Increase Healthy Food Access

Reduce your community's dependence on an unreliable imports of food, fertilizer, and fuel. Build food independence to increase food security, improve community nutrition, and grow culturally significant foods that nourish people physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

Create Vocational Opportunities

Provide hands-on vocational training to help people build the skills needed for careers in agriculture and technology. Support educational opportunities such as garden-based STEAM programming and cooking lessons.

Reconnect With Your Food

Every person deserves access to fresh, healthy produce, but food production is about more than just growing crops—it provides a way to honor and nurture emotional and cultural connections to food and the land.

New Roots Farm

West Sacramento, CA, USA

A project of the International Rescue Committee, New Roots is a production and education-oriented farm that helps resettled refugees reconnect with the land, grow food for themselves and their families, and learn agricultural business skills.

New Roots produces over 50 different crops, much of which is produce from the refugee farmers' home countries. Culturally-affirming food is often difficult to find at stores or markets but is incredibly important to help refugees build community, nurture their connections to their homeland, and celebrate their culture. Local restaurants also welcome the new flavor profiles.

Growing an average of 120,000 pounds of produce over seven acres, and 28,600 pounds on their ½ acre intensive farm, New Roots' harvests are distributed to the farmers and their families, sold at a reduced rate to a nearby food bank, and sold for profit at weekly farm stands and nearby grocery stores.

Through hands-on lessons, New Roots' job training program empowers trainees to start their own farms. Learning to farm in a new climate has innumerable challenges. The weather, soil, pests, and diseases are often very different from the refugees' homelands. Cross-cultural knowledge sharing between farmers who have different agricultural backgrounds is common - and is the secret to New Roots' success.

"Culturally-significant food is hard to find at local stores in our neighborhood. We're growing a diversity of crops that people like and want to eat and we're helping our community access seasonal and organic food."