[Anita Chitaya in Tumbuka] (anxious music) [Anita in English] The climate change, We see it more as a political agenda.

[Anita Chitaya in Tumbuka] ANDIA: "The Ants & The Grasshopper" on Doc World.

Watch on World and YouTube.

[grass crunching underfoot] [bucket rattling] [birds squawking] [Anita Chitaya in Tumbuka] [water pouring] [pump squeaking] [Anita Chitaya in Tumbuka] [chattering in Tumbuka] [fire popping] [woman singing in Tumbuka] [joyful music playing] [chattering in Tumbuka] [Anita in Tumbuka] [Anita in Tumbuka] [Christopher in Tumbuka] [Anita in Tumbuka] [birds chirping] [Christopher in Tumbuka] [Anita laughing] [Anita in Tumbuka] [Christopher in Tumbuka] [chattering in Tumbuka] [Esther Lupafya in Tumbuka] [Anita in Tumbuka] [seller counting money in Tumbuka] [Esther and Anita speaking Tumbuka] [Esther in Tumbuka] [Anita in Tumbuka] [group chanting] [crowd laughing] [crowd agreeing] [singing in Tumbuka] [Anita in Tumbuka] [singing in Tumbuka] [Winston in Tumbuka] [laughing] [in Tumbuka] [Anita and Jenifa in Tumbuka] [Anita in Tumbuka] [Anita speaking] [Anita laughing] [Anita in Tumbuka] [Winston in Tumbuka] [women laughing] [women laughing] [muttering in Tumbuka] [Anita in Tumbuka] [singing Tumbuka hymn] [Anita Chitaya in Tumbuka] [wind rustling] [man in Tumbuka] [chuckling] [Anita in Tumbuka] [Winston in Tumbuka] [laughs] [Anita in Tumbuka] [Anita in Tumbuka] [Christopher in Tumbuka] [Anita in Tumbuka] [bell ringing] [woman singing in Tumbuka] [singing continues] [Anita in Tumbuka] [dramatic music playing] [chattering in Tumbuka] [Anita in Tumbuka] [children chattering in Tumbuka] [Anita in Tumbuka] [chattering in Tumbuka] [Anita in Tumbuka] [thunder rumbles] [airplane rumbles] [Anita in Tumbuka] [Anita in Tumbuka] [Raj in English] And so Anita, we can't promise that this can happen, but if it were possible for us to, for you to visit America, would you be interested in coming?

[laughs] [soft music playing] [children laughing and squealing] [Anita in Tumbuka] [soft music playing] [women laughing] [airplane roaring] [Anita in Tumbuka] [traffic rumbling] [speaking Tumbuka softly] [dramatic music playing] [Esther in English] [Anita in Tumbuka] [cows mooing] [Jim] Yes, I know you all love the camera, but we do need to get moving at some point.

What a bunch of hams.

I'm Jordan.

So this is Jordan and this is Alex.

This is Esther.

Anita.

-I'm Jordan.

-I'm Esther.

-Where are you from?

-From Malawi.

Wow.

[Jim] Rebecca and I have been milking cows for 50 years.

Generally you couldn't ask for a much better life because who couldn't like living in a place like this?

[Jordan] The mower out there mows the hay and this thing turns and then it bails it up and kicks it up in the wagon.

So all you have to do is drive.

[Jordan] That's dry hay.

[Anita in Tumbuka] [Jim laughing] [Jim] It's just a different world.

[Esther] Aye, it's a different world.

Aye, it's a different world.

[Anita in Tumbuka] -[Jordan] $160,000, probably.

-[Esther] U.S. dollars?

Yeah, brand new, brand new 160.

[women laughing] She's saying for all that money that maybe five lifetimes she will buy a tractor.

[laughing] [Jim] Most farmers, in order to run as much land as they do, -they need that big equipment.

-[Esther] Yes.

and the only way to do it is to keep borrowing.

Most farmers are just kind of resigned to the fact that they're going to be in debt as long as they live.

[Esther in English] [speaking Tumbuka] [Anita in Tumbuka] [Esther speaking English] I wonder, are you guys in a drought cycle?

Do you think maybe five years rain will come again?

The last two years, I think we've seen record heat, record rainfall.

I think we'll see all them things again.

I think it's kind of a cycle.

I don't know.

[Esther in English] The history, I don't know.

I think the last couple years we haven't had as much snow, but I think we'll get a lot of snow again.

I don't know.

[Esther in English] I think people at least in, in the Midwest mistake weather for climate and, yes, the weather is cyclic.

We still get spring, winter, fall, but if you look at the poles and the ice caps melting and Greenland melting and, you know, it, it's, a sign of climate change we don't see because -it's not here.

-Yeah, because it's not here.

[Esther speaking English] Is there something we should be doing to help climate change that would help you guys?

-Is there something?

-[Esther speaking English] I'd say just do what you can, do a good job.

We'll leave it in the Lord's hands and he'll take us home and that'll be that, but, it's all going to end some day and we're not in control of it.

[Esther speaking English] Do you want to see the crops, the corn?

[Esther] Yes, yeah, we should.

[laughs] [Jim] I had not really talked about climate change a lot with Liz and Jordan, and I guess I just kind of assumed that, you know, they were on the same page as we were because they see the same weather we do.

[Jordan] This is kind of a bad year for this field.

[Anita speaking Tumbuka] She's saying it's, it looks very, very nice.

[Peter interpreting] Last June we didn't have rain.

April we didn't have rain, March we didn't have rain... up to today.

[Jordan] We probably have been getting three or four inches a week.

We'd be glad to share with you.

[Peter speaking Tumbuka] [all chuckling] [Jordan] Here, I don't know what we could change.

We could get wind or solar for our energy.

That would be great.

And as far as our equipment emissions, I don't know what we could do here, go back to farming with horses?

[laughter] 700 acres.

[Jordan] Talking to them, being with them, I want to do the best I can for the next generation, but I don't see it as an issue.

That's my problem.

[Esther in English] [soft music playing] Crop duster.

Those things are about the worst thing you can have near an organic farm.

Conventional agriculture is just spray, spray, spray and pray I guess, but...

I also do, you know, a lot of conventional ag too, but... [Anita in Tumbuka] I farm about 1,100 acres total.

-[Anita laughs] -[Peter] 1,100 acres.

[Anita in Tumbuka] Have you ever discussed with your fellow farmers about climate change?

[Tyler] Yeah, it's a very hot topic.

Everybody talks about climate change really.

[Tyler] It's just, how do we get the entire world on board to try to do something about it?

We can barely get our own local area on board let alone the United States or, or the entire world.

It would take a global catastrophe to do a, you know, complete 180 really.

[Anita in Tumbuka] [Denise] In Iowa, all of the men are proud because we are number one in soybeans, number one in corn, number one in hogs.

We're number one, but what we have to do is change this type of agribusiness.

Many women want farmers to farm like this and one of the best ways to check climate change is to have a lot of small organic farmers all over the world.

[Anita in Tumbuka] [Denise] We started an organization called Women, Food and Agriculture Network.

And one of the things that we've done is teaching women to farm.

So do you have a similar organization?

How do women organize?

[Anita in Tumbuka] So your husband was willing to change, there has to be the willingness too.

I am a woman in an occupation that's mostly men.

There's a word that is used commonly now, it's a man explaining things to a woman and they shorten the form, the two words, and they call it mansplaining.

[Esther] Mansplaining?

[chuckling] [Anita in Tumbuka] [engine] We were conventional farmers And we didn't want to do that no more.

We didn't want to use Roundup.

We didn't want any of the chemicals or any of that.

So we took out all of our row crop.

Now it's pasture.

We're using the regenerativ practices of rotating our cows, and building soil structure.

[Esther] Oh ho, here he is.

Hello, hello.

[Tricia] If you would have asked me ten years ago if we would have been certified organic, I would have said no, but Eli being born with a heart defect, When the nurse asked me what we had been exposed to six months prior to even pregnancy, that's really what has gotten us changed to a different way of farming.

It wasn't until we had that personal experience that we realized that we needed to change.

And I don't think everybody experiences that.

Ooh!

[chuckles] [Esther in English] The climate change, you know, for us it's not a topic of conversation.

We see it more as a political agenda.

But we know the way we farm is healthy for our family and it's healthy for our land.

Heavenly Father, we just thank you for our guests here tonight.

We ask, Lord, that you would bless their travels for them, provide safety and health.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

[all] Amen.

We've had an incredibly hard year this year, financially.

Our off-farm jobs support the farm versus the farm supports the farm.

So I'm a school nurse.

I work at a coal-fired power plant.

You know it's, it's pretty clean really but... [Raj] When, I know you mentioned earlier on that when you heard climate change you, you know, what you hear is men in suits with an agenda.

What, what is that agenda?

I feel that people make farmers like the, the bad guy.

They just look at big industrial farms and say they're the reason we're having problems, where in reality it could be because lifestyle things that we do are causing the problems.

I was just curious if it's always been that way or if you've noticed a change?

[Esther in English] [in Tumbuka] [Tricia] I cannot express to you how humbled it's made me feel to hear your struggles, because it has made me realize that my little daily struggles that we may have with our animals, our finances, are nothing compared to your daily struggles.

And I'm sorry for that.

I... [Anita sighs] [Esther speaking English] [Anita in Tumbuka] [Esther in Tumbuka] [Anita in Tumbuka] [Raj] You don't want to put them in the dryer?

Not long.

[Anita in Tumbuka] [Esther in English] [speaking Tumbuka fearfully] [laughter] [whistle blows] [Anita in Tumbuka] [Brahm Ahmadi] West Oakland is a community of about 25,000 people in about a 4-square-mile area.

The community is entirely surrounded by freeways which is a legacy of racist development that put in public infrastructure and cut off mostly Black communities from the rest of the town.

You see this across the country.

So economically it's just isolated and neighborhoods like West Oakland became targets for puttin polluting facilities, factories, manufacturing and also dumping because more affluent communities didn't want them.

So environmental pollution, air quality, it has the highest rate of child asthma in the Bay Area, cancer, birth defects, infertility.

[Anita in Tumbuka] [Malik Yakini] You might have heard some gunshots earlier.

I don't know if you heard those.

The police department has a gun range near here, and so they're practicing in case people want to rebel.

[chuckles] So we have kale, curly leaf kale here.

Although Detroit is a majority Black city, there's not one grocery store that's owned by Black people in Detroit.

And so we're trying to encourage Black people in particular to grow food so that we can become more self-sufficient and also as an economic driver.

[Anita in Tumbuka] So that's the other thing is that we're creating a model of democracy.

Our organization thinks capitalism and white supremacy is a terrible way of defining human relationships, and patriarchy as well.

So at the same time that we and many other people are working to dismantle these oppressive systems, we're creating these models of how we might relate to each other that is more equitable, than society begins to shift.

We use regenerative practices here that don't contribute much to global warming.

This is a rainwater retention pond, and we're able to capture tens of thousands of gallons of rainwater in here and then we run it back down through the fields using drip irrigation tape.

And this is our solar energy station.

Many farmers would like to not participate in the industrial style of farming but they feel trapped.

They don't know how to survive without the use of lots of petroleum and extremely large amounts of water.

We have to show how that can be done so farmers can even see that there is a possibility of doing it and still earning a living.

That's right.

Just like we're planting seeds in the ground, we're planting seeds in people's consciousness.

Thank you very much.

We have learned a lot.

I've learned a lot.

Thank you, Anita.

[Malik in Swahili] [laughter] [Sing in Tumbuka] [speaking Tumbuka] [Blain Snipstal] Preston actually used to be the county seat of the KKK on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.

And so people are often surprised when they see young Black people out here working 'cause that's just a sight unseen.

We've created different businesses sprouting up off the farm.

And all of us in the collective, you know, work the land and also have other jobs.

[Blain A village is a very complex idea in the minds of Black people.

It's the idea of something we've never had.

When colonialism happened, there was a disruption to African people, and we have not recovered from that disruption.

[Shakira Tyler] In order to change someone's world, we have to enter their world and bring them out to the land.

We all have to reconnect with the land in our own way.

It's all of our responsibility to figure out how to do that.

Do you like okra?

Uh-huh, it's hot.

If you don't like it, it's fine.

You don't have to eat it.

[laughing] [speaking Tumbuka] My mother and my grandmother and my grandmother's mother have always sort of been the keepers of knowledge and every place throughout the world women have always been the keepers of the seeds.

And since they were the keepers of the seeds, they were keepers of the cultural traditions.

This is rice.

It's called Upland rice.

It grows in dry areas.

And I brought it from my family who are in Trinidad.

Thank you.

[Esther in English] Let me know.

[laughs] Soon, soon!

It's been wonderful hosting you all.

Hey, give it, give it to me, give it to me.

That's what I like.

[singing in Tumbuka] [Anita in Tumbuka] [speaking Tumbuka] Because he's not there.

And she wanted to see him.

[Catherine Gordon] It's rare that members of Congress will meet with people who aren't their constituents.

But he is a huge supporter.

He's one of our biggest champions on climate change, so he's our ally.

[speaking Tumbuka] [slow piano music] [Anita in Tumbuka] [slow piano music] [girl speaking Tumbuka] -[girl in Tumbuka] -[Winston in Tumbuka] [girl in Tumbuka] [Winston in Tumbuka] [women singing in Tumbuka] [Jenifa in Tumbuka] [women singing in Tumbuka] [Anita in Tumbuka] [Anita in Tumbuka] I'm often reminded of the word of Grace Lee Boggs who says that "We have to live more simpl so that others can simply live."

[Ed] ...with us now, in Jesus' name we pray.

-Amen.

-Amen.

[Tricia] I don't have an answer about climate change.

It's a sad thing, but ultimately, it's part of God's plan.

And asking us to change would be to totally change life, what we eat, how we eat it, how we prepare it.

Yeah, it's, I don't know, it's... Hmm.

The chickens like us to talk.

They like noise so they know we're coming.

People are destroyed because of a lack of knowledge.

We have a lot of stuff polluting the atmosphere.

That should not be.

I'd like to apologize a little bit to the friends in Malawi.

I didn't always have a very good answer.

Sometimes I laughed when you all were serious.

I laugh, but maybe I should have cried.

[slow music playing] [in Tumbuka] [in Tumbuka] [soft music playing] [singing in Tumbuka] [singing in Tumbuka] ♪ ♪