What we do
Over several years, we have held several community and town hall meetings to discuss the issues folks see in their communities. 1 Freedom is committed to making each campaign community-led and focused, to ensure that actual social change occurs.
Food Apartheid remains a critical issue in the communities we serve, and COVID-19 magnified the gaps in food accessibility that exist across our region. 1 Freedom's programs are focused on meeting the community where they are and moving from food apartheids to food sovereignty.
Our current programs include:
The Venture Farming Institute
Advancing Markets for Producers: Industrial Hemp CT
Urban Farmer Government Academy
Farming for Freedom:
Farming For Freedom is 1 Freedom's answer to a food system that was never built to serve us. We are committed to making each campaign community-led and focused, to ensure that actual social change occurs — not charity, not quick fixes, but real, lasting transformation led by the people who live it every day.
We know that food apartheid is not an accident — it is the result of deliberate systems that push healthy, affordable, culturally relevant food out of reach for black and brown communities. “Farming For Freedom” meets the community where they are and moves us from food apartheid to food sovereignty — from being consumers of a broken system to becoming growers, stewards, and decision-makers of our own food future.
We organize. We trained. We build power.
We organize farmers, youth, and neighbors into committees and coalitions that create solutions to the issues that impact them most. We train the next generation of Farm & Land Stewards with the agricultural, scientific, and advocacy skills to reclaim the land and feed their communities. And we build power — intergenerational, cross-community power — to disrupt the existing food system and replace it with one rooted in justice, self-determination, and collective liberation.
This is more than farming. This is freedom.
BIPOC Farmers, Youth and Community Organizing Committees
Fighting food apartheid in Connecticut is not simply the work of one group of people, but instead of multiple generations of neighborhoods and farmers organizing and mobilizing for change. As farmers and youth activists learn about their food systems, they begin to apply a social justice and human rights lens to their world. Our activists form community organizing committees to create solutions to issues that impact them and their community. Farmers and youth are organizing their communities to take a hard look at the food we consume and how together they can reimagined the CT broken food system. As farmers and youth learn about people-led social justice movements in history and presently, they become activated to demand justice in their own lives and communities.
Here are our current projects and stratergies to fight against food apartheid in CT:
Advancing Markets for Producers: Industrial Hemp CT
We are now recruiting farmers to commit 5 acres to grow hemp. Farmers who grow 5 acres of hemp in one or more of the '27–'29 growing seasons will receive:
$9,166.67/year for the 5 acres of industrial hemp grown — just for participating
Guaranteed buyer for your harvest
Free hands-on training in hemp cultivation
Conservation Planning from local Conservation Districts
Shared equipment for seeding, harvesting & processing hemp
Join a new collaboration of industrial hemp farmers to invigorate a farmer-powered industry
Learn more
The Venture Farming Institute
The Venture Farming Institute (VFI) is a cohort-based agricultural training program for aspiring Farm & Land Stewards who identify as Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian, or Person of Color, and live in Connecticut & Rhode Island.
VFI is an emerging educational and training program aiming to increase the number of underrepresented farmers in Connecticut & Rhode Island by providing:
Online Training and Lectures from regional Black, Indigenous, and Latinx Industry Leaders
Agricultural & Scientific Skill-Building
Hands-on Farm Field Days
Technical Support
Organization of Inter-generational Network Expansion
Instruction Grounding in Advocacy & Social Justice
Learn more
Urban Farmer Government Academy
CALLING ALL URBAN FARMERS! Interested in understanding how local government affects your farm operations? Confused about local zoning? Learn new skills and network with others in this six-week online course.
Topics include:
Overview of municipal structures
How laws are passed, CT-PA 490, and how it might apply to you
Local zoning
Municipal permitting process