Restaurant Revolution

Female farmers in India are leading the transition to natural farming. They improve soil and plant health by using indigenous seeds and not using chemicals or pesticides. The practice increases yields and decreases costs.

Ethnic grocery stores create a sense of community for immigrant communities and improve food security by providing affordable, culturally relevant foods.

Hawaiians are restoring fishponds to working order with tasks like fixing rock walls and removing pollution to reimplement land practices of the past into daily life. These ponds consist of a rock wall, a gate for midsized fish to enter, and things the fish feed on like algae and coral.

Programs like Motor City Match and Grown in Detroit help entrepreneurs launch Black-owned food businesses in Detroit. The businesses sell healthy foods in neighborhoods often lacking in nutritious options or in the infrastructure needed to support startup businesses. The supportive programs offer grants and training that have nurtured dozens of new businesses, which themselves have formed a supportive network among their peers.

“UNDSCVRD SF," funded by the SOMA Community Stabilization Fund and produced by the nonprofit Kultivate Labs, is a night market held once a month from July to November that features a range of Filipino vendors. There were over 35,000 attendees in 2019 and it generated $300,000 in sales. It also serves as a testing ground to select businesses for Kultivate Labs’ SEED Accelerator Program and grantees for the SOMA Fund. The former provides bootcamps and one-on-one support for Filipino-owned businesses that are located in, or would like to be located in, a permanent space within the SOMA cultural district.

Though the overall poverty rate has been dropping in recent years, rural communities in Uganda still lack many basic resources, including access to healthy food, toiletries, and economic opportunity. The Network of Women in Agribusiness and Development was founded by women to empower and support their sisters through educational initiatives, agricultural training, and the provision of items such as pigs and fruit trees to help them break the cycle of poverty.

Groundswell's Farm Business Incubator Program, along with the help of five other local Ithaca farms, is working to help refugees start their own small farming businesses as they settle into their new lives in the United States. A new farmer can apply to Groundswell for farmer or business training classes, or to lease land at the organization’s incubator farm. The program has mentored and developed sustainable farms with six farmers.

A Kenyan government initiative is helping a growing community of residents to tackle food insecurity in one of the largest slum areas in Africa, championing an unusual form of urban farming: sack gardens.

A collaborative network of farms and organizations is preserving Palestinian heirloom crops by cultivating them in diaspora communities across the United States. The network propagates traditional varieties like mulukhiyah, kousa squash, and Gaza peppers while organizing community gatherings where Palestinian diaspora members can reconnect with these plants through hands-on cultivation and traditional food preparation.

The nonprofit Africa Research Association Managing Development teaches communities in Obanliku, Nigeria, to run their own businesses in things like gardening, soap making, and marketing, and helps establish cocoa cooperatives to keep them from depending on deforestation for income. The program also requires communities to designate parts of the forest for conservation and trains members to protect those areas.