughout agrifood systems while drawing attention to persistent barriers involving land, financing, services, technology, and decision-making.

So while everybody is talking about what we should remove from our refrigerators, WANDA wants Black women asking another question: Who can we intentionally put into our grocery baskets?

Remember “Eat Like Your Grandmother”? It May Be More Relevant Than Ever.

We have heard some version of the advice for years: Eat like your grandmother.

Maybe it sounded nostalgic before. Today, it sounds increasingly practical. Our grandmothers may not have used words like food systems, traceability, ultra-processing, or nutrition security around the kitchen table. But many understood seasonality.

They knew greens had a season. They knew beans stretched. They knew how to make a meal from what was available. They knew the farmer, the gardener, the church lady with the collards, the auntie growing tomatoes behind the house. They preserved food. They shared food. They wasted less. And they often understood something our modern food system has made surprisingly easy to forget: Food comes from somewhere.

It does not begin under fluorescent grocery-store lights wrapped in plastic. And somebody made rules governing nearly every step between the soil and our supper. “Eat like your grandmother” does not mean romanticizing the past. Our grandmothers also lived through segregation, food discrimination, land loss, limited healthcare, and policies that constrained what many Black families could grow, own, purchase, and pass down.

The lesson worth recovering is not nostalgia.

This Summer, Find a Black Farmer

You do not have to already know one. The Black Farmers Index maintains a free national directory organized by region and state and says its listings include more than 400 women-owned farms, gardens, apiaries, and ranches. The USDA Local Food Directories can help consumers locate farmers markets and other local-food businesses and allow searches based on location and features including participation in federal nutrition programs such as SNAP.

For communities in the Southeast and U.S. Virgin Islands,the Southeastern African American Farmers' Organic Network (SAAFON) works with a network of Black farmers practicing ecologically sustainable agriculture.

And right here in the Washington region, there are additional ways to shop Black. Black + Forth Farmers Market in Washington, D.C., describes itself as a biweekly marketplace featuring Black farmers, food artisans, and other Black-owned vendors, while Maryland Market Money maintains a regional list of Black-owned and operated farms in the DMV.

There are Black women farmers doing this work right now, too. Deep Roots Farm in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, for example, identifies itself as a Black woman-owned regenerative farm growing vegetables, herbs, fruit, and flowers while raising chickens on 53 acres.

• Find the women growing near you.

• Learn their names.

• Follow their farms.

• Ask where they sell.

• Subscribe to their CSA if it works for your household.

• Bring a girlfriend.

• Bring your daughter.

• Bring your mother.

• Make farmers-market Saturday the new sister-date.

  
  

Because the International Year of the Woman Farmer should not become another commemorative year that produces beautiful panels while women growers struggle to sell what they grow. Celebration should have an economic address. Sometimes that address is a farmers market stall.

BUT Your Fork Cannot Fix Public Policy by Itself

This is where we have to resist an old habit. Black women are constantly handed structural problems and then given individual homework.

1. Choose healthier food.

2. Cook more.

3. Read every label.

4. Exercise.

5. Manage your stress.

6. Stretch the budget.

7. Check every recall.

8. Find the farmers market.

9. Know the farmer.

All of those actions can be useful. But we cannot shop our way out of every systemic problem.

You can know your farmer and still need a strong FDA. You can shop at a farmers market and still need effective state and local health departments. You can cook from scratch and still need foodborne-disease surveillance. You can plant tomatoes in your backyard and still need policies protecting agricultural workers, water, land, small farmers, and the integrity of the broader food supply.

This is where the second meaning of the word vote enters the conversation.

We vote economically with our forks.

Our communities also participate civically through elections, hearings, public comments, town halls, budgets, and conversations with the people who represent us.

Those are different forms of participation, but both help shape the food system.

The officials chosen in elections make decisions involving food safety, agriculture, public-health budgets, SNAP, WIC, school meals, maternal nutrition, agricultural research, food businesses, land, environmental health, and the agencies responsible for detecting and responding to outbreaks.

So as election season approaches, WANDA is not interested in telling Black women who to vote for. We are interested in making sure nobody gets to ask for our attention without being asked some better questions. When policymakers, candidates, and representatives come into our communities, ask: What is your food policy?

• How will you protect the food supply?

• How will you support small and historically underserved farmers?

• What will you do about Black farmland ownership and land retention?

• How will women farmers gain better access to capital, technical assistance, procurement opportunities, and markets?

• How will you strengthen SNAP and WIC while supporting the farmers and retailers serving those families?

• How will you improve food recall communication so families do not learn by accident that something in their refrigerator could make them sick?

• What are you doing about maternal nutrition?

• School meals?

• Food affordability?

• Nutrition research?

• Local food infrastructure?

And when you talk about supporting farmers, which farmers are actually reflected in your policies and your budget? Those are not partisan questions. They are dinner-table questions. And Black women have every reason to ask them.