Iriel Edwards
My name is Iriel Edwards and I am the farm manager for an organization called Jubilee Justice. We are a non-profit that works with Black farmers across the Southeast who want to grow organic, dry-land rice and participate in a rice processing cooperative. I manage an experimental farm where we test varieties, growing techniques, and equipment in the practice of SRI, or System of Rice Intensification. I also travel to visit farmers in our cohort and set up trials to test SRI on their own farms. I grew in West Monroe, Louisiana and left in 2016 to study Environmental Sciences, Entomology, and Food Systems at Cornell University. Now I live in Alexandria, Louisiana where I work on the Jubilee Justice farm and steward my home and vegetable, mushroom, and fruit farm with my partner and friends.