The Hidden Climate Threat Making Black Communities’ Food Less Nutritious

If you’re lucky, your family is still using great‑grandma’s red beans and rice, black‑eyed peas, and potato salad recipes. And if you’re extremely fortunate, those meals might still taste like home, even without her hands. But climate pollution has quietly made sure that the food on your plates is not the same food she was eating.

Rising carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is stripping nutrients like iron, zinc, and protein from staple crops such as rice, wheat, beans, and potatoes — the building blocks of Black American diets. New findings reveal that today, many of the crops people rely on contain fewer vitamins and minerals than they did just a generation ago.

As that nutrition declines, so does the protection these foods offer. Diets that once sustained families now carry higher risks — from pregnancy complications to developmental challenges in children. In simple terms: Even when the plate looks the same, and even when you’re eating enough, your body is getting less of what it needs to thrive.

“A lot of times people don’t really think too hard about where your food comes from,” said Ashley Webb, an urban farmer in New Orleans. She has been growing food in the city’s Ninth Ward since 2019 and offers free gardening classes to help residents understand their food systems. 

“This is another reason why we need to be thinking more about our food,” Webb said.

For Black folks, the weakening of crops may deepen long-standing health gaps created by racism in housing, food access, and farm policy. Experts fear it will lead to an epidemic of “hidden hunger,” where rates of undernutrition and obesity grow from the lack of micronutrients in food.

Webb is not all gloom and doom about this reality, however, and argues that growing your own food could negate some of the harmful effects of air pollution. 

“If you grow it yourself or if you get it locally, it’s going to be more nutrient dense because they pick it closer to ripeness and you know what’s in the soil, you know the environment that it’s growing in, versus conventionally, you might not know what’s in the soil and what environment it’s growing in,” she said. 

The study found that as carbon dioxide levels rise, plants accelerate photosynthesis and pack on more carbohydrates, but this faster growth dilutes the concentration of essential nutrients. Over a generation, these important nutrients have decreased by 4.4% on average, but some decreased by as much as 38%. At the same time, the number of calories is increasing, which can contribute to obesity. 

Black Americans already face a disproportionate burden of certain nutrient deficiencies.

Black women of childbearing age are significantly more likely to be iron deficient than their white counterparts, and Black adults overall experience roughly three times the prevalence of anemia, a condition often driven by low iron stores as well as chronic disease. Black preschoolers also have documented substantially higher odds of zinc deficiency compared with non-Black peers.

Scientific researchers also found that concentrations of harmful substances such as lead may also be increasing in crops. 

This may be of particular significance for Black rural and urban farmers whose land is more likely to sit near landfills and chemical plants. Even when their own practices are sustainable or small‑scale, they are breathing, drinking, and planting into an environment that can erode the nutritional quality of what they grow.

Some urban farmers believe that growing food — even on polluted land — can help people reconnect with the earth and treat it better. 

“I used to litter, have plastic and chemicals seeping into the earth because there was a disconnection,” explained Yancy Comins, whose urban farm in Altadena, California, has helped residents reconnect with the land after the community was devastated by the Eaton Fire last year.

When communities understand how much they depend on the soil, they may be more likely to protect it by working toward lowering air and soil pollution.

“If we start taking care of our natural environment and stop taking it for granted by removing ourselves from playing a part in keeping it alive, we can see the connection,” he said. “We’ve gotten away from the land, but we will treat it better if more people see the benefits it offers by growing vegetables and fruits.”

Environmental scientist Sterre ter Haar hopes her study can serve as a wake-up call for farmers and consumers. 

“With food security, we often think of whether people can fill their stomachs. Our research emphasises that food security also means nutrient security,” she said. “We need to pay more attention to that.”

Researchers compared data from multiple studies in which crops were grown under different carbon dioxide levels. While the studies used varying CO2 concentrations, making direct comparisons difficult, the team found a consistent pattern: As CO2 levels rise, the impact on nutrients increases in a straight line. That insight allowed the researchers to standardize the data and compare results across 43 crops.

Just as scientists are making these warnings, federal farm policy is moving in the opposite direction. 

In April, the U.S. House passed a five-year Farm Bill that slashed roughly $1 billion from the Environmental Quality Incentives Program — a key conservation fund that helps farmers adopt climate-resilient practices — and inserted a last-minute loophole allowing more air pollution from farm equipment. 

“This will lead to more dangerous pollution and health harms,” said Joanna Slaney, vice president for political and government affairs at the Environmental Defense Fund. 

For some Black farmers and food justice advocates, the answer to declining nutrition lies not in industrial agriculture but in reclaiming ancestral knowledge that has sustained communities for generations. 

Leah Penniman, co-founder of Soul Fire Farm in upstate New York, points out that many sustainable practices now celebrated in organic farming — from composting to crop rotation to raised beds — were pioneered by Black and Indigenous farmers long before they were codified by white-led institutions. 

At Soul Fire, which trains over 1,000 Black and brown farmers annually, participants learn not only how to grow food but how to build alternative food systems that can serve neighborhoods cut off from grocery stores and fresh produce. The farm operates a sliding-scale community-supported agriculture program that delivers fresh, culturally relevant vegetables to families living under what Penniman calls “food apartheid.” Community-led efforts can create pathways to better nutrition, she said last year.

“It’s definitely a survival strategy … when you make your own farm, your own co-op, your own grocery store, your own school, and you’re trying to represent the values in the world you want to see,” Penniman said. “We can’t trust or rely upon the government or corporations to even do what they’re legally obligated to do.”

Read More: 

• Black-Owned Farms Fill Gaps Left by SNAP Funding Delays
• The Little-Known Committee That Has Cost Black Farmers for Generations
• In a N.C. Town With Almost No Grocers, One Farmer Is Expanding Local Food Access

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