Local Food Systems

Founded in 2005, Urban Roots is a consumer cooperative garden center on Buffalo's West Side; its goal is to revitalize Buffalo through beautification efforts and urban renewal. Owned by more than 650 individuals, Urban Roots sells flowers, shrubs, trees and vegetables and originally grew out of planning and revitalization efforts of the West Side Community Collaborative. Read more about Urban Roots Garden Cooperative...

Starting in the late 1960's, Resource Center is a non-profit dedicated to revitalizing Chicago's neighborhoods through composting, urban agriculture, recycling, and other practices that are sustainable and that reuse resources. Today, Resource Center has approximately a $1.5 million annual budget, employs 25 people, and generates 95 percent of its revenue from earned income. Read more about Resource Center...

Established in 2000 as a memorial to a former member of the Weaver's Way Cooperative, the Mort Brooks Memorial Farm (aka Weaver's Way Farm) is a 1.25 acre urban farm administered by Weavers Way Community Programs, an arm of Weavers Way Co-op created in 2007 to run the co-op's non-profit programs, and managed by two full time staff and two full season apprentices. In 2007, with the hire of the two full time staff, the farm was on pace to earn more than $50,000 by mid-July, and was also able to expand its educational mission, bringing students from local schools to the farm. Read more about Mort Brooks Memorial Farm (Weaver's Way Farm)...

Founded in 2004, Cultivate Kansas City (formerly known as the Kansas City Center for Urban Agriculture) is a non-profit organization dedicated to improving the local food system by providing technical assistance and training to urban farmers, conducting research and policy development, and managing the Kansas City Community Farm.  Located in the Argentine neighborhood, the 2.25-acre, self-sustaining, educational urban farm produces more than 30,000 pounds of food each year with sales of more than $100,000. Read more about Cultivate Kansas City...

Founded in 1993, Growing Power, Inc. is a nonprofit organization focused on helping ensure equal access to healthy, high-quality, safe, and affordable food. To do so, it provides hands-on training, on-the-ground demonstrations, and technical assistance—all of which is geared to help people grow, process, market, and distribute food in a sustainable manner. Headquartered in Milwaukee, Growing Power also has multiple farm sites in Wisconsin and Illinois. Read more about Growing Power...

Formed in 2007, the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Food Policy Coalition strives to bring about public and private policy-based changes that foster a healthier food system. The Coalition is an unincorporated organization - an unconventional structure that allows staff and members of it five issue-based working groups to contribute their time through their capacity in one of several dozen organizations, including government agencies, nonprofits, community development corporations, businesses, neighborhood groups, and others. Read more about Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Food Policy Coalition...

City Slicker Farms aims to empower West Oakland community members to meet their immediate and basic need for healthy, organic food by creating high-yield urban farms and backyard gardens.  Founded by a community activist in 2001, City Slicker Farms started as a half-acre vacant lot growing food at a discount for local residents. Today, the organization’s operations include three community market farms (i.e., spaces open to the public), over 300 backyard gardens, a weekly farm stand, a greenhouse, and urban farming education programs. Read more about City Slicker Farms...

Added Value is a non-profit focused on creating a local, affordable food system in the neighborhood of Red Hook by turning vacant land into urban farms and by providing job training to local community youth (to date, more than 150 teenagers).  Its accomplishments include growing 12 tons of fresh produce for donation, sale and consumption; serving as a daily educational/work site for more than 150 teens; generating $70,000 in revenue for youth stipends, creating $120,000 in local economic activity; educating more than 1,300 schoolchildren on an annual basis; and building the largest community compost program in NYC that is run entirely with sustainable resources.

Started in 2008, Hollygrove Market & Farm is a non-profit urban agriculture-training farm and produce market located in the heart of New Orleans.  Hollygrove also runs a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program, coordinating and providing a stable market for more than 50 local - rural and urban - farms.  As of 2009, Hollygrove had redeveloped an acre of blighted property into community garden plots, composted several thousand pounds of unmarketable material, given more than $5,000 in edible donations, and purchased more than $168,000 in local produce.  Committed to increasing access to affordable, healthy food, Hollygrove also offers discounted produce to community residents, students, and people using an EBT card.