BLACK FARM BUREAU dba BLACK FOOD SOVEREIGNTY COALITION
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Mission Statement
The Black Food Sovereignty Coalition (BFSC) mission is to ignite Black and Brown communities to participate as owners and movement leaders within food systems, placemaking, and economic development. We serve as a collaboration hub for Black and Brown communities to confront the systemic barriers that make food, place and economic opportunities inaccessible to us. BFSC is focused on meeting these barriers with creative, innovative, and sustainable solutions.
About This Cause
The primary goal of BFSC is to support building strong organizational governance, land justice, and program development networks throughout the Pacific Northwest focused on three core areas: food, place and wealth. -Food: Provide healthy, culturally relevant food, grown by our community members, to meet the nutritional needs of Black people. Build leadership capacity among our network to advance equitable policy/systems, change, and spur the development of a resilient regional food system. -Place: Reclaim our right to thrive in any neighborhood by connecting people to places and the opportunities that the place provides; increasing the self-reliance of Black people in meeting the food needs of their communities through stewardship of land resources. -Wealth: Deconstruct barriers to wealth creation within our communities and build foundations for wealth creation in the Black community through food and place; create innovative marketing strategies that mutually benefit Black food producers and Black consumers BFSC is a Black-led, culturally-grounded grassroots organization focused on food justice. As a BIPOC collaboration hub, we work in solidarity with Black, Indigenous, and People of Color growers, policymakers, advocates, and educators to stabilize local and regional food systems for marginalized BIPOC communities in the Pacific Northwest. As a culturally specific organization, equity is core to our mission and work. All of our activities around food, place, and wealth-building are directed toward healing, connecting, and uplifting People of Color. BFSC is a part of the EFOD (Equitable Food Oriented Development) movement and employs strategies that improve community health by increasing access to fresh, culturally-appropriate foods in low-income neighborhoods of color; increasing long-term community health through asset-building and ownership of food enterprises; and by expanding self-determination and social capital development by and for People of Color in urban communities. Currently, Black Food Sovereignty Coalition (BFSC) fulfills its mission by operating Food Hub programs to support BIPOC growers and value added producers in the distribution of their products. BFSC offers affordable short-term kitchen rentals for BIPOC value added product makers. Additionally, we operate the Come Thru Market, which is an incubator market centering BIPOC farmers and makers, and we offer the After Market Purchasing Program (AMPP) to Come Thru farmers, which purchases food waste fromvendors and distributes it for free to the community through either partner organizations or in coming years, directly out of the BFSC Headquarters (HQ). BFSC has secured funding to expand AMPP in two ways: first, expanding the AMPP to four additional neighborhood farmers markets; second, providing free food distribution out of our HQ through our Black Resilience Food Hub. Over the course of the 3 year program, BFSC intends to prevent a minimum of 55,000 pounds of “food waste” from entering landfills. That food waste prevention will result in a minimum of 104,740 pounds of CO2 emissions being reduced. All of that “food waste” will be used to generate a minimum of 145,000 meals and/or produce boxes to feed the community, with a focus on food distribution impacting BIPOC communities and other high-need neighbors. All while getting funds directly into the pockets of BIPOC food producers. Additionally, BFSC is working to expand our Lending Library of equipment for BIPOC growers and makers to access. BFSC is building out a Lending Library of post-harvest processing equipment, for BIPOC growers and value added product makers to borrow without the need for them to invest in the equipment themselves. By providing low barrier resources for folks to tap into, BFSC will continue strengthening the local BIPOC food system and provide resiliency for small scale BIPOC entrepreneurs, who may not have access to the capital necessary to invest in the equipment themselves. By creating accessible pathways to educate communities on how to use culturally relevant foods with locally sourced ingredients, we will be creating a larger customer base for our growers to tap into through the market seasons. The increased equipment capacity provides an opportunity for BFSC to host public facing education demonstrations for BIPOC community members to learn about how to use ingredients they get from the Black Resilience Food Hub. BFSC will be able to host things like “Mill Your Own Corn” days, where community members can come out and learn theprocess of creating corn meal, connecting that knowledge to culturally familiar foods. We will also offer cooking demonstrations at the BFSC HQ community kitchen, where the folks will learn to make cornbread or tortillas with thefreshly milled corn meal. Folks will be able to go home with corn meal they milled themselves, knowledge on how to effectively use the ingredient in a culturally familiar way, and hopefully a desire to access that product again, which our growers can fulfill through our other Food Hub programs. BFSC is also expanding the programming that operates out of our communal commercial kitchen. BFSC offers affordable short-term kitchen rentals starting at $18/hr, which is far below comparable market rates for the area. In conjunction with Come Thru’s Farmer Training Program that supports BIPOC growers in taking their small business dreams to the farmers market environment, in the coming market season(s), our goal is to expand the Farmer Training Program to include business development support for BIPOC food product makers. In the coming market season(s) BFSC will create a business development cohort of BIPOC farmers and value added product makers who will go through training to build their farmers market readiness and success, and create pathways into local markets. Food product makers in the cohort will have free access to the commercial kitchen and all cohort members will vend at the Come Thru Market for a season (May-October). BFSC also operates a Food Hub that does free food distribution directly to Black and Brown communities and partner organizations, which can serve as an additional distribution channel for growers and food businesses going through the training program. In tandem with all of the Food Hub programs already in the works, over the next few years BFSC plans on developing, implementing, and managing collaborative urban agriculture projects that address issues of racial equity, climate justice, and community health. Our intent is to transform underutilized urban areas into vibrant agricultural hubs to address environmental, social, and economic challenges. By reclaiming spaces like parking lots, vacant lots, rooftops, and potentially brownfield sites, our goal is to mitigate climate impacts, improve food security, and provide economic opportunities for marginalized communities on lands that otherwise would not sequester carbon or contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. By establishing a network of interconnected neighborhood grow sites, BFSC will be ensuring that communities across the city will have neighborhood scale food security that can support them in the case of emergency. Additionally, by creating a training fellowship we will ensure the long-term success of climate-ready urban farms, regenerative farmers and future climate change leaders. These sites are designed to combat climate issues such as greenhouse gas emissions, stormwater runoff, and the heat island effect, while also improving food access, creating natural spaces, and serving as sites for carbon sequestration. These new grow sites will provide ample growing space for BIPOC farmers to establish the roots of their farming enterprises. There will be a symbiotic relationship between the farmers, the makers and BFSC's Food Hub programs, as they will be able to access BFSC's equipment lending library, commercial kitchen and farmers market to ensure the success of their business endeavors, and BFSC will be able to source produce and products directly from the growers and makers who are engaging in these neighborhood scale food systems projects. BFSC is seeking to create closed loop BIPOC focused food system programs that mutually support and uplift growers and makers, the community and the climate.