Liberation Is on the Land: Why “Farming While Black” Belongs on Every Nonprofit Leader’s Shelf

By Larry Blake Harvey, Principal Consultant at Harvey & Smith Impact

Nonprofit leaders today are navigating a landscape defined by scarcity and uncertainty. Political backlash has put justice-based work under a microscope. Unrestricted funding is harder to come by. Donors are pulling back. Staff are burning out. Leaders are being asked to hold vision, deliver impact, and remain accountable to community, often with fewer resources and higher stakes. In this moment, strategy needs to be practical, values need to be visible, and leadership needs to be rooted in something deeper than deliverables.

Farming While Black by Leah Penniman is a book built for this kind of leadership.

It is not just about farming. It is about infrastructure, healing, and power. Penniman, co-founder of Soul Fire Farm, draws on years of land-based organizing to deliver a manual for how to build programs that do more than survive cycles of funding and public opinion. This book offers curriculum models, facilitation guides, cooperative structures, and real-world planning tools that nonprofit teams can implement today. It helps educators design programming that weaves together food, justice, and cultural memory. It helps executive leaders build internal processes that are accountable to community, not just compliant with funders. It helps teams pause, ask harder questions, and design from the ground up.

In a sector flooded with theory and starved for practice, this book stands apart. It offers strategies for working across lines of race and class without falling into performance or saviorism. It helps teams navigate conflict with clarity. It equips leaders to design with sovereignty in mind. And most of all, it reminds us that liberation is not just a goal on the horizon. It is a way of working. A way of relating. A way of leading.

At Harvey & Smith Impact, we included Farming While Black in our Earth & Place collection because it speaks to the exact tensions nonprofit leaders are holding. It provides structure for organizations that want to align their internal practices with their public values. It is one of many titles in The Bookshelf, our curated collection designed to help nonprofit leaders lead with more skill, clarity, and purpose. Every purchase supports our microgrant program for small, community-led initiatives. More importantly, each title offers something tangible to the people doing the work.

This book is not a retreat from the pressures of leadership. It is a response to them. And it belongs in the hands of anyone serious about building a nonprofit culture that can stand the weight of the work.

Explore Farming While Black and the full Earth & Place collection at: www.harveysmithimpact.com/thebookshelf