{"id":76960,"date":"2025-11-04T14:22:58","date_gmt":"2025-11-04T22:22:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=76960"},"modified":"2025-11-04T14:22:58","modified_gmt":"2025-11-04T22:22:58","slug":"in-the-trenches-with-rizpah-bellard-fresnos-lone-black-female-rancher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=76960","title":{"rendered":"\u2018In the Trenches\u2019 With Rizpah Bellard, Fresno\u2019s Lone Black Female Rancher"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By<\/span>Christopher Alam<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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As the only Black female rancher in Fresno, and possibly all of California, Rizpah Bellard says her identity shows others what’s possible.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Cattle rancher Rizpah Bellard owns and operates Nova Farms in Fresno, Calif. (Image courtesy of Rizpah Bellard)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Cattle rancher Rizpah Bellard remembers the discrimination her father, Cleveland faced when he first set out to become a farmer more than four decades ago.<\/p>\n

Whether it was agribusiness professors at Fresno State arbitrarily lowering his grades, or USDA loan officers tearing up applications in his face, Bellard says her father was open with his children about the forms of institutional racism he encountered.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a big reason why being one of the few Black farmers in Fresno County, and perhaps the only Black woman rancher in California, is so important to 30-year-old Bellard, who now runs her own company,\u00a0Nova Farming<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen Black people were going in for loans, you say, \u2018Hey, I have all my paperwork.\u2019 They say, \u2018Okay, thank you.\u2019 You leave. They turn around, they shred the paperwork,\u201d explained Bellard. \u201cIf my dad had secured a loan that he had applied for in 1985, 1991\u2026 he would have secured land, and we could have been big-time ranchers right now. We just didn\u2019t have that helping hand that the USDA and the Farm Service Agency was supposed to provide for all ranchers, but it\u00a0only provided for white ranchers<\/a>\u00a0and farmers.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to the\u00a0U.S. Census of Agriculture<\/a>, in 2022 there were 32,700 Black-owned or operated farms nationwide, accounting for less than 2% of the country\u2019s more than 3.4 million producers. The number has fallen consistently since peaking in the early part of the 20th<\/sup>\u00a0Century at more than 212,000. In Frenso County, there are just 9 Black owned farms.<\/p>\n

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A graduate of Cornell University, Rizpah Bellard\u2019s career in agriculture began after she returned to California in 2020. (Image courtesy of Rizpah Bellard)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

At the same time, alternative farming methods like urban agriculture are\u00a0growing<\/a>\u00a0across the country, including in predominantly\u00a0Black neighborhoods<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Bellard grew up with her parents and two brothers in Guinda, a small, rural, majority white town about 60 miles northwest of Sacramento. Together, they ran a Black Angus cattle ranch. Her father, who grew up in the East Bay city of Richmond and was first mentored in ranching by a neighbor, learned about regenerative agriculture before there were even terms for it.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were always raising pigs, goats, sheep, cows, horses, chickens\u2026 We\u2019d hunt, fish, camp, all that. We did everything outdoors,\u201d recalled Bellard.<\/p>\n

After graduating from Cornell University in 2015 with a public health degree, Bellard worked in anti-trafficking nonprofits in Oakland for a few years, before receiving her master\u2019s degree in international studies with a concentration in Human Trafficking and Forced Labor. She returned to her family home in 2020, and her career in agriculture began.<\/p>\n

Bellard runs\u00a0Nova Farming<\/a>\u00a0with her father, Cleveland as vice-president. The business, among the few small ranches that operates its own supply chain from calves all the way to frozen beef in your freezer, raises crossbred Angus-Wagyu beef cows using sustainable farming methods. The father-daughter pair market primarily to schools, institutions, and other high-volume buyers, like Beardsley Unified School District in Bakersfield, and the Central California Food Bank.<\/p>\n

Bellard is also sharing the success with other Black ranchers, too. They raise cattle to her grass-fed, small-pasture specifications, which she sells to fill out large deliveries.<\/p>\n

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Rizpah Bellard with her father, Cleveland. The father-daughter duo run Nova Farming in Fresno, Calif. (Image courtesy of Rizpah Bellard)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\u201c<\/strong>Now the way that I operate is a little bit different than most because I have people who are Black and brown ranchers that didn\u2019t have opportunities for an end product as well. So they\u2019re in their 60s or 70s \u2013 one of my ranchers he\u2019s 82. They like ranching, they like running cattle, they just don\u2019t have an end buyer,\u201d said Bellard.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I\u2019ve been pretty successful in that I have institutions that want to buy at my price. And then also because my dad knows the whole process\u2026 So it\u2019s not just like, I\u2019m this young rancher that came out of nowhere selling beef. I\u2019m a second-generation rancher. I just have more opportunities than my dad had, but he has all the knowledge that any other rancher has. He just wasn\u2019t given the opportunity.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

Nova Farming doesn\u2019t just sell beef \u2013 it\u2019s concerned with ag education as much as actual farming. Nova started off raising chickens at Ruby\u2019s Valley Care Home, a mental health facility near Fresno.<\/p>\n

\u201c<\/strong>I was teaching mental health residents how to raise poultry for egg production. So we had about 20 hens, and then every week we would donate all the fresh eggs to the food bank to give to members of the community,\u201d said Bellard.<\/p>\n

Within a year she scaled up Nova significantly: purchasing a small flock of several different animals to help educate children, building out the cattle herd with her father, and ramping up the educational programs for the community. She developed an agriculture education curriculum tied to California science standards for each grade level.<\/p>\n

\u201c<\/strong>I pitched that to Fresno Unified School District, and I got picked up in 2024 or 2023 to teach ag as part of their career and technical education\u2026 So I was going out to all different schools with the animals, all different levels, all different student vulnerability levels, throughout Fresno Unified last school year. And I\u2019m back on contract this school year.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bellard\u00a0shares her knowledge<\/a>\u00a0on improved farming practices through agricultural consulting, classes, and workshops for local schools. Between all this work, she still makes time to run two independent living properties in Fresno\u00a0offering stabilized housing<\/a>\u00a0for at-risk populations \u2013 she was even honored by the Independent Living Association of California for her quality operation.<\/p>\n

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Nova Farming doesn\u2019t just sell beef \u2013 it\u2019s concerned with ag education as much as actual farming. (Image courtesy of Nova Farming)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Across her various educational and agricultural projects, feeding and nurturing others, care for her community at large seems to be the center of Bellard\u2019s work. All that while dealing with the same challenges that all small ranchers in California face \u2013 a tough market, high transportation costs, and being edged out by growing corporate farms.<\/p>\n

Beef prices also continue to climb, due to rising demand and low cattle supply thanks to recent droughts and wildfires. In response, President Trump has agreed to import more beef from Argentina, which has\u00a0rankled ranchers in the US<\/a>\u00a0who say the move will further hurt their sales while doing little to reduce costs for consumers.<\/p>\n

The president\u2019s tariffs have also had an impact.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince the tariffs happened, we have shut down, limited, or just made it really expensive to move beef into the United States\u2026 there\u2019s just not a lot of mom cows,\u201d said Bellard, and what there is \u201cis all going to large corporations.\u201d<\/p>\n

On a positive note, Bellard says she hasn\u2019t had to deal with the kinds of discrimination her father faced. Whereas the older Bellard came up only a few decades removed from the Civil Rights movement and sharecropping, today Nova\u2019s buyers \u201care around my same age. They grew up in neighborhoods with Black and brown and mixed type neighborhoods.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cRegardless of race, age, gender, I\u2019m in the trenches just like everybody else in ag.,\u201d says Bellard. (Image courtesy of Nova Farming)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

She added, \u201cIt\u2019s just been a couple of generations of change where people want to do good now, people want to help out now regardless of race.\u201d<\/p>\n

If anything, she says, her unique position has helped her business.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s also interesting that I\u2019m not really chasing too many opportunities, the opportunities are coming to me because it\u2019s so novel what I\u2019m doing, so people are asking me, can I buy something, how can I support you? What can I do?\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, as Fresno\u2019s lone Black female rancher, Bellard says that identity matters because it shows others what is possible.<\/p>\n

\u201cRegardless of race, age, gender, I\u2019m in the trenches just like everybody else in ag. I\u2019m feeling the blows of tariffs, I\u2019m feelin\u2019 the blow of the shut down, I\u2019m feeling the blows of the consumer not being able to afford my product\u2026 I\u2019m an agriculturalist. I\u2019m a rancher. I\u2019m a farmer. I\u2019m on the ground in the fields, in the weeds, in the mountains doing the work just like everybody else.\u201d<\/p>\n

She added, \u201cI\u2019m just like, well, being Black is important to recognize the fact that there\u2019s nobody else like me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chris Alam is a\u00a0California Local News Fellow<\/a>\u00a0with the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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