Compost, Cotton & Cornrows

Dominique Drakeford
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Compost, Cotton & Cornrows is a podcast centering Black sustainability leaders across fashion, agriculture, wellbeing and beyond. Through storytelling, culture, and climate conversations, the show explores how ancestral wisdom and modern practices can cultivate regenerative futures. Hosted by Dominique Drakeford, each episode unearths powerful insights that shift the narrative of environmental justice.

  1. 2D AGO

    Episode 37 | From Civil Rights to Climate Justice: OG Environmentalist Catherine Coleman Flowers on America’s Planned Obsolescence, the Disaster Economy & Why We’re All Environmental Stewards

    In this episode of Compost, Cotton & Cornrows, Dominique Drakeford sits in powerful conversation with Catherine Coleman Flowers - MacArthur “Genius” grant recipient, founder of the Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice and one of the foremost architects of modern environmental justice. From her upbringing in Lowndes County, Alabama where rows of cotton met front doors and families engineered their own sanitation systems  to advising the White House on federal environmental policy, Catherine reframes sustainability as “building something that’s lasting” in a nation designed for planned obsolescence. She unpacks how civil rights organizing shaped her advocacy, why environmental injustice is not a “Black issue” but a systems issue, and how storytelling, data, and local political power shape who gets protected. Together, they confront the rising tensions of our time: water-hungry data centers and what Catherine calls America’s “disaster economy” a system that profits from neglect and rebuilds only after harm. Yet this is not a conversation rooted in despair. It is grounded in stewardship, spirituality and the radical belief that if we “do the work again,” change is not only possible, it is inevitable. This episode is a masterclass in resilience, policy literacy and the sacred responsibility we all carry as environmental stewards. https://www.catherinecolemanflowers.com/ Compost, Cotton & Cornrows: the space where Black & Afro-Indigenous Vanguards are redefining sustainability through storytelling! @Compost_Cotton_Cornrows

    47 min

  2. FEB 18

    Episode 36 | “I’m Done Being Poor & Popular” - Christa Barfield (FarmerJawn), Founder of the Largest Black Woman-Owned Regenerative Farm in the U.S., on Agricultural Profitability, Wealth Strategy & Creating a Family Office Using a Trust

    In this episode of Compost, Cotton & Cornrows, Dominique Drakeford sits with Christa Barfield, aka FarmerJawn - regenerative agriculture powerhouse, James Beard Award winner, and founder of the largest Black woman-owned regenerative farm in the United States. From managing 128 acres across Pennsylvania to building markets for heritage crops like Nigerian spinach, Christa breaks down what sustainability actually means when you remove the romance and face the reality: profitability. She unpacks why true longevity in farming requires economic power, why undercapitalization is one of the biggest threats to land stewardship and how her company’s decision-making is rooted in a three-pillar framework of environmental, social and physical health. This is a masterclass in building systems that nourishes financial legacy and wellbeing.  Together, they explore regeneration as a lifestyle ethic from letting soil rest to letting ourselves rest. We unpack how “Food is Medicine” is an overused slogan in mainstream agricultural spaces, but for Christa, it’s a real strategy for public health transformation. Christa shares hard-won wisdom on funding pathways, building a protective business trinity (lawyer, accountant, insurance), navigating spaces where you’re the only one and why she’s done being “poor and popular.” The conversation stretches into lineage, land inheritance, family wealth models and her bold new pay-what-you-wish corner store designed to restore dignity and nutrition access in one of Philadelphia’s most underserved neighborhoods. This episode is a financial sustainability blueprint!  https://www.farmerjawn.co/ Compost, Cotton & Cornrows: the space where Black & Afro-Indigenous Vanguards are redefining sustainability through storytelling! @Compost_Cotton_Cornrows

    55 min

  3. FEB 11

    Episode 35 | Heather McTeer Toney on the Pervasiveness of Plastics, Storytelling as Renewable Energy and Deconstructing Mainstream Sustainability

    In this episode of Compost, Cotton & Cornrows, host Dominique Drakeford sits with Heather McTeer Toney, executive director of the Beyond Petrochemicals campaign, 2025 Forbes Sustainability Leader, former mayor of Greenville Mississippi and former Regional Administrator for EPA Region 4. Together they explore what sustainability looks like when it begins with Black life, cultural memory and lived experience rather than policy jargon or extractive frameworks. Drawing from Heather’s leadership in cultural organizing, this conversation reframes environmentalism as something deeply familiar and rooted in the stewardship and wisdom of people who have always lived closest to the land. From petrochemicals and plastics to fast fashion, beauty culture and agriculture, Dominique and Heather unpack how industries built on extraction continue to harm Black and brown communities while selling convenience as progress. Heather traces the lineage from plantations to petrochemical corridors, challenges loud definitions of wealth and calls for a quieter, more intentional vision of luxury grounded in health, longevity and collective care. This episode is both a reckoning and a love letter, reminding us that storytelling is our most underutilized renewable energy source. This is a joyous call to action to listen differently, consume intentionally and claim our role as architects of the futures we deserve. https://www.beyondpetrochemicals.org/ Compost, Cotton & Cornrows: the space where Black & Afro-Indigenous Vanguards are redefining sustainability through storytelling! @Compost_Cotton_Cornrows

    54 min

  4. FEB 4

    Episode 34 | Latham Thomas Unapologetically Goes In on Survival and Sustainability Through Black Matriarchy, Afrofuturism and Weapons of Consciousness

    In this episode of Compost, Cotton & Cornrows, Dominique Drakeford sits with Latham Thomas, renowned birth justice advocate, cultural theorist and founder of Mama Glow, a global maternal health and education platform transforming how birth, healing and care are practiced across communities worldwide. Known for pioneering a model of birth work rooted in Black feminism, spirituality and justice, Latham has shaped a generation of care workers. Together, they reframe sustainability as a living principle: regeneration grounded in lineage, community and the moral intelligence of Black women. What follows is a powerful meditation on care as resistance. Latham names how carceral systems - medicine, media, immigration enforcement  and state violence extract from Black bodies while denying dignity and why refusing the spectacle of Black pain is itself an act of protection. Drawing from Black matriarchy, Afrofuturism and ancestral technologies, she offers a blueprint for building futures that cannot be destroyed because they are encoded, relational and quietly revolutionary. This episode is an invitation to slow down and  build with intention. She unapologetically reminds us to remember that Black women have always set the moral and spiritual standard for what survival, sustainability and freedom truly mean. https://mamaglowfoundation.org/ Compost, Cotton & Cornrows: the space where Black & Afro-Indigenous Vanguards are redefining sustainability through storytelling! @Compost_Cotton_Cornrows

    1h 8m

  5. JAN 28

    Reflection Moment | The Practice of Radical Care

    This week, Compost, Cotton & Cornrows interrupts our regularly scheduled program. No guest. No interview. No promo assets.  Host Dominique Drakeford offers a short grounded  reflection on nervous system care, burnout and the radical necessity of pause as a sustainability practice. In a world saturated with trauma, crisis and constant resistance, this episode reframes rest and re-regulation as political acts of preservation and power - especially for Black women and Black mothers. This is not an escape from the work, it’s maintenance for the mission. Because sustainability must center the care of Black women as well as care as an infrastructure. 🌱 Compost, Cotton & Cornrows: the space where Black & Afro-Indigenous Vanguards are redefining sustainability through storytelling! @Compost_Cotton_Cornrows

    3 min

  6. JAN 21

    Episode 33 | Kevin “The Plant Papi”: Showing Others That They Can - Growing Through Wellness, Joy, Vulnerability & House Plants

    In this episode of Compost, Cotton & Cornrows, Dominique Drakeford sits with Kev aka “The Plant Papi”, creator and cultural storyteller known for weaving plant care, mental wellness and radical self-honesty into everyday life. What begins as a conversation about houseplants opens into something deeper: how plant care becomes a mirror. Kev reflects on how tending plants during the pandemic helped him navigate grief, identity shifts, fatherhood and mental health and how he now reads his plants as signals of how he is doing. From moving away from perfection to embracing seasonality, balance and softness, this episode reframes plant care as a living practice of self-check-in. Together, Dominique and Kev explore representation, history and memory … what it means to be a Black man publicly rooted in wellness, curiosity, humor and vulnerability. Kev traces the ancestral and political journeys of plants across Africa, the Caribbean and the Americas while sharing an insightful example from the Haitian Revolution. The conversation moves fluidly between joy and truth, grief and play, reminding us that sustainability is not just about what we grow but how we show up, who we allow ourselves to be and the freedom found in being fully human. Come for the plants. Stay for the wisdom, the laughter and the reminder that healing doesn’t have to look one way. Listen now on all streaming platforms and watch the full conversation on YouTube. Compost, Cotton & Cornrows: the space where Black & Afro-Indigenous Vanguards are redefining sustainability through storytelling! @Compost_Cotton_Cornrows

    50 min

  7. JAN 14

    Episode 32 | You Cannot Talk About Climate Without a #FreeCongo: Maurice Carney on the Foundations of Capitalism, the Silent Genocide Fueling the Global Green Tech Economy & Why Agro-Liberation Rooted in the Congo Basin Rainforest Is Essential

    In this uncompromising conversation, Dominique Drakeford sits with Maurice Carney, co-founder and Executive Director of Friends of the Congo, to name what the world has been trained to ignore: the Congo is not a footnote to modern life … It is its foundation. From the transatlantic slave trade to King Leopold II’s genocidal regime, from the assassination of Patrice Lumumba to today’s cobalt-powered green energy transition, Maurice traces how African labor, land and intellect have been systematically extracted to fuel global capitalism, while Congolese lives are rendered disposable. He dismantles the colonial gaze, challenges dominant climate narratives that erase Congo, and makes the case that you cannot talk about sustainability, technology, artificial intelligence or climate justice without reckoning with the Congo Basin - the world’s second-largest rainforest and one of its most critical carbon sinks. But this episode is not only an indictment; it is a declaration of resistance. Maurice introduces the Basandja Coalition and the principle of agro-liberation. It become evident how imperative it is to return to indigenous knowledge, soil, culture and collective ethics as pathways to liberation. He insists on agency over victimhood, naming the organizers, women, farmers and communities who are building power on the frontlines of mines, peatlands and forests. This conversation asks more of us as listeners, consumers and global citizens: to refuse normalization, to understand our complicity and to be found by the side of the Congolese people in the unfinished struggle for a #FreeCongo. A Free Congo is one where Congolese control their land, resources, and future for the benefit of Africa and the world. CCC COMMUNITY - this is a listening responsibility. Tune in, share this episode, and explore how to support Congolese movements at freecongo.org. Watch or listen wherever you get your podcasts. https://friendsofthecongo.org/ Compost, Cotton & Cornrows: the space where Black & Afro-Indigenous Vanguards are redefining sustainability through storytelling! @Compost_Cotton_Cornrows

    53 min

  8. JAN 7

    Episode 31 | Ciara Imani May of Rebundle Building Patented Climate Solutions Inside the $19 Billion Hair Extension Industry

    In Episode 31 of Compost Cotton and Cornrows, Dominique Drakeford sits with Ciara Imani May, founder of Rebundle and producer of Reclaimed Beyond the Braid, for a conversation that reframes beauty as a climate and health conversation rooted in agency ownership and truth. What begins as a personal question about what synthetic hair is made of opens into a powerful exploration of sustainability as harmony between our bodies, our communities and the ecosystems that sustain us. Ciara traces her journey from hypothesis to action revealing how curiosity, resourcefulness and community feedback sparked the creation of plant based hair made from banana fiber and why hair has long been left out of mainstream sustainability discourse despite its global environmental and cultural impact. This episode goes deep into the science storytelling and strategy behind building a regenerative supply chain for a nineteen billion dollar industry while centering Black women as inventors, innovators and rightful owners. Ciara breaks down the cultural significance of securing a patent led by Black women alongside the necessity of legal protection in climate innovation and the future of expanding this model across the global banana belt. Together they name what so many avoid saying out loud that products touching our scalps are environmental justice issues that demand clinical testing accountability and imagination. This is a conversation about claiming space and building what has never existed before. This episode  understands that Black led innovation must be integrated as a central climate solution.  https://rebundle.co/ Compost, Cotton & Cornrows: the space where Black & Afro-Indigenous Vanguards are redefining sustainability through storytelling! @Compost_Cotton_Cornrows

    43 min
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About

Compost, Cotton & Cornrows is a podcast centering Black sustainability leaders across fashion, agriculture, wellbeing and beyond. Through storytelling, culture, and climate conversations, the show explores how ancestral wisdom and modern practices can cultivate regenerative futures. Hosted by Dominique Drakeford, each episode unearths powerful insights that shift the narrative of environmental justice.

Information

  • Creator
    Dominique Drakeford
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    39
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Compost, Cotton & Cornrows
  • Show Website
    Compost, Cotton & Cornrows