The local food system was not set up for emergencies. This realization was catalyzing for Julia Van Soelen Kim, a social scientist and food systems advisor for the University of California Cooperative Extension in Napa County, who saw the great abundance available yet no systems to get it to people in need.

“The event magnified and intensified the inequalities in food access and the abundance that our local food system could provide in emergencies,” Van Soelen Kim says.

In typical emergency response larger relief organizations—such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Red Cross, Salvation Army, and state entities—take charge of large-scale feeding. They will use food that might be locally or regionally available from larger chains, but not food sourced directly from area farmers—and there’s no set way for these farmers to get their food to people in their communities.

What’s more, when outside organizations without the proper connections try to start moving food from farms to food banks, it often doesn’t work, Van Soelen Kim says. “They’re just picking up the food and don’t know how the farmer is going to get paid,” she says. While there is a role for these large-scale feeding organizations, she says, “we just want to make sure that they have access to local foods.”

To try to improve the system, Van Soelen Kim created the North Coast Emergency Food System Partnership to connect emergency management and local food-system professionals. The goal of the partnership is to enable the distribution of locally produced food in the wake of disaster. For both fields, this represents a novel collaboration.

A Landscape Vulnerable to Climate Change

While the region is popular with tourists thanks to its coastal location, wineries, and redwoods, the North Coast is very rural. Aside from the communities just outside the Bay Area, the median household income is well below the state average.

Alongside the ever-present threat of earthquakes, the region is especially vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Fires are a worry not just during the hot, dry summers, but year-round, and the coastal landscape is prone to landslides during heavy rains.

Nationwide, climate disasters are increasingly forcing communities to deal with large-scale emergencies, like the floods of Hurricane Helene, the wildfires that ripped through Los Angeles, and the floods in Central Texas after intense rainfall from Tropical Storm Barry. In such emergencies, food distribution is a major concern, and the model that the partnership is developing could serve as a solution across the country.

Suzanne Grady, program director at Petaluma Bounty, a food aid program and emergency food hub, says developing a resilient local food system prior to emergencies helps local food find its way to people after disaster.

“It just seems that we have been set up to rely too heavily upon groups and agencies that come in, potentially flood the area with resources that may or may not be needed, and then leave sometimes just as quickly,” Grady says. “It actually interferes with the local recovery efforts.”

While these relief organizations are necessary for disaster response writ large, she says, if there’s a resilient food system in place, the incoming groups could tap into that local system already in operation.

Transforming Regional Food Systems to Prepare for Disaster

The majority of the $1.5 million in funding for the project comes from the USDA’s Regional Food Systems Partnership Program, and the rest consists of local grants and matching funds from regional organizations and community foundations. As of this writing, the USDA funding has remained intact, despite the administration’s shift in priorities.

In mid-August, in fact, Van Soelen Kim received news that the program received a no-cost extension from the USDA, meaning that instead of having to scale back or end their activities, they have one more year to carry out their work using what’s remaining of their existing funding.

Van Soelen Kim and her colleagues are taking full advantage if the extension by focusing on three goals: building a “community of practice” among emergency management and daily food-operations professionals to collaborate on emergency feeding plans; establishing the technical assistance needed for food distribution systems to pivot after disaster; and shifting local government policy to incorporate local food distribution as central to emergency plans.

Van Soelen Kim has seen almost immediate results from the community of practice goal in particular. Partnership members meet by virtual calls quarterly and in person annually. While 250 people are on the member list, typically around 75 people participate in each meeting. Together, they discuss topics around local food systems and disaster response and build relationships with each other.

“This North Coast Regional Partnership has opened the doors for a lot of relationships and networking that is invaluable to the development of this local group,” says Robert Sataua, the emergency food response coordinator for Food for People, Humboldt County’s food bank. “It’s not something that’s a metric that you can put on paper, but I think the momentum is there.”

Most of Humbolt County, which is rural and rugged outside the port city of Eureka, is susceptible to disasters like fires and winter storms. Local producers raise and harvest livestock, dairy, a diverse array of crops, and oysters, yet a 2019 U.C. Davis report shows that one in five Humboldt County residents lives in a low-income area with limited access to food, especially fresh food. During emergencies, disparate relief organizations worked in a vacuum and most food came from outside Humboldt County.

Sataua, networking with colleagues in other organizations through the partnership, helped develop a multi-agency feeding plan to supplement regional and community disaster response. In Humboldt County, the new plan lays out strategies and guidance that will minimize duplication, coordinate resources, and deliver food and water efficiently.

With this plan, food systems and emergency management folks get on the same page before disaster strikes. Coordinated preparation helps farmers sell their food in a disaster and residents to more easily find out where and how to access it.

‘When Something Happens, We Know Who to Call’

The task force—which involved multiple parties including the Office of Emergency Services, the Department of Health and Human Services, two county food banks, and tribal communities—created a Multi-Agency Disaster Feeding Plan (MADFP), and now meets monthly to coordinate and discuss emergency feeding efforts and ways to strengthen resilience.

The plan is more than a document, Mahan says. “It’s a community-built roadmap for action. Developed by local organizations and government partners working side by side, it has strengthened relationships, clarified roles, and prepared us to respond quickly in a crisis.”

The relationships that members are developing are key, she says. “When something happens, we know who to call, and we know how to communicate with them—we’ve already built the relationship. So, we’re seeing a lot of strength in that soft infrastructure of relationship building.”

One example is the relationship between the DNATL Food Council and the school district’s nutrition services director, Julie Bjorkstrand.

That relationship showed its strength during the Smith River Complex Fire in August 2023, when the food bank, along with many homes in the area, lost power. The fairgrounds that was serving as a shelter had a hard time to keeping up with the demand.

“[Bjorkstrand] really stepped up,” says Mahan, refrigerating all the food from the food bank at the school district kitchen—and then going beyond. “She actually created a team that cooked and fed everybody at the shelter—[using] the school kitchens that she uses to serve 1,800 students breakfast and lunch every day.”

Bjorkstrand’s nimble response shows there’s room in a local food system to respond to disaster. The school district’s nutrition services team, which is actively involved in the task force, has now integrated lessons from the Smith River Fire Complex into the plan and laid out how the school district can help after another disaster.

Establishing Food Hubs and Bottom-Up Infrastructure

Humboldt County volunteer Jennifer Bell helps pack Harvest Boxes in 2020 for distribution during the pandemic. The boxes are a creation of the North Coast Growers’ Association food hub. (Photo credit: Megan Kenney)

Many Humboldt County business leaders revealed in surveys that they found building local and regional food systems to be a clunky process even in blue-sky times, says Megan Kenney, director of cooperative distribution for the county’s North Coast Growers’ Association (NCGA). In surveys distributed to local businesses, including local restaurants, food trucks, and food vendors, “everyone really wanted more local food,” Kenney says. “There just wasn’t an easy way to get it.”

The 100-member growers’ association supported the county’s farmers by coordinating farmers’ markets—but it didn’t distribute food. Now, thanks to participation in the North Coast Emergency Partnership, the group offers a food hub and a multi-farm CSA, too.

Kenney credits the connections and ideas she developed in the partnership for the development of the Harvest Hub in 2020. To make it easy for food buyers like restaurants and grocery stores to buy local food, the hub created an online marketplace that mimics a traditional distribution system.

Farmers drop off their local harvests at the cold storage facility in the NCGA warehouse, a key component of the food hub. From there, hub vehicles deliver the food to customers.

Currently, the hub provides food for 34 school sites, 11 restaurants, and nine community organizations that include two food banks, four tribes, and two community centers.

Though the hub serves the county year round, it has already proven essential after disasters. During the 2021 Monument Fire, NCGA put together no-cook boxes with produce and locally made soap for evacuees and people without power. Following a 6.4 magnitude earthquake in December 2022 and during subsequent winter storms, the hub collected donations from farmers for bulk food distributions.

And during the Smith River Complex fires in August 2023, its members sent food to Crescent City in Del Norte County, proving that the Partnership not only fosters cross-sectoral collaboration, but cross-county support as well. On-site at the hub’s warehouse, they’ve helped to coordinate emergency supply storage.

Additionally, to get around blocked roads after disaster, NCGA—with help from a USDA Resilient Food Systems Infrastructure (RFSI) grant and California Jobs First grants—is planning to establish “cooler nodes,” food drop-off sites with solar-powered coolers, in isolated communities.

During regular times, the nodes can keep food at safe temperatures until hub employees make the rounds for pickup and redistribution. After a disaster, they can serve as lifelines, providing a place for farmers to drop food to be integrated into an emergency feeding operation.

Farmers would still get paid through the same networks, but the recipients of the food would be food pantries or emergency providers like the Red Cross. They could use the same system and codes for the coolers to access food without having to have extra staff on hand.

Daniel Aldrich, director of the Resilience Studies Program and co-director of the Global Resilience Institute at Northeastern University, has found time and again in his research that connections among local people are important to building resilient communities.

“These bottom-up social infrastructure spaces [such as a food hub or community garden] give us the space where we can have agency,” Aldrich says. “The social connection, social capital, always tries to build these ideas of knowledge, of collective action.”

Bringing Local, State, and National Efforts Together

The event brought in 75 attendees from all the counties in the partnership, representing organizations including the Redwood Empire Food Bank, the Salvation Army, the American Red Cross, and the California Department of Social Services Disaster Services. It even brought in state and national representatives from large-scale food distribution and disaster response groups. The important factor wasn’t just that these organizations attended; it’s that their participation allowed for personal introductions.

“All the representatives from these large feeding entities . . . expressed, ‘If you need us, pick up the phone and call us,’” says Van Soelen Kim. “That kind of open-door approach was great to see because before, no one knew even where the front door was, and now they have an actual person to call.”

These connections matter, says Aldrich, of the Global Resilience Institute. “What it often comes down to, in the network that you formed, is how much information and collective action can you accomplish? If you’re alone, if you’re isolated, if you’re not engaged with other people, it’s much harder.”

Resilience, he emphasizes, is about human-to-human interaction, which the Partnership provides.

While the group has not replicated its work in other communities quite yet, organizers have started to disseminate information about the project at scholarly conferences and hope to begin training practitioners in other regions, Van Soelen Kim says.

With an upheaval in federal emergency assistance funding, Aldrich believes that communities need to step up for themselves. Traditionally, he says, we think about disaster response as having two pillars: government assistance provided by FEMA and the state, and insurance provided by the market.

“But the reality is what we see right now—both in California and with the ongoing mess in D.C.—is, it is really a triangle, not two pillars. The third part is community. What it often comes down to, in the network that you formed, is how much information and collective action can you accomplish?”

As the North Coast heads into the driest parts of the season and the Tubbs Fire’s eighth anniversary, Van Soelen Kim says the members of the North Coast Emergency Food System are increasingly appreciative of their group’s innovative approach.

“With time, we’ve found what we’re doing here on the North Coast is really special,” she says. “New people keep showing up to the conversation [and] we continue learning together about how layered and complex the emergency food system is. By collaborating in this way, we’re creating something unique that isn’t being done elsewhere.”

The post Disasters Block Local Food Access. One Groundbreaking Group Has a Solution. appeared first on Civil Eats.

In the process, his operation became a model for treating animals and the land well while building financial, community, and environmental resilience across America’s rural landscape. Along the way, he hasn’t shied away from positioning his approach as a means to take back power from global meatpackers and end harms caused by industrial food production.

It’s the kind of farming—and thinking—that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., now the Secretary of Health and Human Services, has long celebrated as a health and environmental advocate.

So while Harris, who wears a tan cowboy hat and speaks with a soothing Southern drawl, says he’s generally “apolitical,” lately, he’s been engaging in D.C. discourse. That’s because he is “shocked and pleased at how much attention my kind of farming is getting.”

While Kennedy was still running his own campaign for president last year, his running mate, Nicole Shanahan, visited White Oak Pastures. A year later, with Kennedy a member of President Trump’s cabinet, Harris received an invitation to the White House for the release of the administration’s first Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission report.

“I’m not saying I was the only farmer there, but I was the only one there that looked like a farmer,” he said. On Instagram, White Oak Pastures posted a photo of Harris in his cowboy hat with his two daughters at the event, plus a photo of Trump and Kennedy. Comments on the photos were heated.

As everyone awaits the official release of the second MAHA Commission report, expected in early September, those remarks point to a divide that exists among farmers who typically agree on things like increasing organic matter, reducing pesticide use, and diversifying crops.

Like Harris, some farmers are thrilled to hear Kennedy using the word “regenerative” in the halls of power and calling out corporate influence on the food system, and are optimistic that real change is coming. Others question whether Kennedy will walk the walk, given his place in the Trump administration, which has been rolling back environmental protections, supporting increased taxpayer funding for chemical-dependent, commodity agriculture, and cutting support for the small, regenerative farms that the MAHA movement claims to support.

They also say the administration’s aggressive pushback on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives is hurting the young farmers who disproportionately run regenerative farms. The now-delayed (and recently leaked) second report from RFK’s MAHA Commission seems to confirm those concerns.

“We have had a major setback,” said Kate Mendenhall, an Iowa farmer who is also the director of the Organic Farmers Association, describing what organic and regenerative farmers have experienced since the Trump administration took over.

Mendenhall said many farmers fell behind this season because of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) funding freezes and are now reluctant to expand or invest in new practices. Many have also lost technical support due to program cancellations and staff reductions.

“I don’t think we can see the full impact now, but maybe next season we’ll see what comes forward or what we’re lacking this fall and winter,” she said. “I’m really delighted to see more conversation around helping people get access to more healthy food. We need that. And we also need to help farmers with the infrastructure steps they need to make it happen.”

Will Harris of White Oak Pastures.

A Resounding Message from MAHA

“Now all this MAHA talk makes me think that maybe, again, I might be an early innovator,” he said. “And I like that better.”

In other words, Kennedy’s attention feels like overdue recognition for some farmers who have been on the agricultural fringe for a long time.

While the Biden administration made some of the largest investments in history in paying farmers to implement conservation practices, rebuilding regional meat processing infrastructure, and shoring up the local supply chains that small, regenerative farms sell into, it also maintained the overall status quo and didn’t talk about transformation as loudly or as often as Kennedy does.

Harris said he heard talk of those investments but never saw impacts on the ground. What he remembers about the Climate-Smart Commodities Program, a signature initiative of Biden’s USDA, is not that it sent millions of dollars to small, regenerative farms through organizations like Pasa and Working Landscapes North Carolina, but that it directed huge sums of money to Tyson and other commodity ag giants.

Now, the thing that stands out to him about the current USDA is not that its actions seem to place the administration firmly on the side of Big Ag, but that Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins has repeatedly showcased her working relationship with Kennedy.

“I haven’t seen many programs implemented so far, but it’s still very early on,” Harris said. “I might get disappointed again, but the promise is better than it’s ever been in my lifetime.”

Steve Groff is similarly optimistic.

“The MAHA movement is a dream come true for me, because before I even heard the term, I was doing it,” said Groff, a third-generation farmer in southern Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, where he farms 200 acres with his son. “We need to eat less junk food and more healthy food, and I think every American agrees that there’s just too much chronic disease. Something’s going on here. We have an opportunity here that is just unbelievable.”

Groff plants hemp on most of his land; he used to process the crop into CBD oil but is now getting into fiber production for textiles and building materials. He also grows heirloom tomatoes, squash, and pumpkins that he sells to Whole Foods. His farm is certified regenerative by Regenified, which requires farmers to implement certain soil health practices but is not organic, since it does allow the use of pesticides and synthetic fertilizers.

To that end, his fields have been 100 percent no-till since 1996, and he regularly plants cover crops. Because of his attention to soil health and ecosystems, he said, he’s been able to reduce the amount of chemical herbicides and fertilizers he uses over time.

“It’s mimicking nature as much as we can to grow food,” he said. (No-till farming and using cover crops also often rely heavily on pesticides, especially glyphosate, which many in the MAHA movement are opposed to and Kennedy has been critical of in the past.)

Groff said he’s always been a conservative but that he didn’t always fully trust Trump. When Trump joined forces with Kennedy, however, that started to change.

As an example of how farmers might begin to shift to more regenerative practices, he offers the example of how farmers in Maryland and Pennsylvania in the 1980s were initially resistant to no-till farming and planting cover crops, but increasingly adopted both as awareness grew about how the practices could reduce pollution into the Chesapeake Bay.

“In my area right here, 70 percent of the land is no-till and cover crops. Now, they don’t do it for the Chesapeake Bay, they do it because it’s a better way to farm,” he said. “And the same practices that we started to do for the sake of the Bay now are the same practices to grow healthier food.”

USDA Cuts to Funding

At TendWell Farm in western North Carolina, farmer Steven Beltram grows leafy greens, tomatoes, peppers, and other vegetables across several hundred acres to sell to grocery stores and other commercial distributors.  Not only is the farm certified organic, it’s Real Organic Project certified, adding an extra layer of regenerative cred.

“We really focus on trying to build and restore and make the soil better year over year,” Beltram said.

Hit hard by Hurricane Helene last year, TendWell was grateful to be participating in a USDA initiative called the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Program that offered funding to move fresh produce from small farms directly into food banks.

The contract was for about $5,000 a week, a significant amount for a business of their size. It was especially beneficial, he said, because unlike with grocers who demand a certain amount of kale or lettuce regardless of how the crops turn out, TendWell could send the food banks surplus produce, thereby reducing waste.

“That was a good thing for us, and that was a good thing for our neighbors,” he said. “Giving out local produce to the community—I can’t see how anyone could be opposed to that.”

But in March, the USDA canceled $1 billion that had been allocated to the program and another similar program that connected small farms to schools, ending that source of income for TendWell. At the time, Rollins said repeatedly that she was ending it because it was a COVID-era program and states still had plenty of money left to spend.

At the same time, Rollins’ USDA has also cancelled 2025 funding for the Patrick Leahy Farm to School Program, ended the Regional Food Business Centers program, and revised the Climate-Smart Commodities Program in a way that meant many small, regenerative farms and the organizations that support them have borne the brunt of the impacts.

“It’s interesting to see that the USDA is cutting funding for programs like [Local Food Purchase Assistance] while they’re increasing payments for commodity crop production, and of course all that commodity crop production is based on the use of glyphosate,” Beltram said, referencing the $67 billion bump that commodity growers got in the recent One Big Beautiful Bill. “It really feels like a divided administration. The USDA is for the most part implementing practices that are the exact opposite of the goals of the MAHA movement.”

At the Organic Farmers Association, Mendenhall said she also sees staffing cuts at the Natural Resources Conservation Services (NRCS) as potentially undermining MAHA agricultural goals, since NRCS employees in local offices can act as guides for farmers looking to improve their grazing practices to produce grass-fed beef or to get the help they need to reduce chemical use.

“They’ve lost a lot of local technical expertise at NRCS in particular,” she said.

At the same time, cuts to other programs mean agriculture support organizations that provide similar help have also let staff go. “That type of technical assistance that farmers rely on when they’re scaling up or expanding markets has also been lost,” she said.

What Mendenhall would like to see in the MAHA policy recommendations is a reinvestment in helping farmers scale up organic production and enter new markets like school food, hospitals, and the institutional markets that open new doors to wholesale.

“That is the avenue forward, and that’s a great way to increase consumption of organic food, but farmers can’t just do it,” she said. “They need support in order to scale up, and then they’ll be able to continue to do it, but we have to invest in the supply chain issues that are creating a barrier for them to doing that on their own.”

USDA Ends Support for Young Regenerative Farmers

Customers at the farmers’ market have already reported they were losing benefits that allow them to buy more healthy food from local farms using their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, Nelson said. She’s also seen a lot of her farmer friends lose jobs with support organizations, including at Pasa and at the National Young Farmers Coalition (NYFC), where she is an associate field director.

“It’s so powerful to know that you can grow food and preserve a future, so that keeps me going all the time, but I do have worries,” she said. “I really want to have hope that the administration will show how they can support smaller farms. It has been interesting to watch freezes happen and unfreezes happen and nothing feels totally certain or set in stone. Every day is wildly different.”

Things have been particularly fraught for young farmers who don’t fit the stereotype of the brawny white male American farmer. In its latest survey, in 2022, NYFC received responses from more than 10,000 young farmers across the country.

“Through that data, we learned that there are way more farmers of color who are young and way more queer farmers that the USDA data doesn’t reflect,” Nelson said. Eighty-six percent of the young farmers surveyed classified their approach as regenerative farming.

Biden’s USDA encouraged organizations and farmers applying for grants to emphasize whether they were a part of or serving underserved groups, such as BIPOC, women, or LGBTQ farmers. Now, as the USDA goes through grant contracts rooting out DEI initiatives, those farmers and organizations are the ones seeing their grant contracts cancelled.

To push back on that issue, NYFC launched a social media campaign last month dubbed #WeAreAmericanFarmers, calling on USDA to honor its contracts, given Rollins’ repeated statements around supporting American farmers.

“This campaign is to underscore farmers who are immigrants, farmers who are not white, farmers who are queer are all American farmers as well,” Nelson said. “It’s a call for representation and to call out that kind of dangerous language around who gets access to USDA resources or not and who feels like they belong.”

Pesticides, Climate Change, and Ecosystems: MAHA vs. EPA and USDA

“We’re definitely experiencing a change in climate here, and it’s making it more challenging to farm, even aside from just a massive disaster that takes out all the infrastructure,” said TendWell Farm’s Beltram, who still hasn’t received disaster assistance after Hurricane Helene destroyed roads, tractors, box trucks, and more at multiple farm locations and left his team to spend the entire winter cleaning debris out of fields.

On the environmental side, the MAHA movement behind Kennedy has been more vocal about its desire to see more regulation of pesticides linked to health and environmental harm, especially glyphosate, atrazine, and neonicotinoids. Prior to his appointment, Kennedy railed against agricultural chemicals.

However, at a press conference during the recent Great American Farmers’ Market, in response to a question about whether the second MAHA report would include recommendations to restrict the use of some chemicals, he deferred to Rollins.

“There is no question that the use of crop protection tools remains one of the most important tools, if not the most important, to our farmers to thrive and to remain prosperous,” Rollins said, adding that Kennedy has met with 130 farmer and rancher groups. “I’ve also heard him say, ‘We can’t compromise our farmers and their ability to feed and fuel and clothe the world.’ I feel very confident that his and our commitment to make sure farmers are at the table remains paramount, and that the report will reflect that.” Asked to weigh in, Kennedy said he had nothing to add.

Recently, a legislative rider has also gained steam among Republicans in Congress that would help shield Bayer and other pesticide companies from lawsuits claiming their products cause health harms.

White Oak Pasture’s Harris has spoken out about this kind of “pesticide immunity” bill, a version of which passed this year in his state of Georgia. While he acknowledges some worry about the impacts of climate change, he’s especially concerned about the ecosystem collapse caused by pesticide use and other factors.

“I think one of the things we got wrong is this thing of killing the pest,” he said. “I believe that every creature—plant, animal, or microbe—that lives in and is indigenous to an ecosystem has a role in that ecosystem,” he said. “I think we’re not smart enough to know what it is [for every creature]. And the fact that we have driven and are driving so many species of plants and animals and microbes into extinction or near extinction is worrying to me.”

Does he think, then, that a successful MAHA policy plan for regenerative agriculture needs to address that fact? “Absolutely,” he said. Like many others, he’s waiting to see what happens next.

Politico just published a draft version of the MAHA Commission’s policy recommendations, which are currently being reviewed by the White House and could change significantly before being finalized.

The last section of the report is titled “Soil Health and Stewardship of the Land.”  But not one of the four bullet points in the section includes concrete policy steps or positions.

For now, it seems as though not even the MAHA Commission will provide clarity any time soon about the administration’s plans for regenerative farming.

“We don’t know what the program is yet,” Harris said. “Powerful people have been instructed to come up with a program, so that’s promising.”

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https://civileats.com/2025/08/18/refugee-farm-programs-harmed-by-federal-cuts/ https://civileats.com/2025/08/18/refugee-farm-programs-harmed-by-federal-cuts/#respond Mon, 18 Aug 2025 08:01:59 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=68127 “This land was barren, a playground for jackrabbits and tumbleweeds,” said Khatiwoda, a seasoned farmer with earth-worn hands. “Now, the farm is a living place.” Khatiwoda is part of the Sacramento region’s Nepali-speaking Bhutanese community. After emigrating to the U.S. from a refugee camp in Nepal, he worked as a medical interpreter, often translating for […]

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On a cool morning in early June, Ram Khatiwoda, the farm coordinator at the New Roots farm in West Sacramento, California, took a visitor through the garden plots on a strip of land sandwiched between a quiet residential street and the Sacramento River. Fat onion bulbs peeked through the soil, and the scent of strawberries drifted on the air. Gardeners mended trellises, weeded rows of okra, and washed and packed produce to send to a local farmers market.

“This land was barren, a playground for jackrabbits and tumbleweeds,” said Khatiwoda, a seasoned farmer with earth-worn hands. “Now, the farm is a living place.”

Khatiwoda is part of the Sacramento region’s Nepali-speaking Bhutanese community. After emigrating to the U.S. from a refugee camp in Nepal, he worked as a medical interpreter, often translating for immigrants whose ailments, he said, stemmed in part from poor diets. Resolved to grow their own food, Khatiwoda and other refugees in Sacramento founded the 5-acre farm in 2016 with support from the International Rescue Committee (IRC), a refugee resettlement organization.

Since then, the New Roots farm has evolved to serve refugees from around the world. The farm helps people form friendships, Khatiwoda said, while also giving them the chance to grow fruits, vegetables, and herbs for their families and for sale at farm stands, markets, and grocery stores.

“It gave us a way to involve the elderly population and children,” Khatiwoda said, “and to translate our time into food that contributes to the health and well-being of the greater community.”

This farm is just one of many that serve refugees. Over the past three decades, around 50 of them have sprung up across the country, according to Hugh Joseph, founder of the nation’s first refugee incubator farm, the New Entry Sustainable Farming Project, based in Beverly, Massachusetts.

“It gave us a way to involve the elderly population and children, and to translate our time into food that contributes to the health and well-being of the greater community.”

IRC’s New Roots program operates 13 farms in nine states. Last year, those farms enabled more than 1,700 people to grow $3.3 million worth of fruits and vegetables, with roughly $500,000 in produce distributed to low-income community members, according to an IRC impact report.

But refugee incubator farms face daunting challenges. The Trump administration’s termination of refugee resettlement support and its cancellation of many U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) grants for small farmers jeopardize the primary funding sources for most of the farms. The grants pay for staff. They also pay for infrastructure—like a greenhouse at the West Sacramento farm that has enabled farmers to grow crops from seeds they’ve saved, minimizing planting costs, as well as a walk-in cooler that helps the farm send more produce to local markets.

The elimination of federal grants could “threaten the survival of a very large number of the incubators,” said Joseph, who is also director of the Institute for Social and Economic Development Solutions, which helps refugee incubator farms with education and career training, also funded by grants.

Many farms have already been forced to lay off staff this year and scale down their programs. At one farm, gardeners no longer have the transportation assistance some relied on to get from their homes to the site. At another, farmers worry they may lose the staff who helped them sell to markets. Khatiwoda, for years a constant presence at New Roots, had his hours reduced from full time to part time, as did three other IRC staff at the West Sacramento farm.

“It’s not a good time,” he said.

Ram Khatiwoda holds freshly picked strawberries at New Roots farm, where refugees grow fruit, vegetables, and herbs. (Photo credit: Caleb Hampton)

Funding Cuts From All Sides

In May, Catholic Charities, which together with the nonprofit Cultivate Kansas City has run a refugee incubator farm in that city for 17 years, announced it will end its staffing and financial support for the program in October. The decision came after the Trump administration eliminated funding for refugee resettlement services provided by Catholic Charities, forcing the charity network to lay off many of its Migration and Refugee Services staff nationwide.

Catholic Charities also cited the abrupt revocation of a USDA grant as a factor in its decision. The $250,000 grant aimed to expand sales opportunities for refugee and immigrant farmers in Kansas City by piloting winter farmers’ markets, fostering new partnerships, and training farmers to develop value-added products by processing and packaging the food they grow.

“This grant was determined to be out of alignment with priorities regarding diversity, equity, and inclusion,” a USDA spokesperson said in a statement.

Cultivate Kansas City will continue running the farm (also called New Roots, though not affiliated with IRC), but it will likely be forced to scale down the program, especially the market access component long provided by Catholic Charities staff, who connected refugees with opportunities to sell their produce at farmers’ markets and through community-supported agriculture (CSA).

The news left farmers in the program “extremely concerned that they will not be able to sell the produce they’re growing,” Cultivate KC Executive Director Brien Darby said. “There’s clearly some trust that’s been broken.”

In Anchorage, Alaska, the Fresh International Gardens cooperative and the Grow North incubator farm, both run by a Catholic Social Services program called Refugee Assistance and Immigration Services (RAIS), have also been affected. This year, a $300,000 USDA grant was not renewed, and the termination of refugee resettlement funds caused key vacancies at the farm programs.

In recent years, the garden co-op and incubator farm have served refugees from Ukraine and the Democratic Republic of Congo, as well as Afghans who worked with the U.S. military before fleeing Afghanistan in 2021. “We have experienced drastic funding cuts that have resulted in staff losses,” said Keenan Plate, refugee enterprise and agriculture program director at RAIS. “We anticipate lower revenue this year because we have less staff.”

“We have experienced drastic funding cuts that have resulted in staff losses. We anticipate lower revenue this year because we have less staff.”

The Trump administration’s termination of USDA programs such as Local Food Purchase Assistance, which gave food banks money to buy fresh produce from local farms, and its indefinite pause of the similar farm to school program, has impacted many small farms, including refugee incubator farms. The two grant programs were “instrumental in supporting the farmers we work with,” said Jennifer Hashley, director of the New Entry project in Beverly.

New Entry, founded in 1998, receives about 70 percent of its funding from federal grants, Hashley said, most of which pays for staffing. “We have to have a minimum number of staff to operate,” she said. Without new funding streams, she added, the farm “could be in trouble for the future.”

Aside from grants already terminated by the Trump administration, a major concern for refugee incubator farms is that the USDA has not requested applications for dozens of other grants—including some for beginning farmers and farmers from underserved populations—for the coming fiscal year. “Those are the bread-and-butter support for a lot of the refugee incubators,” Joseph said.

Typically, the application window would have opened several months ago. The Office of Refugee Resettlement has similarly not sent out application requests for an agriculture grant that provides $100,000 per year to many of the incubator farms. As the September deadline for the federal agencies to award grants draws nearer, program directors worry those funds have vanished, too.

“It’s a tense time,” said Plate, the RAIS director in Anchorage. The government’s slashing of agriculture grants and support for refugees, he said, has left all refugee farm programs “wondering how they can continue.”

Program directors said they are working to diversify their funding sources, primarily by pursuing state grants and philanthropic donations. However, federal grants are typically larger and can last multiple years, Hashley said, so they are “difficult to replace easily or quickly.”

As this article goes to publication, many of the federal grants that refugee incubator farms rely on remain under review amid an ongoing purge of federal initiatives that serve marginalized populations. “USDA continues to weed out DEI from our programs as we continue our review of the entire department,” the agency said last month in a press release. A USDA spokesperson said in a statement that the department was “working diligently to ensure all funds can be obligated by the end of the fiscal year.”

Do Refugees Compromise Resources?

The Trump administration has framed its suspension of refugee admissions and support services as an effort to preserve scarce resources for U.S. citizens. “The United States lacks the ability to absorb large numbers of migrants, and in particular, refugees, into its communities in a manner that does not compromise the availability of resources for Americans,” President Donald Trump said in his January executive order suspending refugee admissions.

However, those running the refugee incubator farms see them as an example of refugees’ entrepreneurial spirit and their positive contributions to their communities.

In 2010, refugees from Burundi helped start the Global Greens program, administered by Lutheran Services in Iowa. The goal was to provide an outlet for refugees unable to meet the physical demands of meatpacking plants, where many Burundians who resettled in Iowa found work.

“It gives them something really positive to do,” said Firmin Ntakimazi, community resource navigator at Global Greens, which is based in Des Moines. (The program relies on federal grants—and, so far, has not been significantly impacted.)

“These farmers are very important to the community. They’re part of the future generation of farmers in this country, and they should be recognized as such.”

Today, Global Greens operates a community gardening program with around 300 participants, as well as a four-year training program that has enabled more than a dozen graduates to begin farming for a living. Ntakimazi, who helped start the farm, said people drive from across the country to fill vans with Global Greens’ cassava leaves and African eggplant, which stock home freezers and specialty grocery stores from New York to Arizona—enriching and enlivening restaurant and home cooking alike.

In West Sacramento, refugees turned a dusty lot into “an oasis,” Khatiwoda said, providing fresh produce to local schools and grocery stores, as well as to community members through farmers’ markets and a CSA box. Last year, more than half the fruits and vegetables sold through New Roots’ programs across the country were bought by low-income residents using food benefits.

In Kansas City, each of the metropolitan area’s 23 farmers’ markets has at least one farmer who either participates in or graduated from the local refugee incubator farm.

To a person, program directors interviewed for this article said that if funding cuts force these farms to scale back further or to shut down altogether, refugees won’t be the only ones affected.

“These farmers are very important to the community,” Hashley said. “They’re part of the future generation of farmers in this country, and they should be recognized as such.”

This story was updated to correct the location of the New Entry Sustainable Farming Project, which is headquartered in Beverly, Massachusetts.

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]]> https://civileats.com/2025/08/18/refugee-farm-programs-harmed-by-federal-cuts/feed/ 0 https://civileats.com/2025/08/13/louisiana-shrimpers-fight-to-save-their-industry/ https://civileats.com/2025/08/13/louisiana-shrimpers-fight-to-save-their-industry/#comments Wed, 13 Aug 2025 08:01:09 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=67338 Louisiana Shrimpers Fight to Save Their Industry Cheap imported shrimp, environmental degradation, and rising fuel costs are collapsing the seafood economy in the Mississippi Delta. Locals say government intervention and consumer support could change that. Enter keywords

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Louisiana Shrimpers Fight to Save Their Industry

Cheap imported shrimp, environmental degradation, and rising fuel costs are collapsing the seafood economy in the Mississippi Delta. Locals say government intervention and consumer support could change that.

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]]> https://civileats.com/2025/08/13/louisiana-shrimpers-fight-to-save-their-industry/feed/ 3 https://civileats.com/2025/07/30/op-ed-we-need-a-food-bill-of-rights/ https://civileats.com/2025/07/30/op-ed-we-need-a-food-bill-of-rights/#comments Wed, 30 Jul 2025 08:00:42 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=66391 And yet in Oklahoma, where my roots run deep, too many people are hungry, with 15.4 percent of residents facing food insecurity compared with a national average of 12.2 percent. The state’s food landscape is marked by widespread food insecurity, limited grocery stores—especially in rural and low-income communities—and a growing dependence on dollar stores and […]

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Oklahoma sits at the center of the U.S. wheat belt, exporting grain across the world and supplying flour that fills pantries nationwide. It is a major pork producer and also part of America’s cattle corridor, ranking second in cow-calf operations that support the country’s beef supply. The state grows significant amounts of corn, soybeans, and sorghum as well. In short, Oklahoma is a powerhouse of food production.

And yet in Oklahoma, where my roots run deep, too many people are hungry, with 15.4 percent of residents facing food insecurity compared with a national average of 12.2 percent. The state’s food landscape is marked by widespread food insecurity, limited grocery stores—especially in rural and low-income communities—and a growing dependence on dollar stores and food banks. Access to healthy food remains underfunded and undervalued.

Despite the fact that Oklahoma consistently ranks among the top 10 states for food insecurity, the political will to invest in equitable food systems is on life support. While Oklahoma lawmakers have enacted stricter regulations and oversight for the cannabis industry in recent years, they have not shown the same urgency or coordinated investment when it comes to strengthening the state’s food system. For example, for every food-related legislative bill, there are five for cannabis.

Tambra Stevenson at Oklahoma’s state capitol, in Oklahoma City. 
(Photo credit: Photo_by_Wheelz)

By contrast, in my current home of Washington, D.C.—a 68-square-mile district without vast swaths of farmland or a state department of agriculture—only 10.6 percent of District residents face food insecurity.

In D.C., food justice has a seat at the policy table through ever-growing, supportive infrastructure, including the D.C. Food Policy Council, which adopted the “right to food” as a policy priority around 2022.

Additionally, residents fight for their food rights. In 2024, for instance, they pushed back against Mayor Muriel Bowser’s decision to withhold a 10 percent Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefit increase approved by the D.C. Council, the legislative branch of D.C.’s local government. Under mounting pressure—including public demonstrations and potential lawsuits by Legal Aid D.C.—the mayor reversed course and agreed to implement the benefit boost.

Oklahoma and D.C. offer a tale of two plates: one undernourished by misguided politics but piled high with possibility, the other well fed through civic engagement and equitable governance (though there is, of course, room for improvement). The difference between the two isn’t land or resources—it’s participation, the heart of democracy.

I believe we need to equalize these two plates by pushing for food democracy in places where it has eroded. All people, not just corporations or disconnected policymakers, should have the power and agency to shape what’s grown, what’s eaten, and how we are nourished. We, the people, need to reclaim our food freedom and build food systems rooted in local economics, health, sustainability, justice, and belonging.

Crumbling Community Power in the Heartland

I was born and raised in Oklahoma, in the heartland of the U.S., to a family with deep agricultural roots. After emancipation from slavery in Texas, my great-great-grandfather Jiles Burkhalter and his wife Delia Lola “Delie” owned  one of 13,209 farms operated by African Americans in Oklahoma. With more than 800 acres in McIntosh County, the Burkhalters grew food and raised cattle for themselves and the community, according to my 98-year-old grandmother, Ruby (Burkhalter) Tolliver, a retired nurse in Oklahoma City.

In the 1960s, however, the U.S. government authorized the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to construct Lake Eufaula, one of the largest man-made lakes in the country, in the southeastern part of the state. The project flooded over 105,000 acres, displacing thousands of Indigenous and African American families including my own, stripping them not only of acreage but also of agency.

“All people, not just corporations or disconnected policymakers, should have the power and agency to shape what’s grown, what’s eaten, and how we are nourished.”

Big agriculture and corporate lobbyists filled the vacuum, pushing policies that prioritized profit over people. Over time, as community institutions lost funding , so too did the platforms for everyday people to shape their food future—replaced instead by a top-down system that rewarded consolidation and disconnection. In the city of Checotah, where my cousin Leonard Hill sells the produce he grows at a nearby farm, only 1,212 out of 12,650 residents voted in the May 2025 elections. That’s less than 9 percent. That’s not apathy; it’s a sign that people don’t feel they have power. In some D.C. wards, more than 30 percent of residents show up to the polls.

Because of its diminished civic infrastructure and a supermajority of lawmakers aligned with corporate interests, Oklahoma is ground zero for Project 2025—a test site for policies that aim to shrink the public safety net, dismantle food programs, and silence local voices. What’s happening here isn’t accidental; it’s strategic. Oklahoma serves as the canary in the coal mine—a warning sign for the nation. While places like D.C. retain its SNAP increase due to organized networks of nonprofits, activists, and local leaders who push back, Oklahoma lacks the protective layers like the civic networks that once thrived.

The state’s rapid policy shifts are not just harming its own people—they’re laying the groundwork for what could happen across the country if communities don’t organize, speak up, and reclaim power over their food and futures.

Without a sustained structure for public governance, there’s no consistent forum to bring people together to coordinate strategies—and Oklahoma communities have little defense against threats to local and regional food systems. The unchallenged arrival of big box retailers like Walmart, for instance, has led to the closure of local grocers and reduced community control over the food system.

Inside the greenhouse at 3L Farms, Rentiesville, Oklahoma. (Photo credit: Leonard Hill)

In the absence of citizen-powered safeguards, Oklahoma is particularly vulnerable to state and federal threats to food security. In June, Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt was among the 13 Republican governors who opted out of participating in the federal summer nutrition program.

This, in a state where one in four children are hungry. In addition to missing out on $120 per child during the summer, leaving our kids without vital nutrition, the local food retailers that accept SNAP/EBT suffer—because every SNAP dollar spent can generate nearly $2 in local economic activity.

The federal government’s cuts to social safety nets over the last six months have left Oklahoma especially at risk as well. In February, the Trump administration weakened local food supply chains by cutting the USDA’s Regional Food System Partnerships program, which connected farmers to schools and food banks.

Then, on July 4th, Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, substantially cutting funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and other nutrition programs that feed and educate our communities in need. Also this month, the administration terminated the Regional Food Business Centers program, leaving farmers without the critical infrastructure they need to grow and distribute food locally.

In states with stronger food democracy, where food policy councils, local leadership, and civic engagement are in place, communities are better equipped to resist and adapt to these cuts. But in Oklahoma, where civic infrastructure has been deliberately weakened, these changes will hit hard.

Despite the many challenges, Oklahoma is full of food freedom fighters—farmers, tribal leaders, and advocates—who are building pathways to reclaim power from the soil up. My cousin Leonard is one of them.

In Rentiesville, Leonard runs a teaching operation called 3L Farms, named after him, his wife Latitia, and their daughter Londyn, where he grows tomatoes, okra, peppers, squash, and cucumbers along with sunflowers and zinnias.

“Oklahoma is ground zero for Project 2025—a test site for policies that aim to shrink the public safety net, dismantle food programs, and silence local voices.”

Oklahoma is home to more than 18,200 Native-run farms. In partnership with Creek and Cherokee Nations, Leonard supplies farm-fresh produce to food banks and schools across the state, helping to fill the gaps left by state and federal retrenchment.

A father himself, Leonard built relationships with the local Heart Start programs and schools to deliver vegetables to families. And he’s transforming an old school into a community food hub for youth to grow, cook, and preserve what they harvest. His vision includes partnering with healthcare providers for food-as-medicine initiatives by providing them with local produce.

But producers and providers like Leonard, who are building power from the ground up, are the underdogs—and they can’t transform the system by themselves. They need the support of the people, partners, press, and policymakers to scale their impact and sustain their efforts. Still, they are showing that food democracy is not only possible—it’s already in motion. It just needs more hands and hearts behind it.

Leonard Hill of 3L Farms with Rachel Kretchmar of OKC Food Hub at the Oklahoma Local Agriculture Collaborative Conference in January. (Photo credit: Leonard Hill)

Food Democracy in D.C.

While Congress sets the broad rules of the game, passing legislation like the Farm Bill, it is local food policy councils that give everyday people a structured, sustained voice in shaping food policy that reflects community needs.

As a former member of the D.C. Food Policy Council, I saw firsthand the benefit of centering community voices in making food-system decisions. During my nine years on the council, I co-chaired the Nutrition and Health Working Group (now called the Health and Nutrition Education working group), where we worked to ensure the nutrition and healthcare sectors were fully recognized as part of the local food economy.

We convened public forums, set policy priorities, and developed reports that advised the mayor and the food policy director. We collaborated across agencies to assess the feasibility of these policies—not just in theory, but through real budgets, procurement rules, and program design.

Londyn, daughter of Latitia and Leonard Hill, at her family farm, 3L Farms in Rentiesville, Oklahoma. (Photo credit: Leonard Hill)

As a result, D.C. leads the nation in implementing innovative food-as-medicine programs like Produce Rx and medically tailored meals covered under Medicaid. Providing healthy food prescriptions to low-income residents, these programs reduce diet-related disease, drive revenue to local farmers and food entrepreneurs, and promote equity in how the government buys and distributes food.

Perhaps not surprisingly, these programs are most common in places with strong civic infrastructure and engagement. Yet even in D.C., we face structural limits: lack of statehood, budget autonomy, and full Congressional representation. In 2025, for example, the House of Representatives withheld over $1 billion from the District’s locally approved budget, using essential programs like SNAP as political leverage.

Additionally, we are facing a crisis in food access because of increased food costs, tariffs, and now cuts to federal nutrition programs. The East of the River communities (Wards 7 and 8) in D.C. have long been nutritionally divested, and the closures of Good Food Markets and Harris Teeter grocery stores have only intensified the problem.

While we watch plans move forward for a new football stadium in Ward 7, I challenge our city leaders to protect food democracy and ensure that the economic gains from such developments help fund our basic needs.

The Way Forward: Balancing the Plates

To reduce the discrepancy between food access in places like D.C. and Oklahoma—and to increase civic participation in undernourished communities—we must pursue four key actions.

1. Establish state and local food policy councils to drive food democracy.
Local governments, especially in states like Oklahoma, must prioritize the creation and funding of food policy councils to coordinate action across sectors. These councils serve as vital platforms to engage citizens in shaping policy around healthy food access, economic development, and equity.

2. Create pathways for participation in produce prescription and food-as-medicine programs.
State legislatures and local agencies must open clear pathways for farmers, healthcare providers, food retailers, and community-based organizations to participate in food-as-medicine programs. These initiatives allow low-income patients to receive fresh produce as part of their healthcare while also supporting local farmers and food entrepreneurs.

3. Support cooperative farming and retail networks.
State and local governments can strengthen food sovereignty by investing in cooperative farming networks and grocery co-ops that share risk, knowledge, equipment, and markets. That means also supporting small local farms like 3L Farms. These models support land retention, build resilience, and create alternatives to corporate-dominated supply chains.

4. Enact a Food Bill of Rights to protect the right to food.
Ultimately, we must recognize that food is not just a commodity or cash crop but a human right. A Food Bill of Rights can serve as a framework to guide food policy at every level of government—federal, state, and local.

“Local food policy councils give everyday people a structured, sustained voice in shaping food policy that reflects community needs.”

In 2021, Maine became the first state to enshrine the right to food in its constitution, affirming the prerogative of every person to grow, harvest, and consume food of their own choosing. California, New York, West Virginia, Iowa, and Washington are exploring  similar legislation.

These four rights-based approaches empower communities to hold governments accountable and prioritize access to food, fair wages, and land. Local ordinances can play a role by funding cooperative groceries, expanding access to school meals, and ensuring public lands are used to grow food for communities in need. Let us treat healthy food access as essential infrastructure—just as critical as roads, bridges, and schools.

To my fellow food freedom fighters in Oklahoma, D.C., and everywhere in between: Don’t wait for a seat at the table. Build the table. Host community dinners. Meet with your representatives. Draft legislation. Testify at hearings. Ask how your school board, hospital, or city council is supporting or suppressing food democracy. Petition, protest, and plant seeds—not just kale or okra but of hope, justice, and power.

Across this country, our communities are suffering from food apartheid by policy. And if policy got us here, then policy can get us out—led by the people, for the people, and grounded in democracy. From the red dirt roads of Oklahoma to the halls of Congress, it’s time to balance the plates.

Let’s build a food system—and a nation—where everyone eats with dignity and power.

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]]> https://civileats.com/2025/07/30/op-ed-we-need-a-food-bill-of-rights/feed/ 1 https://civileats.com/2025/07/29/a-california-farming-collective-navigates-the-loss-of-federal-grants/ https://civileats.com/2025/07/29/a-california-farming-collective-navigates-the-loss-of-federal-grants/#comments Tue, 29 Jul 2025 08:00:57 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=66353 August 14, 2025 Update: A federal court judge granted a preliminary injunction in Agroecology Commons’ case against the USDA today, ordering the agency to reinstate the two terminated grant contracts and make payments on those contracts while the case proceeds. The decision applied to four other organizations involved in the lawsuit—Oakville Bluegrass Collective, Providence Farm […]

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]]> August 14, 2025 Update: A federal court judge granted a preliminary injunction in Agroecology Commons’ case against the USDA today, ordering the agency to reinstate the two terminated grant contracts and make payments on those contracts while the case proceeds. The decision applied to four other organizations involved in the lawsuit—Oakville Bluegrass Collective, Providence Farm Collective Corp, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, and the Urban Sustainability Directors Network—which also had their grants reinstated. 

Lesley Swain spent most of her adult life teaching English to middle and high school students in Oakland and Hayward, California. The 51-year-old used to joke with herself that when she retired, she would become a farmer. Then, about two years ago, Swain decided she didn’t want to wait any longer. She quit her job and started looking for agricultural work. But with no farming on her resume, she struggled to find opportunities to gain experience.

Eventually she found Agroecology Commons, a small nonprofit farming collective based in nearby El Sobrante, where she signed up for Bay Area Farmer-to-Farmer Training (BAFFT), a nine-month program for beginning farmers. Swain is now an apprentice with Berkeley Basket, an urban backyard community-supported agriculture project, through a program that Agroecology Commons offered to BAFFT graduates.

“It’s given me a path that is so healthy,” Swain said. “This is what I want to do, and I didn’t know how I was going to do it.”

Agroecology Commons has helped aspiring farmers like Swain since its founding five years ago. But like many organizations, it must now do more with less.

It was among hundreds of programs whose grants have been canceled by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

“We’re hoping that we’re successful in fundraising and campaigning to offset some of the losses,” said Jeneba Kilgore, one of four Agroecology Commons co-directors. “[But] I don’t think we’ll completely recuperate everything that was lost as a result of the federal cuts.”

Agroecology Commons co-director Brooke Porter admires the onions grown on the Agroecology Commons farm. (Photo credit: Riley Ramirez)

Thriving vs. Surviving

Agroecology Commons was formed in 2020 by an eclectic group of Bay Area farmers, educators, artists, and cooperative business owners who were passionate about the intersection of land and liberation. They have spent the last five years creating programs and providing spaces for farmer-to-farmer education and relationship-building for low-income and minority farmers.

The group grows a range of produce, including cherry tomatoes, onions, and beans, on three acres of land tucked into the hillside of a suburban neighborhood. They raise goats and harvest honey. And they run a center dedicated to educating farmers and community members about farming and land stewardship.

In August 2022, the USDA announced plans to allocate up to $300 million in funding to projects that enable underserved producers to access land and technical support. The funding was made available under the Increasing Land, Capital, and Market Access Program (ILCMA), which aimed to help those producers move from “surviving to thriving.”

“It’s a seismic blow, but at least we know and can start the next steps.”

In June 2023, Agroecology Commons was among 50 recipients the USDA selected from across the country. It was awarded a $2.5 million grant to find, buy, and develop land for up to 10 “BIPOC, LGBTQIA, and landless farmers” in the Bay Area. The same year, the Commons was awarded a three-year, $397,000 grant through the Community Food Projects Competitive Grant Program—a small program designed to address food and nutrition security in marginalized communities—also through the USDA.

“The ILCMA grant was revolutionary,” said Kilgore, who, with a background in cooperative business, is the “numbers” person on the team. The first program of its kind in the area, Agroecology Commons “was really going to support so many people that have been historically removed from the land in really harmful ways, and support their future generations.”

Not long after the Trump administration took office, however, the USDA froze the grants—first the Community Food Projects grant, then the ILCMA grant—making the money inaccessible for months.

At last, Agroecology Commons received a termination notice for the Community Food Projects grant on March 7, but has yet to receive an official termination notice for the ILCMA grant. However, Kilgore said the grant has been removed from their Automated Standard Application for Payments (ASAP) portal—the portal used by federal agencies to disburse funds to recipient organizations. In addition, although the organization wasn’t named, the USDA publicized that a $2.5 million grant for a Bay Area ILCMA project was canceled in a June press release.

Since the beginning of this year, the USDA has terminated a number of grants that had been offered to food and farming organizations across the county, canceling billions of dollars in funding. Some programs—such as one that provided funding for governments to purchase local food, and another that supported small farms and food businesses around the country—have been completely canceled. Others, like the Farmers Market Promotion, Community Food Projects Competitive Grant, and the ILCMA program, have not been ended altogether but have had individual contracts canceled.

About 35 percent of the Commons’ work is funded by the state, foundations, individual donors, and earned income. But the remaining 65 percent of the work was made possible by these federal grants.

“It’s a seismic blow, but at least we know and can start the next steps,” Leah Atwood, another Agroecology Commons’ co-director, told Civil Eats in June.

Co-director Leah Atwood feeds Agroecology Commons’ goats a special treat of vegetable scraps and plums. (Photo credit: Riley Ramirez)

Increasing Land Access

Systemic barriers have historically made it harder for marginalized farmers to access the land and resources necessary to build lucrative businesses. Today, 95 percent of producers in the U.S. are white and 64 percent are male, according to the 2022 USDA Census of Agriculture.

“There are a lot of young farmers that don’t have access to land or inherited wealth and are not going to be able to disrupt that 95 percent ownership reality by just trying to go at it by themselves,” Atwood said.

The majority of the ILCMA grant was going to be used to purchase land to establish a commons—a collaborative system where land is owned and managed collectively, rather than by sole owner—for BIPOC, queer, and landless farmers. The grant was also going to fund 60 percent of Agroecology Commons’ staffing capacity for the next three years.

“I wish they would just say that they don’t want to support people of color, and they just want to support white men, because that is what they’re implying.”

The organization planned to purchase land in several counties across Northern California. They had already built a relationship with a real estate agent, Kilgore said, and had a list of sites that they were interested in purchasing, but before the team was able to move forward, the grant was frozen.

“When it came to the ILCMA grant, we were doing all the things that they said,” Kilgore said. “We’re supporting farmers; we’re supporting economic development; we’re supporting people to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps; we are giving people the opportunity to start their own business,” she said. “I wish they would just say that they don’t want to support people of color, and they just want to support white men,” she continued, “because that is what they’re implying.”

Brooke Porter (left) and volunteers Zoe Meraz (right) and Noelle Romero (center) inspect hive frames heavy with honey, making sure that the hives are healthy. (Photo credit: Riley Ramirez)

Training New Farmers

In addition to broadening land access, the Agroecology Commons seeks to pass on agricultural knowledge to those who may have trouble accessing it otherwise. It was using a second pot of federal money, the Community Foods Projects grant, to help fund training programs such as the BAFFT program Swain participated in.

The program not only gives participants the chance to learn, experiment, and practice land stewardship under the guidance of experienced mentors, but also enables them to take online courses from global partners on a range of topics, including social movements in agrarian reform, agroecology, and food sovereignty.

Once they complete the curriculum, new farmers can apprentice at Bay Area farms. Of the 40 BAFFT graduates so far, 17 are currently working as apprentices on 12 different farms, according to Brooke Porter, a co-director of the Commons. To alleviate socioeconomic conditions that might prevent new farmers from being able to gain experience, the Commons makes a point of paying both the apprentices and their mentors.

Oftentimes, opportunities for young farmers to gain essential on-farm skills require them to provide free time and labor, which requires a certain level of privilege, Porter said. Agroecology Commons’ program challenges that status quo, giving disadvantaged farmers the boost they need to get started.

“This is an opportunity to really change the dichotomy of how people typically get to learn on-farm skills,” Porter said.

“This is deeper than what I do for my career. This is ancestral work for me.”

The Berkeley Basket CSA program is currently hosting two of the Commons’ apprentices—Swain and Cielo Flores, 31. Flores, whose family from El Salvador has a deep history in agriculture, said he signed up for the farmer training program because he was interested in learning how to start his own farming project and cooperative. The program and apprenticeship provided him a template for how he could approach his own project.

“I wouldn’t be doing this without their support,” Flores said. “Agroecology Commons is trying to support me in my vision to become a farmer, to become a land steward. This is deeper than what I do for my career. This is ancestral work for me.”

Moretta “Mo” Browne, who joined Berkeley Basket CSA in 2019 and now owns it, is grateful that Agroecology Commons pays both hosts and participants in the apprenticeship program.

“I already wanted to be a part of it, but the fact that they were able to compensate folks really feels like they understand how exploitative this work can be,” they said. Additionally, getting paid to be a mentor only sweetens the deal. “Being able to live out your dream of being a farmer shouldn’t come at the cost of having a roof over your head or putting food on the table,” they said.

In addition to the apprenticeship opportunity, the Commons offers its El Sobrante incubator farm as a space where BAFFT program graduates can start their own farm projects and continue gaining hands-on training. The 3-acre plot has shared infrastructure, a tool-lending library, and tractors, helping eliminate the structural barriers to successful farming.

Among vegetables like tomatoes and onions, Agroecology Commons grows an array of native flowers on the farm. (Photo credit: Riley Ramirez)

Equity and Climate Efforts

In March, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced in a video on Instagram that the USDA had canceled the Agroecology Commons’ Community Food Projects grant. She stated that the termination was because the grant aimed “to educate queer, trans, and BIPOC urban farmers and consumers about food justice and values aligned markets.”

“We knew a lot of our language has the DEI buzzwords that they’re looking for and the climate focus that they have been targeting, so [the termination] didn’t come out of thin air,” Atwood said.

Only about $32,000 of the grant remains. As a result, the organization has had to pause some projects, such as the creation of financial literacy and cooperative business-planning workbooks. It also cut back on the number of apprenticeship hours it can offer. Last year, Porter said, the Commons offered apprentices the option to do 250- or 500-hour apprenticeships, but this year, it could only offer the lesser of the two.
“It is a much different learning experience, obviously,” she said.

As for the ILCMA grant, it wasn’t until June that Agroecology Commons became aware that it too was likely designated for cuts. A USDA press release announcing the cuts cited a $2.5 million grant “for expanding equitable access to land, capital, and market opportunities for underserved producers in the Bay Area” as an example of one of the terminated programs.

“Putting American Farmers First means cutting the millions of dollars that are being wasted on woke DEI propaganda,” Rollins said in the press release. “Under President Trump’s leadership, I am putting an end to the waste, fraud, and abuse that has diverted resources from American farmers and restoring sanity and fiscal stewardship to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.”

When asked in an email for further details regarding the grant cancellations, the USDA press office declined to comment.

While Agroecology Commons has yet to receive an official termination letter for the ILCMA grant, Kilgore said it is hard to move forward when they don’t know what might happen next. The organization has had to pause progress on its land commons project and shift its plans to bring on four more full-time employees to only two part-time staff.

Because of the financial constraints that have resulted from the grant terminations, the Commons has had to cut another program, Farmer Wellness Days, which has provided more than 145 farmers with acupuncture, massages, or chiropractic work.

“Try to imagine building something and choreographing planning on quicksand,” Atwood said. “It’s so much of an energy drain trying to figure out how to accommodate that.”

Former street dog Guistino, also known as “Goose,” spends his days adventuring around the Agroecology Commons. (Photo credit: Riley Ramirez)

Pressing Forward

Despite this, the organization has not given up. In June, Agroecology Commons joined five other groups to sue the USDA over the termination of the Community Food Projects grant. Their legal team later amended the complaint to add the ILCMA grant, after becoming aware of its likely cancellation.

The plaintiffs filed a motion for preliminary injunction on June 26, asking the court to stop the USDA’s behavior from continuing and for relief for the plaintiff grantees, according to FarmSTAND, a food-system-focused legal advocacy organization.

David Muraskin, managing director of litigation at FarmSTAND and one of the attorneys representing the case, said with the brief in support of the motion complete, the court can now issue an order. They hope a ruling will be made within a few weeks, he said, but it could also take months. And if the case moves to the appeals court, it could take a year at minimum.

While federal funding cuts have forced Agroecology Commons to scale down some of its initiatives, state funding has enabled the group to expand another one of its programs, which provides young farmers with financial resources to start their own farming operations.

The seed grant program—which addresses resource inequity among beginning farmers—has typically offered $1,000 to $5,000 grants to BAFFT graduates and the apprentice program’s hosts. This year, however, the organization will be able to offer eligible farmers up to $50,000 in seed grants after the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) awarded the program $784,000.

Prior to receiving the CDFA grant, 26 seed grants had been given out, totaling nearly $69,000, Porter said. This year $400,000 will be distributed to people in the Bay Area, who, like Lesley Swain, are pursuing their farming dreams.

Agroecology Commons may be able to help fewer new farmers, but they’re still offering a vital source of support, and they aren’t giving up.

“We’re not retracting any of our goals,” Atwood said. “We are continuing to be outspoken that we do believe that this type of work needs to center BIPOC, queer, and landless farmers.”

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]]> https://civileats.com/2025/07/29/a-california-farming-collective-navigates-the-loss-of-federal-grants/feed/ 1 https://civileats.com/2025/07/28/could-child-care-centers-strengthen-local-food-systems/ https://civileats.com/2025/07/28/could-child-care-centers-strengthen-local-food-systems/#respond Mon, 28 Jul 2025 08:00:20 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=66072 Last year, federal stabilization grants provided to the child care sector during the pandemic ended, leaving many centers in “survival mode,” says Bloom, a local foods extension specialist who is diligently working to build relationships between child care facilities and small farmers. Through her research, Bloom, herself a mom, hopes to improve food access for […]

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Ever since the pandemic, the child care sector has grappled with tight budgets, staffing shortages, and low wages. Dara Bloom, an associate professor at North Carolina State University, has watched over the years as many of these centers have struggled to serve fresh fruits and vegetables to kids, especially when inflation and food prices soared.

Last year, federal stabilization grants provided to the child care sector during the pandemic ended, leaving many centers in “survival mode,” says Bloom, a local foods extension specialist who is diligently working to build relationships between child care facilities and small farmers. Through her research, Bloom, herself a mom, hopes to improve food access for underserved communities and economic opportunities for small farmers. She says the child care sector can play a key role—if given the chance.

“Those early [childhood] stages are so important, especially in terms of health and nutrition. It’s a chance to set children’s taste preferences early.”

Child care centers were set to receive a helping hand this year, after the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) expanded the Local Food for Schools (LFS) program last October to include child care sites. Under the Biden administration, the program earmarked $188.6 million for fresh, local produce for child care facilities already participating in the Child and Adult Care Food Program, which reimburses the centers for providing healthful meals and snacks.

Participating sites range from home-based ones serving up to 15 kids to large private daycare providers and programs connected to public school systems, such as Head Start and Early Head Start.

The additional LFS funding would have been a game-changer for the child care industry, Bloom says. But five months after the USDA expanded the LFS program to child care, the Trump administration terminated the program. The decision sparked extensive media coverage of the impact on schools and food banks, but child care didn’t receive much attention—because it had yet to receive any funding.

However, child care, an often-overlooked sector, could become a larger part of local food systems, Bloom says. Through a farm to early care and education (ECE) program at the Center for Environmental Farming Systems, where Bloom also serves as assistant director, she tests and evaluates local food supply chains for child care that help create better markets for farmers.

The center then creates resources to help others replicate these systems in their own communities—for example, a step-by-step local food-buying guide for child care that offers guidance on understanding ingredient seasonality, where to find farmers, and how to order and incorporate local farm food on menus.

Civil Eats recently spoke to Bloom about her research, healthy eating habits for children, and how the child care sector can support small and midsize farms.

Dara Bloom visits Locklear Farms in Pembroke, North Carolina, which sells produce to a group of child care facilities as part of a farm-to-ECE program. (Photo credit: Bhavisha Gulabrai)

What are some of the ingredients of a resilient local food system?

In North Carolina, one of the things that has helped our local food system and issues of accessibility is a strong food hub network. If you look at our food system over the years, as things got bigger, we lost some local and regional food system infrastructure.

Food hubs are produce distributors, and a lot of them, especially in North Carolina, are nonprofits, and so they have a social mission. This includes working with small-to-midsize farmers who often need training to produce for a wholesale market, in terms of scale and [compliance with] food safety requirements. Many of our food hubs are selling to schools, and we’ve worked with them to increase purchasing for child care centers. That middle infrastructure along the supply chain really helps.

What role can child care sites play in our food system?

We know from the research how important early childhood is developmentally, in terms of education and emotional, social, behavioral learning. Those early stages are also important in terms of health and nutrition. It’s a chance to set children’s taste preferences early.

Research shows it can take anywhere from eight to 15 exposures to new types of fruits and vegetables for kids to develop those preferences. And if you are a low-income family, it’s hard to put food on the plate that you know your kid isn’t going to eat, eight to 15 times.

You want to give your kid something they’re going to eat, that is going to fill them up, and that they’ll love, especially if you’re on a tight budget and maybe have to say no to a lot of things. So, there is this opportunity in child care to do what maybe some low-income families wouldn’t be able to do, which is to increase that exposure.

Children learn about fresh fruit and vegetables with hands-on activities like making spinach smoothies and art projects. (Photo credit: Marcello Cappellazzi)

What challenges do child care providers face in buying and serving local food?

Over the years, there has been a shift to purchasing more processed foods or relying on canned or frozen foods, especially produce. There can be a lot of work to help those [child care] buyers look at their menus, understand seasonality, and find recipes to try new local products. They also need to figure out how to have the staff time, the skill set, and the equipment that’s needed to process local food, especially fresh fruits and vegetables.

Post-COVID, they’re struggling with staffing. We’ve heard stories about child care programs that will lose their cook and so they’ve got teachers or the director coming in to cook meals. I’ve seen reports that staff wages are so low that they’re often on public assistance themselves.

Finding local farmers and knowing how to approach them or work with them is also a challenge, since that takes extra time, which centers often just don’t have. Space and storage are another piece. I’ve visited some child care centers with kitchens that are smaller than my home kitchen, and they might be preparing a breakfast, snack, lunch, and maybe even an afternoon snack for 150 kids. In that situation, it helps to have pre-chopped fruits and vegetables.

Much of your work is focused on farm-to-ECE programs. What are they and how would the Local Food for Schools funding have impacted farm-to-ECE initiatives?

We see farm-to-ECE programs as having three components. One is local food procurement: sourcing from farmers and getting local food on the plate for meals and snacks. Two is experiential learning in the garden. And three is food-based learning, exposing kids to cooking in the classroom. There’s something about that experiential piece of being in the garden and experiencing the food in the classroom setting and learning about it. Then it’s on the plate, they’ve had those repeated exposures and are more likely to eat it.

When we started doing this work, we heard from a teacher at a child care center who said that parents would ask, “What’s going on? I didn’t think my kid would eat this [vegetable].” They’re so surprised when those behaviors carry over at home. We had a parent who said they went to the supermarket, and their kid was yelling, “I want broccoli!”

Our hope with the funding was to reach new child care programs and expand farm-to-ECE programming to reach more children and families.

Obviously, the funding never began, but farmers could have benefited, too. What can you say about the loss of that money for farmers?

This was an opportunity to introduce farmers to a new market, create interest, and train technical assistance providers at the county level. This assistance could help farmers with barriers to selling to the school system, such as the Good Agricultural Products certification, which can be hard for smaller-scale farmers because of the cost and paperwork.

“The child care market can be a great starting point for farmers who are interested in shifting toward wholesale.”

Also, the school system can be so large that farmers don’t have enough volume for it. Child care is not the largest market, but it can be a great outlet for a smaller scale farm that’s not going to be able to meet the demands of a larger market like the school system.

Child care can also be a great starting point, almost like a steppingstone, for farmers who are interested in shifting toward wholesale. The child care market gives them the chance to work with an institutional buyer while they build their own infrastructure, with the hope that maybe they’ll be able to scale up someday to serve that larger market.

How were you and other food-system players preparing for the funding?

The funding could only be spent on local food, so it had to go directly to farmers—which was a great benefit for farmers, but it didn’t cover any overhead, like administrative fees, for non-farmers. It was hard to find an organization with the capacity to handle that much funding without being able to hire someone or pay for someone’s time to manage the funds, distribution, and record-keeping that would come with it.

We worked with the North Carolina Department of Agriculture to do outreach to partners we thought could distribute the funds. We worked closely with Working Landscapes, which is a food hub that was taking a leadership role in organizing other food hubs around the state. They felt strongly enough that it fit their mission and would be such a benefit to themselves and other food hubs that they were willing to be the fiscal sponsor.

Where will you go from here?

Moving forward, we’ll continue supporting our partners with the resources we have, and then in the future we’re trying to have a plan so that if there is ever funding available, we will know how to best implement it in a way that supports all stakeholders.

We’re trying to continue supporting child care centers, farmers, and food hubs, and we’re hoping to organize regional meetups over the summer. We’re still trying to bring those partners—food hubs and child care centers—to the table. We are creating resource documents from our research, like a local food buying guide for child care centers.

The possibility to work on the program is still there. But sometimes it feels like a lot to ask of child care providers. If they’re struggling to get by, it can be hard to take this extra time and energy and find the funds to do this. But we also know that child care programs are dedicated to the health of the children they serve.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The post Could Child Care Centers Strengthen Local Food Systems? appeared first on Civil Eats.

]]> https://civileats.com/2025/07/28/could-child-care-centers-strengthen-local-food-systems/feed/ 0 https://civileats.com/2025/07/08/from-bees-to-beer-buckwheat-is-a-climate-solution-crop/ https://civileats.com/2025/07/08/from-bees-to-beer-buckwheat-is-a-climate-solution-crop/#comments Tue, 08 Jul 2025 08:00:50 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=65717 “Bees love buckwheat,” says Keith Kisler, a farmer who co-owns Chimacum Valley Grainery, a mill, bakery, and brewery on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula. Kisler and his wife, Crystie, cultivate barley, quinoa, rye, spelt, and wheat on about 70 acres of organic farmland, but buckwheat has become one of his favorite crops. That’s because buckwheat—planted in late […]

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From a distance, fields of buckwheat may seem serene, with petite, fluffy white flowers and heart-shaped green leaves. But if you’re standing in one, you’ll hear the distinct buzzing of bees as they pollinate millions of flowers per acre.

“Bees love buckwheat,” says Keith Kisler, a farmer who co-owns Chimacum Valley Grainery, a mill, bakery, and brewery on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula. Kisler and his wife, Crystie, cultivate barley, quinoa, rye, spelt, and wheat on about 70 acres of organic farmland, but buckwheat has become one of his favorite crops.

Despite its name, buckwheat is not a type of wheat; it’s a gluten-free seed, rich in vitamins and minerals.

That’s because buckwheat—planted in late May and harvested in early October—is remarkably easy to grow. “In between, there’s really nothing done to that field,” Kisler says. “I don’t do any weed control, and we don’t water. It’s planted, it germinates, it grows, it flowers, it’s harvested.”

Buckwheat is also easy to mill into flour and adds a rich, earthy flavor to some of the Grainery’s products, like bread, beer, and pasta. By managing every step of the process, from cultivation to the finished product, Kisler has overcome buckwheat’s greatest challenge in the U.S.—a solid infrastructure that connects producers with consumers.

Buckwheat flour can be used in a range of recipes, including noodles, pictured here, as well as crêpes, blinis, and cookies. (Photo credit: Crystie Kisler, Chimacum Valley Grainery)

Buckwheat has a long bloom period, can build healthy soil, and is nutrient-dense, making it good not only for bees and farmers, but also planet and people. These multiple benefits are why Kisler and a team of scientists are working together to test new varieties of buckwheat and to build a local market for it.

Led by researchers at Washington State University (WSU) and supported by funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), they hope to increase organic production of this underutilized, low-input crop—one with the potential to address larger challenges like nutrition access and climate change.

A Versatile Seed

Despite its name, buckwheat is not a type of wheat. It is a seed rich in vitamins and minerals, including vitamins A, B, C, and E, as well as potassium and magnesium, which play an important role in a healthy human diet—and it is gluten free. The tough outer hulls are typically removed, and the hulled seeds, called groats, have a nutty taste and the al dente texture of farro. Buckwheat groats can also be milled into a flour for use in sweet and savory recipes, from brownies and cookies to breads and crackers.

Buckwheat originated in southwestern China, featuring in Asian cuisines for thousands of years before spreading to Eastern Europe, likely in the 15th century. Today, China is the world’s second largest producer of buckwheat after Russia. The grain arrived in North America during European colonization and was a favorite of Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, due to its capacity to suppress weeds.

Its culinary uses, however, have yet to be fully explored in the U.S., where it is still typically treated as an export item or cover crop. About 27,000 acres of buckwheat were grown here in 2017, the most recent year that data on buckwheat plantings were available.

Washington is the nation’s second top producer of buckwheat after North Dakota, with approximately 6,000 to 8,000 acres, according to Kevin Murphy, a WSU professor of international seed and cropping systems and the director of Breadlab, WSU’s grain research center. Almost all of the seed grown in the Northwest state is exported to Japan for making soba noodles.

Kisler’s buckwheat, grown on 12 acres that produce 16,000 to 18,000 pounds of seed annually, remains in his regional food system. His brother, on the other hand, grows between 200 and 300 acres of buckwheat in eastern Washington, entirely for export to Japan.

“There’s a need for different scales of operations,” Kisler says. “For somebody like my brother to grow several hundred acres of buckwheat and for small production at a local level.” 

Buckwheat flowers develop abundantly about 30 days after seeding. At right, an aerial view of a buckwheat field trial. (Photo courtesy of WSU)

Kisler has worked with Breadlab since 2008, and the buckwheat in his fields are varieties they developed together. For years before this collaboration, Kisler used buckwheat as a cover crop, and he saw how it enhanced his soil.

“It helps break disease cycles,” Kisler says. “It grows really quickly, so it out-competes the weeds in a field. It sends down a fairly deep tap root, which loosens compacted soils. It does well even in marginal soils. I don’t ever need to water it, even in a dry season. And it’s planted later, so from a production perspective, it spreads out planting and harvesting so all that work doesn’t need to happen all at once.”

Buckwheat’s agricultural benefits extend beyond the lifespan of the plant. “When I follow it with a grain crop, that grain crop does better in that section of the field where there was buckwheat the previous year than next door where there was no buckwheat planted,” Kisler says.  

The Pancake Project

In 2021, WSU researchers began collaborating with local producers to assess the regional market for buckwheat and millet and build consumer demand for these crops, supported by a $350,000 Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Project (SARE) grant, funded by the USDA.

“I don’t do any weed control with buckwheat, and we don’t water. It’s planted, it germinates, it grows, it flowers, it’s harvested.”

They used the most promising buckwheat varieties from nearby farms to develop a pancake mix for Washington’s school lunch programs. Stephen Bramwell, Thurston County Extension director and WSU agriculture specialist, coordinated with nearly 300 school districts for their feedback. A critical factor, they found, was the ratio of buckwheat flour to whole wheat flour.

“After many rounds of taste tests at the Breadlab and schools, we’ve dialed it in to 50 percent buckwheat,” Bramwell says. “We tried to get it close to what people know, what wouldn’t be too different from other pancakes—fairly light, not too grainy, a little bit sweet.”

The pancakes’ appearance was particularly crucial. “The color—that’s a huge one for kids,” says Bramwell, noting that students prefer the lighter hue of pancakes made with refined wheat flour. “Buckwheat pancakes brown faster and can become really dark, so we’ve done trials to moderate the color.”

Buckwheat pancake-mix packets at the Thurston County Fair, created by WSU Extension. At the booth, kids could grind their own buckwheat flour for the packets using a hand-crank mill. The booth was extremely popular, with some kids returning two or three times to grind more buckwheat groats. (Photo credit: Stephen Bramwell)

To familiarize students with buckwheat, the team also organized hands-on lessons, including growing it in school gardens, harvesting and threshing it, using hand-crank mills to pulverize the seeds into flour, making pancakes, and taste testing batches made with different flour ratios.

“The best way to reach kids is not just when it shows up on the plate,” Bramwell says, “but when they’ve had a chance to get exposure to a new product by learning about it, as a plant, as a seed, and then as a food.”

‘More Bang for Your Buckwheat’

After the SARE grant ended in 2024, the WSU team received another USDA grant for a project they call More Bang for Your Buckwheat (MBYB). Their goal is to develop new buckwheat varieties based on traits that both farmers and consumers like and want. With these new varieties, the team plans to develop a diverse selection of “flavorful, affordable, and nutritious” buckwheat products and continue collaborations with 50 school districts in the region. 

“The name is sort of tongue-in-cheek,” explains Micaela Colley, WSU professor of participatory plant breeding. “Many farmers grow buckwheat knowing they won’t make any money off it, and they just till it in. We’re interested in all the values of buckwheat as a cover crop, but the idea is that you’re getting a food crop out of it, too.”

An array of foods made with buckwheat, including cookies and crackers, at the Buckwheat Festival. (Photo courtesy of WSU Breadlab)

Recent federal funding cuts devastated some WSU research programs, such as the Soil to Society grant, which included buckwheat as a key crop to consider for increasing food security. The four-year, $3.3 million MBYB grant is still being funded through USDA, but may be indirectly impacted by a $1 billion federal funding cut to the Local Food for Schools Cooperative Agreement Program, which affects 850,000 students in Washington and may limit the ability of some school districts to buy nutritious, locally produced foods—like WSU’s buckwheat pancake mix.

The MBYB team also includes experts from across the country, with several in New York—another top U.S. producer of buckwheat and buckwheat products. Cornell University and the Glynwood Center for Regional Food are key for research and forming relationships with both farmers and food producers to develop products such as BAM, a buckwheat-based milk alternative.

The MBYB grant will also help fund the third annual Buckwheat Festival on August 8 at the Breadlab, in Burlington, Washington. The small event, which attracted about 50 visitors last year, will offer an evening tasting of buckwheat foods and drinks for $25 or a full day of activities for $125, including a field tour with plant breeders and cooking demonstrations with chefs.

Since 2018, the Breadlab has collaborated with chef Bonnie Morales of the Eastern European restaurant Kachka, in Portland, Oregon, to develop recipes for the restaurant and pop-up events, including the Buckwheat Festival.

“She makes my favorite comfort food,” Colley says, referring to Morales’ golubtsi, a Ukrainian dish of cabbage rolls stuffed with buckwheat. The seed is used throughout Kachka’s menu, including for custard and blini.

The Buckwheat Festival offers tastings of buckwheat foods and drinks, field tours with plant breeders, and cooking demonstrations with chefs. (Photo courtesy of WSU Breadlab)

California chef Sonoko Sakai has also participated in the festival and will be there again this year. “She did a demo and made soba noodles by hand,” Colley recalls. “One thing that stuck in my mind that she shared is that in Japan, master soba chefs will include on the menu the date that buckwheat was harvested and what farm it came from.”

Ultimately, the goal is for buckwheat to be enjoyed year-round, not only on the day of the festival. For this to happen, there’s still much work to be done, especially in local and regional infrastructure.

“We’re really good at growing large amounts of grain and putting them in silos and then shipping them off somewhere far away,” Murphy says. “But if we want to eat locally and grow these grains at a smaller scale, there are a lot of gaps between the farmers and food companies and schools. How do we work together to bridge these gaps and make regional grain economies and value chains more efficient?”

The post From Bees to Beer, Buckwheat Is a Climate-Solution Crop appeared first on Civil Eats.

]]> https://civileats.com/2025/07/08/from-bees-to-beer-buckwheat-is-a-climate-solution-crop/feed/ 1 https://civileats.com/2025/06/30/can-this-baltimore-academy-continue-to-train-urban-farmers/ https://civileats.com/2025/06/30/can-this-baltimore-academy-continue-to-train-urban-farmers/#respond Mon, 30 Jun 2025 08:00:03 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=65031 A version of this article originally appeared in The Deep Dish, our members-only newsletter. Become a member today and get the next issue directly in your inbox. This is the Black Butterfly Teaching Farm, run by the Farm Alliance of Baltimore (FAB), a membership organization of urban farmers, neighborhood growers, and those interested in learning more about […]

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In southern Baltimore, not far from the sewage treatment plant of Wagner’s Point and massive coal mounds of Curtis Bay, lies a small farm of green grass, rustling trees, and rows of radishes, arugula, peppers, and more. On a cool afternoon in late May, groups of children and their parents pass by, cutting through a dirt path on their way to some other part of this historically industrial city. As they come and go, a small crew of farmers diligently tends to the crops and land.

This is the Black Butterfly Teaching Farm, run by the Farm Alliance of Baltimore (FAB), a membership organization of urban farmers, neighborhood growers, and those interested in learning more about both. The farm was designed to turn food-curious people into urban farmers, especially those who live or work in the “Black Butterfly”—the regions of the city to the east and west of the center, shaped like a pair of butterfly wings, where the city’s majority Black population lives.

“The folks that tore it apart have no intention of fixing it.”

These neighborhoods continue to grapple with a legacy of redlining, with impacts that persist today—from a scarcity of grocery stores to a lack of tree cover (and resulting “heat island” effect) to lower life expectancy in general, often due to environmental pollutants.

Urban farms, though, represent a tangible way for people to have “a sense of control and autonomy” over their health and environment, says Hannah Quigley, a policy specialist with the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC). By enriching the environment and helping build a climate-resilient food system with economic potential, urban agriculture can unlock a form of empowerment for disadvantaged communities.

“It has real big community effects,” Quigley adds. “It’s not just helping one household in a lot of these settings. It’s helping hundreds of individuals in these neighborhood settings.”

Since 2021, the FAB has operated the Black Butterfly Urban Farmer Academy, which launched the teaching farm later that year and has graduated two groups of trainees. But this year, the program won’t be offered, as it takes a step back to finish several construction projects on the farm and to adjust to funding cuts by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

(Photo credit: Sam Delgado)

“I’m really looking forward to the full vision coming to fruition,” says Denzel Mitchell, FAB’s executive director and a former urban farmer himself, about the construction. He says they’re aiming to set up fencing, a greenhouse, an outdoor kitchen, a storage barn, and additional amenities for the community by the end of the year.

The Trump administration has cut many farming initiatives, including those addressing climate change and environmental injustice. That leaves programs like Black Butterfly—which aim to instill sustainable agriculture knowledge in residents who have long been blocked from land access—in limbo. Mitchell is skeptical that the funding challenges will be fixed any time soon.

“The folks that tore it apart,” he says, “have no intention of fixing it.”

Sustainable Farming in a Polluted Community

For years, the FAB had been having conversations about the need to offer people pathways to becoming urban farmers, says Mitchell, who drives an electric Ford truck to and from the farm. In 2017, the organization ran a feasibility study to understand exactly what the membership wanted. The response was “an opportunity to train,” Mitchell says. “That was the seed, if you will—no pun intended—of the training academy.”

There are other programs around Maryland that offer farm training. Mitchell himself trained with Future Harvest, which runs a year-long program for beginner farmers in the Chesapeake Bay region. But the city of Baltimore lacked an accessible, urban-scale training program.

People here needed something that was “a little bit beyond backyard growing,” and geared toward residents who wanted to develop a business, Mitchell says. “One of the things that we certainly understand as Black and Brown working-class folks is that you got to hustle. You got to have some little side gig.”

That entrepreneurial-environmental mindset has been a key part of the Black Butterfly Urban Farmer Academy’s framework. Its training is intended to help people feed their communities and grow potential businesses, while also learning how to sustainably steward the land.

Done properly, urban agriculture can reduce the carbon footprint of food and can help lower the heat island effect that many major cities face (while also benefiting the social, mental, and physical well-being of urban farmers and gardeners).

“The customers are really excited that we grow food in Baltimore City. They’re excited that these farms are right in their neighborhoods.”

Baltimore is no stranger to climate and environmental hazards, and this is especially true for communities living in the Black Butterfly. The teaching farm, whose nearly 7 acres of land were provided by the city’s Department of Planning, sits just a mile away from Curtis Bay, a neighborhood that has been plagued by pollution from coal dust. Black Baltimorians are also overwhelmingly worried about climate change and its harms, too.

As someone with decades of food and farming experience, Mitchell is well aware of how the changing climate has affected farming. At the same time, he expressed frustration that well-known “climate-smart” techniques, such as cover crops, are sometimes incentivized for industrial farms while smaller farms receive less support. These practices, Mitchell says, should be expected, rather than accepted.

Growing Urban Farmers

Past training programs of the Black Butterfly Urban Farmer Academy ran for nine months and began with in-person classes on foundational topics for a beginner farmer. Mitchell and other teachers guided participants through the basics, like crop selection, pest management, post-harvest handling, safety, marketing, and more.

After 12 weeks of classes, participants attended FAB’s field days, which connected them with local farms and food organizations to gain practical experience. Past field days included instruction on subjects like composting, beekeeping, and growing herbs. Students also gained hands-on experience from shifts at the teaching farm and other local farms.

Mitchell in the fields at Black Butterfly Teaching Farm. (Photo credit: Sam Delgado)

Past trainees were also each awarded a $2,000 stipend and equipped with books to further add to their understanding of the food system and farming strategies, including Farming While Black by Leah Penniman, The Market Gardener by Jean-Martin Fortier, and The Organic Farmer’s Business Handbook by Richard Wiswall.

Aria Eghbal was looking for a career change when she discovered the Black Butterfly Urban Farmer Academy. She was working as a medical assistant during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic and was feeling burnt out and frustrated by the healthcare system. She applied to the program and became one of 10 people accepted into the first training program—many of whom were also at a career crossroads, she says.

The training program marked the beginning of Eghbal’s career in the food system: as a farmer, as a cook, and, since last December, as FAB’s lead staffer at farmers’ markets. “The customers are really excited that we grow food in Baltimore City,” she says. “They’re excited that these farms are right in their neighborhoods.”

Becoming part of Baltimore’s urban farming community was one of the greatest benefits of the academy, she adds. “We really do care about each other and want to see each other thrive and succeed, through this process of growing food and flowers and processing honey and all the different things that we do.”

The Challenge Ahead

The Black Butterfly Urban Farmer Academy has seen nearly 20 people graduate from its program. But the USDA funding cuts, particularly to initiatives for diversity, equity, and inclusion, have also eliminated funding prospects. To operate services like the academy and an upcoming incubator program that Mitchell calls “the launching pad for the next generation of diversified family farmers,” he projects it will cost roughly $300,000. “Fundraising has been incredibly difficult this year,” he says.

Crops in the ground at the teaching farm. (Photo credit: Sam Delgado)

Added to the difficulty is a political environment where some organizations are hiding their missions. One funder recently asked Mitchell if he was “woke but cloaked”—whether, in other words, the FAB would be hiding language around equity from its website and other materials, to avoid targeting from the Trump administration. “How am I supposed to do that?” Mitchell asked, annoyed, recalling the conversation. “I’m a Black man. My politics are literally on my face.”

Despite all this, Mitchell still has plans for the land where the teaching farm is located, including a pavilion, a playground, and community and commercial orchards. “This was just us growing food and then trying to teach people how to do it,” Mitchell says. “And doing it in a way that is environmentally beneficial. So now, we got to figure out just how to do that on our own.”

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]]> https://civileats.com/2025/06/30/can-this-baltimore-academy-continue-to-train-urban-farmers/feed/ 0 https://civileats.com/2025/05/28/helping-ramps-flourish-through-forest-farming/ https://civileats.com/2025/05/28/helping-ramps-flourish-through-forest-farming/#comments Wed, 28 May 2025 08:00:44 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=64660 At 71, Schwartz has learned plenty about these wild alliums since he moved here in 2006—and he’s eager to share. In early May, the woods all around him are carpeted with lush green ramp leaves, clumped so tightly together it’s hard to tell one plant from the next. At last, he finds what he’s been […]

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Near the banks of the Delaware River in northeast Pennsylvania, Steven Schwartz, his silver hair tied back beneath his hat, is searching for a seed. It’s ramp season, and finding one of the tiny black pellets is like searching for a needle in an endless green haystack. For a ramp farmer like Schwartz, the seeds are a critical indicator that the population is healthy and multiplying.

At 71, Schwartz has learned plenty about these wild alliums since he moved here in 2006—and he’s eager to share.

In early May, the woods all around him are carpeted with lush green ramp leaves, clumped so tightly together it’s hard to tell one plant from the next. At last, he finds what he’s been looking for and takes a seat on a fallen log. As a woodpecker hammers in the distance, he picks up a dried seed head, left over from last year.

“This,” he said, “is what it’s all about.”

Ramp seeds are a sign that the wild leeks are multiplying. (Photo credit: Ben Seal)

Flavor From the Woods

The ramp, a spring ephemeral that has become the most popular of dozens of wild alliums native to North America, grows across the Midwest and Eastern United States, particularly in the Great Lakes region and throughout the Appalachian range. Similar plants can be found in deciduous temperate forests around the world, including in Europe and East Asia, where the victory onion and Siberian onion, respectively, prosper. Other cousins flourish in the western U.S., especially the Pacific Northwest, including Brandegee’s onion and the swamp onion. But none have developed the ramp’s reputation as a beacon of spring.

Within their fleeting window of availability, foragers and consumers prize ramps for pickling, grilling, pesto, or any adventurous way to enjoy their gentle bite. Here in Pennsylvania, their leaves peek out in April, and by late May they have begun to deteriorate, turning yellow and dying back to make way for a flower stalk. In some regions, the season can stretch to June. The early summer blooms develop seeds by the end of the summer, which eventually fall to the ground as one of the plant’s two modes of reproduction, the other being bulb division.

“It’s the test of the hypothesis that you can eat your ramp and plant it, too. And it looks like it’ll work.”

Every spring, dozens of visitors come to Delaware Valley Ramps, Schwartz’s wooded 20-acre property in Equinunk, to pick the glossy, garlicky greens that are the first to emerge after winter’s thaw. Schwartz offers his wisdom on respectful harvesting to visitors who pay $65 to pick ramps for two hours. He asks them to take only those with three leaves, which are more mature than those with one or two, so they all have a chance to reproduce before they’re picked.

He waits until later in the season to allow harvesting, because larger plants require fewer to make a pound, leaving more in the ground to sustain the patch. He also urges visitors to take only one from each clump so that none is overburdened, and he rotates through several patches to keep them all thriving.

It’s the least he can do to protect the population he found in abundance on his property when he bought it, lured by the Delaware River’s revered wild trout fishery. Although his land has no shortage of ramps, their future elsewhere is under pressure.

In the early 1990s, after Martha Stewart first sang their praises and fine-dining chefs began putting ramps on seasonal spring menus, demand soared, especially in urban centers where they often sell for $25 per pound or more. Eager foragers fanned out into the woods, and it wasn’t long before concerns grew about population decline.

The whole plant is delicious, but every bulb removed from the earth is one less to sustain the wild population. For years, conservationists have worried that avid harvesting of bulbs will endanger a plant whose value is as much cultural as it is commercial.

In both Indigenous and Appalachian communities, ramps are celebrated as a sign of spring with medicinal properties that can revive the spirit after a long, hard winter. Horticulturalists and ramp enthusiasts are working to better understand where and why they flourish and how humans can encourage their proliferation before it’s too late.

Can Ramps Be Farmed?

For more than a decade, Schwartz’s land has been a “living laboratory” for research conducted by Eric Burkhart, an ethnobotany and agroforestry teaching professor at the Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences, where he studies the conservation and management of forest products. His conclusions are in a paper, published last fall in the journal Wild, about the habitats most favorable for ramps: rich, deep soil on north- and east-facing slopes, with an abundance of sugar maple or bitternut hickory nearby to supply calcium and moisture for growth—much like Schwartz’s land along the Delaware River.

Although ramps grow wild, they’re often tended by property owners and harvesters, like Schwartz, who practice forest farming, which Burkhart describes as the cultivation and management of non-timber products under a forest canopy. Ramps and other forest foods are “the crack people can look through to get excited about their forests, rather than just seeing them as a source of timber revenue,” he said. And unlike most forest products, consumers already crave ramps, so expanding their supply can help harvesters meet demand while ensuring the plant population isn’t depleted.

Steven Schwartz takes notes while observing the characteristics of ramps growing in one of six test plots. (Photo credit: Ben Seal)

Schwartz’s land is a suitable place to explore the potential of forest farming, because his methods are clearly working: His land now produces more ramps than ever. He’s seeing new patches flourishing on the property where none had grown before, which means their range is expanding, possibly due to the seeds being dispersed more widely by turkeys and other wildlife.

Today, his property includes a half-dozen 6-by-8-foot plots dedicated to studying whether ramps can be successfully regrown after they’re harvested by replanting the base of their bulbs. The study, designed and run by Schwartz in collaboration with Burkhart and still funded by a Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education producer grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, aims to help balance productive yields with long-term conservation.

“It’s the test of the hypothesis that you can eat your ramp and plant it, too,” Schwartz said as he surveyed the ramps in one of the study plots. “And it looks like it’ll work.”

Rooted in Culture

Ramps have long been an important wild food for Indigenous cultures, often consumed therapeutically to treat colds, earaches, and infections. They are welcomed as the first green vegetable in the spring to replenish vitamins and nutrients after a winter of dried and preserved foods.

Karelle Hall, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Massachusetts at Boston and a member of the Nanticoke Tribe of Delaware, visited Schwartz’s property this spring as part of a broader effort to relearn ancestral traditions and get more people in her community to engage with ramps and other culturally significant foods, she said. A cousin who joined her that day operates the Native Roots Farm Foundation, focused on reconnecting Indigenous communities with their plant relatives.

Although she’d purchased them before at farmers’ markets, it was Hall’s first time harvesting ramps herself. It felt particularly significant to do so right beside the headwaters of the Delaware River, which supported the Nanticoke and Lenape tribes in pre-colonial times, she said. With her harvest, she made soups and stews, ramp butter to eat with a venison roast, and ramp salt that she’ll share with relatives to strengthen her community’s connection to the plant.

The approach to harvesting that she saw at Delaware Valley Ramps echoes the practices central to Indigenous relationships with the natural world, she said. The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, for example, advocate taking just the leaves so bulbs can continue to propagate.

The gentle manipulation of a landscape can help a plant species feel more at home, encouraging it to grow into the space it’s allowed, Hall explained, as long as one rule is always followed: “Never deplete it to the point that it can’t repopulate itself.”

Jeanine Davis, an associate professor in horticultural science at North Carolina State University, has kept that principle in mind for more than 30 years, ever since a botanist in her state government asked for her help studying ramps as concerns grew about their declining population.

Within a decade, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, straddling North Carolina and Tennessee, made ramp harvesting illegal; three national parks in West Virginia followed suit in 2022. Although studies on the subject are scant, Burkhart said populations have diminished over time, but in Pennsylvania, at least, the issue is not overharvesting but the fact that favorable ramp habitats have been developed for other uses.

“Someday, if we continue doing this, we won’t have ramps. It would be one more piece of the forest that’s gone.”

Back when she started studying ramps, Davis said the general consensus was that they couldn’t be cultivated, but she helped show they can indeed be grown, given the right conditions—including slightly acidic, moist soil and sufficient shade. She’s now researching how different harvest practices—say, the number of leaves or portion of a bulb taken—affect a population.

In addition to her work with the plants themselves, Davis has studied the role they play in the mountain communities that have celebrated ramps for generations. There, she said, they are “like a spring tonic,” rich in nutrients and minerals, including vitamins A and C. A 2000 study, she noted, found that thanks to their naturally high quantities of selenium, ramps have the potential to reduce cancer in humans.

Davis remembers the “mind-boggling” volume of ramps she saw the first time she attended one of many annual festivals in Richwood, West Virginia, about 25 years ago. “Pickup truck after pickup truck full of them,” she recalled. She was impressed by how the festival was truly a community effort, with the entire town seemingly involved in some way.

In time, though, as ramps gained broader popularity, “What we’d always thought of as a food for country people, hunters, and fishermen was suddenly a gourmet item,” she said. Although she’s enjoyed seeing more people appreciate the plant, its success poses a challenge for conservation efforts.

Sharing an Ecosystem

On Schwartz’s property, ramps are part of a spring understory populated by fiddlehead ferns, morel mushrooms, and flowering trilliums and bloodroot—the type of biological diversity that indicates a healthy forest ecosystem, according to James Chamberlain, a retired research scientist with the U.S. Forest Service who studied ramps for 25 years. Given the ramp’s fickle growth habits, its presence in a landscape suggests a stable and supportive tree canopy and healthy soil.

Steve Schwartz considers himself an accidental forager. Eighteen years ago, he bought a property in Equinunk, Pennsylvania, to gain access to the Delaware River’s vaunted wild trout fishing. Then he discovered ramps growing abundantly on his property and has been selling them since 2008. (Photo credit: Ben Seal)

But Chamberlain worries that ramps may soon go the way of ginseng, another plant once abundant in the Appalachians that he said has been “genetically extirpated from the forest” by unsustainable harvest practices.

“Someday, if we continue doing this, we won’t have ramps,” Chamberlain said. “It would be one more piece of the forest that’s gone.”

However, a 2019 paper that Chamberlain co-authored in Biological Conservation suggested wild cultivation and good stewardship practices could reverse that trend in ginseng and other wild-harvested plants like ramps. He believes forest farming can be part of supporting the sustainability of ramps and other wild plants, when done right. But doing so requires careful and respectful management of a patch that allows it to sustain itself.

“We get up in arms about cutting old-growth timber,” Chamberlain said, “but think nothing about harvesting old-growth ramps.”

For his part, Burkhart wants more people to engage with the landscapes around them, particularly through forest farming, which he believes can harness the woods’ “tremendous potential” to support our food systems. In a state like Pennsylvania that’s nearly 60 percent forested, managing a greater share of the land in an intentional way and utilizing its products can create income sources while promoting conservation, Burkhart said. He also studies ginseng as well as goldenseal, used in herbal medicines.

“We have a whole suite of wild species that people either forage or forget about, but they deserve close examination and consideration as new crops,” Burkhart said.

Despite conventional wisdom about how to sustainably harvest ramps—some suggest taking only the leaves, while others limit themselves to one-tenth of a patch—there is still little actual evidence to guide foragers and forest farmers. The study on Schwartz’s land, which began in 2023, aims to deliver that evidence. This was his second season observing the growth of ramps whose bulbs were replanted in the ground after being harvested.

Using variables including the number of leaves at the time of harvest, the point in the season when harvest occurred, and the amount of bulb that was replanted, he’s studying how well they bounce back year over year. So far, the most mature bulbs appear to have the strongest rate of return.

“What’s going to be best for this plant, for the forest, and for all the other beings sharing the ecosystem?”

Once the study is complete, Burkhart wants to expand it to other locations across the state to develop more certainty about the findings and their implications. Schwartz says replanting bulbs in the past has helped him develop new ramp patches, suggesting that further understanding of favorable sites and successful conservation techniques can make a meaningful difference.

For Hall, the Indigenous anthropologist, the vibrant ramp patches in Equinunk hold the promise that more members of her community can engage with the plant and share some of the same excitement she felt. But when it comes to the conservation and management of a food found on the forest floor, she offers a reminder that there are always deeper layers to consider.

Hall’s work focuses on language revitalization, including the conversion of the Nanticoke language into writing. She’s still working on a full translation of the ramp’s name, pumptukwahkii ooleepunak, but she says it conjures the process of a plant popping out of the ground. Like the names of many other plants with a bulb or root system, it’s referred to in Nanticoke as a living being—a who rather than a what. We should remember this as we harvest ramps, she said.

“It’s not just about what’s going to be best for us in this situation,” said Hall. “What’s going to be best for this plant, for the forest, and for all the other beings sharing the ecosystem?”

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]]> https://civileats.com/2025/05/28/helping-ramps-flourish-through-forest-farming/feed/ 1 https://civileats.com/2025/05/27/warming-waters-cause-invasion-of-sea-squirts-at-maine-fisheries/ https://civileats.com/2025/05/27/warming-waters-cause-invasion-of-sea-squirts-at-maine-fisheries/#comments Tue, 27 May 2025 08:00:43 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=64593 But the critical work of flipping oyster cages—turning them over to combat biofouling and introduce sunlight and air to the bottom—had become impossible. They couldn’t even lift some of them, even though they were made of hollow plastic mesh. The cages were covered and also filled with the globby bodies of sea squirts, invasive marine […]

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In the summer of 2020, Alicia Gaiero began to realize that sea squirts were putting the success of her new oyster farm in jeopardy. She and her two sisters, Amy and Chelsea, were working together to fulfill their dream of a family aquaculture business, Nauti Sisters Sea Farm, in Yarmouth, Maine.

But the critical work of flipping oyster cages—turning them over to combat biofouling and introduce sunlight and air to the bottom—had become impossible. They couldn’t even lift some of them, even though they were made of hollow plastic mesh.

In large numbers, sea squirts—some as large as a pair of tube socks, some smaller than a pinky ring—are surprisingly heavy, and are impacting lobster, oyster, and other fisheries.

The cages were covered and also filled with the globby bodies of sea squirts, invasive marine invertebrates that thrive in the warming waters of the Gulf of Maine and along the coasts of Alaska and the western United States. In large numbers, sea squirts—some as large as a pair of tube socks, some smaller than a pinky ring—are surprisingly heavy, and are impacting lobster, oyster, and other fisheries.

Gaiero had heard that sea squirts could be challenging, but this was out of control. “I’d never seen anything like it,” she says.

By the next season, she felt overwhelmed. “This was ruining my life.”

Blob Invasions Impact Maine’s Fisheries—and Beyond

There are now over 150 independently owned oyster farms in Maine, in part thanks to investment by the state. Under the glistening, still surface of the water, nearly every line and buoy marking a trap or cage is encased with gooey sea squirts—formally known as tunicates, for the tunic-like sheath of fleshy cellulose that covers their siphons, which suck in and filter sea water. The nickname “sea squirts” comes from the fact that they often squirt water when they’re disturbed.

Tunicates, commonly known as sea squirts, are a problem for commercial shellfish farmers, as they glom onto cages and the shellfish themselves. Here, tunicates cover an oyster cage in Casco Bay in Maine. (Photo credit: Alicia Gaiero/Nauti Sisters Sea Farm)

For more than 500 million years, tunicates have existed as simple creatures clinging to underwater substrates and filter feeding on plankton and bacteria. There are hundreds of subspecies. Some have inhabited the Gulf of Maine since the 1800s, arriving in the ballast waters of ships from distant seas; new subspecies have come from Europe and Asia in oyster seed and on cruise ships.

As tunicates spread across oyster cages, mooring lines, and buoys, they add incredible weight, turning a 5-pound oyster cage into an unmanageable 100-pound obstacle. As they proliferate, they compete with bivalves—oysters, mussels, and scallops—for resources and can eventually choke them out entirely. A bivalve covered in globby tunicates can no longer open its shell to feed, and will eventually starve to death.

They were only a mild nuisance to Maine’s working waterfronts until the past decade, when their populations started to soar.

“The biggest thing driving this invasion,” explains Jeremy Miller, research associate and coordinator of the System Wide Monitoring Program at Wells Reserve, “is the warming Gulf of Maine. The Gulf of Maine is getting warmer and warmer every year. Ever since about 2012, we have been going in one direction, and we haven’t had an anomalously cool year since 2007.” According to the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, sea surface temperatures in the gulf have been steadily rising at an average of 0.84° F annually, roughly three times that of the world’s oceans.

The Wells Reserve team researches and tracks changes to the environment along the Wells Estuarine Research Reserve, monitoring changes year on year and sharing their findings with the broader scientific community. (Although they are concerned about potential federal cuts to their overall funding, their studies on invasive species receives private foundation money.) The warming waters have had profound impacts on Maine’s fisheries and waterfronts, from the disappearance of Northern shrimp to more frequent flooding events, including so-called “blue sky flooding” in the coastal city of Portland. And those rising temperatures are now driving a sea squirt population boom.

Internal anatomy of a tunicate (Urochordata). Adapted, with permission, from an outline drawing available on BIODIDAC.

Tunicates thrive and spread faster with warmer ocean temperatures. And the rising number of aquaculture farms are providing plentiful structures to which sea squirts can attach themselves and grow.

And there are other factors as well. “The Gulf of Maine, compared to a lot of other parts of the world, is actually fairly low in diversity,” says Larry Harris, Professor Emeritus of Biology Sciences at the University of New Hampshire and co-author of UNH studies on tunicates and warming ocean temperatures. Harris explains that development along the coast of Maine has created the perfect ecosystem for tunicates, with new docks and moorings offering an abundance of substrates for them to attach to in addition to aquaculture farms. Also, tunicates have few true predators in the Gulf of Maine, and overfishing has reduced the number.

Because tunicates are effective filter feeders that grow extremely quickly, they can reproduce alarmingly fast; certain species can double their populations in as little as 8 hours. Some species are considered “colonial,” growing in a super-organism, like coral. Others are called “solitary,” but often appear in clusters and groups because their offspring do not travel far.

And they are not easy to destroy. Cutting a tunicate off a line and throwing it back into the sea doesn’t kill it; a new tunicate will grow from the dismembered piece.

Instead, aquaculture farmers and lobstermen are encouraged to deal with tunicates by desiccation: hauling out traps, lines, and buoys and leaving them in the sun until they fully dry out, which kills the sea squirts. For oyster farmers, combating tunicates means regularly flipping, or “tumbling” the oyster cages to expose the tunicates to the sun.

The Gulf of Maine has a particularly intense tunicate infestation because it’s heating faster than other bodies of water.

The impact of tunicates extends beyond oyster farms. As part of his work at the Wells Reserve, Jeremy Miller manages the Marine Invader Monitoring and Information Collaborative. Traveling to different working waterfronts and Maine islands, he’s found lobstermen complaining about tunicates covering their traps, and hears of mussel farmers whose lines have snapped from the sheer weight of the tunicate blobs. Moreover, the diet of a tunicate—nutrients filtered from seawater—is similar to that of shellfish, reducing resources for native filter feeders.

“People are kind of shocked at the amount of actual biomass of these things,” Miller says. “From a biological standpoint, these are taking nutrients—it takes a lot of stuff to grow that biomass, and it’s all stuff that other things could be using. That creates a big impact on aquaculture.”

The Gulf of Maine has a particularly intense tunicate infestation because it’s heating faster than other bodies of water. But global ocean temperatures are all rising, and tunicates have become a nearly worldwide problem. Three species have appeared in the Puget Sound area of Washington State. Invasive tunicates have even been discovered in the waters off Sitka, Alaska.

Nibbling Away at the Problem

A few radical solutions to the tunicate invasion are in the works. A Norwegian company, Pronofa ASA, has perfected a method for turning the meat of the sea squirt genus Ciona, now common in Maine, into mincemeat for human consumption, much like ground beef.

While not all tunicates are edible, many of the varieties currently invading Maine’s coast are, including clubbed tunicate and members of the Ciona species. Tunicate meat is slightly chewy, reminiscent of calamari. Wild tunicate does look unappetizing, however. The fleshy tubes growing in Maine’s waters are brownish, barrel shaped, and flaccid.

A display of sea pineapples (hoya, known as 海鞘 and 老海鼠in Japanese) at a market. These sea creatures are a delicacy in Japanese cuisine, prized for their unique texture and oceanic flavor, and are often served in sashimi or other traditional dishes. (Photo credit: DigiPub, Getty Images)

It can be a struggle to convince consumers to eat these creatures. But in some parts of the world, they’re a welcome food.

“In Asia, they eat the club tunicate,” explains Larry Harris, University of New Hampshire Professor of Biological Science. “They peel off the outer coating. And in Australia they are a pretty standard part of some diets.” In Chile, a rock-like variety called piure is being embraced by fine-dining establishments as a sustainable and local seafood option.

In Norway, the sea squirts for Pronofa’s culinary experiment are farmed, an idea that causes alarm for Maine farmers as it would mean purposefully introducing tunicates to the environment. It remains to be seen whether intrepid chefs may start experimenting with wild-harvested tunicates. In other parts of the world, including Chile, Argentina, and the Mediterranean, sea squirts are part of the local diet. They are easy to harvest and prepare on any waterfront, and recipes for sea squirts abound in these places.

Even if Americans don’t eat them, sea squirts can be transformed into high-protein feed for various animals, from chickens to salmon, and some have begun exploring that possibility.

University of New Hampshire professor Harris began experimenting with tunicates for animal feed decades ago. But he discovered that a Norwegian company, Ocean Bergen, already held a patent for that purpose, which extended to the U.S., so he discontinued his efforts. Ocean Bergen is one of a handful of Norwegian companies working with tunicates as a future food-system solution. Researchers believe that Ciona, which thrives in the freezing waters around Norway, could help clean the water around salmon farms, filtering out the excess nutrients that cause harmful algal blooms.

Two varieties of tunicate that are taking over Maine waters. (Photo courtesy of the Wells Estuarine Reserve)

Scientists are also experimenting with using tunicates for biofuels. Because they produce cellulose to make their outer tunic bodies, tunicates can be broken down to produce ethanol. Since initial studies in 2013, tunicates have been suggested as a potential fuel of the future, but progress with these experiments has been slow and heavily regulated.

Using tunicates for animal food or biofuels would also involve cultivating them for a reliable harvest, which would meet resistance from the aquaculture industry. Since sea squirts are already wreaking havoc on the seafront, a tunicate farm would likely not be welcome near any existing oyster, mussel, or scallop aquaculture operation.

It may be a while before Mainers consider the idea of eating a sea squirt. Meanwhile, the most important step in preventing tunicate spread is effectively stopping their proliferation. As ocean waters continue to warm, and Maine’s aquaculture industry continues to grow, it is likely that the sea squirt will thrive, and aqua-farmers will have to deal with them.

As Larry Harris warns, “Every dock, every net, is a potential population.”

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]]> https://civileats.com/2025/05/27/warming-waters-cause-invasion-of-sea-squirts-at-maine-fisheries/feed/ 1 https://civileats.com/2025/04/30/oregonians-can-now-taste-local-maple-syrup-and-learn-to-make-it/ Wed, 30 Apr 2025 08:00:04 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=63735 What is unusual about Smoot’s work is not how it happens, but where. In her role as the executive director of the Oregon Maple Project, she is among the first to make maple syrup in the Pacific Northwest. The Oregon Maple Project is based in the sugarbush of Camp Colton, an outdoor environmental education center […]

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From late November to early March, Ella Smoot can usually be found in one of two places: the forest or the sugar shack. Like all maple syrup producers, her winter is a rush of running sap—cold mornings tapping trees and warm afternoons boiling the clear, watery liquid down to a golden, viscous substance. Though sugaring equipment has evolved over time, the basic process remains unchanged, as it has been practiced for centuries by Indigenous peoples in northeastern North America, from New England up through New Brunswick in Canada.

What is unusual about Smoot’s work is not how it happens, but where. In her role as the executive director of the Oregon Maple Project, she is among the first to make maple syrup in the Pacific Northwest.

“It’s one of the founding reasons of the Oregon Maple Project: to make maple syrup with people.”

The Oregon Maple Project is based in the sugarbush of Camp Colton, an outdoor environmental education center located 45 minutes southeast of Portland. Its 85 forested acres, composed largely of bigleaf maples, as well as fir and cedar, are the traditional lands of the Molalla and Kalapuya people. Though some tribes historically used parts of the bigleaf maple trees for medicinal purposes, it is only in the past few years that the area’s residents have begun tapping the trees for sap.

Eliza Nelson, founder of the Oregon Maple Project, was inspired by her childhood growing up amid sugar maples on the East Coast. She produced her first bigleaf maple syrup in 2018 and founded the Oregon Maple Project two years later, with Smoot joining a year after that. Though thousands of miles from most sugar shacks, they are part of a growing group of bigleaf syrup enthusiasts in the region, actively supporting its continued growth—especially through their Sugaring Collective, which consists of 22 members, drawn together by an interest in local, sustainable food practices.

As international tariffs implemented by the Trump administration affect the flow of foreign imports into the U.S., this interest has taken on a new urgency. Approximately 70 percent of the world’s maple syrup is produced in Canada. While the U.S. produces the remaining 30 percent, our cravings outpace our supply—in the past decade, we have imported more than half of Canada’s total production of maple goods. As imports from Canada are currently subject to a 25 percent tariff, this may change quickly.

The Oregon Maple Project—which produced just 2 gallons of syrup this past winter—can’t come close to meeting national demand, but what the collective offers to its members is more than just a precious, sweet taste of the season: It’s an opportunity to form a more meaningful relationship with their natural surroundings.

Following her fourth sugaring season, Smoot chatted with Civil Eats about her experience as one of the first maple syrup producers in the Pacific Northwest, the differences between bigleaf and sugar maple syrups, and how the traditional practice of sugaring is changing with the climate.

How would you describe the Oregon Maple Project?

Ella Smoot explains to the participants of a sugaring workshop how the boiler is used to transform bigleaf sap into maple syrup. (Photo credit: Elena Valeriote)

We’re an educational nonprofit with the mission of inspiring experiential learning, community partnership, and connection to nature through the local production of bigleaf maple syrup. We offer a range of programs for all ages, including workshops to teach about native plants and field trips to get kiddos outside more. The heart of our organization is the Sugaring Collective, which brings together individuals and families in Northwest Oregon who have access to bigleaf maples and an interest in learning how to produce syrup.

How does the maple collective work?

People pay a fee to participate during the sugaring season, and we provide training, equipment, and support throughout this time. We have a group email thread where people are able to ask any questions, any time, like, “What should I do here?” People collect sap from their own backyards and bring it to a community boil, where we then boil it down into syrup.

What do you love most about making your own maple syrup? 

The gathering and the community aspect of it! It’s one of the founding reasons of the Oregon Maple Project: to make maple syrup with people. During the days of boiling, it gets drawn out. It’s a lot of work, but the first boil is always the best day. Through this process, people volunteer in different ways—helping make sure the sap doesn’t start foaming up, chopping wood, adding wood to the fire, thawing sap, checking the tank so that we don’t burn the sap. After all that, we bottle it.  

What are the differences between sugar maple and bigleaf maple trees?

Sugar maples are native to the eastern United States and parts of Canada, while bigleaf maples are native to the Pacific Northwest. We usually tag bigleaf maples in the spring and summer, which is when you can identify them using the flowers and leaves (which are bigger than sugar maples’). We also look at the symmetry of their branching patterns.

Steam rises from the Oregon Maple Project’s sugar shack at Camp Colton as members of the sugaring collective oversee the boiling process, reducing the sap from local bigleaf maple trees down to a dense, flavorful syrup. (Photo courtesy of Oregon Maple Project)

Both are used for syrup, but there are some key differences. Sugar maples thrive in colder climates, where they have more consistent freeze-thaw cycles, and are known for producing sap with a higher sugar content, around 2 to 3 percent. This makes the sap easier to boil down into syrup. In the Pacific Northwest, we have less predictable freeze-thaw weather patterns, and the sap of bigleaf maples has a lower sugar content—about 1 to 2 percent—so we need more sap to produce the same amount of syrup.

What does bigleaf maple syrup taste like, compared to the sugar maple syrup most of us are familiar with?

Bigleaf maple syrup tends to be darker than the amber color of the sugar maple syrup most people are used to. Its flavor is usually described as richer, with a hint of butterscotch and a floral undertone.

We try to boil it to all the same properties of traditional syrup, which is sweet and dense because it has to be 66.7 percent sugar. We make sure ours is that percentage of sugar. It’s hard to get there because it’s really scary to be close to burning it when you’re getting to those higher density sugar levels. But what we found is that because there’s less sugar content in our sap, we need to boil it for longer, which gives it a darker color, plus a more molasses-y flavor.

Have Indigenous traditions connected to bigleaf maple trees or sugaring informed your practices at Oregon Maple Project?

Definitely, and moving forward, a big goal of ours is to figure out how to collaborate more with local Native people. Eric Jones (a professor at Oregon State University and a leader of the region’s bigleaf maple syrup movement) has been reaching out to Native communities trying to figure out more about the local history around bigleaf maples.

Buckets are affixed to bigleaf maple trees to capture the sap, which will then be turned into syrup at the nearby sugar shack. (Photo credit: Elena Valeriote)

For us, Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book Braiding Sweetgrass is really inspiring, especially the chapter on tapping maple trees. In our workshops, we try to share what we know about Native practices, particularly those from the East Coast, where maple sugaring traditions have been passed down for generations.

We follow Honorable Harvest principles, which means taking only what is given, using everything we take, showing respect for the environment, and leaving something behind in return. For example, to make sure we are respecting the trees, we wait until their leaves are fully off at the beginning of the season before we tap. Then, we only tap them one spile per foot of diameter and we’re not tapping all the trees in the area.

We’re also taking a really small amount of sap compared to what the tree actually creates and we try to be super-duper clean so that bacteria doesn’t grow. We remove all the taps once the trees start budding so that they have all of their energy go towards flowering and making seeds.

In terms of giving back, I think it’s the way we’re educating people about how to practice tapping sustainably. Overall, research on the East Coast has shown that sugaring is really sustainable, and there is more research being done at Oregon State University to evaluate if it impacts the lifespan of a tree at all. They’ve done samples on trees that have been tapped thousands of times on the East Coast, and it hasn’t led to anything showing that it disrupts its ability to live a long, healthy life.

How is producing maple syrup different in the Pacific Northwest as compared to the Northeast? Has climate change impacted the possibility of producing maple syrup in these two regions?

The sugar maple industry in the Northeast has a shorter season. Theirs lasts about six weeks in the spring after the deep freeze. For us, it’s late November or early December—whenever the first freeze is—through early March. And while their temperature patterns are more reliable and they’re working nonstop, we’re on and off, paying attention to the weather, collecting whenever there’s a freeze-thaw, then freezing all of our sap, because we don’t usually have enough for a boil. We have to do a lot of cleaning of all of our materials, because when there’s nothing flowing and it gets really warm during the winter, that’s a perfect place for bacteria to grow.

The maple syrup industry in general is interesting because there are a lot of small farm owners and woodland owners, and we serve people with all different political identities. Unfortunately, climate change has become a political identity.

At the Oregon Maple Project, we are curious about how the warming climate will impact the bigleaf maple trees. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer talks about how sugar maples are going to start walking up to Canada and colder regions because they really like cold. My inkling is that bigleaf maples are really resilient and they’ll stay here, but as the climate gets warmer, we won’t be able to make as much syrup because we need the freeze-thaw cycle for the sap to run.

Can you describe your work at the start of the sugaring season, and then a typical day when everything is in full swing?

The beginning of the season in November is focused on getting all of our systems up and running, developing curriculum for our educational programs, setting up the equipment for the sugaring season, and waiting for that first freeze.

Then, throughout the sugaring season, from December through March, it’s really just chaos. I’m running programs—we do two field trips every week and workshops on the weekends—but also supporting the Sugar Collective, plus collecting sap and processing it through a reverse osmosis system. Sap is made out of water and sugar, so when you run it through reverse osmosis, it’s separating out the water molecules and the sugar molecules. This allows us to freeze a higher concentrate of sugar sap and that lessens the amount of boiling time that we need to get rid of the water and turn it into syrup.

What does the future hold for the Oregon Maple Project?

We’re hoping to connect with more local Native communities to learn more of the history of this area, to keep growing the educational piece of our programs, and continue sharing the joy of making maple syrup from bigleaf maple trees.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The post Oregonians Can Now Taste Local Maple Syrup–and Learn to Make It appeared first on Civil Eats.

]]> https://civileats.com/2025/04/14/at-these-grocery-stores-no-one-pays/ https://civileats.com/2025/04/14/at-these-grocery-stores-no-one-pays/#comments Mon, 14 Apr 2025 08:00:08 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=63403 They weren’t there for books—at least, not at that moment. They came to shop for groceries. Connected to the library, the brightly painted market space is small but doesn’t feel cramped. Massive windows drench it in sunshine. In a previous life, it was a café. Now, shelves, tables, counters, and a refrigerator are spread out […]

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More than 50 people stood outside the Enoch Pratt Library’s Southeast Anchor branch on a recent spring morning in Baltimore. Parents with small children, teenagers, and senior citizens clustered outside the door and waited to hear their ticket numbers called.

They weren’t there for books—at least, not at that moment. They came to shop for groceries.

Connected to the library, the brightly painted market space is small but doesn’t feel cramped. Massive windows drench it in sunshine. In a previous life, it was a café. Now, shelves, tables, counters, and a refrigerator are spread out across the room, holding a mix of produce and shelf-stable goods.

Every fourth Friday, Pratt Free Market turns into “Pantry on the Go!”, a farmers’ market-style setup outside the library that offers fruits and vegetables.

That day, as staff and volunteers took their stations, shoppers walked in and filled their bags with what was in stock. On any given day, there’s a range of produce, like collard greens, apples, onions, radishes, potatoes, and cherry tomatoes, plus eggs, orange juice, rice, bread, and treats like cookies and peanut butter crackers. As they exited, shoppers did not need to pull out their wallets: No one pays at Pratt Free Market.

Launched in the fall of 2024, Pratt Free Market opens its doors every Wednesday and Friday and serves around 200 people per day. Anyone can pick up food at the store without providing identification or meeting income requirements. The library-based free grocery store was pitched by M’balu “Lu” Bangura when she started her role as Enoch Pratt Library’s chief of equity and fair practices. The idea stemmed from the food insecurity she saw during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Seeing people hungry just never sat right with me,” said Bangura. “People shouldn’t have to stress about this.”

The Trump administration’s rampant cuts across government agencies have heightened concerns about the future of food security in the U.S. In March, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) cancelled two local food programs that connected small farms to food banks and schools.

Republican lawmakers have also proposed significant cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), a critical resource that helps low-income consumers purchase food. Economists also say that President Trump’s recent tariff policy on major agricultural trade partners will only cause the cost of food to rise—during a time when food prices were already projected to increase.

The combination of slapping tariffs on food trade partners and cutting aid programs seems like a perfect way to exacerbate an ongoing hunger problem in the U.S. In 2023, one in seven households faced food insecurity at some point in the year. For Baltimore residents, 28 percent reported experiencing food insecurity last year—twice the national average. Bangura described a time when a group of nurses came to Pratt Free Market on their lunch break, looking to pick up some food. She says that other working people have done the same.

On a recent Friday, the Pratt Free Market was stocked with radishes, apples, onions, eggs, salad mix, and other grocery items. (Photo credit: Sam Delgado)

Free grocery stores, like food pantries and community fridges, offer food at no cost to community members. But unlike other food charity models, free grocery stores often put more emphasis on the physical environment and service.

Just like regular markets, these dedicated spaces are bright, open, and filled with shelves and fridges holding a mix of food and household items, and customers choose what they want. A traditional food pantry may not have an appealing atmosphere, and community refrigerators have limited space and choices. By simulating the grocery store shopping experience, the free stores offer more than just food; they create space for dignity, too.

Pratt Free Market isn’t alone in this model. While some free grocery stores—like Unity Shoppe in Santa Barbara and World Harvest in Los Angeles—have been around for a while, others have popped up in recent years, including The Store in Nashville, Today’s Harvest just outside Minneapolis, the UMMA Center’s Harvest Market in Chicago, and San Francisco’s District 10 Community Market and Friday Farm Fresh Market.

The Pratt Model

The groceries that line the shelves and refrigerators inside Pratt Free Market vary from week to week, depending on who drops off food. Bangura says the vast majority of their food is purchased from a variety of sources, including the Maryland Food Bank and Plantation Park Heights, a local urban farm. The market sources its non-perishables and household or personal items, like deodorant, from Blessings of Hope, a Pennsylvania-based food redistribution organization.

Raquel Cureton, a program assistant at Pratt Library, stocked the shelves at Pratt Free Market before doors opened to the public. (Photo credit: Sam Delgado)

The funding for these purchases comes entirely from donations to Pratt Library, which are then split amongst the library’s different programs and initiatives, including Pratt Free Market. The library also receives donated food from Leftover Love, a Baltimore nonprofit that rescues food from local businesses that would otherwise go to waste.

On really good days, Bangura says, the market offers a mix of everything—from healthy, fresh produce to sweets like donuts. And every fourth Friday, the marker turns into “Pantry on the Go!”, a farmers’ market-style setup outside the library that offers fruits and vegetables. Last month, Bangura said they handed out onions, sweet potatoes, watermelons, celery, and apples.

As with most philanthropic efforts, volunteers are at the heart of Pratt Free Market’s operations. Gwendolyn Myers, a retiree who lives in the neighborhood, has volunteered with the free grocery store since they opened. She sees her work as a way to give back to her community, and she even brings extra bags of food to her elderly neighbors who aren’t able to leave their homes.

“A little bit of food, it helps,” Myers said. “Times are hard, and they’re going to get harder.”

Meanwhile, In Nashville

About 700 miles from Baltimore, in Nashville, Tennessee, The Store has the look and feel of a grocery store—it’s well-lit, spacious, and stocked with an even mix of fresh foods like fruits, vegetables, meat, and dairy, alongside shelf-stable items like oatmeal and rice. It even offers items like flowers and greeting cards. And just like at Pratt Free Market, its shoppers pay nothing.

Inside The Store in Nashville, which looks and feels like a regular grocery store. (Photo courtesy of The Store)

With funding coming from grants, corporate sponsorships, fundraising events, and individual donors, The Store also purchases most of its food, with a small portion donated. Sarah Goodrich, The Store’s operations director, says they source their food and ingredients from partners like Second Harvest Food Bank, the national produce distributor FreshPoint, and various local farms.

The Store opened in March 2020, during a distinctly difficult time for Tennessee and the country at large. Days before their launch, a deadly set of tornadoes devastated parts of Nashville and Middle Tennessee. Then, the staff received more difficult news: a nationwide lockdown was in place as the pandemic upended everything.

But the back-to-back adversities didn’t stop The Store from helping people access food. “We very quickly had to pivot our model,” said Mari Clare Derrick, The Store’s volunteer director. They switched to delivering food, and in that first year, served over a million meals.

Five years later and in spite of a tumultuous start, The Store’s doors are still open. People with incomes up to twice the federal poverty level can enroll to shop there. Participants are then split into a bi-weekly schedule, and each group alternates every other week. Over email, Goodrich added that more than 870 households are currently enrolled, and while the program is full, they’re working to expand their capacity by establishing another location.

Goodrich says that the “secret recipe” for solving social problems, like hunger, is collaboration and partnerships. The Store has dozens of “referral partners,” or organizations that work closely with vulnerable populations, like families transitioning into housing, formerly incarcerated individuals, and victims of domestic violence. These partner groups can refer their clients and patients to The Store, which can guide their shoppers to these organizations for help as needed.

Community Connection

Having the institutional backing of a Baltimore public library made it possible to launch the Pratt Free Market. “Because this is under [Enoch Pratt Library], I’m able to build partnerships with community organizations who want to come in,” says Bangura. “They want to work with us, and they want to bring their volunteers.”

Taking advantage of its affiliation with the library, the Pratt Free Market aims to connect shoppers to other library-run social initiatives, like Project ENCORE, which helps formerly incarcerated individuals re-enter society, and additional wrap-around services, including in-library social workers, lawyers, and housing navigators.

Unlike other food charity models, free grocery stores put a little more emphasis on the physical environment and service.

Using the library’s resources means access to a large and consistently available space, and the ability to offer more food and serve more people than a smaller intervention like a community refrigerator could. Having a market also allows the community to give feedback about what’s offered, unlike with a community fridge. (The library does have a community refrigerator at three other branches, all stocked with produce from Maryland-based Moon Valley Farm.)

Shopper input is a key part of the free grocery store model. When stocking the store, Bangura considers what products seem to be popular, including non-food items. “My dream and vision was always that this would look like a mini grocery store,” said Bangura. “Many grocery stores have things like deodorant, dish detergent, and soap.” She added that Pratt Free Market has a feminine hygiene dispenser, supplied by organic menstrual product company Femly.

Having a welcoming, communal, in-person space has also allowed for relationships to be built between free grocery store staffers, volunteers, and the communities they serve. Goodrich says that store organizers listen to their shoppers and conduct surveys to learn what foods and items to purchase.

A Disconcerting Future for Food Security

As the Trump administration dismantles federal food and hunger assistance initiatives, advocates see the impacts, and they’re troubling.

The “Everybody Eats” sign at Pratt Free Market. (Photo credit: Sam Delgado)

“There are millions of children living in food-insecure households,” said Alexis Bylander, interim child nutrition programs and policy director at the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC). “This is just a really terrible time to end those kinds of programs.”

On top of cuts to the programs, the consumer choices of SNAP recipients have also been a topic of discussion among policymakers. Representative Nancy Mace (R-South Carolina) posted on X that it wasn’t the government’s responsibility to “pay for someone else’s soda.”

“You want a soda? Get a job and go buy it yourself,” Mace wrote.

Though Mace alludes to SNAP recipients choosing “unhealthy” foods, restricting options for beneficiaries does nothing to address affordability or accessibility, says Salaam Bhatti, SNAP director at FRAC. “If your goal is for people to eat healthier, you have to understand that the healthier food is the most expensive food in a grocery store,” he said. “If you really want people to buy better food, then increase the SNAP benefit, because right now, it’s only an average of $6 per person per day.”

“I don’t think that I’m going to cure world hunger. But I could help one person eat their next meal. And that’s enough for me.”

The Trump administration’s ongoing and looming funding slashes haven’t affected The Store and Pratt Free Market directly because neither receive federal dollars. But cuts to critical food assistance and welfare programs could force more families to seek aid at philanthropic food initiatives like free grocery stores—and stretch resources thinner than they already are.

It’s particularly concerning in the context of rising grocery prices, which has been an ongoing problem since the pandemic began in 2020. Not all the increases stemmed from higher demand; some resulted from the intentional decision of major food manufacturers, retailers, and commodity growers to raise prices higher than the rate of inflation, says Errol Schweizer, a grocery store industry expert.

This price inflation is “not just a profiteering issue, it’s a food apartheid issue . . . and that it’s made people so much more food insecure,” he added.

Free grocery stores won’t solve hunger or its various root causes, and the people who lead these initiatives know that. But these spaces can play a crucial role in responding to local needs and gaps in real time, while offering a safe, dignified space.

As a dozen shoppers at a time perused the offerings at Pratt Free Market, they filled their bags with snacks and food and made pleasant conversation with staff and volunteers.

Sylvester Foster just started coming to market in the last couple weeks after some friends mentioned it to him. On his third visit, he noticed volunteers struggling to bring a new refrigerator into the store. So, he ended up helping them, and then started to help with other tasks, like breaking down boxes. In exchange for his spur-of-the-moment volunteer work, he got to shop at the market early.

“I gave [the volunteers] a hand, and I ended up getting myself early. So it was a 2-for-1,” Foster joked. “It’s very useful,” he added about the market. “My thing is, you got to utilize whatever you get.”

The store is modest, and still has challenges, like accessing more food to offer, says Bangura. But even so, for hundreds of Baltimore households a week, Pratt Free Market plays an active role in easing the financial pressure of affording groceries.

“I don’t think that I’m going to cure world hunger,” said Bangura. “But I could help one person eat their next meal. And that’s enough for me.”

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]]> https://civileats.com/2025/04/14/at-these-grocery-stores-no-one-pays/feed/ 4 https://civileats.com/2025/04/07/list-10-ways-to-offer-food-mutual-aid/ https://civileats.com/2025/04/07/list-10-ways-to-offer-food-mutual-aid/#comments Mon, 07 Apr 2025 09:00:34 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=61747 A version of this article originally appeared in The Deep Dish, our members-only newsletter. Become a member today and get the next issue directly in your inbox. Here are Greenfield’s suggestions for strengthening your own food community: 1. Live communally! Thousands of intentional communities and ecovillages are waiting for you to join them. Check out the […]

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]]> A version of this article originally appeared in The Deep Dish, our members-only newsletter. Become a member today and get the next issue directly in your inbox.

Environmental activist and author Robin Greenfield is known for his fully committed experiments in ecological living. His most recent book, Food Freedom: A Year of Growing and Foraging 100% of My Food, covers his efforts to live entirely independently from the industrial food system. Greenfield succeeded only by relying on others who guided him in his gardening, fishing, and foraging, and came to understand the profound power of community and how naturally that flows through food.

Robin Greenfield and friends, tending a community fruit tree. (Illustration by Nhatt Nichols)

Here are Greenfield’s suggestions for strengthening your own food community:

1. Live communally! Thousands of intentional communities and ecovillages are waiting for you to join them. Check out the Foundation for Intentional Community, the Global Ecovillage Network, and the Cohousing Association of the United States to find a community near you. Or use their resources to start a co-living space or community of your own.

2. Plant public trees in your community in collaboration with others. Community Fruit Trees can support you on this path.

3. Source your seeds and plants from small-scale community seed growers, seed libraries, and seed banks that are breeding diversity and resilience. Seed Savers Exchange, Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, Ujamaa Seeds, and Truelove Seeds are a few high-integrity organizations that distribute nationwide.

4. Start a seed library or a community seed network yourself. Community Seed Network and Seed Library Network are excellent resources to help you get started.

5. Join a community compost initiative or start one if there’s a need. Cycle the compost back into small-scale ecological gardening and farming. Find an initiative or learn how to start your own through the Community Compost Program.

6. Harvest food that’s already growing, but not getting utilized, and get this nourishing, local produce to the people who need it the most. Concrete Jungle and ProduceGood are beautiful examples to follow.

7. Join or start a community garden or school garden in your community. Community Gardens of America and Edible Schoolyard Project can help with this.

8. Seek out or start a Food is Free chapter and share your garden bounties freely with your community members.

9. Join a community-led ecological food initiative. A few that have inspired me include Soul Fire Farm, The BIPOC Community Garden, Bartlett Park Community Garden, and the Fonticello Food Forest. Support the initiatives that are already taking place. They are doing the work and they need our support to continue.

10. Take part in land reparations for Indigenous and Black communities, so that they can achieve food sovereignty. Find communities to support via the Northeast Farmers of Color Land Trust. Learn about and take part in the LANDBACK movement to return land to Indigenous people so they can build food sovereignty while stewarding our global resources.

Food Mutual Aid Stories

Illustration by Nhatt Nichols

• Indigenous Food Reciprocity as a Model for Mutual Aid
• Photo Essay: Standing in the Gaps With Feed Durham
• In Chicago, an Environmental Organization Feeds Community
• This San Francisco Food Pantry Is a Labor of Love
• Photo Essay: Connecting Manhattan’s Chinatown Elders Through Food and Culture

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]]> https://civileats.com/2025/04/07/list-10-ways-to-offer-food-mutual-aid/feed/ 2 https://civileats.com/2025/03/25/dignified-food-eases-food-insecurity-in-philadelphia/ https://civileats.com/2025/03/25/dignified-food-eases-food-insecurity-in-philadelphia/#comments Tue, 25 Mar 2025 09:00:53 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=62639 The steady thump of techno music spills from a portable speaker as they wind their way toward service. They’ll turn out 300 plates tonight, each one featuring a bed of couscous piled high with harissa-roasted carrots and a hearty Moroccan beef stew with chickpeas and spinach. A sprinkling of cilantro brightens every serving. This is […]

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Inside the commissary kitchen in West Philadelphia’s Dorrance Hamilton Center, a warming whiff of cinnamon, clove, and cumin fills the air, mingling with the comforting scent of beef simmered slowly with tomatoes. The kitchen is narrow, and the half-dozen chefs cooking on this Friday night in late February weave around its tight corners with a sense of purpose.

The steady thump of techno music spills from a portable speaker as they wind their way toward service. They’ll turn out 300 plates tonight, each one featuring a bed of couscous piled high with harissa-roasted carrots and a hearty Moroccan beef stew with chickpeas and spinach. A sprinkling of cilantro brightens every serving.

This is the home of the Double Trellis Food Initiative, where a group of chefs trained in the world of fine dining are cooking to feed those in need. They once served the city’s upper crust, but tonight their food will be heading to community fridges, mutual aid efforts, and youth programs, where it will feed those facing food and housing insecurity in America’s poorest large city.

With an estimated 15 percent of the population navigating food insecurity, Double Trellis aims to improve the quality of meals these residents receive from a vast network of food banks, soup kitchens, organizations, and agencies.

Over time, Double Trellis became a refuge for chefs turned off by the oppressive, abusive environment found in many white-coat kitchens.

Since its start during the pandemic, Double Trellis has developed from a fledgling operation into an established nonprofit with two full-time and five part-time employees, workforce development for juvenile offenders trying to straighten out their lives, and waste-reduction programs.

The organization receives roughly $400,000 in annual funding from donations, philanthropies, and government agencies, helping its chefs serve more than 55,000 meals last year. As the Trump administration seeks to shrink the public safety net, Double Trellis is deepening its commitment to communities facing increased need.

“Everyone deserves dignified food made from real ingredients by people who care,” says Adrien Carnecchia, a history teacher turned pastry chef who started volunteering with Double Trellis three years ago when it was still a ragtag operation turning out one offering each week.

Today, he and his colleagues send, to two dozen partner organizations across the city, four different meals each week—an evolving menu that recently featured chicken adobo, veggie fajitas, frittatas with potato-and-pepper hash, and butternut squash curry. The cuisine changes, but the food is always nutritious, filling, and flavorful.

The Origins of Double Trellis

Matthew Stebbins, the nonprofit’s founder and executive director, has felt the same hunger experienced by many of the community members Double Trellis feeds, lending extra weight to the standard that guides his kitchen: “If this is the only thing you ate today, would that be OK?” he says.

Executive director Matthew Stebbins updates a recipe board that breaks down the cooking tasks for that day’s meal and the plans for the next day. (Photo credit: Kat Arazawa)

Stebbins has been a chef most of his life, training under James Beard nominee Townsend Wentz and then manning the sauté station at Laurel, once named a top 10 restaurant in the country and the best in Philadelphia. But as his career progressed, so did his drug and alcohol addictions. At his professional peak, he was unhoused and struggled to reliably access food—let alone treatment. He spent five years on and off the streets, he says, before leaving the city to get sober.

When he returned to Philadelphia, Stebbins worked at a catering company whose business cratered at the start of the pandemic. When protests erupted a few months later after the murder of George Floyd, he had time and wanted to help. He rallied some friends to cook and feed the protesters, but quickly realized he should instead be serving the unhoused people he was marching past. Their grateful response to being offered a hot meal as simple as a breakfast burrito showed him the void he’s sought to fill ever since.

“It’s about investing directly into young people so they can have opportunities and things they haven’t had access to before—so they can get the life they deserve and want.”

“There’s a difference between skipping lunch and not eating for three days,” Stebbins says, recalling a moment in 2015 when he was at his lowest. “That sort of debilitating pain isn’t just in your body; it’s in your heart and soul. I think about that often when I get tired. There’s absolutely no reason in the richest nation in the world why that should be happening to anyone.”

When it launched in 2020, Double Trellis—its name drawn from the system Stebbins’ grandfather used as a grape farmer in New York decades ago—hand-delivered meals to unhoused people and soon began placing a portion of their food in a community fridge accessible to all for free. In March 2021, the organization began operating a fridge of its own in Kensington, a neighborhood that has long been the epicenter of the opioid epidemic in Philadelphia.

In that first full year, Double Trellis served around 10,000 meals, split between direct service and community fridges, which surged in popularity and prominence when the pandemic pushed food insecurity into the spotlight. Philadelphia was home to more than 30 community fridges at one point, most of which still exist.

The one Stebbins helped establish has since moved to the LAVA Center in West Philadelphia, closer to Double Trellis’ base of operations, and still receives some of the organization’s meals. Two others—The People’s Fridge, just a few blocks away, and the South Philadelphia Community Fridge—are the main recipients of meals made during this Friday night service.

For Staff, a Refuge and Source of Strength

Over time, Double Trellis became a refuge for chefs turned off by the oppressive, abusive environment found in many white-coat kitchens. Most of the staff is queer and gender-nonconforming, and they collaborate rather than compete. Stebbins is focused on “recreating kitchen culture from a fear-based system to a support-based system,” he says.

The Double Trellis team after wrapping up in the kitchen. Left to right: Adrien Carnecchia, Sarah Grisham, Mads Pryor, Dani Chaquea, Eli Rojas, and Matthew Stebbins. (Photo credit: Kat Arazawa)

The effort seems to be working. By last year, Double Trellis’ service had expanded nearly sixfold, even as it sought to broaden its impact by introducing a workforce development program for juvenile offenders. Through a partnership with YEAH Philly, which offers support for teens and young adults impacted by violence, Stebbins and his team spent four months teaching their first two young trainees the skills necessary to get a job in the food industry.

The trainees were paid $17 an hour and had externships at candymaker Shane Confectionery and Honeysuckle Provisions, an acclaimed Afrocentric restaurant. Both are now ServSafe certified in food safety and handling practices, which will make them more employable in the food industry. More importantly, both have had their juvenile court cases dismissed with support from YEAH’s legal team, according to co-CEO Kendra Van de Water.

Shamp Johnson, now 18, came to Double Trellis wanting to learn how to cook for himself and his mother. During the training program, he sharpened his knife skills, learned to navigate a professional kitchen, and fell in love with cooking. The relationships he built will stay with him, he says.

“Matt came from a similar lifestyle as me,” Johnson says. “He really showed me that whatever you put your mind to you can do. You really can achieve [it]. That really opened my eyes up, his whole story and what he’d been through. Now all I want is a job cooking.”

The organization’s second group of trainees is set to start this spring, remaining small so its members receive undivided attention, Stebbins says.

“Meals are just a stopgap, not a solution.”

The project is in good company in Philadelphia, where other initiatives share a similar goal. The Monkey and the Elephant, a café in the Brewerytown neighborhood, trains and employs former foster youth as they transition into adulthood, while Down North Pizza in Strawberry Mansion exclusively employs the formerly incarcerated. Philabundance, the largest food bank in the region, offers a 16-week culinary vocational training program for those with low or no income.

For Van de Water, who met Stebbins when Double Trellis began contributing meals to the free, youth-staffed grocery store YEAH operates, the program is helping to change how the Philadelphia community views teens affected by poverty, racism, and violence.

“It’s about investing directly into young people so they can have opportunities and things they haven’t had access to before—so they can get the life they deserve and want,” Van de Water says.

Carnecchia developed the curriculum, which includes one hour each day of classroom education—such as math skills for kitchen measurements and recipe building—and five hours in the kitchen. “It’s the hardest thing I’ve done here, by far,” he says, but also the most rewarding.

Stebbins hopes to expand the program if funding allows; last year, he says, Double Trellis’ revenue was around $400,000, including personal donations, support from private philanthropies like the Claneil Foundation, and backing from the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency. This year, the Philadelphia Department of Public Health began contributing funds.

Forecasting an Increased Need

Double Trellis’ work has only become more urgent as inflation continues to put healthy food out of reach for more people and the Trump administration threatens the social safety net by vowing to “correct Biden’s financial mismanagement” of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Economists also warn that tariffs will increase food prices. Following the election, volunteer signups at Double Trellis filled up for months in advance, with people recognizing the need that would likely ensue.

The organization hasn’t been directly affected by the attempt to slash federal government spending that has frozen funding for farmers, Stebbins says, but he anticipates a trickle-down effect. The kitchen sources most of its produce and meat from Sharing Excess, a food rescue nonprofit, and the Carversville Farm Foundation. Now, Stebbins is worried about food donations declining or drying up if his partners’ work is hampered. “Anyone [working to address] food insecurity is pretty nervous right now,” he says.

“We have to care for our community. We have to care for our neighbors.”

For Mads Pryor, a Double Trellis cook who has worked in kitchens for 15 years, most recently as private chef for a wealthy family in Philadelphia’s ritzy Main Line suburbs, working to address food insecurity is more important than ever. “We see the cost of groceries rising, an uptick in health issues, and not enough structural support for the citizens of Philadelphia and this country,” Pryor says.

These challenges underscore the need for Double Trellis’ workforce development program. As Stebbins points out, food and housing insecurity are deeply rooted, tangled up with poverty and the systemic failures that allow it to persist.

“Meals are just a stopgap,” he says, “not a solution.”

In the long term, Stebbins hopes Double Trellis can do more to make a difference. The kitchen’s emphasis on reducing food waste is part of that equation. Last year, it used 40,000 pounds of excess food rescued by Sharing Excess and composted 10,000 more. Meanwhile, Double Trellis makes the most of its ingredients. Lemon peels, for example, are preserved in salt and used in vinaigrettes and slaws.

To further expand its impact, Double Trellis hopes to find a kitchen of its own, which would make it possible to prepare breakfasts and lunches and triple its output to 1,000 meals a day, Stebbins says. His long-term vision includes nutrition workshops and cooking classes for the community, and more culinary training for young people.

For now, though, he and his colleagues are simply responding to the need they see as best they can.

“We have to care for our community,” Carnecchia says. “We have to care for our neighbors.”

The post ‘Dignified Food’ Eases Food Insecurity in Philadelphia appeared first on Civil Eats.

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