Awarding over $670k to support Farmers and Food Businesses serving Metro Chicago
The Chicago Food Policy Action Council (CFPAC) is delighted to announce the awardees of the 2024 Chicago Good Food Purchasing Initiative (GFPI) Community Fund. We are awarding over $670,000 in addition to tailored technical assistance to 15 local farms and food businesses who are working on increasing community food access that builds local economies, sustainable practices, fair labor, animal welfare nutrition and advances the work of building equity in the Metro Chicago food system.
With support from The Rockefeller Foundation, the Builder’s Initiative, and American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds awarded to Cook County Department of Public Health from Cook County Government, the Good Food Purchasing Initiative (GFPI) Community Fund announces the second annual GFPI Community Fund awardees selected by our 2024 Review Committee. By providing flexible funding and personalized technical assistance offerings, this program has been strategically tailored to overcome the most common challenges experienced by systemically marginalized farmers and food entrepreneurs and enhances their opportunities to partner with community meal sites and institutions. Thanks to our funding partnerships, grants ranging from $40,000 to $80,000 are being awarded to these 15 deserving farmers and food organizations and will contribute to the development of a more resilient and vibrant local food ecosystem.
CFPAC envisions a food system where our community institutions support and contribute to building the collective power of those structurally excluded from control over food production and access to imagine, build, and tend to a liberatory foodshed. A core way that CFPAC accomplishes this is through the GFPI Team. The GFPI Team works to ensure that the places that feed our communities purchase and produce food that advances a “good” food system for all. A good food system is: accessible, equitable, racially just, healthy, fair, local, humane, and sustainable.
The Metro Chicago Good Food Purchasing Initiative (GFPI) Community Fund launched in the Fall of 2023 to increase access to Good Food Purchasing Program (GFPP)-aligned produce and food products in the Metro Chicago region through financially supporting local farms and food businesses striving to meet GFPP standards who have faced structural barriers to receiving funding. The GFPI Community Fund is oriented around the 5 core values of the Good Food Purchasing Program (GFPP):
- Nutrition: Connecting community members with nutritious foods and/or nutritioneducation
- Environmental Sustainability: Reduce the environmental impacts of food production and increase sustainable practices
- Valued Workforce: Promote safe and fair treatment and compensation for food system workers (eg: living wages, benefits, disability accommodations, vacation time and paid leave etc.)
- Local Economies: Strengthen regional food economies to create thriving good food businesses and living wage jobs
- Animal Welfare: Ensure the humane treatment of animals and reduce overall meat consumption.
The grants support a variety of projects that aim to increase the amount of locally sourced Good Food Purchasing Program (GFPP)-aligned produce and food products in public meal programs, Institutions, and community food access sites including schools, hospitals, food pantries, and elder care facilities. In addition to working towards institutional partnerships, the long-term goal is to move the fund to being less transactional and more focused on relationship and community building. In this vein, the awardees also have plans and aspirations for developing collaborative relationships with other mission-aligned farms/food businesses in the Metro Chicago food System.
GFPI Community Fund 2024 Awardees:
This year we had a very competitive application pool and received over 100 applications. A Review Committee, comprised of individuals with diverse backgrounds and expertise, came together narrowed down the selection to the 15 awardees based on the publically shared review criteria. The selected grantees are working on initiatives that range from expanding food hubs and establishing partnerships with local institutions to building out large infrastructure projects in order to increase their capacity to serve the Metro Chicago area. It is our pleasure to highlight the 15 well-deserved Awardees below:
● Adelante Center for Entrepreneurship - West Garfield Park, Chicago, IL
● ChiFresh Kitchen, LWCA - Greater Grand Crossing, Chicago, IL
● Brownstone Farms (St. Anne Woods Growers Collective) - Pembroke Township & St. Anne Woods, IL
● 6ix-cess Foods, LWCA - Greater Grand Crossing, Chicago, IL
● Citadelle Green Mountain - Auburn Gresham, Chicago, IL
● Evanston Grows - Evanston, IL
● Food Hero L3C - Little Village, Chicago, IL
● Southside Market and Cafe Cooperative- Chatham, Chicago, IL
● Chicago Urban Farm Solutions LLC - Lynwood, IL
● Just Roots Chicago at It Takes A Village Community Farm - Sauk Village, IL
● Real Foods Collective - Maywood, IL
● Hope Center - Blue Island, IL
● Mother Carr's Farm - Lynwood, IL
● Roots, Eggs, & Greens at CoGro Biodynamic Growers - Chicago Heights, IL
● Urban Growers Collective - Chicago Heights, IL
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Adelante Center is a nonprofit serving Lake County communities whose mission is to create wealth in distressed communities through entrepreneurship, living wage job creation, and community development. For their 2024 project, they plan to build out a food aggregation hub for local growers along with a processing center for the produce they pick up and prepare to distribute.xt goes here
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ChiFresh Kitchen is a cooperative catering business building up their medically tailored meals (MTM) program to serve local institutions such as schools, hospitals, and Senior Living Centers in underserved communities.
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Brownstone Farms project is a joint partnership between Brownstone Farms and St.Anne Woods Growers Collective, a collaborative network of Black-owned farms dedicated to enhancing food security, sustainability, and economic empowerment in marginalized communities. Brownstone Farms is focused on scaling year-round production through new infrastructure to supply fresh, nutritious produce to community meal sites, CSA members, and public institutions throughout Metro Chicago.
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6ix-cess Foods is a food manufacturing business structured as a worker cooperative in the process of launching its first product made from local ingredients, and they plan to sell to local institutions including schools and hospitals.
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Citadelle Green Mountain is a first-generation farm run by a group of farmers who are passionate about growing organic food. The farm is located in an economically disadvantaged community on the South side of the city of Chicago where they grow herbs, bell peppers, lettuce, zucchini, peas, beets, and radishes. They plan to use their funding for infrastructure projects that will enable them to address hunger and food security issues in their community which is experiencing food apartheid. They aim to increase their capacity to provide additional health food options in Auburn Gresham which do not currently exist.
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Evanston Grows is a collaborative nonprofit dedicated to increasing access to healthy food, promoting food literacy, and advancing health equity by building a more equitable, sustainable, and resilient local fresh food system. Their project is focused on piloting a Veggie Rx program in collaboration with a local healthcare provider.
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Food Hero is a social enterprise dedicated to empowering Chicago’s underserved communities through culinary training, food production, and health-focused meal services. Operating as a culinary school, catering service, grocery store, and food production business. Their project will go toward supporting their MTM and meal kits and will allow them to expand their MTM offerings to larger public and private institutions.
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Southside Market is a community-owned, micro grocery and cafe providing nutritious food access while prioritizing local sourcing, hiring, and collective ownership in the Chatham community. Their project is focused on launching and distributing a healthy and nutritious food box program for seniors and after-school programs, working with local partners to build on the existing programs in these communities and filling a crucial gap in their neighborhood that is experiencing food apartheid.
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Chicago Urban Farm Solutions is a small sustainable urban farm serving local, underserved communities by providing organically grown, sustainable produce to people who have little or no access to it. Their project is focused on building out a processing room to help them to expand their sales to their current markets and increase their capacity to serve institutional buyers.
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Just Roots is a farm located in Sauk Village (60411) with the mission to work in collaboration with communities to develop and expand access to local, sustainably grown food. Their project is focused on making a pilot program to establish a sustainable farm to school partnership with their local school district.
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Real Foods Collective (RFC) is a non-profit organization focused on investing in racial and economic justice and building a resilient local food system that supports low-income, Black, Latine, and female food entrepreneurs and growers while increasing food access and nutrition education. Their project will support the development of an urban farm located in Maywood to supply to local markets as well as their local school district in Maywood, Broadview, and Melrose Park along with supplying produce for a prescription prescription box program run by a partner organization.
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Hope Center a non-profit organization focused on community economic development with a vision to eliminate food insecurity in the City of Blue Island. Their project is focused on expanding their food production capacity and strengthening their community’s food security.
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Mother Carr’s Farm is a farm located in Lynwood with the mission is to maintain a sustainable, pesticide-free farm, which provides healthy food options, employment, and education for the benefit of their community of Lynwood. They will use this funding to support infrastructure projects aimed at increasing their production along with their ability to provide produce to community meal sites.
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CoGro Biodynamic Growers also known as Roots, Eggs, & Greens is a farm in Chicago Heights with the vision to provide organic, healthy, & sustainable food resources, nutritional education, and employment to people in the Ford Heights and Chicago Heights. They aim to help address the high rate of negative health outcomes in the area based, in part, on a lack of access to fresh healthy food with the nearest grocery store being more than 9 miles away by car. Their project is focused on helping support their operations so they are able to grow their Soul Food Farmers Market to provide much-needed fresh produce to the local community.
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Urban Growers Collective (UGC) is a nonprofit based in Chicago, IL that aims to address inequities and structural racism that exist within the food system and communities of color. The goal of their project is to support farm operations and farm business pro-forma development for UGC’s Z-Farm located in Chicago Heights. This will directly increase the amount of food available for the local area, while also strengthening urban-rural procurement relationships and developing a model for scaling other farms businesses.
Between the 2023 inaugural year, and the 2024 round of the GFPI Community Fund, we experienced a 74% increase in the number of applications. We have also facilitated an 87% increase in the number of organizations we are able to award. With over $660,000 requested in funds, CFPAC is working diligently to increase flexible funding to enable our local farm and food businesses to continue to overcome challenges and work towards their aspirations of serving the Metro Chicago region.
All 2024 Community Fund applicants opted in to connecting their organization to resources or collaboration opportunities within the Metro Chicago food system. If you are a Technical Assistance provider or Business Service Organization interested in supporting or collaborating with values-based farmers and food businesses, please email KP (Kaitlyn Poindexter), CFPAC Community Fund Program Manager (kaitlyn@chicagofoodpolicy.com) or British Griffis, Equitable Supply Chain Manager (british@chicagofoodpolicy.com).
*This project is being supported, in whole or in part, by federal award number ALN 21.027 awarded to Cook County by the U.S. Department of the Treasury.
To learn more about the Cook County Good Food Purchasing Program you can visit Cook
County Department of Public Health website and view the recently released 2024 Cook County
Good Food Purchasing Program Update. You can also learn more about the Metro Chicago