In late winter of 2021, CoFED began reviewing applications for the CoFUND in cooperation with an amazing selection committee. We learned so much about LGBTQIA+, BIPOC cooperators who are making food and land justice a priority.
The selection process was exciting and challenging. We are so proud to announce the winners of our first-ever regranting program, the CoFUND 2021 Cohort:
Pueblo Resurgents
Pueblo Resurgents has been engaged in community-based research and workshopping in the areas of traditional architecture, food systems and farming, and traditional arts for over six years. In this time, we as an organization have cultivated networks and relationships pertinent to Indigenous resurgence and nationhood, and feel confident in implementing continued actionable steps for Food and Land Sovereignty through education.
Khao’na Kitchen
Khao’na Kitchen (pronounced KAH-OWN-A), a fusion between Filipino and Indian culture, is cooperatively owned and offers wellness coaching, educational workshops & curriculum, and the catering of traditional Indian + Filipino meals with a healthy twist. Khao’na Kitchen is based in Brooklyn, NY and is a queer, gender non-conforming, woman and people of color-run cooperative. Khao’na Kitchen prides itself on delicious, unique, non-factory methods of creating sustainable food while decolonizing our minds and methods of what it means to create & eat food that has ridges, curves, & bumps yet never sacrificing flavor or integrity.
Heal With The Land
Heal with the Land is cultivating a nature sanctuary in the deep South for B/I/POC, LGTBTQIA+ in order to support our collective healing from the effects of patriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalism. Our land project will offer B/I/POC, LGBTQIA+ people a safe and nourishing environment for cooperative ownership and land stewardship. Through retreat, educational programming, and land tending, Heal with the Land will be a space for dreaming of and building a liberated world. It is our deepest belief that the land is our source and accomplice for radical healing.
Ka Hale Mahiku
Ka Hale Mahiku is a small ohana (family) based farm located in East Maui, Hawai’i. As recent recipients of the USDA farm grant the family was able to purchase several acres on the highly fertile and sacred lands in Hana, Maui to cultivate into a culinary focused farm. The ohana of 4 has deep roots in urban and rural farming at their places of residence as well as in ‘loi’s’ or taro patches that are harvested by the community. Over the past several years they have donated most of their “guerrilla” harvests to local families in need, especially in their low-income apartment complex and nonprofits that serve the unsheltered community. The USDA purchased farm will allow them to formalize their efforts and create a line of sustainability for the families ongoing work towards food security as well as the island food sovereignty movement.
Hope to Thrive
Hope to Thrive is a Black and Latinx-led non-profit organization based out of Winston Salem, NC, that works to inspire hope for all communities to thrive in health and wellbeing. We seek racial justice and work within different intersections of economics, food, faith, and health, to bring about good wellbeing for the environment and people. We currently are building a compassionate plant-based food system that both reduces animal suffering and helps economic development through our Holistic Produce Pantry in Winston Salem, NC which functions like a food co-op. We also have a small farm in which we work with a black woman farmer to help us grow food for our pantry. We serve blacks and Latinx underserved populations who are food insecure, 23.3 % of the population is determined to live in poverty, higher than the US national average of 13.1%.
Fresher Together
Fresher Together is a collaborative food and farming project for healing, economic development, training and retreat. From soil to humans, we create nourishing food and spaces that are restorative and support well-being. Fresher Together envisions thriving land with accessible nourishing food, well-being, and community wealth.
Earthseed Land Cooperative
Earthseed is led by 7 Black and Brown co-founding members, who are farmers, teachers, artists and entrepreneurs, Our mission is to remember and reimagine our relationship to ourselves, each other and the land in pursuit and practice of collective liberation. We believe that creating intergenerational relationships and skill sharing promotes and increases resourcefulness, community `wellness, financial independence and self-determination for our current past and future generations. We believe that in cooperation and with analysis of systems of oppression we will create a center for economic liberation and environmental sustainability.
FUBU Farms
This is a small-scale organic farm producing mixed veggies, flowers, medicinal herbs, and natural dyes grown by QTBIPOC for QTBIPOC in Portland, Oregon. Fubu farm is focused on feeding Black and historically marginalized communities while making space for us to work the land in a healing and equitable way. Fubu farm is working to employ QTBIPOC, queer and trans-Black, Indigenous, people of color, in an equitable way and give space and access for beginner QTBIPOC farmers to grow food for ourselves and communities on the margins of our current systems. Fubu Farms is in its start-up phase, looking to create a CSA and develop acquired land for production.
Cooperativa Riquezas del campo
Visualizamos un lugar de trabajo digno, donde la toma de decisiones y la generación de ingresos sea basadas en la solidaridad, la democracia y la sostenibilidad ecológica. Nuestra finca cooperativa es en sí una alternativa económica que nos ofrece la oportunidad de ser dueños de un negocio propio y tener acceso a alimentos orgánicos de mayor valor nutritivo. Al mismo tiempo adquirimos nuevas habilidades en agricultura sostenible que nos ayude a mejorar nuestra calidad de vida. Riquezas es liderado por seis socios-dueños. Hemos establecido nuestra finca como un espacio comunitario donde podamos reunirnos e integrarnos con el objeto de cultivar y preservar nuestras tradiciones, mediante realización de talleres y otros eventos. La finca sirve como una plataforma para que personas de muchos diferentes orígenes puedan conectarse, aprender juntos y también organizar para un mundo más justo, en colaboración con nuestra organización hermana, el Centro Obrero de Valle Pionero. (PVWC)
Cooperative CRECE Huertos Urbanos
La Cooperativa CRECE cuenta con 3 agricultores miembros –Abel G Ruiz, Jaime Bautista, y Emmanuel Preciado—y dos miembrxs que apoyan en capacidad de asesorxs—Clara Leopo (Voz de Jovenes) y Ana Urzua (TA: desarrolladora de cooperativas). Juntos hemos gestionamos una parcela de aproximadamente 1/3 de acre desde el 2016. Nuestra misión es combatir la segregación alimentaria y construir un ecosistema alimentario regenerativo y controlado por miembros de nuestra comunidad en Santa Ana, CA.
Catatumbo Cooperative Farms
Catatumbo Cooperative Farm, LLC, is a worker-owned cooperative farm located in South Chicago operating since the Fall of 2018. We are three queer Women and gender non-conforming immigrants from Mexico and Venezuela; Jazmin Martinez, Ireri Unzueta-Carrasco and Vivi Moreno. We cultivate affordable, nutritious, sustainably grown and culturally relevant produce and medicinal herbs for Latinx, Immigrant, People of color, and low-income neighborhoods in Chicago and surrounding communities. We do this by incorporating and learning about our combined ancestral farming knowledge; working with natural cycles; as well as principles of worker cooperatives where the wellbeing of our ecosystems, our communities, our soils, and our worker-owners are our priorities.
Black Yield Institute
BYI is a Pan-African power institution based in South Baltimore that works towards Black land and food sovereignty. Black Yield Institute aims “to create a self-determined and self-reliant community of Black institutions, Black-owned businesses and people of African Descent in Baltimore’s poor and Black food environments.” Their five main initiatives involve two direct action projects and three programs that facilitate political education work, action network building, and community-based participatory action research.
Black Star Farmers
Black Star Farmers (BSF) mission is to be a Black and Indigenous lead foundry for the radical reclamation of land and food sovereignty for BIPOC through education, conversation, and volunteerism in a safe, joyful, and intentional community. We aim to challenge the white supremacist narrative surrounding agriculture and food security through regenerative agriculture, transformative, restorative and healing justice centering around BIPOC communities.
