This is the second story featuring Kentuckians who won two of the six prestigious leadership awards given by the James Beard Foundation last month in Chicago.

By Chris Aldridge
Kentucky Ag News

In 1968, a summer job in New York City helped change Jim Embry’s life.

Fresh food had always been plentiful for Embry, who grew up on his family’s farm in Madison County. But, while working in Brooklyn, he discovered it was an urban food desert with little access to fresh fruits and vegetables.

“I got exposed to what we now call food injustice,” Embry said.

Embry was a pre-med student working at the University of Kentucky hospital when he decided to make a change.

“It was working at UK Medical Center that gave me practical experiences which helped me with my conclusion to change my life direction,” Embry said. “In the USA, we have a disease care system and not a health care system. And I wanted to be about health.”

Bruce Mundy, retired from both the American Red Cross and Lexington-Fayette County Health Department, summed it up: “Jim decided that he was going to be a doctor, and his patient was going to be the community.”

In 1971, Embry met the late Dick Gregory, a famous comedian, vegetarian, and social activist.

“His mentorship and my family legacy in cooperatives encouraged my interest in founding Good Foods Co-op (in 1972) in order to get access to good healthy food which could then counter health disparities,” Embry said.

“It’s much better now, but back then, we were being bamboozled,” he added. “We were told people should be eating all this fast food and junk food. We had a bunch of young people from UK at Good Foods, and we were saying, ‘No!’”

Embry created Good Foods on three pillars that make food good: healthy, local, and organic. Today, the co-op, which has been in operation for 51 years, purchases about 300 products from local producers.

“Local food – that’s how folks ate on our farms for hundreds of years,” he said. “My mom said it wasn’t called ‘organic’ back then, when all the inputs were animal poop!”

Good Foods Co-op is just one of many reasons the James Beard Foundation honored Embry with one of its six Leadership Awards last month in Chicago. The awards recognize individuals and/or organizations whose work is helping to create a safer, more healthful, equitable, and sustainable food world. Another Kentuckian, Valerie Horn of Whitesburg, was also among those to receive a leadership award this year.

“The best in the nation are at work here – and for me, Valerie Horn and Jim Embry personify that work,” central Kentucky chef and restauranteur Ouita Michel told the Lexington Herald-Leader. “My heart swelled with pride and so much gratitude for everything they do each day to improve Kentucky’s food system.”

Michel herself is a James Beard finalist for her restaurant empire, Holly Hill and Co.

“She’s the poster child for Kentucky Proud,” Embry said of Michel. “We need to appreciate who we have here and what we have here.”

In 2006, Embry founded the Sustainable Communities Network, a Lexington-based nonprofit where he has guided the development of more than 30 community garden projects. Embry is on the administrative team of Ujamaa Cooperative Farming Alliance, a Black- and Indigenous-led company that focuses on African and African-American crops.

Embry, an energetic 74-year-old who keeps a hectic schedule, calls himself “one of Kentucky’s greatest cheerleaders.” He has represented the U.S. seven times as a delegate at Slow Food’s Terra Madre biannual gathering in Turin, Italy, where he sets up a display table of Kentucky Proud products. Some of them are donated by the Kentucky Department of Agriculture, and some he pays for out of his own pocket.

“I took some bourbon the last time (in 2022) that was the big hit!” Embry said.

When Embry received his award at the James Beard ceremony, he emphasized that the award “wasn’t about ‘me’ but ‘we.’” He gave credit to his family.

“Where I live now is where my folk were brought across Appalachian Mountains in 1800 as slaves,” Embry said. “We’ve been here 223 years.”

Three members of Embry’s family fought with the U.S. Colored Troops during the Civil War. One was at Appomattox, Va., where the war ended. Another, Embry’s maternal great-great-grandfather, died in the war.

Embry lives on the family’s 30-acre Atrus Ballew Farm just east of Richmond, Ky., which is named after his great-uncle. Embry is a beekeeper and grows row crops, vegetables, and fruit on the farm, which was once part of a vibrant rural hamlet of 30-40 Black-owned farms known as the Concord community.

“When the (Civil) War ended, we had a whole community of people who worked together,” Embry said. “Remembering my ancestors and what they endured, this recognition (from the James Beard Foundation) is about our capacity not only to survive but to thrive.”