The aim of this page is to recognise, celebrate and encourage the self-empowerment of community agency networks (CANs) and community groups' Food activism across the USA. The majority of our information about this is collated via our place pages ...Near you. Learn about how communities positively impact through innovations, different projects and collaborations.

Food activism news

Video

How This Indigenous Farmer Is Solving Food Insecurity

Authors: PBS Terra, 16.11 mins.

Date: 2014-04-24

International events

Maps

• Serve Your Country Food, A project of the greenhorns - see external links
• yardsharing.org, share a yard, grow a community

Public interest law resources

Farm Commons, empowering agricultural communities to resolve their own legal vulnerabilities, within an ecosystem of support.

Research

• Center for Regional Food Systems, Michigan State University
• Creating Change in the Food System: The Role of Regional Food Networks in Iowa, 2012 Center for Regional Food Systems

Other resources

• Food MythBusters, a new collaborative project to bust myths about industrial agriculture and share the positive story of sustainable farming through creative movies, an online action center, and grassroots events. Food MythBusters is an initiative of the Real Food Media Project, directed by Anna Lappé, and whose mission is to inspire, educate, and grow the movement for sustainable food and farming. A project of Corporate Accountability International, the Food MythBusters coalition includes some of the most important food and farming organizations in the country, including Land Stewardship Project, Family Farm Defenders, Food Tank, Coalition of Immokalee Workers, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, Food and Water Watch, Food Chain Workers Alliance, Real Food Challenge, Slow Food USA, Small Planet Institute, and Sustainable Table. ^W
• HOMEGROWN.org, online community and resource
• Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food, USDA
• Seed Savers Exchange, non-profit organization based near Decorah, Iowa, that preserves heirloom plant varieties through regeneration, distribution and seed exchange. It is one of the largest nongovernmental seedbanks in the United States. The mission of SSE is to preserve the world’s diverse but endangered garden heritage for future generations by building a network of people committed to collecting, conserving, and sharing heirloom seeds and plants, and educating people about the value of genetic and cultural diversity. Since 1975, Seed Savers has produced an annual yearbook of members’ seed offerings, as well as multiple editions of The Garden Seed Inventory, and The Fruit, Nut and Berry Inventory. SSE also publishes Seed to Seed: Seed Saving and Growing Techniques for Vegetable Gardeners. The nonprofit has sold seeds to about 600 retail stores in the United States and Canada. ^W

Food Coops

• Food Co-ops and Associates Cooperative Grocer Network, added 15:21, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
• Coop Directory Service, online source of information about natural food co-ops

Local food

• Local Harvest, Farmers markets, family farms, CSA, Organic food, PYO. Website aimed at connecting local growers; a great way for locavores to continue to source produce within their local community. ^W

Seasonal food

• Eat the Seasons, North America

Seed sharing

• How to Start a Seed Sharing Campaign in Your Town, Shareable, February 2015

Community gardening in the United States

Community gardening in the United States encompasses a wide variety of approaches. Some influential community gardens, such as the Clinton Community Garden in the middle of Manhattan in New York City, and the Peralta garden in Berkeley, California, inspired by architect and community garden visionary Karl Linn, are gathering places for neighbors and showcases for art and ecological awareness, with food production cherished but seen as one part of a much larger vision. Other gardens resemble European "allotment" gardens, with plots where individuals and families can grow vegetables and flowers, including a number (for instance, in Minneapolis and Ann Arbor, Michigan) which began as "Victory Gardens" during World War II. Even such "food" gardens can be very different — for instance, plot sizes range widely from as small as 1.5m × 1.5m (5 ft × 5 ft) in some inner city gardens and art gardens, such as the Dovetail Garden in Charlotte, North Carolina, to relatively large plots of 15m × 15m (50 ft × 50 ft) such as those at Hilton Head, South Carolina.

Some community gardens, in contrast, are devoted entirely to creating ecological green space or habitat, still others to growing flowers, and others to education or providing access to gardening to those who otherwise could not have a garden, such as the elderly, recent immigrants or the homeless — for example, the Community Garden for the Homeless, in Charlotte, is not far away from the very different Dovetail Garden. Some gardens are worked as community farms with no individual plots at all, shading into becoming urban farms. ^W

Campaigns

Organic Consumers Association, consumer protection and organic agriculture advocacy group based in Finland, Minnesota. It was formed in 1998 in the wake of opposition by organic consumers to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's controversial proposed regulations for organic food. The OCA is an online non-profit public interest organization that has over 850,000 members in its database. The members include subscribers, volunteers, supporters, and 3,000 cooperating retail co-ops, such as in the natural foods and organic marketplace. The OCA is one of the only organizations in the U.S focused on promoting the interests of the nation's estimated 50 million organic consumers.

The OCA deals with wide range of current crucial issues for health, justice, and sustainability. The campaigns are issues of food safety, industrial agriculture, genetic engineering, children's health, fair trade, environmental sustainability and other crucial topics. ^W

News archive

See also: United States#Free stuff

local information can be found, or shared, via our many USA location pages

External links

• Agrarian Trust, land access for next generation farmers
• Greenhorns, non-traditional grassroots non-profit organization made up of young farmers and a diversity of collaborators. Our mission is to recruit, promote and support the new generation of young farmers.
• Grow Appalachia
• Growing Power, an urban agriculture organization headquartered in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It runs the last functional farm within the Milwaukee city limits and also maintains an active office in Chicago. Growing Power aims for sustainable food production, as well as the growth of communities through the creation of local gardens and Community Food Systems. They implement their mission by providing hands-on training, on-the-ground demonstration, outreach and technical assistance. ^W
• National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition
• Slow Food USA Wikipedia's Slow Food article includes a Criticisms section, see also information re Slow Food USA
• Slow Money, a movement to organize investors and donors to steer new sources of capital to small food enterprises, organic farms, and local food systems. Slow Money takes its name from the Slow Food movement. Slow Money aims to develop the relationship between capital markets and place, including social capital and soil fertility. Slow Money is supporting the grass-roots mobilization of investors through network building, convening, publishing, and incubating intermediary strategies and structures of funding. It is a 501(c)3 non-profit based in Boulder, Colorado. ^W
• StrongerTogether.coop, consumer website developed by National Co+op Grocers
• Sustainable Table, created in 2003 by the nonprofit organization GRACE to help consumers understand the problems with our food supply and offer viable solutions and alternatives from sustainable agriculture. Rather than be overwhelmed by the problems created by our industrial agricultural system, Sustainable Table celebrates the joy of food and eating from sustainable food systems. ^W