Category: Films & Video

2023 CFF Annual Gathering recap

On September 20th, over 50 CFF members and invited guests gathered at New York Health Foundation for the 8th CFF Annual Gathering, and the first since 2019! Local food and drink was supplied by Bascom Catering, a catering company based out of the South Bronx. The evening featured a presentation by Columbia County Sanctuary Movement, our 2023 CFF Champions Award recipient; an update on the Seeding Power Fellowship; and a keynote presentation by Savi Horne, Executive Director of the North Carolina Association of Black Lawyers’ Land Loss Prevention Project, as well as member of the Agriculture Subcommittee of the USDA Equity Commission, and 2023 recipient of the James Beard Foundation Leadership Award.

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Recap: Cultivating Food Systems Change

On June 27th, CFF partnered with Food for the Spirit to host a briefing titled Cultivating Food Systems Change. As this year's "Champions Briefing", the event provided an opportunity to learn more about and engage with the 2022 CFF Champions Award winner, Food for the Spirit. The interactive Zoom meeting, planned and facilitated by Food for the Spirit (F4tS), focused on how community-led food initiatives are addressing issues of race and racism in the food system and explored how philanthropy can partner with community to address systemic inequities.

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Recap: Creating New Food Cooperatives with an Equity Focus

On May 31st CFF partnered with Sustainable Agriculture and Food System Funders to host a briefing titled Creating New Food Cooperatives with an Equity Focus. The webinar featured two justice-oriented food co-ops in the region: the Central Brooklyn Food Co-op (CBFC), a start-up food co-op working to open a store in Central Brooklyn, and Kingston Food Co-op, a co-op in Kingston, NY that will be opening soon. We also heard from Food Co-op Initiative (FCI), a nonprofit organization that provides free training, technical assistance, resources, peer learning opportunities and support to organizers starting co-ops across the country. FCI has worked with CBFC and Kingston Food Co-op.

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Recap: NY Farm Bill Organizing

On May 25th CFF partnered with five other philanthropic organizations to host a funder briefing titled Elevating and Mobilizing Voices from Across New York to Advocate for an Equitable 2023 Farm Bill. The session highlighted a statewide organizing campaign that engaged over 300 New Yorkers to create a NYS Farm Bill Platform. The leaders of the campaign, Equity Advocates, Black Farmers United NYS, and Food for the Spirit, prioritized outreach to and participation of BIPOC farmers, producers, and practitioners. The resulting policy platform represents a collective voice from NYS community food leaders, farmers, gardeners, land stewards, producers, & advocates.

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Recap: Seeding Power Relaunch

On May 16th, CFF partnered with Philanthropy New York to host a briefing titled, Seeding Power 2.0: Leadership for Our Region’s Food Movement. Funders gathered online to hear about the relaunch of CFF's Seeding Power Fellowship. Speakers included Kellie Terry of North Star Fund, Lisa Cowan of Robert Sterling Clark Foundation, Adam Liebowitz of CFF, and Bianca Bockman of Riseboro who is also a Seeding Power alum.

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Recap: Arts and Humanities Funding in Food

On May 1st, CFF partnered with Mellon Foundation and Philanthropy New York to host a briefing titled, Elevating and Preserving Black, Indigenous, and Immigrant Foodways through Arts and Humanities Funding. The session featured an overview from two program officers at Mellon who participate in the foundation's internal "food cluster" group that collaborates on supporting food-related projects in the arts and humanities. They offered an explanation of what it means to fund food work from an arts and humanities perspective, and specifically with a social justice lens.

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Recap: Feeding and Funding Our City

On March 1st, CFF partnered with Philanthropy New York and the NYC Workforce Funders to host a briefing titled, Feeding and Funding Our City: Recovery for New York City’s Invisibilized Food Ecosystem. The session featured a discussion with organizers from Street Vendor Project and Los Deliveristas Unidos, moderated by North Star Fund's Executive Director Jenn Ching.

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Recap: The Case for Regional Food Systems

On January 26th, CFF partnered with Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Working Group (NESAWG) to host a webinar titled, A Regional Imperative: Making The Case for Regional Food Systems. In it, authors Kathy Ruhf and Kate Clancy present an overview and key findings from their new report of the same name, which updates and greatly expands on the authors 2010 working paper, It Takes A Region.

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Recap: For Us By Us Farm-Based Education

On December 1st, CFF partnered with Engage New York and Neighborhood Funders Group to host an event titled, For Us, By Us Farm-Based Education: Land, Language, and Liberation. The session brought together three farm-based education programs in New York State that are all rooted in culture and community, and designed specifically to serve the population that its instructors and organization are representative of: the Akwesasne Mohawk community for Akwesasne Freedom School; low-income BIPOC communities for Farm School NYC; and the queer community for Rock Steady Farm.

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Recap: Scaling Regenerative Agriculture in the Northeast

On October 12th, CFF partnered with The Martha and Hunter Grubb foundation to host a briefing titled,Scaling Regenerative Agriculture in the Northeast.The session started with an overview of regenerative agriculture and all that the term entails, to provide a framework for the rest of the discussion. We also recognized that these principles and practices are not new at all, but come from indigenous cultures who were stewards of the land for centuries. In fact, if native people were not forcibly removed from the land, we likely wouldn't need to have conversations like this or be in this dire predicament.After the opening framing, we heard from several practitioners in the northeast working to implement and expand regenerative agriculture in our region.

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