Rashid Nuri is one of the most notable names in agriculture and community-building. A visionary of urban farming, his career spanned decades and continents, across which he advocated for global food security, sustainability, nutrition, and racial inclusion. He founded Truly Living Well in 2006 with intentions of connecting people through food. He did just that, and grew the operation for 12 years before handing the reins to Carol Hunter, the organization’s new executive director.
Since retiring, he published his autobiography, “Growing Out Loud: Journey of a Food Revolutionary,” which he promotes when he’s not at home or with his family. We talked with him about the inspiration for his life’s work, both on the farm and in print.
Cash: What interested you initially about agriculture? Was it about farming or food or politics or all of the above?
Nuri: Yes, all of the above. I'm a child of the 60s, we're talking nation building, and in order to build a nation you got to feed, clothe, and shelter your people. I was trying to decide which skill that I wanted to have because undergraduate school really most of the time doesn't teach you a skill. Can't do anything. And God told me to learn everything about food from seed to the table, to do it experientially, and that's what I set out to do. My vision of that as a young man foretold what I ended up doing.
Cash: What was eating like for you as a kid? What kind of food did you grow up eating?
Nuri: Junk food like everybody else. Closest I came-I ran for student body president in 1965, and one of my-I had 10 things I wanted to accomplish, one of them was to augment the soda and candy machine with fresh food and fresh juice.
Cash: You were ahead of your time.
Nuri: Yeah, as it turns out.
Cash: At what point in school did you determine that you would start studying agriculture and practicing?
Nuri: Well, I went to college twice, depending on how you add it up. I went two years at Harvard and got kicked out, and then I came back several years later to finish. And it was in that second go around that I had what I call my burning bush experience. It's all in [my book].
Cash: Cool. That's exciting. What was the process of writing that like?
Nuri: It was much more strenuous than I ever imagined. A lot of work. After I stepped down, took about three weeks I didn't do anything, just rested, and then I got into the book and I put in many hours every day in the process. The book was begun many years ago, but I had the time and the space to really focus on it.
Cash: How did you know or how did you decided to step away from Truly Living Well?
Nuri: Oh, it was time. I'm a pioneer, revolutionary in this work, and my work ethic has always been ready, fire, aim, and you can't build institutions that are going to stand the test of time doing that. It has to be ready, aim, fire. And those are administrators and managers and I'm not that, I'm a builder. I like to take an idea and make it real, and that has been what I've done through the course of my life.
You know the name Daniel Boone? Daniel Boone founded the Cumberland Gap to go through the mountains to get people from the east coast into the Ohio River Valley. But he was never a governor or a congressman, mayor, all he did was get those people over the mountains, and that's his contribution to history. He was a pioneer, he paved the way, he showed people how to get there. And that's what this work represents. I could say, "Here we stand in the shadow of the downtown skyscrapers,” and be able to see from the freeway that you can grow food in the city. Then we got this site which has greater potential.
Cash: And what was important to you about bringing some of the soil from your first site and the trees?
Nuri: Because all wealth, all health, all life begins and ends in the soil. And I spent five and a half years building that soil. What I taught was compost, compost, compost, but I wasn't about to leave it. Picked it up and carried it here.
Cash: What has the experience of building this farm been like?
Nuri: I remember one day sitting under that tree over there, sitting on that bench, in that vicinity, and said whoever came up with the idea of moving all that dirt and all those trees was stark raving mad. One tree at a time. You dig a hole here, go over and get a tree, then bring it back over here, plant it, then dig another hole and go back. All these fruit trees that you see. Now these five or six trees that are standing right here, they were getting old. But all the rest we brought, all these beds were filled with dirt that we brought from the other site. It was quite a challenge.
Cash: What it's been like to start on another plot of land after having built something so rich in one place?
Nuri: We built on concrete downtown for the most part. We had some in-ground beds, but it was beautiful, an oasis in the middle of the city. And the residues that were left, man, that's some of the most beautiful weeds I've ever seen are down there now, because the soil was so rich that we built up over there. What was it like? Man, it was a challenge. This is the culmination of a certain aspect of my life. They gave me a wonderful party last year. Did you know about that?
Cash: I read the flyer and felt sad that I didn't know about it then.
Nuri: Right there at that podium, folk had a lot of nice things to say. It was like I was at my on memorial service.
Cash: That's nice to be able to attend.
Nuri: Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's the beauty of it. It was my 70th birthday and the ending of my leadership here. I just had to let it go and step back. I had to give Carol her space to run it and I also had to separate myself. It don't look too bad, huh?
Cash: It is beautiful. Do you garden at all at home or farm anywhere else?
Nuri: No, I live in the woods.
Cash: That's nice.
Nuri: I will eventually. But I'm tired. This is 13 years, 14 years to build Truly Living Well, three phases. This is TLW 3.0, so Carol gets to do 4.0. And she was the most qualified candidate, and it just so happened that we had worked together for seven years. She'll get it. It's a challenge. There's a lot of work that needs to be done and it's stressful, strenuous. She knows how to stop, I don't. I was telling people I was available 24/7, and now I tell people to make it 20/7.
Cash: That's still generous. What made that level of commitment and work feel worthwhile to you?
Nuri: Part of being crazy, I guess. I've done that all my life. That's one of the reasons I'm tired. From all my life since I was very young, very intent. When I went back to school—in the book I call it "Harvard Two”—a normal course load was four classes, and I took six. And I had three children before I graduated.
Cash: Wow.
Nuri: I remember one young man said to me when I was finishing grad school, he said, "You've been serious a long time." And I said, "Yeah, you're right. I have been." And it's been a nice ride. It's really been a great ride.
Cash: What drew you to Atlanta?
Nuri: I came to Atlanta to do this work, and Atlanta's been very, very good to me. I have a quick quote to tell you how I feel about it. "My life has not been a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly claiming, ‘Wow, what a ride.’"
Cash: That's a great conclusion.
Nuri: Yeah. And that's an adaptation of a statement that Hunter Thompson made. That's how I end the book.
Cash: But you're not done now, so what's your day-to-day life like?
Nuri: Oh, I don't have to get up and chase people, see what they're doing, I'm not diving for dollars. I can sleep later if I want to, particularly now. The book's out and now I'm selling it, promoting it. I do know at least one book that's next, and a lot of that work had already been done it's just got to put it together. And I'll start on that eventually. But I'm resting up.
And at that level of commitment where I had to get it done I had help, I have a researcher and editor to work with me, but then even after we were done, send it off and had it edited again and still missed some stuff. I found at least three just now reading the book, because in writing it you don't get to step back and read it.
Cash: No. No, you see what you meant to say and not what you said, and it's easy to miss things.
Nuri: Yeah. Now, I'm enjoying the read. And it certainly is an appropriate ending to that era. I think everybody has at least one book in them. This is my first and we'll see what happens next.
Cash: All along and even now, what keeps you inspired and motivated?
Nuri: God is greater than everything, and I try to keep that—God first, family second, work third. I was lamenting one time that I hadn't given my children religious strength, but my son says to me, "Isn't the purpose of religion good character?" He was right, all of them teach that. He reminded me that all my children have good character. A couple weeks ago someone said to me the true measure of your success is if your children are doing better than you. And they are.
Cash: That's a blessing.
Nuri: Yeah, oh yeah. That's exactly what it is. And my sister, Reverend Dr. Kekonsa, she says you ask people how they're doing and they say, "Well, I'm blessed." She said, "Yeah, that's cool, but are you a blessing?" That's what's more important. You read my book, you'll see that the theme which runs through it is service, and George Washington Carver said, "It's simply service that measures success." And I believe it.
Cash: And both of your parents had lives of service, so do you think they influenced that attitude also?
Nuri: Well, I was raised as a child in youth by a stepfather. My father definitely. He spent his entire career as an educator serving underserved communities, whether it was physically handicapped, mentally handicapped, or just living in poverty. That one school PS-9 in Brooklyn, the neighborhood looked like it was bombed out, like it was a war zone. That's where he had his school. After he retired from the New York City schools, he went down to New Jersey and started a school for young people that got kicked out of school. My mother worked for the Urban League doing community organizing, and then she ran a bookstore, Pyramid Books out in San Diego.
My work ethic and commitment came early. During that period when I was out of school I worked in the poverty programs, war on poverty, model cities, doing community organizing work.
Cash: And what learnings from the work you were doing in Africa and Southeast Asia, did some of that transfer to what you were putting here? What did you learn there?
Nuri: Absolutely. Everything that I've done prior to now is here. And I saw local food economies, how people feed themselves. We used to live within walking distance of where our food was produced, that doesn't exist anymore. The fact that America is now 82 percent urban, we need to produce the food in the urban areas. And Atlanta is lucky. Look at all these trees, we're the greenest city in America by virtue of trees in open space, so there's no reason we can't produce food. The local food economy is no longer a movement. The paradigm has shifted, and so the rest of the world is catching up to what it is that has been created and is being extrapolated throughout the country, around the world.
Small farms are going to be the salvation of the world.
Cash: If there was one thing that you wish that people would do differently just as a lifestyle or attitude change, what would it be?
Nuri: Yeah, think, use their minds, sort through this bamboozling that's occurred. Corporations are overtaking the nations.
Cash: What has it been like to see community develop around the farm?
Nuri: Oh, it's been great. The role that I played in this town, it's amazing how much work you get done if you're not concerned with who gets the credit. One of the things I used to say early on is my work is like throwing a pebble in a pond—that initial impact but then you don't know what's going to happen on the outskirts. And none of this stuff was here, the local food economy really. I've been a catalyst in that, just pushing, pushing, pushing. There were a lot of people on the periphery of the pond that don't know me, there's a lot of people in between the initial impact and the perimeter who have some idea of the role that I play. It just amazes me what people think about the work that I have done. And it's nice. The memorial service was wonderful, the accolades I'm getting from my book are like roses that are thrown onto the casket, but it's nice to be able to be here to get it. I'm cool with that.
I'm grateful and thankful for the accolades, but then they'll then turn around and go with somebody else to do the work or to pay for the work that's being done. And my work has been an inspiration. So again, it's amazing how much you can get done if you're not concerned who gets the credit. And I'm just happy to see the work, because I ride around town and see all the people that are in this business and doing what it is we're doing. It's good.
Written & photographed by Jodi Cash