By Jean Willoughby — Last month, Dallas Robinson received an email from someone she didn’t know, asking if she would be open to receiving a large sum of money — with no strings attached. For once, it wasn’t spam. She hit reply. Robinson is a beginning farmer with experience in organic agriculture, and has had plans to establish the Harriet Tubman Freedom Farm on 10 acres of family land near her home in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. Located in an area where the poverty rate hovers at nearly 20 percent, according to census data, and where both food insecurity and obesity rates are even higher, the farm will focus on serving the needs of the surrounding community by producing vegetables, herbs, and mushrooms.
