A Talk with Jim Embry

We Are the Seeds of Our Ancestors' Dreams

Join 2023 James Beard Leadership Award winner Jim Embry for an engaging and inspirational conversation about sustainable communities and food justice. Available on livestream.

**Our sincere apologies, due to technical difficulties this livestream has been cancelled. We will try to post a video of the event elsewhere afterward. Thanks for your understanding. **

The conversation will include: 

• Jim’s essay “Ancestral Vibrations Guide Our Connection to the Land.”  An edited version appeared in We Are Each Other’s Harvest: Celebrating African American Farmers, Land, and Legacy, edited by Natalie Baszile (Harper Collins, 2021). The unedited essay is available at Embry_WeAreEachOther'sHarvest_uneditedversion.pdf (sustainlex.org)  or by emailing nclewett@lexpublib.org
• his upcoming trip to Italy as he represents Lexington and Slow Food USA at the global Terra Madre  
• and his 2023 James Beard Foundation Leadership Award 
   

Speaker Biography:

Jim Embry won a 2023 James Beard Foundation Leadership Award in recognition of over 50 years of work in the food justice movement. His work is local, national, and international in advocating for sustainable communities and social justice.  

Embry’s interest in local and healthy food, urban agriculture and food justice can be traced back through his family’s legacy as agrarian intellectual activists. He is the great-grandson of formerly enslaved African farmers who fought in the Civil War and who became social activists in Madison County, Kentucky.  

Jim is at home at every level, whether as an eight-time USA delegate to Slow Food’s Terra Madre in Italy, a visitor to Cuba to study organic farming, extensive work in urban agriculture, or planting on his 30-acre farm. Jim maintains that the local food and sustainable agriculture movement is the foundation of a sustainable community.  

As a scuba diver and photographer, Jim has traveled widely to capture the beauty of the land and oceans. He has exhibited his photos in books, hospitals, galleries, and magazines. Working now on two books, Jim has contributed articles and photographs to We Are Each Other’s Harvest, Sustainable World Source Book, Encyclopedia of Northern Kentucky, Kentucky African American Encyclopedia, Latino Studies, Biodynamics Journal, African American Heritage Guide, Stella Natura and other publications. Jim believes that we need some big ideas that connect humans in a sacred relationship with the Earth and Cosmos, which will require us to think not just “out of the box” but “out-of-the-barn.” 

Upcoming Events