north country food alliance

North Country Food Alliance is a worker-run non-profit that takes action to strengthen food access and food justice in the Twin Cities Metro area. They envision a Twin Cities Metro where no food is wasted, and everyone is empowered by abundant access to healthy, sustainable, and culturally-appropriate foods.

foodshare

Every weekday (and some weekends!), North Country Food Alliance (NCFA) picks up surplus food from co-ops, grocery stores, and distribution centers across the Twin Cities area. All of this food would otherwise be thrown away either because it’s overstocked or visually imperfect. Most of it is fresh produce, which is often less available to people facing food insecurity. In 2020, they started shifting more focus to local food recovery by launching a gleaning program. Gleaning is the act of harvesting fresh produce that would otherwise go to waste at orchards, gardens, and farms. This is high-quality food that would rot in the field if not for outside efforts—possibly due to constraints on time, storage, or budget. They also began purchasing food from local farmers in 2020, focusing on BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color)-run farms. By doing so, we support the local food system, provide additional funds to underrepresented farmers, and select specific culturally-appropriate foods for our foodshare program. As always, all food is given away completely free-of-charge. To ensure they serve the people experiencing the most disadvantages in our society, NCFA partners with local nonprofit organizations such as soup kitchens, homeless shelters, and food shelves. Their work provides them with reliable access to fresh foods.

gardens

NCFA believes that a strong connection to food improves the health of our communities and its members. This is why they build and maintain community gardens in neighborhoods with restricted access to fresh foods in the Twin Cities. These gardens do not follow the traditional model of leasing out parcels to individuals; rather, everything is communally worked, and the produce is free for community members to enjoy. NCFA also offers donation-based workshops, giving people the opportunity to learn how to grow their own healthy food, and hold neighborhood events to bring people together. Any surplus produce is given away completely free-of-charge to Metro Area food shelves, homeless shelters, and soup kitchens. When NCFA first began, they built gardens at their office and in community member’s yards; but their program has since expanded. In 2020 they established a partnership with the Minneapolis Public Housing Authority to garden at Charles Horn Towers, which has a large Somali population. They transferred stewardship of this site to the Somali American Farmers Association in 2021. They currently lease garden space at a former vacant lot owned by the city of Minneapolis and manage the garden at their office location in South Minneapolis. This is their eight garden site since they were founded in 2013.

Sun Leaf Naturals and Bryn Mawr Soap are both donating 10% of their total sales in December to North Country Food Alliance.