All posts of HEAL Staff

Climate Resilience: HEAL’s Summer Update

Welcome to the HEAL Food Alliance quarterly newsletter! To stay up to date on what’s happening in the food and farm justice movement, subscribe now » As we soak up the final weeks of summer, we are reflecting on the super bloom of our alliance’s collective work – from building climate resilience in our communities […]
1 year ago

Advocacy & Action: Reflections on our Final SoPL Session!

By Mina Seck, Community Food Manager, SPROUT NOLA, and Member of the “A Greener New Orleans” SoPL team I’m extremely lucky to be a part of the A Greener New Orleans campaign, a coalition of growers, food access advocates, policy advisors, and community members who are advocating for a policy platform in New Orleans that […]
1 year ago

It’s time to center climate justice and real climate solutions in the Farm Bill!

Real solutions to the climate crisis already exist – on fields and farms, in communities, grassroots organizations, and in agricultural collectives. Currently, the Farm Bill props up industrial agricultural practices and corporations that wreak havoc on our ecosystems while polluting our air, water and food, including their false climate solutions that perpetuate extraction and exploitation.
1 year ago

It’s time to address food insecurity in the Farm Bill!

Community care is ensuring every person has access to sustainable, nourishing food they can afford.  Nutrition in the US is most often decided, not by personal or individual choice, but by where you live, what you do, and what you can afford to buy. And for communities of color, food apartheid and systemic racism further limit the nutritious food we have access to.  
1 year ago

It’s time to invest in communities and break up corporate power in the Farm Bill!

Corporate agribusinesses, through consolidation, have amassed massive power over food production lines, controlling each step from “farm to fork.”  Before I joined the HEAL Food Alliance as an Organizer, I supported beginning farmers and livestock producers in the Midwestern “corn belt,” a region dominated by commodity farming and the base for many large corporate agribusinesses. 
1 year ago

We must center BIPOC farmers & producers in the farm bill!

For many Black, Indigenous, and other people of color in the US, land and water stewardship play a central role in our culture, way of life, economic livelihoods, and the sustainability of our communities.  However, due to white settler colonialism, the opportunity to farm has been unjustly stripped from the majority of BIPOC communities in the US through many avenues, including government policies and programs. 
1 year ago

It’s time to secure rights for food and farm workers in the Farm Bill!

I became enamored with the restaurant industry when I first came to the US. I was 13 years old and my parents were fleeing a bloody civil war that claimed the lives of several members of our family. Despite being a teacher in Guatemala, here in the US my mother could only find work in a restaurant. It was only after I began working in the industry myself that I soon realized the glamor and fast-paced energy I glimpsed through the windows of my mother’s workplace was just a mirage. It was in fact the reflection of abusive managers, racism and a sexist environment unlike anything I had ever experienced.
1 year ago

There is More That Unites Us Than Divides Us: Reflections on Messaging through SoPL

By Caitlin Stuart, Community Engagement & Navigator Manager, Nourish Colorado and Member of the Nourish Colorado SoPL team Our team, Nourish Colorado, joined HEAL’s School of Political Leadership (SoPL) as four women from vastly different backgrounds passionate about food justice and access on the Healthy Food Incentives team at our work, also called Nourish Colorado. […]
1 year ago