10 Ways to Get Involved With Food Mutual Aid | Civil Eats

10 Ways to Get Involved With Food Mutual Aid

Activist and author Robin Greenfield offers his suggestions for strengthening your community through food.

April 7, 2025

A colorfully hand drawn image of diverse people working in food mutual aid, from a bbq'er to someone holding a bowl of rice, and more

Illustration by Nhatt Nichols.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Robin Greenfield is a truth-seeker, activist, social reformer and servant to Earth, humanity and the plants and animals we share our home with. His life is an experiment with truth and integrity. At the heart of Robin’s action-based philosophy is his dedication to living simply and sustainably as a means of active resistance to systems of destruction and exploitation. Through living closely connected to Earth, he is on a path of personal liberation. Through living simply, he rejects societal standards of consumerism that contribute to great inequity and injustice. Read more >

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Keltech Energies
April 24, 2025
Getting involved with food mutual aid is a powerful way to support your community and help ensure everyone has access to nourishing food. One of the easiest ways to start is by joining a local mutual aid group—many operate through social media or neighborhood networks and are always looking for new volunteers. You could also help start or maintain a community fridge, which offers free food to anyone who needs it. If you enjoy cooking, consider preparing meals or assembling bagged lunches for distribution, or organizing a food drive to collect essential pantry items. For those with green thumbs, growing your own garden and sharing the harvest is another impactful way to contribute. Resources like Keltech Energies’ horticulture products can help support community or home gardens with quality soil, cocopeat, and growing media that enhance sustainable cultivation.
Shannon
May 4, 2025
Great ideas to start off. I hope more people get involved.