Nutrition and the Right to Thrive

Beloved community,

March is National Nutrition Month, and across the country, we’re told to read labels more closely, count nutrients more carefully, and “eat real foods.” But nutrition is not a trend cycle; it is a question of power.

I invite you to join me in curiosity and ask: Who has access to what’s being recommended? Who can afford the “real” food being celebrated? Who grows it, and who gets paid? Are we treating illness, or are we transforming the conditions that produce it?

Health outcomes matter, but health equity goes further.

Health equity asks why certain neighborhoods have higher rates of diabetes in the first place. It asks why fresh food feels exceptional in some zip codes and ordinary in others. It asks why farmers struggle to survive while healthcare systems expand.

If we do not address land access, procurement policy, and economic extraction, then “eat real” risks becoming a quiet moral judgment instead of a structural commitment.

Michigan once modeled real structural commitment through 10 Cents a Meal for Michigan's Kids & Farms; matching school dollars to buy Michigan-grown produce and making local food standard in cafeterias. It strengthened children’s health, stabilized farmers, and shifted institutional purchasing habits.

This year, the program was not funded. And as a result, students miss the chance to build lifelong food memories rooted close to home. And still, we are not retreating.

Together, we are building a foundation of generational health.

Generational health is the long game. It is the work of ensuring that today’s third grader doesn’t just eat a fresh apple; but grows up expecting apples from Michigan orchards in their cafeteria. It is ensuring that a teen doesn’t just volunteer at the market; but understands zoning laws, farm bills, and supply chains well enough to challenge them.

This is the foundation of our theory of change.

We build generational health by shaping habits early and reinforcing them often; through initiatives like our Teen Leadership Program, where young people gain the skills and critical lens to navigate and influence the food system; through field trips to our urban farm and incubator kitchen, where learning is rooted in soil; through Farm to School programming that normalizes local procurement; and through Power of Produce (POP) Club, where children practice agency by choosing fresh food for themselves.

This is how we shift from reactive nutrition work to regenerative nutrition culture.

We do this by pairing conversations about Food as Medicine, dietary guidelines, and eating real foods, with:

An insistence that farmers are part of the prescription.

Guidelines that align with affordability and access.

Understanding that real foods need to be reachable, culturally meaningful, and dignified.

Nutrition is not simply about what’s on a plate. It is about who has the right to thrive.

This National Nutrition Month, I invite you to see nutrition not as an individual burden, but as a collective project that treats fresh food not as charity, but as infrastructure. We are cultivating a community where children expect fresh produce, where farmers are stable and respected, and where health is inherited as legacy.

That is generational health.

And that is the future we are growing together.

In solidarity,

Julius

P.S. Check out the FoodCorps Policy Action Map or sign up for our Farm to School Newsletter if you’re interested in building generational health.

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Queen Mother Audley Moore & Reparations Through Land and Food

By Julius Buzzard • February 25, 2026

Long before reparations entered mainstream conversation, Queen Mother Audley Moore was clear: justice required land, resources, and self-determination; not symbolic gestures. A descendant of enslaved people, Moore spent decades organizing for reparations rooted in material reality. She understood that stolen labor was tied to stolen land, and that food insecurity was not accidental; it was engineered . Moore advocated for land redistribution, cooperative economics, and community-controlled food systems as necessary steps toward repair. Her vision aligns directly with modern food sovereignty movements: returning control of food, land, and labor to the people most harmed by their removal . This is not history; it is instruction. Growing Hope’s work exists within this continuum. From urban farming to food hubs, from youth leadership to market access, we are building the kinds of systems Moore demanded, systems that repair harm by restoring agency. Food sovereignty is reparations in practice. And the work is unfinished.

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 .

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