Food Solidarity Economy

We often talk about the economy as if it were a neutral system governed by objective laws. In reality, every economy reflects a worldview about what matters, how value is created, and what kinds of relationships are prioritized. For the past century, the dominant economic story has framed humans as autonomous individuals competing for scarce resources, defined progress through perpetual growth, and treated ecosystems and the people most affected by their degradation, as peripheral to economic life. This story of separation has shaped how we organize food, labor, care, and governance.

Today, that worldview is increasingly difficult to sustain. Climate destabilization, ecological breakdown, rising inequality, and widespread social exhaustion point to limits that can no longer be ignored. These are not simply implementation failures or policy gaps. They reflect deeper misalignments between our economic systems and the living systems they depend on. In Feeding the Future: Restoring the Planet and Healing Ourselves, I argue that we are living through a civilizational transition that requires moving beyond extractive logics toward more ecological understandings of value, interdependence, and responsibility.

Food sits at the center of this transition. It makes visible the extent of our separation from land, labor, and one another, and it remains one of the most immediate and practical places to begin repairing those relationships. When we examine how food is grown, processed, distributed, and shared, we see both the structural harms of the current system and the early contours of alternatives already taking shape.

The excerpt that follows traces how this shift is unfolding through regenerative food systems and the solidarity economy. These efforts do not assume easy solutions or guaranteed outcomes. They reflect what scholar and activist Joanna Macy described as Active Hope: the practice of seeing conditions clearly, acting with integrity, and engaging in the emergence of new possibilities amid uncertainty. Across communities and bioregions, people are experimenting with new ways of organizing economic life that honor limits, rebuild relationships, and expand the conditions for collective flourishing, even in times of profound transition.—Nicole Negowetti

* * *

Just as ecosystems hold wisdom for regenerating land and reweaving our relationship with food, they also offer guidance for transforming our economic systems. One of nature’s most poetic teachings comes from the metamorphosis of the caterpillar.¹ In preparation for its radical transformation, the caterpillar encases itself in a chrysalis, dissolving into a nutrient-rich soup. Within this dissolution lie imaginal cells—dormant during the caterpillar’s earlier life, yet always present—holding the blueprint for a radically different being. At first, the caterpillar’s fading immune system treats these imaginal cells as threats. But eventually, these cells find each other, cluster together, and begin to cooperate. They differentiate, specialize, and cohere into wings, legs, eyes, and other parts of a new body. From this integration emerges a creature that is not a modified caterpillar but something entirely new: a butterfly.²

This metaphor mirrors what is stirring in the realm of economic transformation. The solidarity economy—an expansive movement of democratic, post-capitalist initiatives—acts like imaginal cells, already embedded in the body of capitalism but often dismissed or suppressed by dominant logics. As Emily Kawano of the U.S. Solidarity Economy Network observes, we do not have to wait for a future revolution—these regenerative practices are already here, taking root across communities and bioregions.³ They include worker and producer cooperatives, community land trusts, public banking, credit unions, time banks, participatory budgeting, mutual aid networks, collective childcare, and food justice initiatives like community gardens and community supported agriculture (CSAs).⁴ Making these initiatives visible interrupts the presumption that capitalist systems are the only viable economic option. These diverse experiments offer tangible proof that another economy is not only possible—it’s already unfolding.⁵

The solidarity economy, first named in Latin America and Europe in the 1990s, rests on principles of pluralism, solidarity, equity (across race, class, gender, and species), ecological stewardship, and participatory democracy. It resists universalist blueprints and instead supports a patchwork of localized solutions rooted in relationship and reciprocity.⁶ In this framework, economic activity is not driven by competition and growth but by the shared responsibility to meet collective needs without causing harm. It reorients the purpose of infrastructure—housing, education, food, transportation, healthcare, governance—away from profit and toward community wellbeing and ecological regeneration.⁷ This is not a utopian fantasy but an emergent reality. These projects exist not just in theory but in neighborhoods, villages, and urban enclaves across the globe.⁸

Food, in particular, has become a catalytic site for this transformation. Regenerative food movements are experimenting with how food is grown, gathered, prepared, and shared—not as a commodity but as a commons. These efforts are unsettling the dominance of industrial food systems and cultivating alternatives that nourish bodies, lands, and relationships. Food becomes a lever for social, ecological, and economic justice.⁹ The pressures of converging crises—climate collapse, global pandemics, inflation, food insecurity, ecological destruction, and widening inequality—have destabilized the illusion of capitalism’s inevitability.¹⁰ What once seemed permanent now feels precarious. In this space of rupture, imaginal initiatives are stirring. The dormant is awakening. But what emerges from the chrysalis is not a reformed caterpillar. As author and educator Carol Sanford reminds us, regeneration is not about incremental improvement—it is about transformation.¹¹ A regenerative economy will not arise from regulating capitalism or softening its edges. It will emerge from composting its failures and seeding new paradigms of ownership, value, and exchange—ones that redistribute power and wealth and are accountable to the flourishing of all life.¹²

Across the world—and likely close to home—communities are already enacting these futures. They are engaging regenerative finance, rethinking ownership, revitalizing local governance, and reclaiming food sovereignty. These are not merely alternatives—they are seeds of resilience, glimpses of a future economy grounded not in extraction but in care, reciprocity, and interdependence.

Revival of Regional Grain Economies

While the Midwest is now often referred to as the “breadbasket” of the United States, this designation obscures a deeper and more decentralized history. Before industrial agriculture centralized grain production and commodified it—particularly following the mid-twentieth-century shift westward—grain was a local affair. Most communities had their own grain supply chains, intimately tied to local ecologies, knowledge systems, and food cultures. The industrialization of staple grains like wheat came with a heavy toll: diminished flavor, loss of seed and varietal diversity, environmental degradation, and the erosion of human and animal health. It also dismantled regional economies and relational food infrastructure, as local mills shut down and farmers ceased growing grains for direct human nourishment.

In Maine, this trajectory began to shift in the 1990s. Jim Amaral, baker and founder of Borealis Bread in Wells, noticed the absence of Maine-grown wheat and began asking why. His inquiry led him to Matt Williams, then a small grains specialist with the Aroostook County Extension Service. At Amaral’s urging, Williams planted a crop of hard red winter wheat, harvested in 1998. At the time, Maine had no milling infrastructure, so the grain had to be trucked to New Brunswick, Canada. After 9/11 made border crossings more difficult, Williams decided to mill the grain onsite.¹³ With his daughter Sara and son-in-law Marcus, Williams transformed Aurora Mills & Farm into a model of mid-scale, regenerative organic grain production¹⁴—now growing wheat, oats, rye, spelt, legumes, and buckwheat on 420 acres.¹⁵ Aurora Mills is part of a revitalized “grainshed” in the US Northeast—an emerging regional ecosystem of grain cultivation, processing, and distribution. This local grain economy now extends across New England, supporting a web of seed growers, food businesses, farmers, bakers, maltsters, and eaters, while restoring value to rural communities and ecological systems alike.¹⁶

Yet the revival of regional grain economies doesn’t depend on farmer enthusiasm alone. Rebuilding requires relational infrastructure—physical and social—that was dismantled during decades of industrial consolidation. As a founder of the Sustainable Sourcing Initiative, which connects plant-based food companies to regenerative farmers, I’ve encountered these obstacles firsthand. Early in the project, I believed that increasing demand for regeneratively grown crops could redirect farmland away from extractive corn and soy monocultures. But the barriers turned out to be far more structural. Midwestern farmers often want to diversify—to grow oats, lentils, millet, and other nutrient-rich crops—but they are blocked by a lack of accessible processing infrastructure. There are few facilities to clean, sort, dry, or package these crops. Transportation is a major bottleneck, with shortages of trucks and drivers. Without reliable local markets or post-harvest handling systems, even the most willing farmers cannot transition. This gap is what food systems advocates refer to as “the missing middle.” It is the infrastructural void between small-scale direct-to-consumer models and large-scale industrial supply chains. Filling this gap is essential for scaling regional, regenerative food systems and creating viable markets for mid-sized farms.¹⁷

Today’s systems of storage, transport, and processing were built for the industrial model—optimized for efficiency, volume, and uniformity. These systems are now deeply consolidated, as detailed in earlier chapters. When it comes to building resilient grainsheds, the Artisan Grain Collaborative has identified a key constraint: the lack of accessible infrastructure for diverse, small-batch, organic, or regionally adapted grains. Essential needs include certified processing facilities willing to work with small quantities; temperature-controlled drying and storage; market development for products made with local grains; and support with packaging, food safety, and labeling. Beyond the physical infrastructure, farmers also need access to arable land, appropriate equipment, skilled labor, and—perhaps most critically—capital in the form of grants, loans, and cooperative investment.¹⁸ Rebuilding this infrastructure is not merely about logistics—it’s about reweaving economic life around place-based resilience, ecological care, and community nourishment.

Building on the early efforts of Amaral and Williams, the revitalization of Maine’s local grain economy was further catalyzed by the vision and tenacity of Amber Lambke and baker Michael Scholz. Recognizing the need to restore regional processing capacity, they co-founded Maine Grains, a gristmill housed in a repurposed county jail in downtown Skowhegan. This project wasn’t just about flour; it was about rebuilding an entire ecosystem of relationships: between farmers and bakers, soil and seed, economy and place. Maine Grains collaborates with organic growers to expand markets for grains and rotation crops, supplying stone-milled flours and oats to bakeries, breweries, food cooperatives, and restaurants across the Northeast corridor—from Maine to New York City. Farmers who supply Maine Grains pledge not to use chemical fertilizers or pesticides on their grain crops, and the mill itself is certified organic.¹⁹ But its significance is not merely technical—it serves as a community anchor, hosting a farmers’ market, local café, radio station, and other place-based enterprises that reflect a shared ethic of regeneration.²⁰

Lambke, who also founded the Maine Grain Alliance in 2007, envisioned this work as both economic and cultural repair. Through efforts like the Kneading Conference, an annual gathering of grain farmers, millers, bakers, researchers, and oven builders, she helped reweave the social fabric that makes a grain economy not just functional but alive. After five years of careful planning, research, and business development, Maine Grains began milling Maine-grown grain in 2012.²¹ Yet transforming a jail into a mill—like many regenerative infrastructure projects—did not attract conventional investors. Most traditional lenders remain tethered to industrial metrics of risk and return, unable or unwilling to recognize the broader social, ecological, and relational value such projects generate.²²

The Covid pandemic starkly revealed the fragility of centralized food systems and the urgent need for diversified, place-based infrastructure. In response, the USDA launched programs like the Resilient Food Systems Infrastructure Program (RFSI), distributing up to $420 million in American Rescue Plan funds to bolster regional processing and distribution.²³ While public investment is essential, the scale of transformation needed far exceeds current commitments. Estimates suggest that transitioning to agroecological and regenerative models globally would require between $250–430 billion annually—yet only $44 billion is currently invested across philanthropic, public, and private sectors. This funding gap signals the need for a tenfold increase in regenerative investment—and an equally significant shift in how value is defined and capital is deployed.²⁴

Regenerative food enterprises often require a different kind of capital—patient, relational, and rooted in place. While conventional financing is structured around quick returns and high margins, regenerative systems generate slow, layered returns over time.²⁵ A study of Kansas wheat farmers transitioning to regenerative practices found that while profits dropped 30 percent to 60 percent during a three to five year transition period, returns rebounded to 15–25 percent over a decade.²⁶ These timelines and trade-offs are ill-suited to extractive capital models focused on quarterly profits or venture-scale exits.²⁷ To finance Maine Grains, Lembke assembled what she calls “a smorgasbord” of funding, blending philanthropic support, individual investments, and bank loans.²⁸ Among the early contributors was the Maine chapter of Slow Money, a grassroots movement that mobilizes local capital for local food systems. Rather than chasing profit, Slow Money’s approach foregrounds community resilience, ecological health, and food sovereignty. Since 2010, more than $100 million has flowed to over 1,000 local food enterprises²⁹ through decentralized networks.³⁰

One innovative offshoot,³¹ Beetcoin, provides 0 percent loans to small organic farms and local food businesses through donor-funded, democratically governed lending circles.³² Groups like the one in Boulder, Colorado, operate on a “one member, one vote” basis, regardless of donation size.³³ When loans are repaid, funds are recycled into new loans—creating a regenerative loop that mirrors the cycles of the ecosystems these farms depend on.³⁴ These funding ecosystems don’t fit the mold of philanthropy or finance; they blend elements of crowdfunding, micro-lending, mutual aid, and cooperative governance to reimagine capital as a relational force rather than an extractive one.