Publications — Shorlette Ammons

Talking Good [Podcasts & Interviews]

This episode of Rooted Wisdom bridges the wisdom of an Indigenous Land Steward and a Food Equity Educator to discuss the memories and songs that shape our homes. The Steward, Lilian Hill, is the ED of the Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance. The Educator, Shorlette Ammons, leads the Center for Environmental Farming Systems’ Committee on Racial Equity (CORE). Learn how ancestral knowledge informs their lives, how they navigate the complexities around food access, and how colonization and slavery impact food and the path toward resilient & equitable local food systems.
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Victoria Bouloubasis visits a rural county where the multicultural workforce kept America fed during the pandemic. We'll meet Esmeralda, who has become a community health worker, and her mother Marta, who works in a poultry plant.
In the face of blatant mistreatment and inadequate protection, food factory workers in North Carolina became sick, and died, in unacceptably high numbers. This mother-daughter team stepped up to protect the health of their neighbors and coworkers, efforts they continue today.
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Eastern North Carolina is a place of flat fields to the horizon, small corner stores, barbecue spots that are only open Thursday-Saturday, and as Shorlette Ammons says, more pigs than people. She’s a native of Mount Olive, North Carolina, where she grew up in a large family of farmworkers, cooks, and storytellers, and we met last year when she presented at Thrive NC in Raleigh. She’s currently serving as Equity in Food Systems Associate with the Center for Environmental Farming Systems at NC State University, which means in the broadest sense, she spends her days assessing and activating change within a Southern food system that often runs on an auto pilot of inequity. But it’s her practicality, her love for people, and her intense wealth of knowledge can help us see a different future.
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