On a Tuesday morning in May, Byron Nkhoma pulls a radish from the soil.
He dusts it off, rubber bands it with a half dozen others, and drops it into a large bin.
The radish is juicy, crunchy and spicy — full of flavor often missing from its grocery store kin.
Nkhoma takes pride in that flavor. He goes out of his way for it. Sometimes, when it’s warm outside, he and his wife Joyce will harvest at midnight, working under the cool of the moon, so his crops are most alive with that taste.
This radish is not destined for a Michelin-starred restaurant, but for a food pantry.
It’s his joy, Nkhoma said, to feed his community the best food possible.
His laugh rings out across his four-acre farm in Ramona, as regular a sound as the bird chirps and goat bleats.
He moved from Zimbabwe in 2015 and started Hukama Produce — a Shona word for “relationships.”
It was a battle in the “reds,” he said. “We barely had our noses above water.”
This is not uncommon.
Farm sector debt in the U.S. is over $530 billion, a record high. One in four farm operators carry debt. It’s even harder for small to midsize farms like Nkhoma’s.
In January, that changed. The food bank Feeding San Diego asked to partner with him as part of a new program.
Feeding San Diego received funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program (LFPA). It directs $900 million of American Rescue Plan funds to local governments across the country to buy from local growers.
Feeding San Diego’s weekly $500 purchase, on average, helped stabilize the Hukama Produce’s finances. It provided a steady income that’s hard to get from unpredictable farmers markets.
He’s started to dream about how to invest that money back into the farm — hiring more labor and buying shade netting and temperature-controlled tunnels.
Nkhoma washes the radishes, folds them into boxes, and stacks them in a delivery truck, where they make the half-hour journey to the Feeding San Diego warehouse in Mira Mesa.
There, they join boxes from 45 other small to midsize farms in the county.
Women and farmers of color tend to run smaller farms, a Feeding San Diego spokesperson said.
It’s a challenge that’s contributed to the disappearance of Black-run farms across the country, according to a 2021 report.
USDA data show the number of Black farm operators dwindled from almost one million in 1920 to less than 50,000 today.
When the industry became mechanized, white farmers took out loans for things like tractors and irrigation. Black farmers were typically denied those same loans by the Farm Service Agency, a fact which would later lead to the largest civil rights settlement in U.S. history.
It became impossible to compete with the economies of scale of the rapidly expanding white farms.
Produce from small farms like these costs more for buyers like Feeding San Diego about $2 per pound instead of 20 cents.
The LFPA helps level that playing field.
Buying locally allows Feeding San Diego to cut down on shipping produce from other counties and states, saving fuel, emissions and hundreds of dollars in shipping fees.
Leticia Rodriguez, Feeding San Diego’s Senior Manager of Sourcing, said offering fresh produce — not just canned or boxed food — is vital.
“Food is medicine, and a lot of the communities that we serve, they do have more health issues. They're more vulnerable. So this allows them to have access to produce that they normally may not be able to purchase,” she said
Before LFPA, they would purchase staples like potatoes, onions and cucumbers. Now, they’re able to stock vegetables like swiss chard, shiitake mushrooms and bok choy, which Rodriguez said are culturally preferred by their clients.
Word about the new produce spread.
Nearly 1,000 people come to their produce distribution every week. Rodriguez said many are new faces.
On Saturday — four days after harvesting — Nkhoma’s radishes are placed at the end of a long line of tables covered in a rainbow of produce.
Volunteers stretch their arms as the clock counts down to 10 a.m., preparing to pass out thousands of pounds of food.
Languages as varied as the vegetables fill the air.
Feeding San Diego doesn’t track demographics of their produce recipients, but volunteers say they serve a large number of immigrants, especially from the Philippines.
The San Diego Hunger Coalition estimates one in four people in the county are nutrition insecure, and they are disproportionately people of color.
Nkhoma’s radishes land in the bag of Ofelia West, who is bringing produce back for four adults and two children.
She plans to use them in a salad. She likes fresh vegetables and fruits, she said. She can taste the difference in this produce.
Though Nkhoma never met West, or saw her smile as she received his radishes, she — and the hundreds others in line — are the community he works hard to feed.
The program is currently funded through July 2025. Rodriguez hopes the USDA will renew the funding.
