East Denver Food Hub and Emerald Gardens Proposal

Community Wealth-Building, Economic Justic, and Food Sovereignty

Project Lead:

Robert Meza, Founder

Executive Summary:
East Denver Food Hub is meeting the immediate needs of food insecure communities, by connecting with local farmers and using pandemic relief funds to implement new models of local procurement that can fortify communities, strengthen local economies, and address the root causes of hunger through economic opportunities. We endeavor to capture funding in the food access space to not only aggregate and deliver food to families in need, but also promote community wealth-building and job creation by leveraging our resources, land, market connections, and private/public partnerships.

The partnership between Emerald Gardens and East Denver Food Hub, both of which occupy the same 35 acre property in Bennett, CO is a model of food sovereignty and dignity in the food system that is activated through partnerships with nonprofit organizations and food relief efforts in our community.

Two projects that we are implementing are food distribution of East Denver Food Hub local food boxes to communities in the Denver metro region, and our food production model that creates opportunities for community members to participate in farming opportunities at Emerald Gardens’ year-round farm. We see our model and approach as a way of addressing hunger at the root, supporting communities' ability to access fresh local food, and enabling their right to self-determination in the food system.

Our pilot food distribution pilots are modeled after the Women, Infants, and Children food box program we have initiated with the support of LiveWell CO. Since the summer of 2020 we have been delivering approximately 160 food boxes to families in Jefferson County, Denver County, and the Tri-County region, and have worked with 20-30 different farmers including Emerald Gardens, High Plains Food Co-op, and Front Range producers and fruit growers. We have also networked with Hunger Free Colorado as Regional Food Coordinators to help facilitate the purchase and distribution of local food to food pantries, who with the support of the Food Pantry Assistance Grant, have been able to pay a fair and dignified price to local farmers and producers. This model of local procurement, facilitated by East Denver Food Hub, have also allowed us to use the purchasing power of nonprofit organizations to create jobs in our food and farming (eco)system.

The other critical component and case study for this project is leveraging the resources on Emerald Gardens farm to remove barriers of entry for young, beginning, and farmers of color who want to become owners of their own farming operation. We are currently working with Irving Reza, a DACA Dreamer from the Montbello neighborhood, and budding mycologist, who is growing mushrooms for both Emerald Gardens and the East Denver Food Hub’s food access boxes. The other is an immigrant couple from Ghana, Evans and Vivian Mensa, who will be growing cilantro, lettuce, and tomatoes in our greenhouse until they are able to find financial resources to build their own greenhouse on our farm. In order to fund these projects, we have looked toward creative investment opportunities, implementing CSA-style models at the institutional level and with food pantries, and capturing food access funding to promote food production opportunities. It is critical that we communicate clearly that the cost of local food that EDFH provides accounts for the dignity and fair price we commit to pay our farmers and community members who work for our food hub, and thus crucial to addressing economic justice in our work.

We would like to engage MENV students in creating research markers to evaluate the social, economic, and environmental impact, and to develop an intersectional analysis among these markers. We hope that this research can accurately communicate the immediate and long-term impact of this model. This project will also support the education efforts at EDFH in developing an awareness of new models that can sustain a more equitable food system. Based on this research, we hope to generate state and federal policies to incentivize local procurement in different communities, and develop a collaborative network of partners and farmers in our regional foodshed.

Key words:
Food sovereignty, food access, food justice, local and regional food systems

Links:
View full proposal
Watch partner video
Access networking event Zoom link