2025 Right to Food Learning and Action Fellow Spotlight: Tyler Yarbrough
- Photini Kamvisseli Saurez
- 17 hours ago
- 4 min read
January 20, 2026
By Daniel Chian, National Right to Food Community of Practice Intern, Oberlin College
For the fourth entry in our Right to Food Learning and Action Fellows Spotlight Series, we are happy to introduce Tyler Yarbrough. As the Director of Mississippi Delta Programs at Partnership for a Healthier America (PHA), Tyler works to empower local communities by providing them with nutritious food and the means to produce it.
A native of the Delta, Tyler hails from Clarksdale, Mississippi. As he describes it, his hometown’s history is inextricably linked to agricultural production. Considered the home of the Blues, Clarksdale’s cultural legacy is rooted in the Black community forcibly brought to the region through enslavement. In describing the long-standing disenfranchisement of Black residents, Tyler uses the term “food destiny” to argue that food access alone is too limited a goal—it fails to reflect a community’s deeper aspirations for land, ownership, agency, and self-determination. He also acknowledges that the land in the Delta was stewarded by Indigenous peoples long before enslavement and settlement, including by the Choctaw, whose descendants now live primarily on the Mississippi Choctaw Reservation. As a resident of Clarksdale, Tyler sees himself as shaped by this layered history and was drawn to the Right to Food framework as a way to help communities reclaim control over their own food destiny.
Tyler studied public policy leadership at the University of Mississippi, where he developed a strong interest in making change in the energy and agricultural sectors. He started working with PHA through an undergraduate fellowship, and soon became the organization’s first hire in the Delta. This month will mark four years of Tyler’s time at PHA. During this time, Tyler has taken on several important projects, including a healthy corner store initiative that connects mom-and-pop shops with local farmers and suppliers to make them community produce hubs. Since the renovation of Clarksdale’s J’s Grocery–the initiative’s first project, which drew national attention– Tyler has been working to install refrigeration services and provide technical assistance to several stores each year.
Other projects Tyler has worked on include PHA’s Good Food at Home program, which provided families with boxes of locally grown produce over 12 weeks. Tyler has also supported the production side of food systems through the GROW grants program, which has distributed tens of thousands of dollars to local smallholders. With so much on his plate, Tyler finds himself in a dynamic work environment. A day could involve anything from site work at a processing plant or farm, to connecting with community members at a corner store, to lobbying in Congress on behalf of those local stakeholders.
From the Mississippi Delta to Geneva
This past August, Tyler attended a Universal Periodic Review (UPR) pre-session in Geneva. While there, Tyler presented on food insecurity in the Mississippi Delta at an event co-hosted by the National Right to Food Community of Practice, FIAN International, and the Geneva Academy titled From Food as a Commodity to Food as a Human Right: Confronting retrogressive food and agricultural policies in the U.S. During the pre-session, Tyler also provided a statement at an event hosted by the European Union, in the presence of EU Member States and civil society representatives.
Because his work is deeply concerned with local issues in the Delta, Tyler is fascinated with the Right to Food movement. He said he was struck by learning that international legal frameworks exist to protect the right to food - and that those same frameworks could be leveraged from places like Mississippi to build global relationships to advance local food access. Tyler is particularly appreciative of novel methods, identifying our current context as a “strategic moment.” His perspective is especially shaped by the World Wildlife Fund’s (WWF) "Next California Project," which has identified the Mississippi Delta as a site with major potential for U.S.-based produce farming in the coming years. With increased interest in fruit and vegetable production in the Delta, Tyler is determined to ensure that local producers have their voices heard.
Bringing Sinners Home to Clarksdale
Clarksdale is also the setting of Ryan Coogler’s breakout film Sinners, a vampire thriller that explores race, history, and music in the Mississippi Delta. Upon watching the film, Tyler found his hometown accurately and respectfully represented, and immediately began discussing the possibility of a local screening with his colleagues. However, with no movie theater in town, Clarksdale’s residents were unable to host a premiere of the film in the place it was set in. On a trip to the Choctaw Reservation of Mississippi, Tyler conceived of an open letter to the team behind Sinners, inviting them to visit Clarksdale. After writing the letter on the reservation, Tyler washed his hands ceremoniously at the head of the Pearl River, a sacred Choctaw site, and published it online. Tyler received a call soon after from the distribution team at Warner Brothers, later learning that Ryan Coogler himself had seen the letter hours after it was published. Inspired by Tyler’s letter, the makers of Sinners were on board to screen the movie in Clarksdale, and were hoping to attend the event themselves.
The three-day screening series at the Clarksdale Civic Auditorium included Q&As with Clarksdale locals and the production team behind the film. As a major organizer of the event, Tyler gave the film team a tour of Clarksdale, including a stop at J’s Grocery. At a visit to a Clarksdale farm with a history of slavery, now part of a farm incubation program, Tyler recalls a special moment at another important body of water. In a nearby bayou on the land, once used as a “hush harbour” for enslaved people to take spiritual refuge, Tyler, followed by the film team, washed his hands once more.
We hope you can join us in celebrating Tyler Yarbrough, one of our inaugural 2025 Right to Food Learning and Action Fellows!
Stay tuned for upcoming spotlight blog posts on our other impressive Right to Food Fellows.
