In the face of mass food insecurity and racialized state abandonment, where the Trump regime’s so-called Big Beautiful Bill will gut SNAP and WIC for millions, plunging already precarious Black families even deeper into extreme hunger—KC Black Urban Growers, the Ivanhoe Neighborhood Association, The Kansas City Defender, and 5 Black farms are launching a first-of-its-kind Black Free CSA Box: The Hamer Free Food Program. This radical pilot connects Black-owned farms with 50 local Black families, delivering fresh, nutrient-dense produce completely free.
It recirculates direct cash to Black growers, embeds political education into every box, and plants the seeds for a citywide, worker-owned Black Food Co-op. Rooted in land, dignity, and liberation, it is an urgent step towards food sovereignty at a time it is needed most.
The Hamer Free Food Program honors Black food justice, polymathic, civil rights pioneer, Fannie Lou Hamer by deploying catalytic funding to launch Kansas City’s first ever Black CSA Box program: a city-wide food-sovereignty model that:
By weaving production, distribution, education, and media together, this project energizes Black economies from farm rows to front porches, an unprecedented synergy in Kansas City history.