Ten years into a career in healthcare administration, Christa Barfield realized she needed to make a change. She was feeling burnt out about her work-life balance, but she knew she still wanted her work to be focused around health and health access.

So she resigned from her day job and, within the past five years or so, has launched the 128-acre farm FarmerJawn in the Philadelphia area and the organization CornerJawn, a corner-store concept that reimagines those convenient neighborhood stops as places to access nutrient-dense produce in urban neighborhoods.

“I want people to see [how] the quality of food relates back to their health,” Christa told me on the Food Talk podcast this summer. With CornerJawn, she said, “What I want to do is create a shopping experience where you’re actually learning what this particular crop…is going to do for you and can do for your body.”

With her urban farming and food justice work, she seeks to raise awareness around the challenges that Black and Brown farmers face, push for regenerative agriculture practices that connect us to the land, and highlight the intersections between environmental health and people’s nutritional health.

“It’s not just about nutrient density. It’s definitely important, but the food is also going to taste better because we care for the soil,” she says. “It’s about how it’s grown.”

Barfield has made a huge impact in a short time. She is the recipient of the 2024 Leadership Award from the James Beard Foundation. And during our conversation on the podcast, she pointed out an important truth that I think we’d all do well to remind ourselves:

“How you eat now isn’t just about you,” she says. “Food is about lineage. It’s about everyone in your bloodline before you and the ones that are coming after you.”

This is true across every aspect of the food system. The way farmers treated soils a generation ago influences how healthy they are today. The way we approach regenerative food production and access today will directly shape how our food and climate systems look for our kids and grandkids.

Read the full article about regenerative food by Danielle Nierenberg at Food Tank.