Rizpah Bellard, cattle rancher, Fresno, CA (USA)
Rizpah Bellard was raised on a cattle ranch in Guinda, California and decided to pursue an education and career in agriculture. Nothing really out of the ordinary at first sight, except that she is the only Black female cattle rancher in California and the Central Valley, an indicator of just how conservative agriculture is, still. In this ‘Encounter’, Rizpah tells us about being a Black female rancher, her social involvement with the community and her work on and off the ranch.
Raised on the family cattle ranch, Rizpah had an extensive knowledge of the agriculture sector before deciding to pursue a career in agriculture. During her graduate program
at the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies, she went on a Winter externship in Cali, Colombia in December 2018, working with the nonprofit PASO Colombia that used agriculture to reintegrate ex-combatants of the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) back into society. “Instead of growing coca for cocaine, these farmers were now growing tomatoes, potatoes, and bananas to sell at local farmers markets and to be put into CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) boxes for community members”, she explains. Right then, Rizpah knew what she wanted to do once she came back home.
Nova Farming
“Upon my return to the States, I called my Dad and told him how I wanted to use agriculture as a way to provide rehabilitative and healing services for marginalized populations back home in California through the use of agriculture. Unbeknownst to me, he already had this plan in action for me, he was just waiting for me to come to that realization on my own.” The next year, Rizpah founded Nova Farming. Two years later, in 2021, she moved to Fresno to start working as the President and Lead Agriculturalist of Nova Farming. “My first ‘customer’ was a fifty-bed in-patient mental health facility where I taught agriculture and animal husbandry, built their chicken coop and started an egg donation program, and led their agriculture community volunteer opportunities at the Central California Food Bank and local food distribution sites.”
At the same time, Rizpah started pulling heifers and cows from her father’s herd in Northern California to begin her own herd and expand the family operation in Walker Basin, Central California. “Now, in 2024, I am contracted to teach agriculture education with a local school district and I supply all-natural quality beef products to Beardsley Unified School District. I am always looking for opportunities to expand to other school districts, hospitals, prisons, or even as far up as the federal level.”
Discrimination
Unfortunately, growing up on a ranch and being able to expand the family business is still an exception for a Black person in America. Rizpah is very aware of her heritage and what it took for her family to be able to become ranchers. “Being Black in America, unfortunately, my roots go back to slavery and forced labour in the agriculture sector, building this country. But fortunately, they also extend beyond that to working the land in Western Africa, as a free people, prior to colonization and slavery”, Rizpah explains.
“My maternal and paternal grandparents come from the South (Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas) where they worked in cotton fields and with livestock.” In the forties and fifties, Rizpah’s grandparents migrated to California, her maternal grandparents settling down in Oakland and her paternal grandparents in Richmond, both major cities where Black people did not work in agriculture. “They were discriminated against by the U.S. government – look to Pigford v Glickman lawsuit* – and unable to secure loans or capital to create and grow agriculture operations, in either crops or livestock.”
Growing up in this context, Rizpah’s father spent his youth in a racially segregated neighbourhood, near horse stables and a cattle rancher and conservationist across the train tracks, who ended up becoming his childhood mentor. His brother-in-law raised cattle on 6,000 acres on Morgan’s Territory Regional Preserve, part of the East Bay Regional Park District, in nearby Livermore, CA, where Rizpah’s dad gained more experience in working with cattle and riding horses as a young adult. When he decided to pursue a degree in Agricultural Sciences at CSU Fresno, he was the only Black student in the Agriculture Department. “My father experienced a lot of racism and discrimination”, Rizpah says. “He was given intentional D’s and F’s and his teachers attempted to dissuade him from a career in agriculture, trying to push him to become a policeman or a teacher.”
“Despite the discrimination that my father faced, he pressed on, received his Bachelor’s of Science in Agricultural Sciences from CSU Fresno, and took some courses at the College of Veterinary Medicine in East Lansing, Michigan. Simultaneously, he was hired by California Secretary of State Bill Jones to artificially inseminate his dairy cows and tend to his herd of Limousin cattle in Tranquility, CA.”
By the mid-nineties, Rizpah’s parents had established their Black Angus cattle ranch in Guinda, a rural town of about five hundred people, where they raised cows, sheep, goats, chickens, cats, dogs, horses and pigs. “We regularly camped, fished, hiked, hunted, RV’d and went out on our boat. My childhood was very much aligned with nature and I was raised to give back to others in my community and society at large. I studied Biology & Society at Cornell University under their College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (class of 2015, red.) and have now made my way back to what I know and love – the land and ag.”
Transhumance
Rizpah’s primary herd is composed of Black Angus, Hereford and Shorthorn mom cows and a Wagyu bull. The herd roams a leased nine hundred acre (+/- 364 hectares, red.) conserved ranch in the foothills of the Sierra Mountains. On top of that, she also runs cattle in Northern and Central California on different ranches across the State, operating in very rural towns and areas. “Overall, the temperature is hot and the climate is dry, with rain about four months a year.”
As a rancher, Rizpah participates in the ancient practice of transhumance, moving her cattle into the mountains in late autumn until late spring and taking them back to the flatlands for the summer. “They forage on their own and fight off predators, like coyotes, mountain lions or bears, when they calve. During the dry months in the mountains, we supplement their feed with molasses tubs. We bring them out of the mountains late Spring, wean the calves and move them to the flatlands to finish raising them on my specially formulated all-natural feed. For any mom cows that didn’t get bred in the mountains, they’ll be bred in a more confined space on the flatlands. We restart the process in the late Fall”, Rizpah says.
From her main base of operation of Bufford Ranch, a conserved cattle ranch under the California Rangeland Trust**, Rizpah works as a custom supplier of quality all-natural ground beef. “I offer ground beef, beef hotdogs, beef stew meat, and carne asada, just to name a few of my beef products, to institutions such as hospitals, school districts or prisons. At this time, I do not sell direct-to-consumer or provide specialty cuts. All of my cattle are hormone free, antibiotic free, and most importantly, stress free!” The cattle are slaughtered and processed between 18-30 months of age and only after a purchase order comes in. “I do not include internal organs in my beef. All primal cuts from the carcass are included in my beef. Every bite of my beef consists of all the best cuts of beef.”
A typical day in Rizpah’s life
Agriculture is just one part of Rizpah’s professional life. “As an entrepreneur, I have a few businesses.” Next to her work as a cattle rancher, she also provides shared affordable housing for adults experiencing homelessness with severe mental health disabilities. As such, she operates two homes: an all female, four bedroom home with a pool and a co-ed fourteen bedroom home with livestock in the backyard.
“My mornings start with a 7AM wake up, then I drive to my second independent living home to feed my smaller livestock around 8AM. While tending to my livestock, I let my animals graze for a bit, clean pens, and refill water. I then walk inside my home and touch base with all of my tenants before their day starts. I make sure the kitchen, bathrooms, and living rooms are clean.”
“Around 10AM I’ll put my livestock back in their pens, feed them and leave the property. I’ll be showing a room to a prospective tenant at my first home later on so I head to a coffee shop to have virtual or phone meetings and touch base with institutions requesting to purchase my ground beef. I also review my calendar for my agriculture education dates with Fresno Unified School District – I teach interactive agriculture classes K-12 in my local school district as a vendor with the Expanded Learning Department. My first class is lined up for September 6, and I’ll be teaching on goat production and grazing land management. I eat lunch around noon and get a call about an incident between male tenants at my second house. I call their case workers to help them resolve the issue; if they don’t pick up, I have to drop what I’m doing to resolve the issue in person – this depends on the severity of the issue and what I have going on for the day.”
The afternoons are split between managing things at her homes and work involving the ranch. “I head to my first home for a 3PM prospective tenant walk through. I’m showing a private room for a female; the prospective tenant is coming from a homeless shelter, has no recent rental history and is on medication for Schizoaffective/Bipolar disorder. She also has weekly appointments with her therapist, psychiatrist, and social worker – sounds like a good fit. I tell her she can move in today or tomorrow, take your pick. She chooses today, I prorate the rent and invoice the organization; she returns to the shelter to collect her belongings and moves in around 6PM.”
“At 4PM, I touch base with my slaughterhouse to go over my live cow drop off for the following day and then touch base with my processor so they know to expect a few of my carcasses in about four days. I return to my second property to check in with the tenants that had an incident. I go over house rules and their signed lease agreement. Their case workers let me know whether they put them on a behaviour plan or decide to move them out of my home.”
When Rizpah returns home in the evening, she starts her shift of volunteer work, teaching neighbourhood children about agriculture. “I return to my own home around 6/6:30PM. My students/neighbours rush my truck and ask if I’m going to have Summer School on the Porch. I tell them class will start at 7PM, they sit and wait on my porch until 7PM. I have eight students show up and we have class until 9:30PM. I beg my students to go home, they don’t want to. They continue to eat snacks, talk, laugh, and play hide and go seek in the dark. I sit outside with them until their parents and grandparents call them home. The last time I ate was at 12PM but now it’s too late to eat so I just drink some water, take a shower, and go to bed at 10:45PM.”
Being the only female Black rancher in California
Rizpah did not experience too many negative reactions during her work as a rancher up until now, after recently being publicly recognized as the only female Black rancher in the State of California in several articles and interviews. The prejudice she faces has nothing to do with her being a woman and everything to do with her being a person of colour. “Up until a year ago, I didn’t receive any backlash as a Black woman in ag but as of late, I have. I’ve been in a few news articles and the racist internet trolls have attacked. And they’re not attacking me because I’m a woman, they’re attacking me because I’m Black, and I let it be known that I am a young Black female cattle rancher. I have to ignore it, I can’t argue with ignorance and it’s not my job to educate. But, as of now, everything negative has been online.”
Her being the only Black female cattle rancher in the State is the result of a history of racism and discrimination, resulting in the Black population not being able to fall back on the generational wealth and land ownership that are so important to make a start in agriculture. “For the most part, Black people in California came to the Western states to escape the rural South and moved to large urban cities (Oakland, Los Angeles, Denver). There, they picked up jobs in factories, classrooms and offices while other minority groups were cheaper labour in the fields, so now in 2024, you have very few Black people owning land or working land. And when you add the intentional discrimination by the US Department of Agriculture against Black farmers and ranchers…that just makes it even worse.”
“To work with cattle, you have to have had prior experience, you have to have “cowsense”. Not many women can move from the city mid-career with no experience in agriculture, start working cattle on a large amount of acreage, and supply beef to a secure market with a profit in sales. Cattle and agriculture usually take a (married) couple and most likely, someone from that couple is a second, third or fourth generation rancher that has access to land, cattle, and a market.”
Very aware of this background, Rizpah realizes she has been lucky to have grown up on the ranch her father fought for and is determined to pay it forward. “I was lucky enough to be raised on a cattle ranch so I have developed “cowsense” and I’m not scared of cows. I have the knowledge, wisdom, trucks, trailers, brands, feed…basically everything you need to maintain a successful herd and cattle business. I can look at a 1,000 acre (+/- 404 hectares, red.) property and map out a years’ worth of grazing for my herd. I know what my supply chain needs are for feed and cow/calf operations. And I’m building a secure market base for sales.”
“We have to teach younger generations of all races about the importance of agriculture and more importantly how to do agriculture. They have to work on the land at a young age so they’re familiar with it when they’re older.”
Only a few years in, Rizpah has built her business and now hopes to make a name for herself in the beef industry. “In the beginning of me building my herd in 2021, the hardest part was securing markets. But this year, 2024, I’m leveling up, getting recognized and publicized for my work as a Black female rancher. People want to spend their dollars on small BIPOC farmers and ranchers, so this is my year to really build on the foundations I’ve laid.”
Guiding light
When we ask Rizpah what makes it all worth it to her, she does not hesitate to honour her father. “Being in business with my father is really what makes it worth it. I’m very happy to work for myself, call the shots, and have my father as my guiding light. He wasn’t afforded the opportunities I have, so being able to use his wisdom, knowledge and experience to succeed in this industry is a very big deal to me. It’s a blessing really.”
To the women and girls who dream about starting a career in agriculture, she says:
“start now! Show animals at the fair, raise and sell livestock, apprentice under a local farmer or rancher, take classes at a local college…you have to start now if you think you’re interested in this field. Ag is all about experience in the field, and the more experience you have, the better off you’ll be.”
*
Pigford v. Glickman (1999) was a class action lawsuit against the United States Department of Agriculture, asserting that it had racially discriminated against African-American farmers in its allocation of farm loans and assistance from 1981 to 1996. The lawsuit was settled on April 1, 1999. Due to delaying tactics by U.S. government officials, more than 70,000 farmers were treated as filing late and thus did not have their claims heard. The 2008 Farm Bill provided for additional claims to be heard. In December 2010, Congress appropriated $1.2 billion for what is called “Pigford II,” settlement for the second part of the case. Click here to read the detailed account of Pigford v. Glickman.
**
The California Rangeland Trust is the largest land trust in California. The trust partnered with California ranching families across the state to permanently protect 399,600 acres of open spaces as working landscapes forever. These lands serve as wildlife corridors and carbon sponges; where sensitive species thrive, the air is cleansed, and the fresh water flows. Rangelands are a vital part of the State’s history and they are critical to its legacy. These lands, and the resources they protect, are invaluable. That’s why California Rangeland Trust is devoted to working with local ranching families to protect these landscapes forever. Click here for more information.
You can follow Rizpah’s work here:
Education
Housing
Agriculture
This article was published in Women in Ag Mag 2024-003. Click here to read the magazine
