Ariana Dolcine moved to Texas with two dreams: to establish a thriving farm with her partner, Kennady Lilly, and open a farm-to-table Caribbean restaurant celebrating her Haitian roots. In her vision, she would cook dishes with malanga, a starchy root vegetable, calabaza, a pumpkin-shaped squash, and other “cultural crops” that she and Lilly cultivated themselves.
In February, she opened Griot Gardens, her restaurant in Houston, going into business with her mother, a seasoned restaurateur. But growing food in Hempstead, a remote agricultural town outside the city, has proven tougher than she and Lilly anticipated, with numerous losses in the past year.
LGBTQ+ people in farming are over three times more likely to experience depression and suicidal intent and about two and a half times more likely to experience anxiety than the general population.
First came Hurricane Beryl, knocking down trees and two 50-foot sunflower beds that Lilly planted solely for the joy they added to her kitchen window view. Shortly after, the winds from a tornado-strength derecho damaged their well, and then the generator broke down, leaving them without water for six months. A rare snowstorm wiped out their winter greens just a few months ago. To add to their woes, a beloved cow and its calf died during labor.
Speaking about her mental health, Dolcine named isolation, burnout from the daily grind of farming, and the “heartbreak” of their repeated losses among her challenges. “I’ve felt really hopeless at a few points this year in a way that I haven’t felt before,” Lilly said, as she expressed feeling “lonely” and “depressed” while struggling financially. Living in a remote town, and in a world rife with homophobia, she and Dolcine never know if revealing their queer identity will jeopardize their safety, adding another layer of stress to their lives.
They’re not alone in this experience.
A study released last year by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign revealed that LGBTQ+ people in farming are “over three times more likely to experience depression and suicidal intent and about two and a half times more likely to experience anxiety than the general population.” According to the researchers, not conforming to the gender and sexuality norms of farming culture while navigating potentially hostile social environments increases stress and may lead to poor mental health outcomes.
For Dolcine and Lilly, community building and cultivating a sense of belonging are crucial for maintaining their mental well-being. In October, the couple hosted the “South Side Queer Farmer Convergence,” the Queer Farmer Network’s first gathering of queer and transgender Black, Indigenous, and people of color in Texas.
For three days, 50 farmers camped out at Lillyland Farm in Hempstead, invited to shift their focus from caring for the land to tending their own mental and emotional health. Dolcine and Lilly found the gathering “healing,” both for them and those who attended.
A lot has happened in the months since then that threatens to diminish the mental health benefits they experienced.
With President Trump back in office, multiple reports have called attention to the mental health risks for LGBTQ+ Americans amid his efforts to revoke their rights, signing executive orders that recognize only two sexes, end discrimination protections for LGBTQ+ people, restrict access to gender-affirming care, and attempt to erase queer and trans people from public life and history.
On social media, Trump’s newly appointed Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins, praised the termination of grants meant to support queer and trans as well as BIPOC farmers and consumers, implying this funding represented “waste, fraud, and abuse.”
None of this is stopping Dolcine from organizing another queer farmer gathering this year.
“People are struggling in this line of work,” she said, highlighting the additional difficulties that queer Black, Indigenous, and people of color face in accessing farmland and resources. “I want them to be connected and know they’re not alone in this journey.”
Building Community in the Trump Era
In 2018, in the midst of Donald Trump’s first term, a group of friends in Iowa got together and created the Queer Farmer Network (QFC), a national nonprofit devoted to building community and reducing isolation for rural and queer farmers. That same year, they organized the first Queer Farmer Convergence, a now annual gathering informally known as “the QFC.”
It was created “to provide a space of respite for farming and rural queers who may experience isolation . . . and who may be particularly vulnerable to the mental health struggles well known to both farmers and LGBTQ+ community members,” its website states
The 2024 South Side Queer Farmer Convergence focused on rest and restoration for LGBTQ+ farmers and land stewards. (Photo courtesy of Lillyland Farm).
First held at Humble Hands Harvest, a worker-owned cooperative farm in the northeast corner of Iowa, the QFC has branched out over the years to include gatherings in Virginia, Michigan, and New Hampshire. The QFC took place at locations in Texas and Wisconsin for the first time last fall, both of which focused on bringing together queer farmers identifying as Black, Indigenous, or people of color—a change Dolcine suggested when she attended her first QFC two years ago.
Originally from Miami, Dolcine was living in Iowa temporarily, working as an independent insurance adjuster. That’s where she met Lilly, a Des Moines native who co-founded the now-closed urban farm Radiate DSM. “On a whim,” Dolcine joined her at Humble Hands for the QFC and found a glaring lack of racial diversity. Organizers told her the network had reserved one-third of tickets for BIPOC farmers, waiving their registration fees and providing travel stipends to attend the QFC, but had limited success.
Due to a high number of last-minute cancellations and no-shows, the network likely never reached one-third BIPOC participation, according to a board member of the Queer Farmer Network who asked to remain anonymous. To Dolcine, moving the gathering to a region with greater diversity and organizing a BIPOC-centered event where people of color would feel safe attending seemed like viable solutions.
“The BIPOC gatherings had been a long-term plan of the Queer Farmer Network,” the board member told Civil Eats via email. Securing a first-time grant from the University of Illinois for farmer mental health and well-being allowed the network to finance the gatherings and assemble a team to organize them. Dolcine joined that team and agreed to organize a QFC herself, naming it to reflect its location in the South and her own Southern origins.
