Heber Brown III tends fertile ground for Black Church

In Baltimore’s Govans neighborhood, what started as a simple vegetable garden beside Pleasant Hope Baptist Church has grown into a nationwide movement of more than 230 congregations fighting food insecurity through self-sufficiency.

At the center of this transformation stands Rev. Dr. Heber Brown III, a third-generation preacher who’s reinventing how Black churches address hunger in their communities.

“If we embrace and renew our ability to feed ourselves, it will have an outreaching effect in so many other areas of our industry,” Brown says.

He started the Black Church Food Security Network (BCFSN) in 2015 with a revolutionary premise: rather than merely distributing food, churches can help their communities grow it. His vision extends beyond immediate hunger relief to rebuilding lost connections between people and land.

If you’re selling grandma’s land down in the country for a couple of dollars, and if you’re not appreciating fully what your daddy did in blood, sweat, and tears to get that land and pass it down to the children — if you sell it to Walmart or Costco or whatever big box store or somebody to make a parking lot, you don’t appreciate it.

The network “co-creates Black food ecosystems anchored by Black churches working in partnership with Black farmers and other organizations,” tackling a crisis that disproportionately affects Black Americans.

Recent data from the Food Research & Action Center underscores the urgency of this work. While one in seven U.S. households faces food insecurity, the rate for Black households (23.3%) is more than double that of white households (9.9%). An estimated 13.8 million children lived in food-insecure households in 2023, marking a 3.2% increase from the previous year.

“The Black Church Food Security Network has been an invaluable partner in helping our church to establish a vegetable garden,” said Rev. Dr. Sammie Logan III, pastor of New Hope Baptist Church in Chesapeake, Virginia, “that has energized members of our church and deepened our relationship with residents of our community.”

Word In Black: What do you want people to know about the Food Network?

Rev. Heber Brown: Our ability to feed ourselves is connected to so many of the other aspirations and dreams that we have as a community. It helps to create the runway and open the door for economic opportunity, for improved health outcomes, for youth and young adult mentoring and apprenticeships, for supporting our families with respect to heirs’ property and ensuring that family legacies remain long into the future.

WIB: Where’d you get your love for the earth?

HB: I am old enough to remember spending the summers down in the country when school let out. For us, my maternal line of my family is in rural Virginia, a little town called Kilmarnock, Virginia, in Northumberland County. And my Momma Geraldine lived in one of those houses that sat like a mile off the main road.

She had a different idea of conservation because there was a well and the water had to be fetched. She made me, the preacher, and my brother Anthony, who’s now a worldwide known gospel music star, take a bath in the same bathtub and said, ‘y’all share that water because I’m not going back out to that well.’

Summers down in the country introduced me to a different rhythm of life. It brought me closer to the land. It brought me closer to farming and where our food came from. It was a real education beyond anything the classrooms had ever taught.

WIB: What are the young people missing without this frame of reference? 

HB: It feels like for the first time what is beginning to emerge is a Black America that does not have that point of reference to land or farming or food, and perhaps is not interested. If you’re selling grandma’s land down in the country for a couple of dollars, and if you’re not appreciating fully what your daddy did in blood, sweat, and tears to get that land and pass it down to the children — if you sell it to Walmart or Costco or whatever big box store or somebody to make a parking lot, you don’t appreciate it.

WIB: Who were your role models?

HB:  The first who comes to mind is Rev. Vernon Johns, who was preceded Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. He was a great preacher, theologian, all of that, religious leader, seminary president. He was also a farmer and set an example of growing food and selling his watermelons and produce at the church.

WIB:  How did you summon the courage to follow your vision for your life rather than remain in a prevailing model of ministry?

HB: When I announced I was leaving the church, one of my deacons said, “Rev. Brown, I’m sad, but not surprised.”

Because they’d seen me delivering sweet potatoes, driving a truck, singing, and making videos. I had to pay attention to what made my heart sing, what made me smile. It was hard work. But it was doing something to really give me life and joy. And that can be contagious for whatever field.