FrontLine Farming (FLF) formed in December 2018 to take control of the narrative around our work. As people of color and womxn who are farmers, advocates, and educators, our story is too often told about us, not by us. We saw a need for food-based advocacy in Denver that elevates and centers oppressed voices and experiences - so we created FrontLine Farming.
FLF grew out of Urbiculture Community Farms, a non-profit multi-plot farm that was committed to providing food to people of all income levels in Denver by growing affordable food established in 2007. In 2014 Urbiculture partnered with Regis University and Urban Ventures LLC, to design the Cultivate Health Project which received grant funding from the Colorado Health Foundation. In 2018, FrontLine Farming was formed to continue and expand these programs.
Today, FLF is a food justice and farmer advocacy organization that believes good food should be for all people and that farmers deserve living wages. We develop asset-based and data-driven solutions that are community derived. We funnel money, resources, and time into the communities we serve and the farmers who grow our food.
Farming is our base and a central identity for all leadership staff. However, we are intersectional people and so is our work. FLF established the The Center for Food Justice and Healthy Communities as the policy, education, and research arm of the organization.
The mission of Frontline Farming is to create greater equity across our food system on the Front Range of Colorado. We specifically seek to support and create greater leadership and access for women and people of color in our food systems. We achieve these goals through growing food, listening, educating, honoring land and ancestors, policy initiatives, and direct action.
We are a food justice and farmer advocacy group led by women and People of Color. We are a community engaged in food production and education along the Front Range on three different farm plots. We grow high quality, organic food which supports fair wages for our farmers and is distributed through sales to a network of restaurants and institutional purchasers, sliding scale sales at farm stands and donations to a variety of non-profit partners.
We undertake our work in order to honor the land and the community we cultivate. As educators we engage a range of individuals from elders to toddlers in ethical and sustainable growing practices that enhance land and community connections. We have done all of this while helping to build and expand a network of farms and farmers who mutually support one another’s work and vision of agriculture in Denver.
We work at the intersection of food because we know that food shapes cultures, societies, where we work, and how we are valued. Our work to create changes in the food system is one way in which we can bring greater structural change and equity to systems that articulate profit as the only motivation.
Our work is divided into three strategies (which are also not always mutually exclusive) of food security, food justice, and food sovereignty. While sovereignty is the end goal, we know that our work is not linear and that we must approach our real problems at multiple levels simultaneously.
Organization name
FrontLine Farming
2018
Tax id (EIN)
83-3496361
Category
Food, Agriculture & Nutrition, Education, Civil Rights, Social Action & Advocacy, Community Improvement & Capacity Building, Environment, Philanthropy, Voluntarism & Grantmaking Foundations, Public & Societal Benefit, Youth Development
Organization Size
Large Organization
Address
2830 N CLAYTON STDenver, CO, US
Jefferson County, CO, US
Aurora, CO, US