“You’re not going to answer the question?” Nelson asked.

Bittman batted her away. “I’m not sure what the question was. I don’t know what ‘hold yourself accountable’ means.”

The attendees, seated around bottles of wine and cider at communal tables, murmured nervously.

Then the exchange escalated. Nelson accused Bittman of “just pontificating,” and shouted from the back of the room, without a microphone. The room was thick with tension as Bittman and Salvador moved on to field more questions.

Ten minutes later, another attendee, apparently dissatisfied with the previous back-and-forth, took the mic. “I do not have a question,” said Dallas Robinson, a farmer based in Edenton, North Carolina. “I just want to let black people know that your dismissal was hurtful. It was enraging.”

Land reform, she said, was not the answer to systemic racism. What was needed, instead, was for white men, like Bittman, to respect the voices of people of color, and give them a seat at the table. “This shit is exhausting,” she said, in reference to Bittman’s dismissal. “And we’re not all friends. Y’all don’t listen to us.”

The room burst into applause. Bittman, on stage, was stone-faced and silent.



The interaction described starts near the 56-minute mark.

Nelson’s original question was prompted by Bittman’s assertion that the country’s most fertile farmland was long ago “grabbed” by white colonists and is still owned by their descendants. To even the playing field, Bittman proposed a sweeping land-reform policy, one that would allow the federal government to appropriate farmland and redistribute it to young farmers, as part of inheritance or transfer tax reform.

His proposal, which he said would begin to undo the damages of these racist federal policies, was echoed by Salvador, who quoted a 1968 speech given by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. that enumerated historic policies—such as the Homestead Acts, land-grant colleges, low interest rates to mechanize farms, and cash subsidies—that favored white farmers.

Bittman probably expected the room full of young farmers to be receptive. After all, access to land is one of the primary obstacle facing young farmers of any race. A survey conducted by the National Young Farmers Coalition, a Hudson, New York-based advocacy group, found that 30 percent of aspiring farmers say difficulty finding farmland prevents them from entering the field. That’s twice the amount that cited student loan debt. Indeed, without a long-term lease, or the ability to own land, many young farmers are ineligible for federal loans that allow them to invest in infrastructure or conservation practices.

In theory, Bittman’s proposal was probably intended to inspire an audience of idealists. But it backfired.