No Fear in the Food System

Beloved community,

Many hearts, mine included, remain heavy as we enter into a new month.

Right now, immigration enforcement is being used in ways that are destabilizing people’s lives, and in the process, destabilizing the food system that all of us depend on.

Across the country, intensified immigration crackdowns are pushing workers into hiding. People are staying home rather than risk detention. Parents are weighing whether it’s safe to take their children to school. Farmworkers, food processors, delivery drivers, and food service workers are being forced to choose between survival and visibility.

Immigrants are essential to every step of how food moves in this country.

They plant and harvest crops. They process meat and produce. They transport food across regions. They cook and serve meals. When enforcement actions target farms, food facilities, or entire neighborhoods, the consequences ripple outward immediately: fields go understaffed, food rots before it’s harvested, supply chains strain, and prices rise. Families, especially those already navigating scarcity, are pushed closer to hunger.

A food system built on fear cannot feed people well.

And a just food system depends on more than abundance.

It depends on safety.

It depends on dignity.

It depends on sovereignty.

Here in Ypsilanti, this national climate is not abstract. Families are feeling it in their bodies. Schools have warned parents to take precautions amid reported ICE activity. That alone should stop us in our tracks. When fear follows children into classrooms, we are witnessing a profound failure of care.

At Growing Hope, we refuse to accept fear as the cost of feeding one another.

The Growing Hope Urban Farm and the Ypsilanti Farmers Market are built on the belief that everyone deserves a safe and welcoming place to gather, grow, and nourish one another. We affirm clearly and publicly that no person should be targeted, questioned, detained, or surveilled based on immigration status.

Over the past several months, we’ve been developing response plans for our markets, events, and shared spaces that center collective care. This includes clear protocols, staff and volunteer training, and alignment with partners who understand that food access and community safety are inseparable. Safety is not separate from justice.

If people are afraid to buy, sell, grow, or gather around food, then we are not talking about a functional food system; we are talking about harm dressed up as policy.

As we move through Black History Month, I am reminded that Black food history has always taught us this lesson: when systems fail us, we feed each other. From mutual aid kitchens to cooperative land ownership, from feeding children before school to organizing entire communities around food, our ancestors understood that food is both care and resilience.

This is the work in front of us now: to stand in solidarity across Black and immigrant communities, to reject policies that criminalize survival, and to build food systems rooted in dignity rather than disposability.

I carry this responsibility with humility.

I am here because others fed people when it was dangerous to do so.

I am here because food has always been one of our most powerful tools for care, resistance, and imagination.

And I am here because silence has never kept us safe.

In solidarity,

Julius

P.S. How you can show up right now: Stay informed. Interrupt misinformation when you hear it. Support organizations doing accompaniment, rapid response, and food access work for immigrant families. When you come to the Ypsilanti Farmers Market, help us uphold it as a space of care and protection. And if you’re able, donate or volunteer with local groups defending immigrant dignity, because a just food system requires all of us.

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Rooted Again: A National Farmers Market Week Reflection

By Julius Buzzard • August 1, 2026

Beloved community, As we enter the final weeks of summer and back into the rhythm of the school year, it’s impossible not to recognize how hard it’s been to breathe as of late (in every sense). A few short weeks ago, smoke drifted down from wildfires burning across Ontario and settled over Southeast Michigan with force. As air quality alerts stacked on top of heat advisories, everyone from youth to elders was advised to mask up or otherwise remain indoors. In the same stretch, Michigan’s cyclospora outbreak kept climbing past six thousand confirmed cases. Understandably, many have been left feeling paralyzed. Clean air and safe food are not amenities; they are the foundation on which we build food sovereignty. Right now, it feels like that foundation is beginning to crumble, and crumble beneath some more than others. The folks breathing the worst air and eating the least trustworthy food are disproportionately Black, brown, Indigenous, low-income, elderly, young, or some combination of all of it. This pattern is known as environmental racism, meaning the way pollution, contamination, and environmental harm land hardest on communities of color and low-income communities. Whether it’s a decision about a permit, protective rights, or a pipeline, this happens by design. Last month, for example, Michigan's environmental agency approved permits allowing Enbridge to build a new tunnel for the Line 5 pipeline under the Straits of Mackinac, locking in another 99 years of fossil fuel infrastructure running beneath the largest freshwater system on the planet. While this devalues, or even ignores, the long-term health of our climate, economies, and water (another foundational element to life), the environmental harm of this decision is just the tipping point. Construction threatens ground that includes Native American burial sites, and tribes are being handed what one Native American Rights Fund attorney representing Bay Mills Indian Community called an agonizing choice between digging up and recovering their own ancestors before bulldozers arrive, or leaving that work to the state once construction starts. That same attorney, David Gover, put it plainly: "What is more sacred than how we treat our dead?" The grief, rage, and anxiety showing up in our community as a result of these compounding factors is real, merited, and inextricably tied to what’s happening to the land, water, and air on which we, and our food, depend. But it’s not the end of the story. Behind Growing Hope's mission is a strongly rooted belief that communities deserve autonomy within the entirety of their food system. You cannot separate a just food system from a just relationship to place. The cure to systems that poison our air, contaminate our food chains, and desecrate sacred ground is hope that is deeply seeded in community. It's in building a local food system that celebrates the growers, land stewards, and makers that paint a portrait of a vibrant local food system. And that's what a farmers market is, when you get down to it. It's a supply chain you can see with your own eyes. It’s names you know and fields you can visit. It’s fresh produce that arrives from caring hands just moments away from home. It's food grown by people accountable to this community. And when we feel betrayed by the very air and food we need to survive, this is all more important than ever. That’s why I’m excited that this is reaching you right on the edge of National Farmers Market Week, August 2-8, formally proclaimed by the Ypsilanti City Council at their last meeting. Come join us in our weekly celebration of local food at the Ypsilanti Farmers Markets on Saturdays, 9a-1p, at the Ypsilanti Farmers MarketPlace (16 S. Washington St.) Underneath all of it (the smoke, the cyclospora headlines, the pipeline permits) is us. A community vying for a food system where we can gather, cook, and grow together without fear. See you at the market, Julius P.S. Even if you can’t join us to celebrate National Farmers Market Week on Saturday, August 8, you can share your thoughts and help us plan for the future (even get entered to win a great prize) by completing our annual market survey .

From Dream to Legacy

By Julius Buzzard • July 1, 2026

Introducing the growing hope accelerator kitchen!

Return of the Tuesday Market

By Julius Buzzard • June 1, 2026

Beloved community, June is alive in Ypsilanti, and so are we! The farm is buzzing with pollinators, heavy with the first fruits of the season, keeping the produce cart full, and tended by caring hands, sowing hope along with each seed. At the same time, the MarketPlace is filling back up with color and noise with the joy of neighbors who have looked forward to the market all winter. We have so much to celebrate this season! Namely, the Tuesday Farmers Market is back! Starting tomorrow (June 2), the Ypsilanti Farmers Market will run not only on Saturday mornings, but also every Tuesday from 3 to 7 pm, through August, right here at the Ypsilanti Farmers MarketPlace. That means every week we’ll have two opportunities to invest in our local food system while building the community care that makes a market special. This matters more than it might seem on the surface. Many community members have shared that while they love the Ypsilanti Farmers Market, want to support local farmers and makers, and believe in local food, Saturday mornings simply do not work for their lifestyles. Saturday mornings may be reserved for overtime shifts or soccer games, or to recover from a week that didn’t seem to give anything back. For some, they can only get the financial assistance or translation services needed to fully participate on a weekday. For many of our neighbors, Saturday mornings are simply not free. Access can only be actualized when every community member experiences it. It’s as much about time as it is about proximity. We've always said that the Ypsilanti Farmers Market is for everyone in our community, and the Tuesday market is our effort to live that out more fully. The Ypsilanti Farmers Market, in each step toward the future, is a step toward a living vision we have built together. Toward a vision of the Ypsilanti Farmers MarketPlace as a community food hub, an anchor in the life of our city and of our local food system. A place where neighbors come together, build community, and leave united; all while gathering around food. The Ypsilanti Farmers Market is not purely about simple transactions. It’s about practicing what it looks like for a community to feed itself. It nurtures spaces where farmers can move their harvest and where small businesses can grow. The Ypsilanti Farmers MarketPlace is fostering that mid-week run-in with a neighbor, reminding us that we are not alone. We are grateful to the farmers, vendors, and partners who said yes to this. And we are grateful to our entire market team, who make it possible week after week, with devotion and creativity that continues to humble me. This spring, our Teen Leadership Program launched our second Seed Library, located at the Ypsilanti Farmers MarketPlace, which is available to the community at every market. Because everyone deserves a chance to grow. Seeds hold within them the agricultural knowledge of generations, the food traditions of all of humankind. When we talk about seed sovereignty, we are not simply speaking about the practical reality of who controls the global seed supply (the four corporations that control 60% of the seed and pesticide supply). Rather, it goes a level deeper into the question of who and what gets to be remembered. "Farmers are literally archivists of the land." -Abena Offeh-Gyimah Seeds are stories. They are living reminders of all the ancestors who walked before us. When we save and share seeds, we are practicing reciprocity with Mother Earth, and with one another. The seed library that our teens built is just the beginning. Our hope is that it grows into a circular system . We dream of a future where the seed library at the farm and MarketPlace are filled with self-labeled packets of seeds saved from the harvest of our community. We dream of a food future that sits in the hands of the very community that tends it. This is seed rematriation in practice, and I’m excited to grow with you. In solidarity, Julius P.S. Your support makes this food system possible, whether it is financial, volunteer, or saving seeds; we’re in this together. Keep an eye out for future newsletters for a hands-on seed-saving workshop later this year.

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