Hunger is a Question of
Power
“The global food system was built to extract from Black, Indigenous, and People of Color communities here in the U.S. and across the Global South. But frontline communities are building an alternative. Food First’s job is to support them.”
The world grows more than enough food for everyone. People go hungry anyway — and not at random. Hunger follows the same lines as everything else: who was allowed to own land and who was pushed off it, who gets a loan and who gets refused, who sets the price of a crop and who has to accept it, who sits at the table when policy is written and who hears about it afterward.
Change that, and you change who eats. But power isn’t handed over. It gets built — by farmers forming cooperatives, by communities organizing, by movements that make demands too large to ignore.That’s where Food First works. Not around hunger, but at its root.
We’re a catalyst, not a middleman.
Food First is a small research, storytelling, and partnership organization. We work alongside people already building power in their own food systems — farmers, cooperatives, organizers, and communities across the United States and the Global South — and we help make sure their work is understood, resourced, and connected to others doing the same thing elsewhere.
What We Don't Do
We aren’t a large grantmaker, and we don’t run food distribution or direct services. Those are essential roles, and other organizations do them well. We’re most useful in a different spot: making the case, telling the story, and doing the unglamorous coordination work that lets small organizations get funded and stay funded.
Support Our Work by Donating
Food First’s research, advocacy, and direct partnerships with farmer movements are funded by people who believe communities deserve control over their food systems.