Shared Ground Farmers Cooperative
St. Paul, MN
CSA Type: Vegetables, Eggs, Cheese, Mutual Aid/Solidarity Share
Drop Locations: Big River Yoga
Shared Ground Farmers’ Co-op is a marketing and distribution cooperative owned by seven farms in the Twin Cities region. Shared Ground provides produce to our local community through a CSA, as well as via several local food co-ops and the Minneapolis and St. Paul public schools. Shared Ground Co-op is owned and run by a diverse group of farmers from the Latino, Anglo, and Hmong communities. One of their core objectives is making environmentally sustainable farming a living wage job, especially for minority, immigrant, and beginning farmers. Shared Ground views its marketing and access to local food markets as an instrument of social justice, and a way for farmers with limited resources to gain more stable income and build their leadership skills through participation in a member-owned and member-governed enterprise.
Shared Ground’s CSA is a little different from many others because it does not come from a single farm. Instead, your membership supports a group of diverse farmers who are committed to working together to improve our local food system. Many of Shared Ground’s farmers might not be able to direct-market all of their produce due to language barriers, size of their operation, etc. By working together, Shared Ground says, we can use all of our strengths to bring the people of the Twin Cities high quality food while supporting farmers.
New in 2021- Mutual Aid option: In 2020 in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and the uprising after the murder of George Floyd, Shared Ground Farmers’ Cooperative knew that they had to do something differently. Not only had a third of their normal markets evaporated due to the pandemic but many people were being pushed further into food insecurity and poverty. Inspired to help out their community and create more markets for their farmers, Shared Ground created the Food for the People CSA, providing high quality and sustained access to food for families that don’t usually have access to it.
The Food for the People program is simple: each week from mid-July to mid-October Shared Ground farmers provide organically grown vegetables that will be received by their staff at their warehouse and packed into boxes. Partner organization Divine Natural Ancestry, a grassroots, Black-led organization, selects families- primarily Indigenous and Black- to receive the boxes and distributes the boxes to recipients’ houses each week.
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