Rev. Richard Joyner Answered Too Many Funerals With a Garden in Conetoe

Richard Joyner has been the lead pastor of Conetoe Chapel Missionary Baptist Church in Conetoe, North Carolina, since 1986, according to the Conetoe Family Life Center. He is also a U.S. Army veteran and has worked as a hospital chaplain in Edgecombe County. Modern Farmer reported that his parents and grandparents were sharecroppers and his great-grandparents were enslaved.

Conetoe is a very small town in a rural county where fresh, healthy food was hard to come by.

Joyner began to notice how often he was burying people, and how young many of them were. CoGenerate, which awarded him its Purpose Prize, reports that 30 members of his congregation under the age of 32 died in a single year, and that many of the deaths were health related, tied to poor diet and lack of exercise. Modern Farmer described him conducting funerals about twice a month in a town of roughly 300 people.

Those losses weighed on him. Modern Farmer quotes him asking how he could tell someone who had lost a child to poor nutrition that it was God's plan, when it was totally preventable.

Joyner has described the moment things turned. After a difficult shift at the hospital, he recalled, he pulled his car over and prayed. As he told Modern Farmer, he heard a voice telling him to open his eyes and look around. He took it as a call to look for answers in what was already near at hand, starting with the ground itself.

In 2005, at about 52, Joyner started a garden on a borrowed plot of land. The Conetoe Family Life Center, which he founded and chairs, was formally established in 2007 with a mission to improve the health of young people and the community by increasing access to healthy food.

He made young people central to the work. CoGenerate describes children and teens, roughly ages 5 to 18, planning, planting, and harvesting produce, serving properly portioned food at church events, and taking part in after-school and summer programs. Students also learned beekeeping. By Modern Farmer's 2017 count, they managed 150 hives that pollinated crops and produced honey, some of it sold by the jar and some shared with low-income neighbors.

The church changed too. CoGenerate reports that Sundays became Healthy Sundays, with an emphasis on healthy living, and that only nutritious food was served at church events.

The garden grew. Modern Farmer reported in 2017 that it covered about 21 acres across five plots. Revenue from produce and honey, along with donations, helped pay for school supplies and scholarships for participants, according to CoGenerate. Joyner received the Purpose Prize in 2014 and was honored as a CNN Hero in 2015.

Sources report encouraging health changes, though the figures vary by source and period. Modern Farmer reported that, by the time of its visit, there had been only a handful of funerals for people under 40 in the previous year. The changes came from many hands: young people, church members, families, and partners in the community.

The Conetoe Family Life Center continues to operate. Its website describes farm operations producing fruits, vegetables, and greens, summer camp programs with school partners, public health education in collaboration with ECU Health, and food distribution through Farm Bus stops. Its motto is to nourish people, build solutions, and empower communities.