Where Environmental and Food Justice Meet

Happy New Year!

I recently accepted the Environmental Justice Award from the Sierra Club. I was amazed at the accomplishments within our region as I listened to the stories of others in the program. It is an honor to participate in such a rich, diverse, and vibrant local community and to work alongside many other individuals and organizations as we collaborate to build systems of sovereignty as we interact with Mother Earth.

The food justice movement will fail without all of us on board.

At the same time, it would have been easy to feel out of place, given that so much of our work and advocacy centers on food justice and food sovereignty. It was a good reminder that food and environmental justice are inextricably connected. In fact, the food and environmental justice movements each emerged as critiques of environmentalism’s anti-black rhetoric and bend towards the elite class. Together, the food and environmental justice movements highlight and challenge harmful structures perpetuating inequality in our communities.

Earth was made for growing food.

When we live in harmony with Mother Earth, nothing is more true. There is so much Mother Earth has to teach us, and we are united through its fruit. Producing food is a central purpose of our planet, and food is at the center of human existence. It nourishes our bodies, brings us together, and ushers in peace and joy. We aim to help our community find this life-sustaining harmony with food and Mother Earth.

That is why we have to speak out with condemnation when we see instances in which food is being weaponized and politicized and actively damaging communities. For the past several months, this has been the reality for the people of Gaza and the West Bank. We stand in solidarity with the oppressed and the victims of historic injustice and power imbalance, particularly with the Palestinian people.

Imagine if these resources were poured into building harmony and peace with one another and Mother Earth through growing food. As we grow here in our community, we know we grow for one another.

We grow for sustenance.
We grow for nutrition.
We grow for pleasure.
We grow for peace.

Thank you for growing with us,

Julius

< 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