The Rev. Richard Joyner ventured down to his small community farm in Conetoe, North Carolina, after the deadly Hurricane Helene ripped through six states before it dissipated late last month. Joyner, 71, is used to flooding brought on by extreme weather in the hurricane-prone state. But this time was different.
He has seen areas of the farm take on some floodwater. But this time, all six plots of about 4 acres of land he dedicated to farming produce for the community were completely flooded.
“We could only see the top of the vegetables. We were hoping the water would recess quickly. It didn’t happen. We finally had to come to the conclusion” that the crop was lost, Joyner said, noting that he and a group of children who helped plant in the garden went down to inspect the damage on Sept. 28 — two days after Hurricane Helene made landfall.
“We had collards, we had broccoli, we had turnip greens, we had kale, we had cabbage,” he continued. “Once the water set on it, it just flopped. We knew it wouldn’t recover.”
The youth-led community farm, called Conetoe Family Life Center, was a place where locals and children as young as 5 learned to farm and distribute produce to their neighbors. Now, they’re left to clear out damaged crops and wonder when they’ll be able to bring vegetables to their food-strapped neighbors.
“It’s been really tough,” Joyner said of the two weeks since the hurricane. Joyner launched the Conetoe Family Life Center in 2007 to provide Conetoe and its surrounding cities with nutritious food options.
Joyner has been vocal about Conetoe’s being a food desert, where the predominantly Black population has very limited access to vegetables and fruits. He said the community farm provides vegetables to 1,500 people in and around Conetoe, many of whom, he said, rely heavily on the crops.
“We depend on this land to produce the products that we serve our community and congregations,” he said. “So when this flood came … it has been tough because we lost a lot of products that were getting ready to go to the market.”
Hurricane Helene made landfall on the Florida coast on Sept. 26 and ravaged cities with high winds, extreme flooding and power outages; it destroyed several homes. At least 200 people died, and searches for hundreds more were underway days after landfall. Parts of North Carolina were hit the hardest, with state officials declaring at least 115 people dead in the state — a majority of them in Buncombe County, where Asheville is located, according to The Citizen-Times of Asheville.
President Joe Biden toured the devastation in Florida last week and deployed at least 7,000 federal personnel to help clear debris in remote areas, according to a White House statement. He announced he would send 1,000 active-duty troops to help with search and recovery efforts in North Carolina. Joyner and the rest of the Conetoe Family Life Center are among hundreds of people working to recover from and repair after the storm.
Joyner said that he and his team are assessing the soil and that, if it doesn’t need much repair, they hope to begin farming again in the coming months. But when Joyner isn’t tending to the garden or preaching at Conetoe Chapel Missionary Baptist Church, he’s sounding the alarm about climate change. Joyner has long said the destruction left by storms like Helene is preventable.
He is part of the Act of Man Coalition, a nonprofit collective of leaders, organizations and local residents who are raising awareness about the effects of fossil fuel pollution on weather outcomes. A 2021 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that the rise in greenhouse gases has led to more severe extreme weather. Now, Joyner is among several advocates hoping to change the public’s perception of disasters like hurricanes.
“By shifting the notion that the extreme weather events we’re seeing on our TV screens and in our day-to-day lives — which are growing in severity and in devastation — aren’t natural but rather unnatural disasters, we can better understand the human cause of these disasters and help spur people towards action,” Katharine Hayhoe, chief scientist for the Nature Conservancy and a founding member of Science Moms, said in a news release.
Joyner agrees. He acknowledges that connecting faith with climate action isn’t common among Christians in the country. He said he owes his outlook to his upbringing on a farm about 20 miles from Conetoe.
“We were sharecroppers,” he said of himself, his 12 siblings and his parents, Benny and Nellie Joyner. “My father was the best farmer in the world. He was very environmentally safe. He would compost animal waste and food waste and leaves we raked in the yard.
“My father was a real climate person. He believed that if we take care of the universe, the universe would take care of us. He would treat his land like a human being. That really informed my faith.”
