Giving Tuesday: Rooted Together, We Rise
Dear beloved community,
As we come to a close of another season, we reflect on the seeds we’ve planted, the soil we’ve tended, and the community that has held us through a year unlike any other.
While we have much to be grateful for, this year has also been one of the hardest we’ve faced as a small, cooperatively-led nonprofit working for food sovereignty, land justice, and farmer-to-farmer education. The current administration attempted to silence our work by canceling two of our federal grants — hard-won resources that support beginning farmers, community-scale food production, and BIPOC and Queer & Trans land stewardship.
They tried to uproot us. Instead, we dug in.
With the support of our community and legal allies, we fought back, and won back one of the grants, at least for now. Even in the face of political targeting, bureaucratic harm, and financial uncertainty, we kept showing up for farmers. We kept planning. We kept planting.
Today, on GivingTuesday, we’re asking you to help us not only help us survive this moment, but grow through it.
Why Your Support Matters
In 2026, Agroecology Commons will expand our work in three core areas:
1. The Cooperative Incubator Farm and Land Commons
A land-based classroom and community home for underserved beginning farmers who have been denied land access for generations. Your support strengthens:
Short- and long-term land tenure
Cooperative tools and infrastructure
Mentorship rooted in agroecology and food sovereignty
A community of peers who committed to tending land as a commons
This farm is where emerging farmers build skills and solidarity, and where they reclaim their right to steward land with dignity.
2. Collective Wellness & Strategic Evolution
After a year marked by political targeting, grant cancellations, and ongoing uncertainty, our organization — and the farmers in our network — need spaciousness to heal, reflect, and rebuild. Wellness isn’t just individual self-care; it is a collective practice that strengthens our shared capacity to continue this work with integrity and clarity. Rest can be revolutionary. Your gift helps us:
Carve out organizational space to pause, refine, and redesign our program offerings to ensure that the programs we relaunch in 2026 and beyond are grounded, strategic, and fully resourced.
Offer restorative wellness gatherings and resources to land stewards who navigate heavy emotional, physical, and financial strain, and to support farmers who are systemically targeted by ICE. For so many of these farmers, wellness isn’t a luxury– it’s survival.
Create intentional space for land-based healing, embodiment practices, nourishment, and reconnection with land and community.
3. Participatory Seed Grants for Farmers
This year, we launched a participatory seed grant program to redistribute $425,000 directly to Bay Area farmers rooted in mutuality, trust, and collective decision-making. With your help, we will:
Strengthen bio-regional food sovereignty by resourcing farmers who face systemic barriers to capital
Deepen farmer-led decision-making through an advisory circle of farmers and community stakeholders
Fund on-farm projects that deepen agroecology, food sovereignty, and community resilience
The legal battle and grant cancellations cost us time, resources, and stability. But they did not cost us our spirit. We are still here — land-tending, relationship-building, and creating the cooperative future our communities deserve. And we’re committed to protecting this work from political retaliation by strengthening our base of grassroots supporters.
If this year has taught us anything, it’s that we cannot rely on systems shaped by extraction and oppression. We rely on you — our community, our collaborators, our kin.
Launching today on Giving Tuesday, our goal is to raise $50,000 by the end of the year. Whether you’re offering $25, $100, $1000, or more, your gift nourishes this work.
Your contribution, in any amount, is a seed. It grows safety. It grows sovereignty. It grows the world we’re trying to build.
Donate today and help Agroecology Commons keep resisting and root a future where every farmer can thrive.
With gratitude and devotion,
Agroecology Commons Collective
