Food Justice & Cooperative Economics

Greetings Community,

The return of spring always brings new faces to the farm as we support an ever-growing community invested in growing food for themselves and one another. It reminds me why we must invest in infrastructure to support food sovereignty and self-determination.

I am always excited to kick off the season and initiate this programming because it’s a vital piece of our mission as we seek to build a just and equitable food system. Investing in food sovereignty means investing in members of our community. It requires us to move collectively as we imagine an economy that values food, acknowledges our right to it, and brings us together for our collective good. It requires us to consider cooperative economics.

The intersection of cooperative economics and food sovereignty is a dynamic space where community resilience, social justice, and sustainable agriculture converge. Food sovereignty emphasizes local control over food systems, empowering communities to make food production, distribution, and consumption decisions. Similarly, cooperative economics emphasizes the principles of collective ownership, democratic control, and shared benefits among members.

Collaboration between the two addresses food access issues and racial injustice. It empowers communities to define their own food systems, promote sustainable agriculture practices, and reclaim traditional food production and distribution knowledge.

And so, we invest deeply in equipping every community member with the tools, resources, and knowledge needed to have an intimate relationship with our local food system.

Some of this support looks like free seedlings grown at the Growing Hope Urban Farm, free compost and seeds, workshops, and supporting our local community gardens to thrive. This year, we are excited to reenage our Community Tool Lending Library! We have the space ready and have one question for you:

What tools would you like to have available from a tool lending library?

Thank you for reimagining the food system with us!

In solidarity

Julius

P.S. To free ourselves, we must feed ourselves–the Teen Leadership Program, Home Vegetable Program, Farmers Market, Seasonal Internships, and Solidarity Shares are all open to applicants!

< Older Post

Newer Post >

Georgia Gilmore & The Club From Nowhere

By Julius Buzzard • February 18, 2026

During the Montgomery Bus Boycott, when formal fundraising was surveilled and criminalized, Georgia Gilmore organized something deceptively simple: a kitchen network . Known as The Club From Nowhere , Gilmore and other Black women sold pies, cakes, and home-cooked meals to quietly raise money for the movement. Their anonymity was protection. Their food was infrastructure. For over a year, as the boycott stretched on, these funds paid for carpools, gas, and daily survival. While history often centers on speeches and marches, Gilmore reminds us that revolutions are sustained behind the scenes by those who feed people, organize logistics, and keep the lights on. Her kitchen was a site of resistance. Her recipes were tools of liberation. At Growing Hope, we honor this lineage every time we invest in food entrepreneurs, incubator kitchens, and cooperative models. When food businesses are community-rooted, they do more than generate income; they fuel movements . Never underestimate what food can do. And never forget who has always been doing the work.

Fannie Lou Hamer & the Freedom Farm Cooperative

By Julius Buzzard • February 11, 2026

“If you have 400 quarts of greens and gumbo soup canned for the winter, nobody can push you around.” Fannie Lou Hamer said this not as a metaphor, but as a lived experience. In 1969, after being evicted from her plantation home for registering to vote, Hamer founded the Freedom Farm Cooperative in Sunflower County, Mississippi. The goal was simple and radical: Black families deserved land, food, housing, and economic independence, without having to ask permission. Freedom Farm grew vegetables, raised livestock, built homes, and supported cooperative ownership. It addressed hunger and poverty at their roots, refusing the lie that liberation could come without material security. Hamer understood what we still grapple with today: political rights mean little without food sovereignty . Voting doesn’t protect you from hunger. Legislation doesn’t replace land. Dignity requires access to the means of survival. This is why Growing Hope centers farming, education, and entrepreneurship together. Food sovereignty is not just about what’s on your plate; it’s about who controls the systems that decide who eats .

The Black Panther Party & Free Breakfast

By Julius Buzzard • February 4, 2026

In 1969, the Black Panther Party launched the Free Breakfast for Children Program , serving tens of thousands of children across the United States every single school day. Not as an act of charity, but as a declaration. The Panthers understood something the dominant systems refused to acknowledge: a hungry child cannot learn, organize, or imagine a future . Feeding children was a political act. It was protection. It was strategy. Volunteers cooked before dawn in church basements and community centers. Children were served breakfast while learning about Black history, self-determination, and collective responsibility. The state noticed and felt threatened. The FBI labeled the program “the greatest threat” to internal security, not because it was violent, but because it worked. And it worked so well that the U.S. government was forced to expand public school breakfast programs nationwide . Mutual aid didn’t just meet immediate needs; it reshaped public policy . This is food sovereignty in action: communities identifying harm, meeting their own needs with dignity, and building power in the process. At Growing Hope, we carry this legacy forward. When we insist on dignified access to food, when we support farmers markets as sites of connection and not extraction, when we center youth and Black leadership, we are walking a well-worn path. When communities feed themselves, systems change.

ALL ARTICLES