Growing and selling food locally can give people agency over their food purchases. Photo: EcoPhotography
You should get the final say over what food you put into your body, how it’s grown, and how it’s distributed. It sounds obvious – but our modern food system often doesn’t allow for it. Often, big corporations get to decide the healthiness, affordability, sustainability, and accessibility of the food that’s available to us. A movement called “food sovereignty” is fighting to change this.
Food sovereignty calls for a food system where people have the power to produce food within their community. They should have control over a food system that’s affordable, sustainably and ethically produced, healthy, and authentic to their culture.
Food justice and food sovereignty are closely related, but not identical, concepts. Food justice calls for all people to have access to sufficient, nutritious, culturally authentic food. No one should go hungry, have to decide between putting food on the table and paying bills, or be forced to feed their families unhealthy food. Food sovereignty calls for communities to control and manage their own access to food. People should get to decide what they consume.
How the Healthy Neighborhoods Study is Helping Communities Fight for Food Sovereignty in Massachusetts
CLF’s Healthy Neighborhoods Study works with communities to research and try to address problems residents are facing. The multi-year study, developed in concert with CLF and MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning, looks at the relationship between health and housing alongside community partners and residents in nine Massachusetts communities. CLF and our MIT partners recruit community members to act as “resident researchers” – experts in their neighborhoods’ needs.
Over the 10 years of the study, researchers and partner organizations have launched local projects to address the issues identified through the study. Recently, they found many people in their communities were struggling to access healthy, affordable food. To bridge that gap, they started a project to help their neighbors connect with government resources. (If you want to learn more about that food justice work, check out the first blog in this series.)
Their work also showed that some residents wanted to make their communities more self-sufficient by growing food for themselves. That prompted the Healthy Neighborhoods Study to start a “Homegrown Produce” pilot project to improve food sovereignty in Massachusetts. The project ran for about six months in 2025 in Everett and Roxbury.
“We began by recruiting growing ambassadors – people who have experience growing food in their community – to teach others how to grow their own food,” explained Anisha Patil, manager of community research at CLF. “Our goal was to build community control over food to make communities more self-reliant, in addition to bringing people together and providing healthier food.”
This would give community members agency over the food they put on the table for themselves and their families. Affordability and safety of food have become a major issue even in national political campaigns, making the pilot project especially timely.
Encouraging Homegrown Produce in Massachusetts
“Rooted in love, care, empathy, and history. Community-oriented. Justice-focused.” That’s how growing ambassador Ellie Cordero described her work helping people in her community grow food. With experience working as a resident researcher and at Everett Community Growers, this pilot project provided the perfect opportunity to combine her passions. Cordero hosted a series of educational events through the Community Growers nonprofit to give people the skills and seeds (literally) that they need to grow produce in their own yards, porches, and windowsills.
Cordero arranged for an elder community grower who she said “brought all her wisdom from her time in the Dominican Republic growing” to lead the event. To make it as inclusive as possible, the grower spoke in Spanish that was translated into English by a youth who grew up in the garden. They showed residents how to save seeds from storebought produce, like mini cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, and peppers – a more accessible, sustainable option than buying seed packets. The Community Growers provided soil and the seed-filled produce.
Decades of industrial pollution in Everett have rendered the soil in Cordero’s backyard too toxic to grow food in. Like many of her neighbors, she has to rely on garden beds to safely grow produce. She shaped the program to accommodate others in the same situation, as well as those who had no backyards at all. At Everett Community Growers Season Kick off last June, Everett resident researchers led a hands-on activity where residents planted their choice of seeds that could be set up on a porch or windowsill. The seeds, mini planters, and care instructions were provided for free for all residents to take home.
“We’re finding other ways that residents can grow in the space that they have,” explained Cordero. The events were popular, and she’s proud that the project “reclaims our power in growing, and shows there is power in growing.” After landing a micro-grant, Cordero is planning on continuing the work by hiring five “agriculture ambassadors” to continue to spread knowledge in the community.
Encouraging Food Sovereignty through Community Gardens
For Nataka Crayton and Bobby Walker, growing ambassadors and urban agricultural farmers in Boston, growing food has been a shared passion since they met. But they, along with Boston residents and other community organizations, had to fight to make it legal. Incredibly, farming was functionally illegal in the city for a long time. Community gardens always existed, but opportunities to sell their hard-earned produce were scarce.
Crayton and Walker co-created the Urban Farming Institute and trained new farmers for more than 10 years. They helped lead efforts to legalize Boston community farms in 2013 by passing Article 89. This made selling food legal and clearly regulated, establishing new zoning to make way for an agricultural economy for growers and producers. “Food sovereignty [means] everyone should be able to grow their food,” said Walker simply. Getting your hands in the dirt to nurture fresh fruits, vegetables, and herbs that nourish your community should be a universal right.
Crayton and Walker brought this philosophy to their work with the Healthy Neighborhoods Study. Like Cordero, they hosted events to help people grow their own food. “We want as many people to learn how to do it as we can,” explained Walker. They held pop-ups in busy spaces, like the Dudley T Station in Roxbury and outside the National Center of Afro-American Artists in Boston, for a Juneteenth event.
The pair hosted “Ask a Farmer” Q&As, shared useful information for beginners, and spread their tremendous enthusiasm for growing food for yourself. Meeting people where they are was a major priority. It’s important “just having someone accessible to you to answer questions you have, no matter what they are,” said Crayton. Their community responded with enthusiasm, requesting more events and even asking about taking classes.
Food Sovereignty Isn’t Easy – But We Can Keep Up the Fight
With cost, access, contaminated soil, and sometimes regulations standing in their way, the path to increased food sovereignty hasn’t been easy for the Healthy Neighborhoods Study’s resident researchers, growing ambassadors, or the people they’re reaching through their events. But the program has achieved steady and impressive progress. While both this iteration of the Healthy Neighborhood Study and the pilot project are wrapping up, the researchers report that the event attendees have been engaged, interested in learning more, and hopeful about attending more events or even classes.
“Community control over food can build community resilience in many different ways,” said CLF’s Patil. “Nurturing plants makes space for mindfulness. Young people can feel more connected to and curious about healthy food options. As we honor generational knowledge, we build the intergenerational connections that are so important for strong communities.”
A windowsill pot of basil or a row of tomatoes in the backyard won’t upend our commercial food system on its own. But giving people the knowledge and tools to grow even a portion of their own food gives them power over their diet and environment. It reconnects people to the soil and the natural world. And it creates fresh fruits, veggies, and herbs that otherwise wouldn’t sprout. This is the work that food sovereignty is all about.
