Arlana Brumfield

I come from a family of farmers in Mississippi, though I grew up in New Orleans. I joined the Army and served as a food safety and water inspector, spending my entire tour overseas in Germany where I noticed how much fresher and healthier the food was, with no chemical exposure. After getting out, I finished my biology degree and went on to get a cell biology clinical lab science degree. During that time, my family stopped farming and I started growing in the urban space. I became a food director and manager, running kitchens at the state prison and doing catering management over the years. I started gardening as a veteran because it was a good way to maintain stress and anxiety in the transition to being a civilian, using it as a sense of therapy. In 2018, I returned to school and moved to Dallas, Texas. I pursued a public health degree locally in Dallas, which was a perfect fit with my heavy background in biology. That degree taught me the real facts and statistics about how unhealthy the entire nation was when it came to food, water, and environment. All those experiences clicked together - my military experience, my love and passion, my family's background - and that's how Soilutions evolved. I was able to collectively take all that experience and create my nonprofit, Soilutions. Even though I do mentor urban gardeners and farmers on regenerative agriculture practices and how to have healthier soil, produce, and animals for a healthy food system, the produce is just icing on the cake. What I'm really teaching is healing - healing of mental health diseases, healing with nutrition by changing the nutrition in your lifestyle and your body, and healing of the urban ecosystem by removing chemicals. That's Soilutions in a nutshell.