Pay-What-You-Can Farm Stands Feed Communities Against Tough Odds

An insulated shed turned food pantry at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Des Moines, Iowa, is open 24 hours a day seven days a week. Community members can drop off donations or pick up food for themselves at any time for no cost. And the pantry has a refrigerator for perishable goods.

Good Grocer, a grocery store in Minneapolis, is a nonprofit run by volunteers who receive an additional discount on groceries for their work. The store’s food outlet offers discounts of up to 70% and provides affordable, healthy foods to combat food insecurity.

More and more public libraries around the United States are creating seed libraries as a way to encourage gardening, combat hunger insecurity, and build community resilience. For example, the Jefferson Public Library in Georgia has seen the number of people using the seed library grow to more than 300 in 2021. It can be a lot of work to maintain the seed libraries, but some librarians see it as a way to engage the community.

Jubilee Market is a non-profit grocery store that provides affordable and nutritious foods in low-income neighborhoods. This community-based grocery store caters to the unique cultural needs of the community and helps to improve the overall neighborhood and quality of life.

The BC Farmer’s Market Nutrition Coupon Program in British Columbia, Canada, provides lower-income families and seniors with coupons to purchase food at farmer’s markets. The program improves food security by ensuring more people have access to fresh, healthy food and supporting local farmers.

Through a land trust, Community Partners in Affordable Housing sells homes to buyers at a fixed cost while maintaining ownership of the land they’re built on, allowing those who wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford market rate housing to become homeowners. Some of the homes are even built by high school students enrolled in a local Geometry in Construction program.

Over 20 organizations in the Austin neighborhood of Chicago work together under the name Austin Eats to improve healthy food access with food pantries, community gardens, and grocery stores.

The nonprofit Strawberry Week Society is tackling period poverty in Kansas City, Missouri, by providing free menstrual products to organizations that help those in need.

Cooking to Share allows fifth- and sixth-grade students to cook meals for families in need. Since its inception, the program has served 78 families in the county, while teaching 2,000 students about cooking, food safety, foodborne illnesses, and cleanliness.

MARSH Grocery is a food cooperative with urban farm lots, an online catalog, a delivery program, a commercial kitchen, and a grocery store in which people can pay the amount on the sticker, 20% more, or 20% less. The cooperative is not quite profitable but is growing its customer base in a St. Louis neighborhood that previously lacked access to affordable, healthy food.