A ray of hope: growers keep on growing 🌱

Filomena of Mena’s Farm at Good Shepherd Baptist Church in Atlanta (Photo by Caleb Jones)

Eight weeks ago, COVID-19 still seemed far away. Today, it completely surrounds us, impacting almost every aspect of our daily lives. Nowhere has this been more evident than our food system. As we witness empty shelves at grocery stores, fast food chains without meat, milk being poured out, crops being plowed under, and plants closing down due to unsafe working conditions, it has become clear that centralized, industrial agribusiness is unable to protect its crops, workers, or supply chains in environmentally sound, sustainable ways.

Meanwhile, small scale, sustainable farmers in metro Atlanta are selling out of food. Farmers markets are seeing record numbers of customers. Community garden plots are being snapped up, as are seedlings from local farms. 

Anticipating this increased demand, Food Well Alliance pivoted early on to keep growers growing by offering emergency stimulus funding, providing labor support, delivering additional compost and seedlings, creating online tools for growing and cooking -- and partnering with other nonprofits to support farmers across the state, home gardeners, and school gardens. 

Below you'll find a recap of our efforts over the last two months, but the work is just beginning. As an Alliance, we look forward to working with growers and local food organizations as we attempt to navigate this new normal together.

In addition to direct support for farms and gardens, we also branched out with virtual experiences to help people grow, cook, and connect online, and doubled down on our partnerships with local food organizations. We are also excited to begin working with school gardens for the first time and look forward to increasing support for home gardeners as well.

• Listening

  • Directly contacted over 140 farms and gardens in metro Atlanta

  • Distributed needs assessments to farms, gardens, and partners

  • Held weekly conference calls with local food leaders

  • Co-hosted a community garden listening session with Park Pride
     

• Virtual Experiences:

  • Monday Morning Gardener - a weekly gardening show on Instagram Live answering YOUR gardening questions! 

  • Plant Based Cooking Demos - Chef Zu hosted two cooking demos for healthcare workers

  • Food Well Live - weekly updates and interviews with growers and local food leaders every Friday on Instagram Live

  • Greenhouse Party - on Earth Day, we held a virtual celebration with DJ Fifthwurld

  • Volunteer Bingo - since we can't be together, we created a volunteer bingo to engage our volunteers virtually