Near the loading dock, a shipment of kale awaits transport to refrigerated storage, the curly green leaves poking out of boxes from a nearby farm. More boxes of food, including brown rice, coconut milk, and Corn Flakes, are stacked on towering shelves.

Some shelves, however, are notably empty.

Due to funding cuts at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) over the last several months, the food bank lost more than 25 tractor-trailer loads of food between April and June and an expected $2 million that would have been used to purchase local produce next year. As other food banks across the country have reported, Capital Area’s President and CEO Radha Muthiah said that demand here is way up. Now, her team is preparing for another rush.

“We know that with any reduction in SNAP [the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program], people are going to look to try and make that [food] up in other ways, and certainly looking to us and our network will be one of those ways,” she said.

More than 40 million Americans rely on SNAP for food aid. But Republicans are counting on major changes to the program to help fund tax cuts in their “One Big, Beautiful Bill,” which they hope to have to President Donald Trump by July 4. In 2023, SNAP cost $113 billion.

Their plans would fundamentally alter how SNAP works, decreasing federal spending on the program by about $200 billion over 10 years. The bill is not yet final, but the Senate is poised to soon pass it, sending it back to the House (where it could face other obstacles) before it heads toward Trump’s desk later this week. If the plans remain intact and the bill becomes law, many fewer Americans—possibly millions fewer—will receive benefits.

House and Senate Agriculture leaders G.T. Thompson (R-Pennsylvania) and John Boozman (R-Arkansas), who worked on the plans, have both said they support SNAP and are committed to ensuring that hungry people can access food. But Republican leaders also claim the program is rife with waste, fraud, and abuse.

They want to shift the cost to states, with the amount based on how many errors the states are making in administering the program. They say this will incentivize states to make fewer mistakes with taxpayer funds. They also say the Republican plan to subject more SNAP recipients to work requirements will move them off benefits faster.

But many experts and those who work within the program say the changes will do the opposite, adding to state agency workloads and creating more opportunities for the wasteful inefficiencies and errors Republicans say they want to reduce.

Opponents of the Republican plan cite evidence showing that work requirements don’t encourage more work. Instead, they can make it harder for those who need help to get it, pushing them further into a hole and increasing their dependence on food aid.

At a Capitol Hill forum hosted by Senate Democrats in June, Barbara Guinn, the commissioner of the New York State office that administers SNAP, said the plans would not reduce waste, fraud, or abuse. “Instead,” she said, “these proposals threaten an effective and efficient program which research consistently and clearly shows has very low rates of recipient fraud, reduces hunger, supports work, and stimulates the economy.”

Fraud vs. Error Rates

According to the plan, states with higher error rates—as determined by USDA oversight—would have to take on the responsibility of paying a larger proportion of SNAP benefits, which historically have been paid by the federal government.

Last year, when the USDA’s annual report showed error rates were higher than typical, Boozman signaled the Agriculture Committees in Congress were paying attention. “While SNAP is a critical nutrition program for households in need, any level of erroneous payments is a misuse of taxpayer dollars,” he said in a statement. “House and Senate Republicans stand ready to . . . hold states accountable for exploiting the generosity of the American taxpayer.”

But Republicans have also spread misinformation: At a House hearing in early June, for example, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins appeared to conflate error rates with fraud.

In response to a question about error rates, she said she thought they were likely even higher than the data showed. “That is why these efforts are so important. We just have had, I think, three stings in just the last couple of weeks.”

Rollins was likely referring to recent law enforcement actions where the USDA targeted individuals stealing benefits from SNAP participants and, in one case, installing fraudulent benefit terminals.

But these stings target fraud, something entirely separate from error rates.

Fraud in the program is typically the result of “skimming,” when criminals steal benefits from the debit-like cards participants receive. In the 2024 fiscal year, states reported about $190 million in stolen benefits. None of the changes Republicans have proposed target this kind of fraud (although the USDA is cracking down on it).

Error rates, on the other hand, measure what are essentially clerical and reporting errors.

“Error rates are reflective of a very, very rigorous quality control process that is one of the most—if not the most—robust of any federal program,” said Katie Bergh, a senior policy analyst working on food assistance at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP).

Most errors are made by employees in state agencies. Others may reflect an individual who didn’t realize they had to report a change in a work situation. Historically, error rates have been low, because states have multiple incentives to keep them that way.

If their rate is over 6 percent, Bergh explained, states have to create a “corrective action plan” with the USDA. If that doesn’t fix the situation after two years, they get fined, and the funds go back to the feds. In 2023, for example, Pennsylvania had to pay almost $40 million. “If a state’s error rate creeps up, what we see is they typically are successful in bringing it back down within a few years,” she said.

That shifted during the pandemic, as a spike in people needing food assistance flooded agencies that had lost employees and struggled to set up remote work systems.

As a result, the USDA allowed states some flexibility in issuing benefits. When the agency measured error rates in 2022 and 2023, they had increased significantly. As Senators pushed toward the final bill passage, the USDA released the 2024 numbers, showing error rates are still elevated but have decreased compared to the previous two years.

In 2022, meanwhile, the USDA made a change to how it counts errors, creating more potential confusion. In the past, when its reviewers found an error on a required form, such as a missing signature, they would follow up with a family to determine if they were in fact eligible before counting it as an error. Now, without followup, they count it as an overpayment, skewing the data.

“Oftentimes, people will imply that the entire error rate represents taxpayer dollars that are going to people who are ineligible, and that’s incorrect,” Bergh said. “It includes both over and underpayments, and most overpayments go to people who actually are eligible. They’re just receiving the wrong amount.”

Finally, the error rate does not take into account state efforts to recoup overpayments, which they are required to do by reducing a participant’s future payments. In the 2023 fiscal year, the last year data was available, states were able to collect about $389 million in overpayments, although that number was tiny compared to the estimated $10.5 billion in overpayments.

The Republican plan would penalize states with the highest error rates by forcing them to take on a significant portion of the costs of benefits. But at a press conference last week, governors of four states, all Democrats, said their states won’t be able to afford it and will be forced to either cut food aid or cut other services.

“The fact is, in our state government, we simply cannot shoulder the extra $50 to $80 million burden over the next decade without sacrificing serious investments in education, in healthcare, and public safety,” said Delaware Governor Matt Meyer. “That’s the harsh reality.”

In all states, the bill would also cut in half the administrative costs the federal government pays for, shifting another $25 billion onto states. That move would cost Massachusetts an estimated $15 million per year, Governor Laura Kelley said.

Bergh said cutting administrative funding could potentially lead to even more errors.

“The things that states fund using those administrative resources are all of the things that they do to reduce errors,” Bergh said. “If you look at what the Department of Agriculture recommends for improving program integrity and reducing error rates, it’s things like making sure you have enough staff so that workers have manageable workloads, staff training, investing in technology upgrades, investing in data analysis, so you can identify the root causes of your most common errors. Those are all things that federal resources would be cut for in both the House and the Senate bill.”

Impacts of Expanding Work Requirements

Under the House version of the bill, for example, CBPP estimated that about 6 million more people in a typical month would be subject to work requirements. (That number will be lower in the current Senate version.) “That means that states would need to be screening those 6 million more people for exemptions,” Bergh said. “It means tracking compliance: Making sure people are working enough hours and cutting them off if they have reached their three months and are not complying with the work requirement. So that’s a ton of additional work.”

In her opening testimony during a House Agriculture Committee hearing in April, Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, a Northwestern University economist who has been studying SNAP for decades, included a table of new studies and survey data on the impacts of work requirements.

“These new studies have found that SNAP work requirements have no positive impact on work-related outcomes, as measured by employment, earnings, or hours worked,” she said. “On the other hand, they substantially reduce the likelihood that an individual receives SNAP.”

Angela Rachidi, a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, presented the opposite argument, calling stronger or expanded work requirements a key means to improving SNAP. However, in her testimony, she said that when it comes to the requirements, “some studies find positive effects on employment while others find negative or null effects.”

At the Senate forum in June, witness Jade Johnson described a situation in which SNAP benefits supported her path toward more secure employment. Johnson said she works two jobs—at a church and as a home health aide—while attending college classes part-time to become a dialysis technician.

Her hours, especially as a home health aide, are often unpredictable, she said, and the fluctuations could mean she wouldn’t meet new work requirements in a given week. For her, SNAP benefits were a source of stability as she focused on finishing school, after which she’d have access to higher wages.

“If my SNAP benefits were cut, I wouldn’t be able to get ahead or even maintain,” she said. “It would keep me stuck in a cycle where I’m always scrambling to make ends meet and never able to focus on building a better future. SNAP is one of the only things keeping me from falling behind.”

Incarcerated individuals have been on the fire lines in the Golden State since 1915, but their numbers have increased in recent years as wildfires have intensified. The Anti-Recidivism Coalition (ARC), a Los Angeles-based organization working toward criminal justice reform, supports those firefighters with quality food unavailable in prison, serving more than 800 during the recent wildfires.

ARC’s executive director, Sam Lewis, himself formerly incarcerated, worked as a butcher in the prison kitchen while serving a 24-year sentence. Now, he and formerly incarcerated prison chefs active in ARC are advocating for incarcerated firefighters—also known as hand crews—and sharing with them a wide range of foods at the fire camps.

Thanks to donations from the public, local restaurants, and food companies, the firefighters battling the L.A. fires were provided pulled pork sandwiches, brisket sandwiches, cheeseburgers, and vegetables. This is a noted departure from the substandard meals people in prison typically receive, meals that often lead to chronic health problems.

ARC will be supporting incarcerated firefighters again this fire season, throughout the state, and Lewis will be there alongside, cooking and putting donations to good use. ARC would also like to see incarcerated firefighters receive significantly higher wages, supporting pending legislation that would allow them to earn a starting hourly pay of $7.25 during active fires and built-in annual wage increases.

These firefighters work long hours, comparable to conventional firefighters, and are vulnerable to suffering serious injuries. Yet most earn meager wages, starting as low as $5.80 per day. The least skilled of the incarcerated firefighters earn about $30 a day for completing 24-hour shifts during active emergencies, a sum critics say is far too little for the risks they take.

Sam Lewis, ARC’s executive director. (Photo courtesy of ARC)

Lewis spoke to Civil Eats about why his organization makes food a priority for these firefighters, and how improving their pay could transform their lives.

Why was it important to ensure that the hand crews had a wide range of foods during the fires earlier this year?

The public wanted to know how they could say thank you to these incarcerated individuals that were putting their lives on the line to save people’s property. So we came up with the idea, with the permission of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, that we could provide them with different meals across the board. The goal was to give them different meals based on what they would ask for but also give them the opportunity to experience different kinds of cooking.

One chef who prepared meals for the firefighters, Jeff Henderson, has an interesting backstory, one that gives him a personal connection to them. Can you say more about him? 

Yes, Chef Jeff was the only formerly incarcerated chef that I knew of who came and cooked. He purchases the food, cooks it, and then after the meal is cooked, we reimburse him for the cost. He cooked what he calls “correctional chicken” [the fried chicken he learned to make in prison with all-purpose flour and seasonings] and hot link sandwiches with cheese, and then they had a dessert. The dessert was sent by the cookie company Crumbl.

Chef Jeff is self-taught. Cooking was his dream. He came home a long time ago and started his program [Chef Jeff Project]. He’s written a number of books. His food is incredible. He trains a lot of the kids who work in some of the hotels in Las Vegas, where he’s based. So, if you go to those hotels and you have amazing food there, a lot of times that’s the touch of Chef Jeff.

Although you’re not a chef, food service was one of your responsibilities when you were incarcerated. What was it like to be a butcher in prison?

When I was at Soledad [State Prison], I was the lead butcher for about two years. We prepped meals for about 6,000 people, so anything that had to do with meats, any dairy products, like cheese, was our responsibility. We prepped everything—roast beef, spaghetti and meatballs, hamburgers, chicken. It was our job to make sure that it was prepped, properly stored, and then sent out to the main line for people to eat.

Do you feel like food has improved in prisons or do you think there’s still a long way to go?

So, here’s the thing: It depends on the cook. We had a guy over the entire kitchen who was incredible. This guy would go out and sample food and bring it back. He was from Louisiana, so he was serious about what he would purchase. Each institution gets a budget, so his job was to find the food and spend his budget wisely. He really worked hard to make sure that we had great fresh fruit, and he wouldn’t get the processed turkey because his attitude was like, “If I’m not going to eat it, I’m not going to serve it to the people I’m feeding.” He would also make sure you had enough vegetables on your tray.

There has been some serious effort by the Department of Corrections to move to a healthier diet, because on the back end of having people incarcerated, the cost goes up as their health goes down. But if you feed people properly, their health can be maintained at a higher level, which causes the cost on the back end of incarceration to go down.

ARC supported incarcerated firefighters in January by making sure they had access to foods they wouldn’t normally eat and that they were properly hydrated while risking their lives. And you were inundated with donations of sports drinks for the firefighters?

There were just pallet loads of those coming in. We even had some of our ARC members transport some of those drinks to different base camps. There was so much that sometimes, it was like, “Could you stop donating?” [Laughter] It was a beautiful thing because it just shows the unity of Los Angeles.

Beyond food, ARC is seeking donations to help improve the lives of incarcerated firefighters overall once they leave prison. Can you describe the needs these funds will meet?

The donations are for scholarships for [incarcerated] firefighters coming home who want to continue to be firefighters. When a person comes home from incarceration and they go into a training center and become a certified firefighter, then they’re deployed. They can be deployed anywhere in the state, and they have to cover the cost of living, of moving. They have to get an apartment, first and last month’s rent, so that’s one thing that the scholarships will cover.

ARC is also advocating for recently introduced legislation to give incarcerated firefighters higher wages. If this bill passes, how might it change their lives?

The legislation, Assembly Bill 247, was introduced by Assemblymember Isaac Bryan. The money would go on the [prisoners’] books, so they could do what they would like to with it. In some instances, [prisoners] may have restitution to pay, so the state would take 55 percent of that. If they don’t have restitution, or if the restitution has been paid, then they can use it for the commissary. They could just save the money until they’re released also. Walking out of prison, normally, you have $200 in gate money. Ask yourself, how far does that take you, especially in today’s economy?

What is your response to members of the public who are concerned that incarcerated firefighters are being exploited?

The firefighter program is a voluntary program. You have to apply to go to the fire camps, and there’s a whole process that you have to go through, including medical clearance, in order to be accepted. The CDCR health care staff have to clear you—physically and mentally. Because if you think about it, it’s hard work.

Incarcerated firefighters also have to be what you call minimum custody status, which is the lowest classification of security. They have to have eight years or less on their sentence. Disqualifying things that can stop them from going to fire camp are convictions like sex offenses, arson, or [prison] escapes. Other things that are disqualifying are active warrants, medical issues, or high-notoriety cases.

If a person goes to a fire camp, it’s voluntary. If they get there and don’t want to continue, they don’t have to. They can go back without being written up. One of my young people that I mentored decided it wasn’t something that he wanted to do, and so he returned to the facility.

How long have you all been supporting incarcerated firefighters?

We helped establish the Ventura Training Center (VTC) in 2018. That’s the program where people come out of incarceration, go through the training, and become certified firefighters. With the passage of additional legislation after the implementation of VTC, people who are coming home now [after having trained to fight fires] can also get their record expunged so they can get their EMT license, which allows them to become municipal firefighters if they can find a job. We have three or four [ARC alums] who are working [as EMTs] in Orange County, and the rest work for CAL FIRE [wilderness fire protection].

Are you hopeful that public perception of the incarcerated community will change in the wake of the wildfires?

I would hope that this tragic event and the attention that’s being given to our incarcerated hand crews that support firefighters help the entire public understand that people change, that redemption is possible. We should always believe in the human spirit and resiliency and understand that our job as a society is to help people become the best version of themselves, even when they’ve made bad choices and possibly have hurt people. That does not necessarily make them bad people. That makes them people that have done bad things that can be corrected.

This interview was lightly edited for length and clarity.

The post This Man Is Feeding California’s Incarcerated Firefighters appeared first on Civil Eats.

This March 30, the day before Cesar Chavez’s birthday, a high school student named Cesar Vasquez walked up the rise. He was surrounded by other young protesters, all from Santa Maria farmworker families, 80 percent of whom are undocumented. He turned to face the several hundred marchers who’d paused there, and began reciting a stream of consciousness poem, fierce gestures punctuating his emotion-filled words. The noisy crowd before him grew silent.

“We’re meant to work in the fields,” he cried out. “[And told,] ‘Don’t be too loud because then you’re seen as just the angry brown kid ’ . . . The system has pushed us onto our knees into the rows of dirt where the berries lie. We are tired of being called essential workers but not even treated as essential humans . . . We are going to do something about it . . . We can no longer be suffocated. It is our time to breathe, our time to rise, our time to fight!”

Brave words, given that he’d helped organize the day’s march to counter pervasive fear in Santa Maria of immigration raids and detentions and worry over how growers are hiring more and more temporary guest workers from the H-2A visa program.

Concepcion Chavez, who went on strike briefly in 2024, described that impact. “The company always keeps them [the H-2 workers] separate from us. If we don’t work hard, the supervisors say we will be replaced, they will send in the H-2As.”

Top: Cesar Vasquez shouts out his poem to the crowd of marchers on March 30. Center: Two young women listen to Vasquez speak at the march. Bottom: At the march, a boy from a Mixteco (Mexican Indigenous) farmworker family with a hand-drawn portrait of Cesar Chavez.

As Vasquez spoke, the strawberry season was just getting underway—the time of year when people depend on going back to work after months of winter and unemployment. Instead of relief, however, most farmworkers this year have found themselves swinging between fear of being picked up by “la migra” on their way to work and anger that wages haven’t gone up despite the sharp rise in rents and grocery bills.

Normally, that anger would have resulted in work stoppages. Groups of strawberry pickers often withhold their labor at the beginning of the season to negotiate better piece rates with the Santa Maria Valley’s big growers. So far this year, however, there have been no strikes or slowdowns. The number of workers participating in marches like the one on March 30 for Chavez’s birthday, and a second on May Day, has dropped from previous years.

Hazel Davalos, co-executive director of the Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy (CAUSE), says her organization has collected reports of about 40 undocumented farmworkers detained in Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties since President Trump took office.

Of any city, “Santa Maria has been hit the hardest,” she says. “Because of our know-your-rights work, it’s hard for ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] agents to catch people at home, so they concentrate enforcement in public spaces.”

After the know-your-rights training, people understood they didn’t have to open their doors to ICE agents, so now the agents wait for people to leave home. “And while they have warrants for specific people, they often go beyond those names,” she said. “In a recent case, when they couldn’t find one man, they took his brother. The impact is a day-to-day fear in the community. Schools report children are afraid to come to class.”

Francisco Lozano, a longtime activist in the community of Mixteco (Indigenous Mexican) farmworkers here, says, “They follow the cars of individuals they’re looking for, but if they don’t find the person, they’ll take some else. They wait outside homes and stop people when they leave to go to work.”

ICE has not responded to requests from Civil Eats for information on detentions in Santa Maria.

According to Fernando Martinez, an organizer for the Mixteco Indigenous Community Organizing Project, as the strawberry picking starts, “Our people are having to risk going to work, to pay their rent and for their basic needs,” he said. “But they go with the fear of not coming back home to their kids.”

That fear can make workers more reluctant to demand higher wages and better conditions. “It especially affects them when employers threaten to call immigration if they start organizing. It’s a big fear,” he said. “No one wants to get sent back to the country they left for a better future. A lot of people have kids and they’ve been here for 15 or 20 years. This is what people consider home.”

One purpose of the marches, therefore, is to push back against panic. This year, the key to their success has been the willingness of children who are documented to protest on behalf of their undocumented parents.

On February 18, Vasquez and his friends organized a walkout of 400 students in three high schools, three middle schools, and the local Hancock Community College to protest the threat of immigration raids. They demanded a two-mile safe zone around every high school, and even teachers participated. “Some kids marched five miles, for over two hours,” he says.

According to Vasquez, over three quarters of the students at Santa Maria High School come from immigrant families, and half have worked in the fields themselves. They were motivated not just by deportation threats, but also by the unrecognized sacrifice of their parents.

“For my whole life my mom and dad would leave home at 3 a.m. and get back at 7 p.m.,” he says. “They’re always working to make ends meet and always stressed out at the end of the month trying to meet the rent.”

This year, there’s fresh urgency motivating these young protesters: Those long, exhausting workdays are harder to get. “Many of us have no work or only get four or five hours before we’re sent home,” Lozano says. When workers go out to a field to ask a foreman or a labor contractor for a job, he says, they’re often turned away. Increasingly, people fear being displaced from jobs they’ve depended on for years. These longterm, experienced workers are the lifeblood of agriculture in the Santa Maria Valley.

At the same time, rents are rising and there are fewer available places to live. Both work and housing pressures, say local labor organizers, can be traced to an important element of the administration’s immigration policy: increasing the numbers of H-2A guest workers.

The Rise in H-2A Workers

In 2017, Trump’s first year in office, growers received 200,049 certifications, and in Biden’s last year, 2024, they received 384,900. The total number of farmworkers in the U.S. is about 2 million, and today, almost a fifth are temporary workers on H-2A visas.

H-2A workers, almost all of whom are young men, are often not treated fairly. They must sign contracts for a maximum of 10 months per year, after which they have to return home, usually to Mexico. They can only work for the grower who recruits them, and can be fired for protesting, organizing, or simply working too slowly.

Fired workers lose their visas and must leave the country and then are usually blacklisted by recruiters. This makes them very vulnerable to pressure and illegal conditions.

In some states, the number of H-2A workers now exceeds the number of local workers. In Florida, with its anti-immigrant and anti-farmworker laws, growers’ 47,416 H-2A certifications last year covered over half of the 80,821 people employed on its farms. Georgia’s 43,436 certifications were for over three-quarters of its 55,990 farm laborers.

In Santa Barbara County, where Santa Maria is located, and in neighboring San Luis Obispo County, the total number of farmworkers is close to 25,000. The Employer Data Hub of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which verifies employers’ visa applications for H-2A workers, lists 29 growers and labor contractors employing a total of 8,140 workers, or at least a quarter of all the farmworkers in the two-county area. This is the highest concentration of H-2A workers in California.

The threats from the Trump administration of increased immigration enforcement have been accompanied by movements within farm groups—who strongly backed Trump’s election—to make it easier for growers to use the H-2A system, including by lowering wages and softening housing requirements. In 2020, in Trump’s first term in office, then Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue emphasized the government’s support for more H-2A workers. “That’s what agriculture needs, and that’s what we want,” he said at the time.

In her nomination hearing, Trump’s current secretary of agriculture, Brooke Rollins, told Congress that she’d modernize the H-2A program to “make sure that none of these farms or dairy producers are put out of business [by immigration enforcement].”

In his last term, Trump froze the wages of H-2A workers for two years, in effect lowering them because federal regulations would have required increasing them annually. The administration estimated that the move saved growers $170 million each year. In addition, Trump allowed growers to access, for H2-A housing, funds that had been earmarked for year-round farmworker housing.

He also allowed growers to use, for H-2A workers, the federal labor camps started in the 1930s for housing farmworker families at affordable rents financed by USDA.

Impact on Local Workers

“The H-2A program grows where the strawberry industry is growing,” Lopez says. While the H-2A wage is higher than the state’s minimum wage ($19.97 per hour versus $16.50), the productivity of H-2A workers is higher because growers recruit young men and then require them to work at a fast rate in order to keep their jobs. This is particularly important in strawberries because it is a highly labor-intensive crop.

As growers bring in the H-2A workers, Santa Maria farmworkers are feeling the impact–in terms of less work, rising rents, and inadequate wages.

Many local Santa Maria farmworkers, themselves immigrants (the majority undocumented)  who have been living and working in the valley for years, say they are often sent home after working only four or five hours, and that they can’t get steady work every day. Since they rely on the strawberry season to save enough to get through the leaner months of winter, the loss of hours can reverberate through the rest of the year.

In a study of the social impact of the H-2A program in Salinas, demographer Rick Mines predicted that “the older settled workers will be getting less work as their younger co-nationals [the H-2A] replace them in the fields.” That is how the H-2A program is likely to play out in Santa Maria as well, according to Martinez and others.

Mines also looked at housing conditions in Salinas. “There is a growing competition between the new migrants [the H-2A] and the old [settled Mexican families]. This competition affects the availability of housing as the older migrants face higher prices and increased crowding in the apartments where most live.”

Similar pressures exist in Santa Maria. Growers are obligated to provide housing to H-2A workers, and in Santa Maria, in addition to housing those workers in complexes, the growers also rent houses in working-class neighborhoods. That has led to steep rises in rents, as growers outbid residents for leases.

“I rent my house for $3,000,” explains Francisco Lozano, “but the grower can pay $4,000 or $5,000 and put four people in each bedroom and the living room.”

In 2019, Santa Maria passed an ordinance requiring growers to obtain permits to house H-2A workers in neighborhoods with single-family homes. According to earlier reporting by the Santa Maria Sun, Jason Sharrett, representing the California Strawberry Commission in a city council meeting, called the ordinance unnecessary and “based on erroneous findings.”

Alexandra Allen, another grower, told the Sun she would have to use two units to house 12 workers instead of one, incurring greater costs. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (under the Trump administration) threatened to sue the city for discrimination, and, according to reporting from the Santa Maria Times, the city withdrew the ordinance.

The rising number of H-2A workers means growers don’t have to raise wages to attract workers. As Martinez points out, “The price they’re paying per box of berries this year is too low—$2.30, the same as last year and the year before. But the cost of living has gone up a lot, so in effect, wages have gone down.”

Last December, according to the Santa Maria Times, MICOP and CAUSE asked Santa Barbara County to consider an ordinance that would set a $26 per hour minimum wage, and increase piece rates per box enough to guarantee that minimum. In response, the Times reported, Claire Wineman, president of Grower-Shipper Association of Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties, told supervisors, “The economic realities do not support any local minimum wage increase, much less $26 per hour.”

“Without fair wages, the farmworkers will remain trapped in a cycle of poverty,” farmworker Reynaldo Marino said at the same hearing. “The real solution is an increase of wages.”

Lack of Protections for H2-A Workers

Nelson’s story, “The Land Back Movement Is Also About Foodways,” recounts the 19th-century seizure of Indigenous hunting, fishing, and gathering grounds by settlers and the military across the United States. “Native peoples have lost nearly 99 percent of their historical land base in the U.S. . . . With it, they lost access to important hunting and fishing grounds as well as myriad places to gather and prepare food,” writes Nelson, an Alaska Tlingit tribal member.

The Land Back movement, she says, is driven by a desire for “a powerful yearning to rebuild relationships to actual places—and the countless living things that inhabit them.” And, from Minnesota to California, tribes are managing to do just that, she reports, reclaiming grasslands for bison, farmland for sacred corn, and forests for harvesting wild rice.

Nelson also points out that land under Indigenous stewardship holds benefits for all of us, citing studies that support the power of traditional ecological practices to offset climate change. “The future we’re fighting for is not just a future for Indigenous people—it’s a future for people everywhere,” says Oglala Lakota Nick Tilsen, the CEO of NDN Collective, a Native-led activist coalition.

In addition, Nelson’s story was recognized by the James Beard Journalism Awards committee as part of The Deep Dish, our member newsletter, which is a finalist for the Columns and Newsletters award (the winners will be announced on June 14).

We’re also celebrating “Black Earth,” a lyrical profile of a North Carolina farmer that we cross-posted from The Bitter Southerner, written by Civil Eats’ Associate Editor Christina Cooke, whose nuanced, graceful writing appears regularly on our site. “Black Earth” is in the running for a James Beard Award too.

In telling the story of Patrick Brown, who recently purchased the plantation where his ancestors had been enslaved, Cooke deeply explores hundreds of years of Brown family history against the backdrop of American racism and discrimination, showing the family’s struggles and triumphs in an epic feat of reporting. She dives deep into Brown’s own many-chaptered life, too, recounting his farm childhood and his work in real estate, as an agricultural advisor in Afghanistan, with the Department of Defense, and now as a regenerative hemp farmer and grower of vegetables for his community. All of this richly told history resonates in the story’s final scenes, with Brown on his farm, “carrying out acts of reclamation, finding ways to push back against the systems designed to oppress people of color.”

To arrive at the final selections for the anthology, series editor and food writer Jaya Saxena combed through submissions from print and online publications, as well as doing her own research. Then she and guest editor Bryant Terry, the cookbook author and food activist, reviewed them. Both Nelson’s and Cooke’s pieces, she said, “hit that great intersection of speaking to the food and travel conversation happening in America right now, as well as being just genuinely beautiful writing.”

“Kate Nelson’s ‘The Land Back Movement Is Also About Foodways’ stood out for the way it powerfully connects Indigenous sovereignty with food systems, layering history, activism, and ecology into a deeply reported narrative,” Terry added. “Christina Cooke’s ‘Black Earth’ is equally compelling, weaving together questions of Black identity, land ownership, and healing with an intimacy that lingers long after the final paragraph. Both writers bring nuance, vision, and a fierce sense of purpose to their work—exactly the kind of storytelling we need in this moment.”

Civil Eats writers have been featured in previous Best American Food Writing editions. Kim O’Donnel’s piece “Cooking as the Cornerstone of a Sustainable Food System” and Barry Estabrook’s “Five Things I Will Not Eat” were both chosen in 2014. In 2023, former Senior Reporter Wesley Brown’s story “Black Farmers in Arkansas Still Seek Justice a Century After the Elaine Massacre,” was selected for the collection.

The Best American Food and Travel Writing 2025 also includes terrific, insightful pieces by many others whose writing we admire, among them John Paul Brammer’s “How to Eat a Rattlesnake” for The New Yorker; Reem Kassis’s “They Ate at My Table, Then Ignored My People” for The Atlantic; and Kayla S. Stewart’s “An African Legacy Endures in Palenque, Columbia,” for Saveur.

The post Civil Eats Included in ‘The Best American Food and Travel Writing 2025’ appeared first on Civil Eats.

In February, she opened Griot Gardens, her restaurant in Houston, going into business with her mother, a seasoned restaurateur. But growing food in Hempstead, a remote agricultural town outside the city, has proven tougher than she and Lilly anticipated, with numerous losses in the past year.

First came Hurricane Beryl, knocking down trees and two 50-foot sunflower beds that Lilly planted solely for the joy they added to her kitchen window view. Shortly after, the winds from a tornado-strength derecho damaged their well, and then the generator broke down, leaving them without water for six months. A rare snowstorm wiped out their winter greens just a few months ago. To add to their woes, a beloved cow and its calf died during labor.

Speaking about her mental health, Dolcine named isolation, burnout from the daily grind of farming, and the “heartbreak” of their repeated losses among her challenges. “I’ve felt really hopeless at a few points this year in a way that I haven’t felt before,” Lilly said, as she expressed feeling “lonely” and “depressed” while struggling financially. Living in a remote town, and in a world rife with homophobia, she and Dolcine never know if revealing their queer identity will jeopardize their safety, adding another layer of stress to their lives.

They’re not alone in this experience.

A study released last year by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign revealed that LGBTQ+ people in farming are “over three times more likely to experience depression and suicidal intent and about two and a half times more likely to experience anxiety than the general population.” According to the researchers, not conforming to the gender and sexuality norms of farming culture while navigating potentially hostile social environments increases stress and may lead to poor mental health outcomes.

For Dolcine and Lilly, community building and cultivating a sense of belonging are crucial for maintaining their mental well-being. In October, the couple hosted the “South Side Queer Farmer Convergence,” the Queer Farmer Network’s first gathering of queer and transgender Black, Indigenous, and people of color in Texas.

For three days, 50 farmers camped out at Lillyland Farm in Hempstead, invited to shift their focus from caring for the land to tending their own mental and emotional health. Dolcine and Lilly found the gathering “healing,” both for them and those who attended.

A lot has happened in the months since then that threatens to diminish the mental health benefits they experienced.

With President Trump back in office, multiple reports have called attention to the mental health risks for LGBTQ+ Americans amid his efforts to revoke their rights, signing executive orders that recognize only two sexes, end discrimination protections for LGBTQ+ people, restrict access to gender-affirming care, and attempt to erase queer and trans people from public life and history.

On social media, Trump’s newly appointed Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins, praised the termination of grants meant to support queer and trans as well as BIPOC farmers and consumers, implying this funding represented “waste, fraud, and abuse.”

None of this is stopping Dolcine from organizing another queer farmer gathering this year.

“People are struggling in this line of work,” she said, highlighting the additional difficulties that queer Black, Indigenous, and people of color face in accessing farmland and resources. “I want them to be connected and know they’re not alone in this journey.”

Building Community in the Trump Era

It was created “to provide a space of respite for farming and rural queers who may experience isolation . . . and who may be particularly vulnerable to the mental health struggles well known to both farmers and LGBTQ+ community members,” its website states

First held at Humble Hands Harvest, a worker-owned cooperative farm in the northeast corner of Iowa, the QFC has branched out over the years to include gatherings in Virginia, Michigan, and New Hampshire. The QFC took place at locations in Texas and Wisconsin for the first time last fall, both of which focused on bringing together queer farmers identifying as Black, Indigenous, or people of color—a change Dolcine suggested when she attended her first QFC two years ago.

Originally from Miami, Dolcine was living in Iowa temporarily, working as an independent insurance adjuster. That’s where she met Lilly, a Des Moines native who co-founded the now-closed urban farm Radiate DSM. “On a whim,” Dolcine joined her at Humble Hands for the QFC and found a glaring lack of racial diversity. Organizers told her the network had reserved one-third of tickets for BIPOC farmers, waiving their registration fees and providing travel stipends to attend the QFC, but had limited success.

To Dolcine, moving the gathering to a region with greater diversity and organizing a BIPOC-centered event where people of color would feel safe attending seemed like viable solutions.

But BIPOC gatherings had been a long-term plan of the Queer Farmer Network. Securing a grant for farmer mental health and well-being allowed the network to finance the gatherings and assemble a team to organize them. Dolcine joined that team and agreed to organize a QFC herself, naming it to reflect its location in the South and her own Southern origins.

On the first day of the South Side QFC, farmers hailing from Houston, Dallas, El Paso, Fort Worth, Florida, Tennessee, Atlanta, Iowa, Minnesota, California, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey gathered at Lillyland Farm in a welcome circle that lasted “hours and hours,” Lilly said. As the farmers went around introducing themselves, Dolcine and Lilly heard many express gratitude for the chance to be on land where they could “be themselves and be queer,” not having to mask their identities or code-switch.

“It seemed extremely needed,” said Dolcine, who co-organized the event with Cyd Keel, a queer trans farmer and herbalist living in Memphis, Tennessee.

For the rest of the weekend, the group followed a loosely planned itinerary that included printmaking, natural plant dying, beading, and yoga while leaving space for spontaneous activities like a nighttime dance party around a bonfire and communal nap in a field. Although the event was held three weeks before the election, Dolcine felt it was important not to make it all about political or environmental crises or attacks on bodily autonomy.

“At what point can we turn that all off and just say, ‘OK, I deserve peace of mind,” she explained, fighting back tears. “I deserve not to have these things on my mind for just a moment. I deserve not to think about next month. I deserve just to hear the earth as it is: the water running, the birds chirping. People deserve to just be at ease.”

Brooklyn Gordon, a queer, Black preacher, licensed therapist, and new farmer based in Dallas, attended the South Side QFC not to counsel attendees but to be in the company of other queer folks. “What was most powerful was seeing love prevail,” she wrote in an email to Civil Eats. “We dreamed together of futures for queer farmers, queer families, queer love. We dreamed of being in community with one another again and growing . . . Regardless of the mental state that everyone may have come in with, we all left better.”

Gordon has observed in her therapy practice that managing the complex interplay of racial, gender, and queer identities presents “a constant challenge to being seen, valued, and safe.” From familial and religious beliefs to social conditioning and mistreatment, “it all poses a risk for mental and emotional health,” she said. Recent studies by The Trevor Project and the Center for American Progress echo this point: Mental health risks for LGBTQ+ people stem not from their gender or sexual identity, but from stigma and discrimination.

Like Gordon, Lilly was uplifted by the gathering and the attendees’ reassurance that she was still a farmer, even though her vision of abundance hasn’t yet materialized. “I cried when people were leaving,” Lilly said. “They are my family now.” From her perspective, “family, community, and chosen family” are essential not only for the mental well-being of LGBTQ+ farmers but particularly for LGBTQ+ Black women like her and Dolcine, who face the added stress of anti-Blackness.

Living Free on Black-Owned Land

“I think about it every day,” Lilly said, sitting in her camper surrounded by lush starter plants. “There is not a single day that I leave the farm that I’m not on edge. Anytime a police officer is driving behind me, I am terrified.”

Lilly feels safest at Lillyland, a 32-acre parcel that’s been in her family for eight generations. She picks up a thick stack of paper, slightly curled at the edges, that she calls “The Lilly Bible,” as it lists every member of her family, all the way back to an ancestor who arrived from Africa in 1818.

A local university conducted the genealogical research, though Lilly’s family knowledge also comes from oral histories. She learned from her great-uncle, who also lives on the farm, that when their ancestors were freed from chattel slavery, they came across a field of lilies and adopted the flower as their surname, rejecting the family name of those who enslaved them.

As Lilly walked the property, four adult dogs and six mixed-breed puppies ran behind her. She stopped for a moment to greet Corotha, a horned cow that lives on the land, before moving through the pasture. With each step, she shared the rich history of Lillyland, a legacy that dates to the Reconstruction era, when Black families, denied the promise of 40 acres and a mule, bought whatever land they could.

Based on county records, Abraham Lilly, Sr., acquired 10 acres from Leonard Waller Groce, his former owner’s eldest son, in 1867. His father, Bowie Lilly, bought several plots in the area, amassing at least 82 more acres in the town. But, at some point, the Lillys’ property shrank to 50 acres and then to 32.

“What I’ve heard is that one of my aunts missed a payment,” Lilly explained. “Back then, they were trying to take land from Black people anywhere they could.”

Kennady Lilly and Ariana Dolcine’s dog Sugar happily feeds her six puppies. (Photo credit: Nicole J. Caruth)

Lillyland Farm provided an idyllic backdrop for the South Side QFC, its thick, prickly woods gradually giving way to open fields where cattle graze in the sun. A large pond covered with lily pads sits at the heart of the landscape, a feature added by Lilly’s great-grandfather. A partially submerged boat at the pond’s edge, left there by the youngest of his thirteen children, reads “The Other Woman” on its side.

Lilly’s grandfather grew up on the farm but left Hempstead to work for the United States Department of Agriculture in Iowa and returned after retirement. After he died, he left two acres to Lilly’s dad, which she and Dolcine now tend. Lilly’s great-uncle wasn’t exactly welcoming when they arrived. “His first words to me were, ‘I know about your lifestyle and I don’t agree with it,’” she said, walking past his house. “He still makes a point to say that all the time, but now he loves me. I’m his favorite niece.”

Texas is known for its particularly hostile stance toward queer and trans people, with recent legislation reinforcing this reputation. The American Civil Liberties Union is tracking 88 anti-LGBTQ bills in Texas, the highest number of any state in the U.S. Meanwhile, the Trans Legislation Tracker shows 128 anti-trans bills in Texas, compared to 33 in Oklahoma and three in Louisiana, its neighboring states.

“I had it in my body and mind not to be gay here,’” Lilly said, reminiscing about the summer when she and Dolcine first visited Hempstead. “It just didn’t feel safe.” But she momentarily forgot and kissed Dolcine at the town’s annual Watermelon Festival in July. “The second we kissed, I heard someone [holler].” A cowboy came up to them and shared that he had a gay brother. “Just be yourself,” he told them. “People are gonna’ hate, but you have the right to be yourself.”

Making LGBTQ+ Farmers’ Mental Health Needs Visible

“I really wanted to understand better what’s going on with mental health for LGBTQ+ folks and how might that be related to the environment within agriculture,” said Courtney Cuthbertson, who led the study of LGBTQ+ farmer mental health at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. “I was kind of surprised when I was starting to tell people about this project idea: Some of the reactions I would get were, ‘I didn’t know LGBTQ+ farmers were a group of people who existed.’”

Cuthbertson’s research team received 148 survey responses from LGBTQ+ farmers in 36 states. About 7 percent lived in Texas. “Most participants were white,” the study said, with 58 percent identifying as queer and 38 percent as trans. From this data, they surmised that poor mental health experiences for LGBTQ+ farmers may be connected to, among other things, the family farm model.

The idea of “family” being defined as a married male and female is codified in the American Farm Bureau’s 2024 policy book, which states, “A family should be defined as persons who are related by blood, marriage between a male and female, or legal adoption,” excluding all other forms of kinship. The impact of this on queer farmers includes reduced likelihood of securing loans and other support necessary for their success and survival.

When the USDA attempted to broaden the gender and sexual identity options on its census, it encountered pushback. “The survey asks questions including whether farmers identify as transgender, the gender they were at birth, and their sexual orientation,” Missouri Senator Josh Hawley posted on X in 2022. “For Joe Biden, even farming is about advancing his woke agenda.”

Cuthbertson warned that their team’s survey didn’t ask about legislation but about LGBTQ+ farmers’ experiences in general. Still, “We’ve seen historic year-after-year increases in anti-LGBTQ+ legislation,” Cuthbertson said. “I think it’s a fair thing to say that when you hear a lot of negative things about a group you’re a part of, and then there’s legislation proposed, that is going to have a personal impact.”

Although the study found high depression and anxiety rates among those surveyed, somewhat encouragingly, suicide risk was “much lower” for LGBTQ+ farmers than for the general LGBTQ+ population. The research team suggested that future studies investigate whether agricultural work offers some level of protection.

Living the Dream and Finding Hope

The song “Sonia” by the Haitian Canadian musical group Black Parents streams from a large portable speaker as couples and families eat and chat across tables. A uniformed police officer who moonlights as a DJ walks to each table, striking up conversations in Haitian Creole while waiting for his to-go order

This is the restaurant Dolcine dreamt of when she and Lilly moved to Texas. She opened it in February in collaboration with her mother, Pricia La France, who cooks most of the food. “I’m hoping for a good harvest this year,” said Dolcine, who still aspires to grow all the vegetables for the restaurant. For now, she sources them from Miami and Haiti.

Dolcine runs the restaurant seven days a week, while Lilly gears up to launch a personal chef business and manages the farm, where she has planted eggplant, tomatoes, okra, cantaloupe, watermelon, blackberries, sweet potatoes, lemongrass, and a variety of medicinal herbs. Lilly arrived at the restaurant in mud-covered boots, pitching in to help wait tables. Reflecting on their recent struggles, Lilly said, “There are also good things: There is also beauty and hope.”

Plans for the next South Side QFC are slowly developing. Dolcine and Lilly say their biggest obstacle isn’t the political climate, but rather finding time to organize the event with everything else they have going on. “I try not to let these shifts in power influence my state of mind and cause me to be worried or scared,” Dolcine said. “If I want to do a QFC, then I’m gonna’ do it however I can do it.”

The post This Queer Couple Supports LGBTQ+ and BIPOC Farmers’ Mental Health appeared first on Civil Eats.

The union has been organizing demonstrations all week, following the arrests of 14 farmworkers in western New York last Friday. They are organizing at an ICE detention center in Batavia, New York, today to “demand the release of detained farmworker leaders,” according to calls to action from the UFW.

The UFW demonstrations come on the heels of another protest, this one in Washington state yesterday morning, where civil rights groups are also demanding the release of detained farmworkers, including a union organizer.

In both cases, unions say workers appear to have been targeted by agents for their organizing.

Across the country, federal agents for U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have detained farmworkers and union organizers amid a wider immigration sweep, in line with President Donald Trump’s policy agenda. Nearly 50,000 were being held in CBP and ICE detention in April. It is unclear exactly how many are farmworkers or labor organizers, but such arrests have been confirmed in California, New York, Vermont, Washington.

In California, Border Patrol agents made 78 arrests in Kern County, targeting a Home Depot, a convenience store frequented by farmworkers on their way to work, and drivers on roads running between farms, CalMatters reported.

In Vermont, at least three dairy workers have already been deported to Mexico after nine arrests there in April. Migrant Justice, a Vermont-based human rights organization, says thousands of people marched against ICE detentions last week.

“ICE has deported three farmworkers without due process, in clear violation of their rights,” Brett Stokes, a professor at Vermont Law who leads the legal team representing eight of the farmworkers, said in a statement. “We will fight for justice for those unjustly deported and will continue to move for the release of those still in detention.”

Arbey Lopez-Lopez, who was detained separately from the other eight, has a hearing scheduled with an immigration judge May 15. “The remaining farmworkers in detention have yet to receive a hearing date,” Migrant Justice said.

In New York, on the morning of May 2, federal agents pulled over a bus full of farmworkers in Albion, west of Rochester, detaining 14 employees of Lynn-Ette & Sons Farms. The UFW says the agents had a list of names, including union leaders who had been organizing at the farm. Those were the workers detained, the union said.

“Our top priority right now is to get these workers out. We are doing everything we can think of to accomplish that,” UFW Secretary Treasurer Armando Elenes said. “In this case, some of the workers who were detained were actively involved in organizing their workplace. We still have more questions than answers on how they came to be targeted . . . but if any workers at any company are ever targeted for immigration enforcement because of their involvement in union organizing, that would be a violation of our Constitution’s first amendment: the right to freedom of association, including with your union.”

In Washington state this week, organizers are calling for the release of Alfredo “Lelo” Juarez, a farmworker and organizer for Familias Unidas Por La Justicia (FUJ), who is being held at a detention center in Tacoma. Family members say Juarez was violently detained by ICE agents, who smashed his car window prior to arresting him.

Edgar Franks, an organizer at FUJ, told Truthout that the union believes Juarez’s detention was “politically motivated.”

“We believe he was targeted,” Franks said. “The way that ICE detained him was meant to intimidate. They hardly gave him any chance to defend himself or explain. He wasn’t resisting, and he just asked to see the warrant. They asked to see his ID, and right when he was reaching for it, they broke his car window. The ICE agents escalated really fast.”

The manner of the arrest was not unique, Franks said. “In past years, we’ve seen people getting pulled over and asked for their documents, but now it’s becoming more aggressive. ICE is harassing and intimidating people and not even showing warrants. It’s free rein for ICE to do whatever they want.”

An ICE spokesperson told Civil Eats Juarez had been ordered removed to his home country by an immigration judge in 2018. “U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducted a joint federal law enforcement arrest of Juarez in Sedro Woolley, Washington, March 25, where he refused to comply with lawful commands to exit the vehicle he was occupying at the time of the arrest.” Juarez will remain in ICE custody “pending removal proceedings,” the spokesperson said.

All of these arrests and protests come amid ongoing scrutiny of Trump’s immigration policies and widespread concern for farmworkers in agriculture.

Agricultural Secretary Brooke Rollins faced questions from the Senate Appropriations Committee on Wednesday, including questions about farmworkers and immigration crackdowns. Rollins told lawmakers she had had lengthy conversations with President Donald Trump about the issue and that the president understands the importance of immigrant farmworkers. “The larger effort to reform our immigration system to better serve our farmers and our ranchers is a priority,” Rollins said.

Labor organizers say the immigration crackdown is making their work harder—and more necessary. The New York arrests, for example, show “why workers who may be facing this more hostile anti-immigrant climate nationally can really benefit from having a union that’s able and willing to go to bat for them,” Elenes at UFW said. “We in the labor movement know all too well: an attack on the rights of any worker is an attack on the rights of every worker.”

The post Protests Mount Against ICE Detentions of Immigrant Farmworkers appeared first on Civil Eats.

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

The post 10 Ways to Get Involved With Food Mutual Aid appeared first on Civil Eats.

https://civileats.com/2025/03/26/in-a-new-kids-book-a-north-carolina-farmer-and-his-son-offer-a-practical-and-joyful-guide-to-beekeeping/ Wed, 26 Mar 2025 09:00:56 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=62682 “I enjoyed it so much I wanted to keep doing it every day,” the now 8-year-old remembers. On a cloudy day in late February, under a tall loblolly pine tree at one end of the farm, Akeem uses a metal tool to scrape old beeswax off a beehive frame. With new bees set to arrive […]

The post From a Farmer and His Son, a Practical and Joyful Guide to Beekeeping appeared first on Civil Eats.

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When farmer Kamal Bell first established a beekeeping operation at Sankofa Farms in North Carolina, his son Akeem was four years old and scared of bees. But with his father’s coaching—and the help of a protective beekeeping suit—Akeem now loves tending the hives and is central to the farm’s beekeeping effort.

“I enjoyed it so much I wanted to keep doing it every day,” the now 8-year-old remembers.

“We need to be able to do things on our own, where we won’t have to be as reliant on this larger system that can change at any moment with the swipe of a big black marker.”

On a cloudy day in late February, under a tall loblolly pine tree at one end of the farm, Akeem uses a metal tool to scrape old beeswax off a beehive frame. With new bees set to arrive by early April, Akeem is helping clean and prepare the space. Kamal picks up a pile of the excess wax that Akeem has loosened and rolls it between his palms. “We want to take this and save it so we can make candles one day,” he tells his son.

In February, Kamal—with Akeem’s help—published a kids’ book,  Akeem Keeps Bees! A Close-Up Look at the Honey Makers and Pollinators of Sankofa Farms. Illustrated graphic-novel style by Darnell Johnson, the book takes young readers through a beekeeping season at Sankofa. It provides detailed information about the bee life cycle, beekeeping tools and equipment, and how bees make honey, with instructions on how to establish a hive, feed your bees, handle harmful Varroa mites, and harvest honey. Kamal hopes the book can serve as a practical guide for young people who might want to get into beekeeping.

Akeem Bell scrapes the remains of old beeswax from a honeybee frame at Sankofa Farms in North Carolina. He and his father, Kamal Bell, recently published a children’s book about beekeeping. (Photo credit: Christina Cooke)

A North Carolina native, Kamal did not grow up farming, though he has always felt at peace  in nature. After graduating from NC Agricultural and Technical State University (A&T), a land-grant, historically Black institution, with a master’s degree in agricultural education in 2014, he began teaching earth and environmental science at a Title 1 middle school in Durham. In 2016, he purchased 12 acres in nearby rural Cedar Grove to start a regenerative vegetable farm, which he named “Sankofa,” after the West African word for reclaiming and carrying forward what has been lost.

Education and community aid have always been at the core of Sankofa’s mission. In addition to raising vegetables—including kale, collards, salad mixes, cilantro, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, and watermelon—to feed the food insecure in the surrounding area, Bell founded the STEM-based Sankofa Agricultural Academy, which engages Black youth in projects and learning on the farm. His new book ties into that same goal of helping kids learn agricultural skills, connect with nature, and experience, in his words, a “form of liberation.”

Civil Eats caught up with Kamal and Akeem on the farm recently and spoke with them about the evolution of Sankofa’s beekeeping program, their new book, the farm’s educational mission, and Kamal’s vision for the food system.

Kamal and his wife, Amber Bell, along with their son, Akeem, inspect the hives at Sankofa Farms in 2021 to ensure the colony is healthy. This involves checking for all stages of brood, making sure there is deposited nectar and pollen, and looking for evidence of a laying queen. (Photo credit: Mark Stebnicki, NC Farm Bureau)

How did you come to keep bees?

Kamal: One of the kids in the [agricultural academy] program, Kamron, mentioned, “Mr. Bell, I want to get bees.” He was an inquisitive child, and I was just like, it’s my duty to cater to that interest in this child. The part that sold me on it was when he said, ‘It would help keep me more involved in the farm.’

The only experience I had with bees was working with a farmer [during undergraduate school], and it didn’t go well—and then the movie Candyman—so I was terrified, like everybody else. But there’s a deep connection between African history and African Americans and beekeeping. Booker T. Washington actually pioneered a beekeeping program at Tuskegee [University].

And Charles Henry Turner, a Black man from Ohio who ended up being a geology teacher, proposed research on how bees can see in patterns. Once you start to uncover that history, you see there is an extensive history between African Americans and bees.

“[My dad is] giving people healthy food so they can be healthy and have a better life. And if a kid wanted to start a farm, they could ask our dad how to start one.”

I ended up going to Durham County Beekeepers Association. I met Matthew Yearout, and he brought us out to a campus right around corner. We all worked with the bees. And then a couple of weeks later, I caught my first swarm and brought the bees out here. And then that was a segue for Sankofa keeping bees. That happened in 2018.

Akeem, how did you start keeping bees? Do you remember your first time putting on the beekeeping suit and going into the hive?

Akeem: When I was little, when I saw a bee, I used to get really scared. But when I got into the suit, it felt really good to actually be able to work with the bees. [When I’m wearing it,] I’m not afraid. When I first started [caring for the hives], it was really fun. I was passionate about it.

To go into the hive, you have to grab your smoker, and then you use the hive tool to take the top off. Then you can take the frame out and see if you can see the queen or if you can see larvae. You see a lot of bees on the frame, walking around and exploring both sides.

What is the most fun part of keeping bees for you?

Akeem: Going into the hive. I like to see them making honey.

What is the hardest part?

Akeem: When the bees land on top of me, on the face part. I just stay still until they move off. Or my dad just takes it off.

How would you describe the state of honeybees in North Carolina?

Kamal: Bumble bees and carpenter bees are native to North America, but I think it’s important to identify that honeybees are not. They need a tropical environment. You will only find them in the wild if they were essentially colonized at some point down the line and then made it out into the woods [and adapted].

The winters are very harsh on them, and Varroa mites are as well, so they’re very dependent on the beekeeper in this part of North America. [That said,] we’ve had a lot of success with our swarms, because if you catch a swarm, they typically have the genetics to survive in this area.

Kamal, you’re primarily a farmer. What motivated you to write a kids’ book?

Illustration by Darnell Johnson, courtesy of Storey Publishing

Kamal: Just the idea of trying to introduce agriculture to kids at a younger age. [Akeem] and his brothers will be fine, because they are out here, and they get it by default. But I was thinking about how beneficial the experience can be when you are younger, and how you’re able to reimagine what society [could be like].

I don’t think there are many books that are tailored to teaching kids about farming. This book, you can use it as a guide—it has a glossary in the back—and you can use it to become a beekeeper. It caters to different learning styles too, because if you’re not a heavy reader, the illustrations can guide you through. I wanted it to be an inspiration for children.

How would you describe the mission of Sankofa in terms of how you work, what projects you take on, and who you feed?

Kamal: I would describe Sankofa as a place of redemption—where we have an opportunity to fix things that have gone bad. That’s from the students, to ourselves, to the organizations we work with.

I like working with organizations that are trying to solve something wrong socially. We work with Table NC. About 90 percent of our food goes there. They give access to kids who are food insecure in the area. They send them produce bags every week—right now, I think they distribute to around 1,000 kids. For us, it’s just about working to improve things that we think should be a right for people in society.

It seems like educating young people is at the core of what you do. Can you talk about how the Sankofa Educational Academy started and evolved?

Kamal: It started with wanting to get Black boys a stronger foundation using agriculture as the pathway. And what I started to see is that they became better students. They became overall better citizens. There was a feeling of ownership and belonging here at the farm. From 2016 to 2018, we had 10 kids. From 2018 on, we kept the four most consistent ones on.

When COVID hit, that’s when I started to see the work in the foundation become undone. I think COVID produced a hyper individual—kids who were only concerned about themselves because they were in isolation for so long. I started to see kids who had been really committed only coming to the farm when it was convenient for them.

They started to drift off and become the thing that we were trying to prevent them from becoming the whole time. From COVID, I decided to focus on the business part of the farm [and pause the academy]. Working with the kids, being able to teach them, is better when we’re not expanding the farm like we have been.

When we start the academy again [later this spring], we’ll have more mentors to help keep them on track. They need around-the-clock support. I was going around picking them up in the van, buying food for them, essentially paying out of pocket, using farm funds to support them. There needs to be more support when we launch. And the kids, I think, need to be younger. I think we start in elementary school this next time.

Illustration by Darnell Johnson, courtesy of Storey Publishing

What did you see the academy impart to its participants when it was up and running?

Kamal: They understood what they needed to contribute to society. They found a place. They had an identity, because we went over African history. We had conversations as they were coming into manhood. I think it would have been great if they were still here at their age now, because of all the opportunity that’s opening up in the food space. They would be primed to be able to own their own farms.

And I think philosophically, it was a meditative break for them to get away from the things that they were seeing. Some of those kids had seen people get killed; some of them had been involved in high-level violence. It gave them a place just to be.  It gave them a sense of divinity and redemption, that they weren’t a product of a trauma that they experienced in their lives. From a higher level, I think it gave them a sense of balance.

Why do you think it’s so important to provide young people of color with farm education? How does it tie in with larger issues facing Black farmers and with your goals of promoting Black liberation and freedom?

“It’s the opportune time for farmers to unite from all backgrounds, to push for a better agricultural industry.”

Kamal: Because if it doesn’t happen here, where else are they going to go to find those things? There are not many spaces where that demographic can go for  liberation-centered thinking. College is not necessarily the first thing on their docket. The school system isn’t that. Sports—.001 percent of people who play make it. For Black males who are not athletes or entertainers, there’s nowhere for them to go. There is only hyper-individualism for them, because society has told them that we don’t want you, besides jails and prisons.

We have a history of generational land loss [in my family]. My great-great-great-grandfather on my mother’s side owned 50 acres of land. But our family didn’t keep their land; I had to start all the way over. I wanted to be able to put [the young men] in a position to own something, to have something that they could call their own, and that way they could have some form of liberation.

The new administration is shrinking or eliminating efforts to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion and mitigate climate change. What effect do you think that might have on farms like yours, and do you have a sense of what approach you will take moving forward?

Kamal: When I saw that these things are starting to happen, I was just like—that’s why we built what we built. I think about the things that the USDA agent tried to get me to do so we would lose our farm. One thing they tried to say was, “Oh, you want to get an FHA [Federal Housing Administration] loan so you can tie in your house and your farm together.” But we bought our house separate from the farm on purpose to make it more resilient, because if I lose my house [and they’re tied together], they take everything.

I think the question that needs to arise is—how can we reduce the adjacentness of our farms to outside funding? There’s something wrong with it if we’re so heavily impacted by a [federal] funding freeze. We have to look at more resilient models so that when administration changes, when the climate changes, when everything changes, our models can adapt.

When are farmers going to start to come together across the board? The whole idea of climate change—if you talk to farmers on either side, they will acknowledge that weather patterns have changed since they’ve been farming, whether it’s by human output or by it naturally happening every so many years. We need to find more commonality so we can have discussions. There need to be more platforms where we can meet in the middle so we can advocate for a change to the farming system. Only 10 percent of farmers make over a million dollars in their operations, and everybody else is still trying to push forward.

In addition to producing honey, Sankofa, a 12-acre regenerative farm, grows produce to feed the food insecure in surrounding areas, both rural and urban. (Photo credit: Christina Cooke)

How do we need to think differently about food systems?

Kamal: We need to be able to do things on our own, because we can’t depend on the American system to always serve our needs.

Just look around now. We need more farmers. We need to be looking at how we can build more local food systems, with distribution, that are more vertically integrated. We have to be raising chickens around here. We need more seed-starting programs. We need more people with small gardens in their front yards. There’s no reason why we have should have grass lawns when we can turn them into small areas to produce food. We’ve got to reimagine this. Something needs to change.

At the end of the day, I know that we can build a home here. We can carve out a piece of this to fully sustain ourselves where we won’t have to be as reliant on this larger system that can change at any moment with the swipe of a big black marker. Why would we want to live like that? I’m 99.9 percent sure that I wasn’t born to be under the will of a black Sharpie. That’s what I want people to take from Sankofa, that you really can build something better—you can build an alternative.

Akeem, what difference do you see your dad making through the farm?

Akeem: He’s the only person that works out here, and he’s doing a lot of work to help our family. He does so much for us, so we can have a home and food and all those things that we need.

He’s giving people healthy food so they can be healthy and have a better life. And if a kid wanted to start a farm, they could ask our dad how to start one.

Kamal, what would you like people to know about bees that may not be common knowledge?

Kamal: We can learn a lot about their social organization and how there’s no individual bee in the collective. They’re all working together consistently. You can address gender roles, because the female bees are higher in the social hierarchy. They commit to their roles, and then as they get older, these worker bees change their roles. They start out taking care of baby bees, [and go] to making decisions, to foraging. They protect.

You look at all that the bee can teach, and then just about how their history is reminiscent of Black people. They were taken from Africa [as well as Asia and Europe], and they were shipped all across the world. In each environment, they take on these different characteristics, and they’re still a collective. If we look at just how America operates—it was built off our forced labor. Once there’s some healing done with us, [and] I think bees can offer a great lesson, we can start to heal and work on other issues in this nation.

We’re in a very interesting time of humanity where it’s going to call for collective work amongst all people. And I think it really could start with farmers. Farmers have a very important role in the future of this country. And it’s the opportune time for farmers to unite from all backgrounds, to push for a better agricultural industry.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The post From a Farmer and His Son, a Practical and Joyful Guide to Beekeeping appeared first on Civil Eats.

]]> 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.

]]> https://civileats.com/2025/03/25/dignified-food-eases-food-insecurity-in-philadelphia/feed/ 1 https://civileats.com/2025/03/24/this-san-francisco-food-pantry-is-a-labor-of-love/ Mon, 24 Mar 2025 09:00:24 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=61738 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. She has hosted a weekly food pantry from her garage since 2021, stocking it with donations from local food banks, grocery stores, restaurants, bakeries, and anywhere else she can get […]

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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.

Priscilla “Cilla” Lee gave away nearly 50,000 pounds of food last year to her neighbors in San Francisco’s Outer Richmond district.

She has hosted a weekly food pantry from her garage since 2021, stocking it with donations from local food banks, grocery stores, restaurants, bakeries, and anywhere else she can get free food for her community. Every Friday and two Saturdays a month, she hands out food boxes filled with fresh fruit, vegetables, meat, dairy products, and dried goods like beans or rice. She still serves between 40 and 50 families per week, and 25 families come on Wednesdays, when she gives away baked goods donated by a local bakery.

In a recent week, she shared four boxes of bread and pastries and 20 pizzas. She also gave away 120 boxes of mangoes donated by a food bank and trays of papaya salad and spring rolls provided by a caterer.

Since 2022, Lee has doubled her volunteer team to 40 or 45 people and added more structure. Last year, they gave away nearly 50,000 pounds of food to neighbors in San Francisco’s Outer Richmond district. (Photo credit: Tilde Herrera)

Lee, 54, began hosting the food pantry out of her garage in 2021, alarmed by the level of food insecurity in her neighborhood during the pandemic. She was inspired to help others by her late mother, who had always tried to give her family, friends, and acquaintances a hand, even during her cancer treatment. Also, Lee was on leave from her airline job, giving her a bit of extra time—and was volunteering with local food banks, which had surplus food. Starting a neighborhood food project just made sense.

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

Civil Eats first covered Lee’s food pantry in 2022, when she was inviting free pickups through two local branches of Buy Nothing, an online network of neighborhood groups that share everything from extra food to old clothes and used appliances as part of a gift economy model.

Lee is an administrator for the official Outer Richmond Buy Nothing group, which has 1,100 members, and the Richmond-Sunset Buy Nothing group, which has 2,200 members. Now she limits slots for food pickup to ensure enough food for the core set of regulars who have relied on the pantry for all these years.

These regulars include Yulia Koudriashova, a single mom and teacher who saves nearly $300 a month by getting most of her family’s food through Lee’s pantry. She lives with her two daughters and her parents, who moved in three years ago after fleeing Ukraine when Russia invaded. “My parents’ income is zero in the United States,” Koudriashova says. “For them, it’s very important support because mentally, it’s very important that they know they can get food.”

Koudriashova’s mother spends her days cooking everything they receive from the pantry, and her father volunteers at the pantry a few days a week, unloading boxes or sorting food, despite not speaking any English. He worked as an engineer in Ukraine but is unable to work in the U.S., so he is happy to have a “job” and help others as he often did for his neighbors back home, Koudriashova says. Everyone calls him “Papa.”

“When he began to do it, he became alive, because it’s a very important role, mission,” Koudriashova says. “He tells us, ‘I’m working today,’ so we know he needs to go and help. He loves it a lot.”

Serving the Community

Since 2022, Lee has doubled her volunteer team to 40 or 45 people and added more structure. She has two volunteer administrators who create pantry schedules and sign-up sheets, as well as a third administrator who sends weekly reminders for volunteers to sign up for picking up donations or setting up the pantry. At each pantry, one or two hosts oversee the food pickups and support the pantry assistants, who receive the food donations and get food ready to be given out. About 75 percent of her volunteers are pantry recipients themselves.

Lee asks for a three-month commitment when recruiting volunteers, who donate their time and gas. “I’m donating my sanity and my family’s time—my partner also helps,” Lee says. “No one’s getting paid from this pantry.”

Annelissa Reynoso, a part-time restaurant manager and student, has been volunteering at the pantry for the past year. She met Lee through the Buy Nothing Facebook group when she was giving away a fruit platter. Lee claimed it and asked Reynoso if she was interested in volunteering.

“My parents’ income is zero in the United States. For them, it’s very important support because mentally, they know they can get food.”

Reynoso, 25, saw it as a sign to take action at a time when life felt overwhelming. The Israel-Hamas war was raging, and Reynoso felt helpless, hopeless, and disconnected. She began volunteering with Lee, working her way up from pantry assistant to host. She also drives to pick up donations and gives rides to neighbors who want to visit the pantry.

“I feel like I’m finally part of a community,” Reynoso says. “I’ve wanted to feel this way for a long time.”

Reynoso had already considered herself to be a human rights activist but says Lee has influenced her to consider a career helping unhoused, immigrant, or low-income communities.

“That’s awesome,” Lee says, of her friend’s new direction. “I love it.”

Growth of the Buy Nothing Model

The Buy Nothing Project continues to resonate with people a dozen years after its launch, says founder Liesl Clark, a documentary filmmaker who was fascinated by the cashless gift economies she saw in communities throughout the Himalayas. There are now more than 8,000 Buy Nothing groups on Facebook, representing 12.5 million people, and another 1.4 million people using the Buy Nothing app.

The app has added a global feed for users who are interested in a broader circular economy, Clark says. Rather than buying a product on Amazon, users can now search for it in Buy Nothing’s global feed or post an item they haven’t had success gifting locally. If they find the product, or a taker, they can use Buy Nothing shipping to receive or send the item through UPS.

“We still aim to provide every community that wants one, a gift economy, so community members can get to know each other and connect through our stuff and services offered,” Clark said in an email. “We know this builds connected neighborhoods, which is a building block toward resiliency, mutual aid, and healthy, human-centered cities and towns.”

A Labor of Love

Food donations have been unpredictable for the last 18 months, Lee says. With fewer donations, Lee must give less food to each family. She consistently receives high-quality donations from the Second Harvest food bank every week, but she says other food banks are giving her less food now compared to during the pandemic. That contribution could further decline in the wake of unsteady federal funding for the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program, designed to move local farm harvests into food banks.

“We still aim to provide every community that wants one, a gift economy, so community members can get to know each other and connect through our stuff and services offered.”

Lee estimates that she spends 32 to 40 hours a week working on the pantry. It’s more manageable since she retired in October from her airline job; when she was working, she often spent time on pantry-related tasks before and after work and during her lunch breaks.

In addition to the day-to-day logistics, Lee also keeps tabs on everyone’s food preferences. For example, she makes sure Koudriashova’s family gets plenty of their beloved potatoes and sets aside extra beans for a Hispanic family who visits the pantry. This ensures people get food they like to eat, and that food is not wasted.

It’s a lot of work to run the pantry, and the food-supply situation can be unnerving, but hearing about how the project has impacted people’s lives drives Lee to keep going.

For example, Koudriashova uses the money she saves on groceries to pay for gymnastics lessons for one of her daughters. She says she wouldn’t be able to afford those lessons without the pantry.  “When I go to the shop, I buy only some food for the kids to make sandwiches for the school lunch,” Koudriashova says. “Otherwise, we use all the products that we have from this pantry. I don’t know how we would survive without Cilla.”

Lee says she had no idea she would still be running this pantry, years after it began.

“I will try my best to keep the pantry going until either I am no longer receiving food donations or community [volunteers], and as long as I am healthy, my family is healthy, and I am not neglecting my own family.”

She says none of her volunteers want to take over the pantry. For now, seeing how it has alleviated financial stress for her neighbors motivates her to continue.

Although Lee didn’t start the pantry to inspire others or seek recognition, she says she has often been told by her community, volunteers, and peers that she motivates them to help others. Which, in fact, they do.

“It is a very powerful feeling, and I feel overwhelmed by the positive feedback,” Lee says. “It reminds me of how my mother would be so proud of the person she raised.”

The post This San Francisco Food Pantry Is a Labor of Love appeared first on Civil Eats.

]]> https://civileats.com/2025/03/20/building-stronger-communities-through-food-mutual-aid/ Thu, 20 Mar 2025 09:00:37 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=62373 Who Spoke: The event was kicked off by Civil Eats Membership Manager Kalisha Bass, with a welcome from Executive Director Naomi Starkman. Editorial Director Margo True moderated our conversation with Katina Parker, a filmmaker and founder of Feed Durham in North Carolina, and Yasmin Ruiz, food justice co-organizer at Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO) […]

The post Building Stronger Communities Through Food Mutual Aid appeared first on Civil Eats.

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Last week, we welcomed Civil Eats members and the public to a thought-provoking and inspiring discussion on how to create and sustain food mutual aid. Our salons are usually for members only, but we felt that this inherently generous topic deserved to be shared with all interested listeners, particularly at a time when many of us might be supporting mutual aid in our communities.

Who Spoke: The event was kicked off by Civil Eats Membership Manager Kalisha Bass, with a welcome from Executive Director Naomi Starkman.

Editorial Director Margo True moderated our conversation with Katina Parker, a filmmaker and founder of Feed Durham in North Carolina, and Yasmin Ruiz, food justice co-organizer at Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO) in Chicago.

Feed Durham is a multifaceted program that feeds hundreds of people at a time and includes produce giveaways, clothing distributions, and repair clinics. LVEJO was founded 30 years ago to fight environmental injustice in the neighborhood, has now expanded into several different food mutual aid projects.

The Overview: The conversation centered around what true community care looks like, based not on charity but on reciprocity, and how people can care for one another during difficult times. The audience included people from across the U.S., many of whom work on farms, garden programs, and food access issues. They contributed a lively stream of chats during the discussion.

Many audience members were already working to feed people in their communities, and a few were encouraged by Parker to start new local projects such as community gardens to feed more people in need. By the time the salon ended, there was a palpable energy for change in the audience, with listeners vowing to connect with one another and the speakers after the session.

Become a member today for invitations to future salons—along with other benefits that come with being a Civil Eats member.

Nuggets From the Conversation  

 

What Is Food Mutual Aid?

• Katina Parker emphasized that mutual aid is not about traditional power structures, but about shared responsibility and collective survival, as it was in her family and community: “Growing up, there were a lot of kids, and we never went hungry. . . . Surviving wasn’t just about sharing food, it was about knowing one another. It’s what Dr. King called ‘service.’ There’s a difference between service and volunteerism. Service is something that is built into our lives, it’s a way of being, it’s a lifestyle–and volunteerism is something you pencil in on a Saturday.”
• Yasmin Ruiz of LVEJO defined mutual aid as “solidarity, as opposed to charity,” fostering empowerment and reciprocal relationships. “It’s not just you being on the receiving end, but giving back. It gives a sense of empowerment to people in the community, [and] allows us to take direct action to immediate needs we see.”

Tips for Sustaining a Food Mutual Aid Community

• Learn from elders, Indigenous communities, and immigrants. Elders are a trove of expertise, and immigrants (who are sometimes also Indigenous, as in the case of the Little Village neighborhood) hold knowledge from their homeland, including of agricultural practices.
• People on the receiving end need to be involved. Parker emphasized learning from unhoused individuals to prepare for societal disruptions, potentially including how to live outside, how the land and soil work, knowledge about weather conditions, and beyond. “Learn things from people that are different from us, particularly people who are closer to the earth. Native folks, unhoused people, veterans—they know a lot about the land.”

 

Turning Challenges Into Opportunities

• How to unite a group of people from disparate backgrounds into a true mutual aid community? Parker: “Unless you’re forging relationships across difference and really learning from one another, what you’re doing is what I would call ‘altruistic capitalism.’ What we need for what’s coming is to lean deeper into these relationships.”
• Programs that once supported farmers, school food sourcing, and food banks are being cut, increasing reliance on mutual aid as available resources decrease. Ruiz noted LVEJO’s community gardens produced 8.2 tons of food last year, but the demand far exceeds supply. Continuing to build local partnerships is key.

Sources of Inspiration and Strength

• Ruiz says it’s the relationships she forges with people in the community, and seeing how participating in mutual aid gives people agency and purpose. “A lot of people that have helped us are also people that have received produce and meals.”
• For Parker, it’s often her family. “My faith and the memory of how I was raised, and how so many have looked out for me along the way. Many of them are still alive, in their 70s and their 80s now. I spend a lot of time talking with them . . . . Standing on those broad shoulders is definitely what keeps me in it, and an awareness that we need people to survive.”

Expanding Mutual Aid

• Feed Durham is launching a national mutual aid network focused on rapid response and food access. “After four years of no rest, we have to find another gear and somehow dig deeper and be in the battle of our lives. . . .We have the best chance of getting the world that we’ve been fighting for right now, because things are so unstable and so unfamiliar.”

Read More About Food Mutual Aid

• Photo Essay: Standing in the Gaps With Feed Durham
• In Chicago, an Environmental Organization Feeds a Community
• Indigenous Food Reciprocity as a Model for Mutual Aid
• Op-ed: We Can Build a Better Food System Through Mutual Aid
• How a Year of Mutual Aid Fed Minneapolis
• Food is Free in a City Near You
• Op-ed: Why Those Community Fridges Won’t Solve Hunger
• Seattle’s Little Free Libraries Offer a Catalog of Collections and Connections

The post Building Stronger Communities Through Food Mutual Aid appeared first on Civil Eats.

]]> https://civileats.com/2025/03/12/in-chicago-an-environmental-organization-feeds-community/ Wed, 12 Mar 2025 09:00:09 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=61734 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. At the base of the Little Village Arch, a group of protesters gathered earlier this month. Braced against the biting winter chill, they loudly decried the raids of immigrant communities […]

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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.

A towering, two-story arch, trimmed in barrel tiles with an all-caps marquee, makes it very clear where you are: “BIENVENIDOS A LITTLE VILLAGE.” The structure rises high above bustling 26th Street in Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood, where independent restaurants, retails, and street vendors make it one of the highest-grossing commercial corridors in Chicago. This is the threshold of the Little Village neighborhood, home to many immigrants from Central America as well as the largest community of Mexican Americans in the Midwest.

At the base of the Little Village Arch, a group of protesters gathered earlier this month. Braced against the biting winter chill, they loudly decried the raids of immigrant communities ordered by the incoming Trump administration, which aimed to arrest and deport an estimated 2,000 immigrants across this sanctuary city, and more nationwide. In this climate, members of this tight-knit community must rely on each other now more than ever.

The entry to Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood. (Photo credit: The City of Chicago, 2021)

One of the strongest advocates for the neighborhood is the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO). For decades, the nonprofit has fought to protect Little Village’s land, air, and the life in between. Its multifaceted, community-led food justice program includes hot meal dropoffs, backyard garden startups, and a new farm, just a few blocks from the arch, where fresh produce can be picked up for free. LVEJO is now also a landmark for Little Village.

Last December, LVEJO received the national Food Sovereignty Prize, awarded for “grassroots, agroecological solutions from the people most harmed by the injustices of the global food system,” according to a press release from the U.S. Food Sovereignty Alliance. “I felt so glad that the Food Sovereignty Prize committee really got what the team was trying to do here,” says LVEJO’s deputy director, Juliana Pino. “It’s not just about simply growing food. It’s really about committing to the land, defending and protecting each other in the land, and showing up for a community in ways that are really rooted.”

LVEJO’s role in the local food system was years in the making, and it began with environmental activism. Pino recalls how, in 1994, a group of parents forced their local elementary school to restrategize renovation plans after some children suddenly became ill, likely from toxins released during the renovation process. That foundational group of parents would soon expand to include other community leaders and go on to tackle environmental injustices neighborhood-wide as Little Village Environmental Justice Organization.

“It’s not just about simply growing food. It’s really about committing to the land, defending and protecting each other in the land, and showing up for a community in ways that are really rooted.”

Over its 30 years, LVEJO has shuttered two local coal power plants as well as an asphalt roofing manufacturer, Celotex, which was deemed a Superfund site by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and took the better part of a decade to remediate; now it is a 21-acre neighborhood park.

Viviana “Vivi” Moreno grew up near the neighborhood, hearing these stories. “I knew people whose family members were affected by the coal power plants,” she says. In college, while elbow-deep in a detailed case study about LVEJO in her environmental health class, she fully connected the dots, and began to see “the legacy that polluting industries have in communities of color and immigrant communities of color.”

Moreno joined LVEJO as a volunteer more than a decade ago, and has evolved alongside the organization. Now LVEJO’s senior food justice organizer, she helps facilitate a multigenerational network of neighbors who offer essential insight on traditional farming practices and foodways. Pino sees the work as a multitiered form of sustenance: “A number of those folks . . . had a really hard time sustaining employment due to racism and disrespect for their skills and undervaluing the knowledge that they have. And on top of that, they were looking for ways to sustain the ancestral practices that they had back from their origin countries, as well as feed their families.” Such cultural knowledge risks being lost if it isn’t transferred to the next generation.

Viviana Moreno is Little Village Environmental Justice Organization’s senior food justice organizer. (Photo credit: Little Village Environmental Justice Organization)

LVEJO’s multi-pronged food justice program is offered free of cost and is communicated primarily through word of mouth. Eight food justice staff members and 50 to 80 volunteers run the program, which includes the pandemic-born Farm Food Familias project, created in collaboration with Getting Grown Collective. The project has served more than 50,000 meals so far, using produce donated by and purchased from local urban farms.

“What we noticed with this mutual aid program is that it wasn’t just COVID, it was an economic issue,” says Moreno. “A lot of folks lost their jobs because of either contracting long COVID or losing family members, and were having a hard time getting back to an economic space where they could provide for their families. So, that’s where some of the meals came in and they were really beautiful and healing.” Funding for Farm Food Familias and LVEJO’s other food initiatives, as well as for the organization as a whole, comes largely from private foundations that have supported LVEJO for years, as well as individual donors.

Food justice staff member Taryn Randle organizes Backyard Gardens Little Village, a program that supplies residents with education and materials—including plants and garden beds—to activate their own gardens. About 20 homes participate so far. Meanwhile, Moreno is helping to develop a blossoming 1.3-acre greenspace, La Villita Park, which opened in 2014 on a portion of the converted Celotex site.

Semillas de Justicia (Seeds of Justice), a half-acre community garden and farm, sits just outside the park. A series of painted vignettes adorn the garden’s fence: people gardening together, whimsical hearts, the landmark arch, and messages affirming the neighborhood’s existence: “Defiende La Villita!” and “Let us breathe!”

During the growing season, Semillas’ garden beds are fully occupied by 70 households. The adjoining vegetable farm hosts a weekly free farmers’ market, offering produce freshly harvested from the site. LVEJO collaborates with community members in deciding what to grow, to ensure that the land offers agency to the people of the neighborhood while fortifying their connection to culture and heritage.

Yasmin Ruiz, food justice co-organizer at Chicago’s Little Village Environmental Justice Organization. The organization won the national Food Sovereignty Prize in December. (Photo credit: Little Village Environmental Justice Organization)

This includes several varieties of tomatoes, corn, beans, pumpkin, medicinal herbs, and edible flowers such as marigolds, a key element of Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) celebrations in the fall. Last year, between the community garden and the farm, LVEJO collectively harvested and distributed nearly 16,000 pounds of produce and about 1,000 fresh eggs during a time when the price of eggs and other groceries had spiked.

LVEJO’s farm manager, Nateo Carreño, says it isn’t uncommon for elders to stroll by during the growing season and offer a hand. Every interaction is a chance to pass down ancestral knowledge, and sometimes, a pat on the back. Carreño recalls, “A señora just [told] us, ‘I walked to the park to tell you guys that your potatoes taste like they have butter in them.’”

Both of Carreño’s grandfathers were farmers, and Carreño sees the soil as a wonderland of living, breathing organisms that can heal itself over time if given the proper support. Years after being reclaimed and cared for by LVEJO, the soil here not only produces bountiful harvests, but also teems with beneficial bacteria like Mycobacterium vaccae, which get absorbed through the skin and trigger serotonin, the “happy hormone,” in the brain. “I love soil, that’s my jam,” says Carreño. “There’s just something in you that wakes up when you start working with plants and start working with soil.”

For now, in the stillness of the winter, the land sleeps. Meanwhile, its caretakers keep planning. When the new season begins, LVEJO will continue to sow its mighty vision for Little Village.

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

The post In Chicago, an Environmental Organization Feeds a Community appeared first on Civil Eats.

]]> https://civileats.com/2025/03/04/arcenio-lopez-on-the-history-and-struggle-of-indigenous-farmworkers/ https://civileats.com/2025/03/04/arcenio-lopez-on-the-history-and-struggle-of-indigenous-farmworkers/#comments Tue, 04 Mar 2025 09:00:29 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=61766 His grandfathers began traveling to the U.S. under the Bracero Program, which operated from 1942 to 1964, bringing millions of Mexican citizens to work legally in American agriculture and railroads. López himself followed in their footsteps, coming to California in 2003 to work in the strawberry industry. Today, López serves as the executive director of […]

The post ‘If You Speak an Indigenous Language, You Are Treated as Less’: Migrant Indigenous Farmworkers Feel Deportation Threat appeared first on Civil Eats.

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For three generations, Arcenio López’s family has lived at the mercy of crops, the changing seasons, and the constant shifts of U.S. immigration policy. Born in 1982 in a small village in Oaxaca, Mexico, López comes from an Indigenous family of farmers who have been part of a long-standing migration pattern between Mexico and the United States.

His grandfathers began traveling to the U.S. under the Bracero Program, which operated from 1942 to 1964, bringing millions of Mexican citizens to work legally in American agriculture and railroads. López himself followed in their footsteps, coming to California in 2003 to work in the strawberry industry.

Today, López serves as the executive director of the Mixteco/Indigena Community Organizing Project (MICOP), a nonprofit based in Oxnard and founded in 2001 that assists Indigenous agricultural workers on California’s central coast. The state is home to an estimated 165,000 Indigenous Mexican farmworkers. These workers form an integral part of the agricultural labor force, which totals around 407,300.

California is home to an estimated 165,000 Indigenous Mexican farmworkers.

Over 80 percent of Indigenous farmworkers in California come from Oaxaca, López’s home state, where Mixtecs are a predominant group. In Ventura County alone, where MICOP operates, there are an estimated 20,000 Indigenous Mixteco migrants from Mexico. These communities are among the poorest workers in the region, often earning meager seasonal wages with few, if any, employee benefits.

Most are undocumented immigrants who face unique challenges in the U.S., including language barriers, as many speak pre-Hispanic Indigenous languages rather than Spanish. In the wake of new federal deportation threats, their already precarious status has become even more destabilizing, forcing many to avoid critical services or legal protections out of fear.

We spoke to López about the impact of recent immigration raids in Ventura county, misconceptions about undocumented farmworkers, and prejudice against Indigenous farmworkers in the fields.

What inspired you to become a community organizer?

At first, I didn’t know what a community organizer was. But while I was working in the fields, the first thing I noticed was the division among Mexicans, particularly against Oaxaqueños (people from the state of Oaxaca in Mexico), and how they were treated by other Mexicans. I felt there was a profound lack of knowledge and awareness about the diversity of our own Mexican country, especially regarding Indigenous peoples and our history. I started asking myself, “Why are people treating us as if we were less human for speaking an Indigenous language or because of the way we look? Where is that coming from?”

I connected what I was experiencing in the fields and the agricultural industry here to what I used to hear from my grandmother about her experiences as a farmworker in Mexico. I grew up listening to her stories about her pain, challenges, mistreatment, and the abuses she endured as a farmworker and as an Indigenous woman who never learned how to speak Spanish. I connected her world to what I was living through in 2003. It was a wake-up call for me to see that so much injustice still existed—and nobody was talking about it, at least not in the fields.

When I was recruited as a volunteer by El Concilio (a nonprofit that serves rural, low-income Latino communities), and two years later offered a position as a community organizer, it became an opportunity for me to learn more about social justice, economic justice, environmental justice, and to dive deeply into my own history and learn about colonization.

At that time, I didn’t feel comfortable speaking Mixteco. My parents and grandparents didn’t want their children or grandchildren to speak it because of what they went through—feeling disadvantaged simply for speaking their own languages instead of Spanish. They worked hard to ensure we learned Spanish because they believed it would give us better opportunities than their Indigenous languages ever could. Soon, I found myself in a painful moment because I had to challenge my parents’ and grandparents’ beliefs of assimilating to Mexican culture.

We grew up Catholic, so I had to break down all the ways religion played a role in colonization—how it was used as a weapon to dominate, invade, and kill. I also learned about internalized racism—the self-hatred many of us carry after being discriminated against for so many years. All of this pushed me further into organizing work.

How has migration played a part in you embracing your Mixteco identity and language, claiming your roots?

If I had stayed in Mexico, I don’t think I would be embracing my culture and language for many reasons. One of the main reasons is that the Mexican education system doesn’t encourage you to be critical about yourself or your Indigenous identity. They don’t want you to know your own history.

In Mexico, there is a lot of racism toward Indigenous people—those with brown skin, shorter stature, or those who speak an Indigenous language. If you look more brown or speak an Indigenous language, you are treated as less. That’s how it is. But according to the law and the education curriculum, everyone is supposedly equal—no one is less or more. The system tries to make us homogeneous by erasing Indigenous identities. For example, I never heard of a curriculum in Mixteco, which is my culture, or Zapotec. You just keep going, keep working, learning Spanish, and chasing big goals with the hope that someday you’ll succeed and no longer face discrimination—but that’s not true.

When you cross a border and you feel far from your own land, you find yourself missing your roots. It becomes an invitation to deeply question yourself, “Who am I?” It pushes you to be more critical. I am the grandson of an abuela [grandmother] who worked in agriculture in Mexico. Some people focus more on learning the culture here or mastering English.

But I realized early on that if I don’t claim my roots—my culture and my identity—there’s a high risk I’ll lose myself because I will never fully fit into white culture, no matter what I do. That need for belonging is something I think many of us go through. Not feeling a sense of belonging to certain groups forces you to ask yourself: What community do I belong to?

What struggles for Indigenous farmworkers still exist, two decades after you first came to work in the fields?

Primarily, immigration status. Thousands of Indigenous migrants still have no opportunities for a legal pathway to adjust their status in this country.

Language barriers remain a major issue as well. Many of our people come from rural areas of Mexico and different states where they don’t have access to a formal education. Many don’t know how to read or write. The education system in Mexico is in Spanish and excludes many of our communities. We feel more comfortable in our Indigenous languages—Mixteco, Zapoteco, Purépecha, Triqui—but transitioning into the Spanish-language education system is a barrier that prevents many from attending school at all. As a result, literacy continues to be a significant problem.

“We’ve started seeing agricultural companies and growers becoming concerned about many farmworkers not showing up to work.”

Here in the United States, we face new layers of challenges, such as immigration issues, violations of labor laws and rights, workplace retaliation, and wage theft. Language barriers also make it difficult for workers to access accurate information about their rights or available resources. Misinformation is another issue—there aren’t enough news outlets providing fact-based information tailored to our communities.

Our population is substantial. Yet many companies still lack systems to provide training or support in Indigenous languages for their workers. California has strong labor laws that protect employees, but enforcement is lacking. This makes workers from Indigenous communities especially vulnerable. Even when they know their labor rights, many of our people don’t feel confident or empowered enough to advocate for themselves.

The Trump administration, through U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement (ICE), has deported more 37,000 people during his first month in office—less than the monthly average of 57,000 deportations during Biden’s presidency. In the fields, what has happened or changed since Trump was elected to his second term?

People were hopeful that, even though he said there would be massive deportations, there wouldn’t be a significant difference between his administration and the previous Obama or Biden administrations. But now it feels like his actions have been more aggressive, and it’s all over social media—ICE agents in our neighborhoods. A few weeks ago, people were detained in our neighborhood. Folks got scared and stopped going to work in the fields.

We’ve started seeing agricultural companies and growers becoming concerned about many farmworkers not showing up to work. We’ve also heard that many parents are not taking their children to school. Even at our organization, people who use our services have been canceling their appointments and participation in our programs. We offer different training sessions and groups, but participants have been calling us to say they prefer staying home and asking if we can hold virtual trainings or meetings instead.

Being undocumented means always living in fear. We’ve normalized fear, but it escalates when someone like Donald Trump gets into this position of power.

What are some things that undocumented workers should know under this administration? What rights do they have if they are detained by ICE?

When I get the opportunity to talk to people, I tell them: Let’s take a moment, breathe, stay calm, and approach this with a cold head. All I need to focus on is making a plan for the worst-case scenario.

That said, if you are unfortunately detained, the first thing to remember is: Do not provide any information. You have the right to remain silent. I know it’s hard because agents can be very intimidating—they may yell, scream, and try to get as much information from you as possible. If you carry the red card—the Know Your Rights card—show it to them and say, “I need to talk to my attorney. I’m being detained.”

If they take you to a detention center, do not sign anything, no matter what the paper says. If possible, ask if you can call a family member. Planning and preparation are key here because your family member should already know what to do. They should have the contact information for our offices and should call our hotline to get legal advice. The goal is to find a lawyer who can take your case for removal defense and fight for a bond.

“Imagine the worst-case scenario: All undocumented workers are deported. The agricultural industry would collapse.”

In preparation for this possibility, you need to make a family plan. Decide who will have legal custody of your children and who will pick them up from school if you are detained. There are already many resources available that we’re sharing with our communities. We’re organizing fairs where we’ll bring public notaries to help notarize these plans. That’s what we’re telling our people: Even though they are undocumented, they still have rights

What are some of the most common misperceptions about immigrant farmworkers, especially those who are undocumented?

There’s a perception that undocumented people are abusing the system or taking advantage of public benefits. But the reality is different—they are not taking advantage of all the benefits.

They are paying taxes. All individuals who work here are contributing to this economy as farmworkers. However, the deductions taken from their paychecks on a weekly basis—such as Social Security and Medicare—are benefits they will never be able to access.

Undocumented workers won’t have access to retirement benefits or Medicare when they reach 60 years old because of their immigration status. And many people have no idea that undocumented workers are paying all these taxes without receiving the same benefits in return.

What would happen to the agricultural industry without migrant farmworkers, roughly half of whom are undocumented, according to the USDA? 

I wish we could ask this question to a grower. They likely know that a large percentage of their workforce is undocumented. Imagine if they lost them.

Growers have already been struggling with a worker shortage for the last five to seven years. They started using the H-2A program, which is very similar to the Bracero Program, but it’s not enough to meet their labor needs.

We are also concerned about the H-2A program because it makes workers very vulnerable. Once they are on this side of the border, who knows what happens to those workers? For years, efforts have been made to streamline the process of bringing workers over the border, but growers are still facing significant challenges due to a lack of labor.

Now imagine the worst-case scenario: All undocumented workers are deported. The agricultural industry would collapse. This is the last thing growers need to face. They have a lot of political power, and I hope they are pressuring their leaders to take action.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Arcenio López on How to Support Farmworkers

1. 1. Donate to nonprofits that work directly with farmworkers.
   2. Use social media platforms to spread awareness or share a different narrative. The current narrative often criminalizes undocumented people, but farmworkers are mostly good, hardworking individuals. We, as brown and undocumented people, may not always be able to educate others—especially white people—but white allies can educate their peers.
   3. Call local representatives in the [state] Capitol and ask them: What are you doing for farmworkers? How can you stop these raids and ICE operations?
   4. Hold public events to invite others to learn about the agricultural landscape of this state.
   5. If there are marches or protests, it makes a difference when U.S. citizens attend and physically show up to protect those who don’t have the privilege of participating in civil disobedience. Citizens can use their presence to shield vulnerable community members.
   6. Finally, create spaces that are respectful and allow farmworkers to share their own stories—our stories should come from us.
   7. Language barriers make it difficult for workers to access accurate information about their rights or available resources; translate or provide interpreters when possible.
   8. Misinformation is a problem—news outlets can provide fact-based information tailored to our communities. We also have our own media outlet, Radio Indígena, and you can follow us on social media.
   9. Pass the Know Your Rights card to anyone who might need it.

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