From Warehouse to Table

Food Gatherers Keeps Washtenaw County Fed as 1 in 7 Face Food Insecurity

If you’ve spent any time in the Washtenaw County area, you’ve seen the Food Gatherers trucks around town–they’re a ubiquitous presence all over, every day. Food Gatherers is the largest food bank and food rescue program in Washtenaw County, distributing over 10.3 million pounds of food–about 8.5 million meals–to over 140 partner agencies in just the last year. Established in 1988, they are also Michigan’s first food rescue program and among the first six in the entire nation.

The large fleet of Food Gatherers trucks goes out twice each day, once in the morning and once in the afternoon. They leave the Food Gatherers warehouse filled with food to distribute to partner agencies, drop the food off, and then on their way back to the warehouse, they refill the trucks with donated or rescued food, which they get from “pretty much everywhere.” Rescued food is usually food from grocery stores that is past its “best buy” or “sell by” date, but which is still healthy to consume. These dates indicate peak quality, but there are different guidelines for evaluating when a food is still safe to consume. The USDA estimates that 30 percent of the food supply is lost or wasted at the retail and consumer levels, so by rescuing these foods, Food Gatherers can both feed the community and prevent massive amounts of food waste.

Food Gatherers focuses on rescuing food that is both high in demand and provides the biggest nutritional benefit, as well as foods that are shelf-stable and will last longer for their distribution partners. Over 60% of the foods they distribute are produce or high-protein items like meats, eggs, and dairy products. After the food has been rescued, a vast force of volunteers sorts through the food to make sure that it is all still safe to be distributed to the community: that nothing has broken its seal or been punctured, that the produce is in good shape, and that everything is still within the date extension guidelines (a certain amount of time after the “best by” date). They do this work immediately to make sure the perishable food gets distributed as quickly as possible, and sort the food into boxes to make it easier to deliver to partner agencies–including making tailored halal boxes for partner agencies serving the Muslim community.

Food Gatherers distributes through a vast network of over 140 partner agencies, 40-50 of which are “open sites” such as food pantries and the remainder of which are “closed sites” such as school pantries and housing complexes. Many of these partnerships go back many decades, and Food Gatherers provides the material support while allowing the agencies to make their own internal decisions about what and how to distribute. Food Gatherers is also intentional about making sure that through their network of partner agencies, they are reaching all portions of the county–both urban and rural–which are reported as experiencing food insecurity.

Because of this vast network of partnerships, any cuts to Food Gatherers' funding affect the entire county. Historically, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has played a major role in funding food assistance programs throughout the country. In March, however, the USDA canceled about $4.3 million in food orders to Michigan, equating to more than 2 million meals. Food Gatherers estimates that their organization alone lost 1.2 million meals from these cuts–meals which will cost them about $2.5 million to replace. The program, which was cut, the Emergency Food Assistance Program, focused on providing high-quality, nutritious food such as produce and dairy items. So, although Food Gatherers is still receiving some federal funding, they have been working hard to make up the gap caused by recent cuts. So far, they have been able to, thanks to generous support from donors and our local government.

The recent changes to SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) in the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” don’t affect Food Gatherers directly, but they will cause increased need throughout the county as more Washtenaw County residents lose their benefits due to more time limits on benefits and greatly increased paperwork requirements, which many people find difficult to navigate. Food insecurity in Washtenaw County has already been rising, from 12.5% to 14%, meaning that one in seven residents lacks reliable access to nutritious food. Food Gatherers saw a sharp uptick in need when COVID-era SNAP benefits were withdrawn, and they anticipate a similarly sharp uptick in need with the upcoming changes to SNAP. According to Feeding America, for every meal that food banks supply, SNAP supplies nine; organizations like Food Gatherers and their partner agencies are meant to be supplemental to food assistance programs like SNAP–not a replacement.

Food Gatherers won’t be able to fill all the gaps in food access that will come from reduced SNAP benefits, but they expect to be able to continue providing the level of services they have historically been able to. They will continue to distribute record amounts of nutritious food through their agency partners, rescue and distribute food which would otherwise be wasted, conduct community outreach to connect with community members and help them access services, and raise general community awareness through food drives. Even as the terrain of food access becomes increasingly difficult to navigate, community members should have confidence that our local food pantries will continue to be well-provisioned by the incredible work that Food Gatherers is able to carry out.

The essential services that Food Gatherers provides would not be possible without the incredible support they receive from the Washtenaw community in the form of volunteer hours, monetary donations, and food donations. In 2024, over 4,100 volunteers dedicated over 53,000 hours of their time to sort and pack food, go on food runs, cook and serve meals at the Food Gatherers Community Kitchen located in the Delonis Center in Ann Arbor, and help with the Summer Food Service Program, which ensures that families have access to food even when school is out. As more and more federal funding and support are cut for food access programs, it is more important than ever that our local communities show up to support programs like these at the local government level and in our actions as members of the community.

This post is part of a series by Emma Rose Hardy, a PhD Candidate at the University of Michigan and the Rackham Local Food Systems Intern at Growing Hope. The series aims to highlight the essential role that SNAP and other food assistance programs play in the Washtenaw County local food system.

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2025 Teen Graduate Reflections

By Julius Buzzard • August 21, 2025

Dear Growing Hope Community, August 7th marked the last day of our eight-week Summer Teen Leadership Program! Over the past eight weeks, 12 Ypsilanti teens joined us as part of our farm staff for an intensive summer program of farm work and workshops on food justice, community organizing, social identity, and cooking lessons. The teens worked hard this summer caring for their Oasis Garden, Children’s Garden, and the Sharing Garden, harvesting food for our free produce cooler, and partnering with local organizations to deepen their knowledge about the Washtenaw County food system. The Teen Leadership Program is an integral part of Growing Hope, and we are so proud of and grateful for this incredible group of young people! This Summer, four of our teens, Josephine Smith, Tuula Martínez, Jaylah Cotton, and Eli Harris, graduated from High School and will be moving on from the Teen Leadership Program. They have a few reflections on their time in the Teen Leadership Program that they would like to share. We are so proud of their work at Growing Hope and wish them all the best in their future endeavors! Josephine Smith, YCHS Hi, my name is Josephine Smith, and I was with Growing Hope for 2 years. Before coming, I did not know how to actually think of myself as a person. I was aimlessly drifting through life, not knowing what to do with myself or knowing my future goals. After joining Growing Hope, I was awakened to feelings of hope because I became aware that I have worth in my life. I can use myself to help others. I gained experience by doing lots of work for the community, the most impactful being that we helped distribute delicious food for people who need it the most. Growing Hope is a beautiful and life-changing program for teenagers, and can help guide them as they grow into people who understand that they have worth in this crazy world. I love you, Growing Hope! Eli Harris, WAVE My name is Eli. As of writing this, I am coming to the end of three long years with Growing Hope. It’s a bittersweet experience for me, as my time with this amazing organization — and the even more amazing people who run it — has been the best three years of my life. When I joined the Teen Leadership program, I questioned why I was there. My stance on people was poor, and my attitude poorer. I would say I didn’t take the program seriously at first. Often being grouchy and pedantic about the work we did, and the people around me. But I wasn’t treated as such. I was still given as much care, space, and voice as everyone else. Over time, I began to feel like my attitude towards things for the last couple of years had been fueling my grief and anger — and I started to try and change how I approached things. The amazing advisors, Jenny and Esha, were the cornerstone of that growth. It wasn’t just their welcoming attitudes towards the large group of unruly teenagers (myself included) — it was their consistency. When I needed support, they gave it. When I needed guidance, they offered it. When I wanted to share about my day and what I had been up to outside of the program, they listened. And when I slipped back into old habits or wasn’t being the version of myself they believed in, they were direct — they told me, made me aware, and helped guide me back to who I was working to become. I’ve grown more than I sometimes realize with Growing Hope. The workshops, especially, have taught me more skills than I could list — and more importantly, they’ve helped connect me to the Ypsilanti community, our food system, and the amazing people who keep it all running. I wouldn’t be who I am today without joining this incredible program or without meeting all the amazing people I’ve had the chance to grow with. If you’re reading this and have the opportunity to join: do it. I can’t recommend it enough. Tuula Martínez, ECA Hi Saplings/Everyone! 🌱, My name is Tuula Martínez, I am an eighteen-year-old youth of Ann Arbor & Ypsilanti, and I have been working in the Growing Hope Teen Leadership Program for almost three years. The first two summers I was simply a (paid) teen intern, and in my last summer I was ‘promoted’ into a crew leader, where I took on more leadership opportunities and responsibilities. This summer was really the time for me to not only deepen the knowledge I had gained from my previous two summers (and after-school programs), but also to apply said knowledge and leadership skills as I entered a new stage within the program. Working in the teen program has taught me a lot about impact. Before working here, I didn’t really think I had an impact on people or places, and I often doubted my own ability. Growing Hope does an amazing job of teaching you about the work that needs to be done to help our community, and giving you resources or opportunities to take part in it (whether through the program or outside of it). Through these opportunities, I have been so lucky to see the community come together. I have been able to talk to people and hear how much they appreciate the work Growing Hope does, and it really makes you proud of the work you’re a part of. My confidence has also significantly improved while I’ve worked with the teen program. Being in a leadership role this summer, and realizing the people who came before also didn’t have everything figured out, has surprisingly really comforted me. I think confidence comes when you, of course, 1. Start trusting in your abilities and knowledge, but also 2. When you realize that everyone is trying their best, and no one does things perfectly. I suppose I hope, as I leave this program, that perhaps my coworkers can look up to me in the same ways I looked up to my past crew leaders. And I hope that through watching me figure out and grow into this leadership role, I can in turn teach them that they are also just as capable, even if they haven’t figured everything out. The community itself is also something I’d like to touch upon. I feel it is such a treat to work somewhere where you’re genuinely excited to see the people. Over my three years working in the program, I have gotten the opportunity to meet so many awesome people and really befriend everyone. That is something that I love so much about the program, as you get the chance to get to know everyone and build your own dynamic with each person. The culture is something so special, because it bred an environment of comfort, which made it feel like a second family in a lot of ways. In the future, I hope to study at the University of Michigan, majoring in Archeology and minoring in Art History. My plan for the near future is to do one more semester of free college classes at my high school (the ECA), and take the next two semesters off from school (to apply to the UofM for the following fall, and look for museum-based internships). This upcoming summer, I hope to become involved with archaeology fieldwork through the UofM Museum of Archeology (which may involve travelling, exciting!). Though my choice of career will most likely be museum/history related, I know that I would love to stay connected to Growing Hope, as Environmental education and stewardship have become very important to me through working here. Thank you to everyone I’ve had the privilege to meet, get to know, and work with. You’ve all had a profound impact on me. 🩵 Tuula Martínez Jaylah Cotton, Skyline I applied to the Teen Leadership Program because I already loved plants and gardening. I didn’t realize how much I would learn outside of farmwork, but it’s all helped me grow tremendously as a leader, a member of my community, and just as a person. I’ve also found that it’s kept me very grounded and taught me to appreciate what I have and what I can do. The overall work I’ve done is truly my proudest accomplishment in life so far. From selling herbal tea bags at the farmers market, to digging out our new wildlife pond, and leading weekly social identity workshops, I can’t pinpoint a single favorite thing! However, I can express how grateful I am for the opportunities that working with Growing Hope has given me. Because of the Teen Leadership Program, I was awarded one of AAACF’s 2025 Young Citizens of the Year. The award recognizes leadership and community service among Washtenaw County teens. Thanks to Jenny and Esha’s nomination, I was selected and got to participate in an MLive interview (which went to print/online in May) about my work with food insecurity and Growing Hope. I received a scholarship as well. This has meant so much to me because it feels great to have the work I’ve done be recognized, but it’s also helping to further my education! Soon, I’m headed off to Michigan State University to major in Elementary Education, meaning all the leadership skills I’ve learnt will be put to great use! I’m so excited to go somewhere new and keep learning, too, but I’m forever grateful that I have a place back home in Ypsi where I am always welcome. - Jaylah

Growing Hope Through Food Sovereignty

By Julius Buzzard • August 20, 2025

Growing Hope, in Ypsilanti, Michigan, is a food systems organization that works on ushering folks into more intimate, just, joyful relationships with their food systems. Their mission is to foster food sovereignty . Food sovereignty means different things to different people, but according to the executive director, Julius Buzzard, food sovereignty means people having autonomy within the food system at all points–from seed to belly. For communities, this means being able to have self-determination over everything from the treatment of workers to the nutrition of produce, and to have both local and culturally relevant produce available. Growing Hope has a multi-pronged approach to promoting local food sovereignty. Their programs include a farmers market, both youth and adult education programs, an incubator kitchen, and some direct food aid. The Ypsi Farmers Market is the most visible component of Growing Hope’s work, held in downtown Ypsilanti every Saturday, May through October. They pride themselves on being a market that is accessible to the people who live in the community around them, and whose diverse community is reflected in the vendors that sell at the market. The market has much lower vendor fees than other farmers markets, which in turn allows vendors to charge less for their produce than they would at a high-fee market. The market also has multiple food assistance programs: they were the third market in the state to accept federal food assistance benefits, and it also has the Power of Produce club for children. By participating in activities such as painting farmer’s market tote bags and sampling vegetables, kids earn $5 in market tokens, which they can then spend on whatever they want. Another component of engaging youth in the community is the youth education programming. The Growing Hope farm hosts field trips for students from Ypsi Community Schools, Lincoln Community Schools, and other youth-serving organizations such as Corner Health. The goal is to reach community kids in order to build a foundation of generational health that the kids can carry on to the rest of their families and communities. Another component of youth education, the teen leadership program, is the longest-standing program at Growing Hope, and has been a central part of the organization since its inception over 20 years ago. It started as a school garden program, and over time has grown into a paid after-school leadership program where teens work at the farm and receive a mix of hands-on agricultural training, workshops on community organizing and food sovereignty, and guidance on job skills such as how to track and submit weekly hours and how to read the different parts of a paycheck. Regardless of whether they end up continuing to work in the food justice sector, the teens learn the crucial skills of 1) caring about the community around them and 2) knowing how to act on that care. When it comes to adult education, Growing Hope teaches a wide variety of skills through the expertise of its staff. There is a home vegetable garden program, run by Ayanfe Jamison, which provides both the physical resources and the knowledge needed for working-class Ypsilanti residents to start or strengthen their home gardens. The teens who are part of the teen leadership program also put on workshops for the rest of the community, such as a recent corn nixtamalization workshop. Much of the adult education is community-driven or community-led; folks who are affiliated with Growing Hope but not part of its staff present on subjects that they’re passionate, experienced, and knowledgeable about. These workshops are often in response to specific requests or identified needs within the community. There was also recently a Stepping Stones to Food Entrepreneurship workshop series organized by Deante Bland, the Incubator Kitchen Manager. Workshops covered topics such as Cottage Food Law, food business licensing, business planning and goal setting, menu and recipe optimization, and marketing and branding. The series culminated with a panel of makers who had graduated from the Incubator Kitchen sharing their experiences. The incubator kitchen can, in some way, feel divorced from the rest of the food sovereignty work that Growing Hope does, but Julius sees local food entrepreneurship and having circular food economies as integral to creating communities with food sovereignty. He says that it is an essential step in creating new systems to empower people currently in the community to share their hopes, passions, and dreams, and to bring life to their communities in ways that are special and unique. The more that we can encourage people and give them options to spend money in ways that support their neighbors and invest in people who are part of the community, the more autonomous we make our food system. Through the shared space and programming, the incubator kitchen provides a more accessible entry point into food business creation for people of color or anyone else who doesn’t have access to money and resources to start or scale up their food business. The kitchen supports makers in keeping their values as they build their businesses, and many of the businesses collaborate with other elements of the local food system. About 70 businesses have used the kitchen, 15 of which have graduated out to other places (and all but one of which are still local). One of these makers is Bird Dog Baking, which now has a brick and mortar space in Downtown Ypsilanti and which sources its grains locally and gets its produce from a Growing Hope-affiliated farm, Old City Acres. Another business just around the corner is Bearabakes, which also sources its fruits and vegetables from local farmers. The incubator kitchen doesn’t just foster food businesses; it fosters food businesses that are deeply integrated into the local food system. Growing Hope’s emphasis is on food sovereignty and changing food systems, but the organization also recognizes that sometimes people need their direct, immediate needs met before they can engage in autonomy-building programs. The Growing Hope Urban Farm is located next to and across the street from some of Ypsilanti’s low-income neighborhoods, and has an on-site (recently rebuilt and expanded) free farm cart where they distribute both the produce they grow and food donated by other farms and food assistance organizations. Growing Hope alone produces and distributes more than 6,000 pounds of produce, and through donations from Old City Acres, We The People Opportunity Farm, Community Farm in Ann Arbor, and Food Gatherers, they feel like they are able to meet at least some of the needs that their community has. The need is so much more than what they can directly provide, but Growing Hope does what they can to support people in getting to a place where they can pursue food sovereignty. This post is part of a series by Emma Rose Hardy, a PhD Candidate at the University of Michigan and the Rackham Local Food Systems Intern at Growing Hope. The series aims to highlight the essential role that SNAP and other food assistance programs play in the Washtenaw County local food system.

Where You At?

By Julius Buzzard • August 19, 2025

Ayanfe Jamison’s current role is the Garden Manager at Growing Hope in Ypsilanti, Michigan, but her roots in agroecology, permaculture, and food sovereignty are far deeper than her current role. She grew up in a very intergenerational environment in East Tennessee, watching her older relatives work the earth, engaging in subsistence farming and traditional skills such as making pickles and homemade wine. However, her mother wanted her to pursue more “professional” skills and “move up” through education, so these ancestral skills were not passed on to Ayanfe. Since then, she has spent the past 30 years seeking out knowledge and understanding of the practices she grew up surrounded by. As part of her lifelong education process, Ayanfe spent an “eco urban year” as an honors student at Miami Dade College, where her cohort lived together, made meals together, and maintained a garden together. Each Tuesday, one person was responsible for preparing a vegan meal, and their “class” was their dinner time. They read texts on deep ecology from writers such as Wendell Berry. As much as Ayanfe enjoyed the subject, she was deeply bothered by the fact that the “world literature” collection didn’t include any Black authors. She pushed back, and new material was introduced. To this day, she treasures her heavily-annotated copy of Literature and the Environment: A Reader on Nature and Culture . Edited by Lorraine Anderson, Scott Slovic, and John P. O’Grady, this was Ayanfe’s first real exposure to ecological literature written from perspectives that resonated with her. One of her favorite pieces in the collection is “Touching the Earth,” by bell hooks. Another favorite is “Where You At? A Bioregional Quiz,” which aims to raise people’s awareness of how much they really know, or don’t know, about the place they call home. Through questions such as “Trace the water you drink from precipitation to tap” and “How long is the growing season where you live?” quiz-takers are scored on a scale from “You have your head up your ass” to “You not only know where you’re at, you know where it’s at.” This kind of straight-speaking evaluation is typical of Ayanfe. One of her continuous sources of frustration is that almost all of the “rewilding” she has engaged in as an adult has been dependent on learning skills from White folks–skills which she recognizes as part of her heritage, such as cob construction (building with mud and straw) and permaculture. When she first started rewilding, her friends were all “earthy crunchy white kids that lived teepees, school buses, and yurts” and who didn’t need to make money to sustain themselves. Ayanfe became focused on finding a way to reintroduce rewilding practices to people of color in ways that were realistic and acknowledged and respected the origins of these practices. One of the ways Ayanfe passes on this knowledge is through running the Home Vegetable Garden program at Growing Hope. The program is focused on working-class folks in Ypsilanti and provides the materials and knowledge needed to have a robust home vegetable garden. Ayanfe and her interns (when she has them) install raised beds at people’s homes, and by the time they leave, they have a garden assembled, filled with soil, and with starter plants. Participants also receive seed packets and additional plant starts throughout the year. People who qualify for food assistance programs are prioritized, but other factors that are considered for program selection are whether there are seniors or children in the household, whether anyone in the household has a disability, the income scale of the household, and the racial demographics of the household. Participants in the program are able to grow whatever they would like to, and do whatever they want with it, whether that’s personal consumption, selling, or giving away the produce to the community, or feeding it to pets. This freedom is essential to the program's role in promoting food sovereignty. To Ayanfe, food sovereignty means that food is a human right that cannot be bestowed or revoked. This includes the right not just to have access to food, but access and agency over your personal food system. Food assistance programs such as SNAP and WIC often do not provide options for people with different dietary restrictions, and when she was receiving benefits as a vegan, she felt like she had no agency over her food choices. Food sovereignty isn’t about just having access to whatever food the government determines you deserve, but about having the freedom to decide what kinds of food are appropriate or not appropriate for you and your household, freedom to use food as medicine, and the freedom, knowledge, and capacity to grow your own food and medicine. For Ayanfe, the Home Vegetable Garden program is an important route to providing community members with this kind of no-strings-attached sovereignty. This post is part of a series by Emma Rose Hardy, a PhD Candidate at the University of Michigan and the Rackham Local Food Systems Intern at Growing Hope. The series aims to highlight the essential role that SNAP and other food assistance programs play in the Washtenaw County local food system.

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