NORTH MEMPHIS FOOD PLAN
Reclaiming Power from the Ground Up
WHY NORTH MEMPHIS NEEDS FOOD POWER NOW
From food apartheid to food power.
Long before the current crisis of food access, North Memphis had a rich history of food sovereignty and stability. Today, residents face a landscape shaped by redlining, discriminatory lending, and planning decisions that favored corporate control over community control.
The term “food desert” hides the truth — there is nothing natural about this crisis. North Memphis faces food apartheid: a human-made system that segregates food access along lines of race and class. Fast food chains and dollar stores far outnumber full-service groceries, and many residents must rely on unreliable transit just to buy basic groceries.
“I was born and raised in Douglass. We created the garden so the elders wouldn’t have to hitch multiple buses just to buy groceries.” – Chasidy Harris, Founder, Five Senses Farming & Youth Garden Program
The Stakes
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Higher rates of diet-related illnesses like diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease
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Lost opportunities for local jobs and community-owned businesses
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Threats to cultural foodways and everyday dignity
The Goal
This plan imagines a North Memphis where food systems are no longer imposed from the outside but grown from within:
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Neighborhoods grow, distribute, and govern their own food
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Land, jobs, and profit stay in the community
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Food becomes a site of dignity, health, and self-determination
Food apartheid is the result of policy decisions and economic disinvestment. Food power is the community’s response — rooted in organizing, imagination, and refusal. Reclaiming control over food is a step toward racial justice, economic equity, and community healing.
This plan grounds itself in power with creating space for community to share the ability to act.
Laying the Groundwork For Food Power
The North Memphis Food Power Plan documents how disinvestment and policy have shaped food access — and how residents are reclaiming control. The goal is a self-sustaining food system that is governed by, accountable to, and economically beneficial for the people of North Memphis.
This homegrown roadmap combines research, mapping, and oral histories with the lived experience of residents who know the land best. Community priorities include:
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Securing long-term use of vacant land for growing food
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Expanding neighborhood markets and mobile produce routes
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Supporting youth training and food entrepreneurship
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Creating local food hubs for storage and distribution
Winning long-term policy and land control to keep food power in community's hands
64% of North Memphis households live more than one mile from a grocery store.
200+ vacant lots could support food production — but only twelve active gardens currently serve the area.
Food power is the ability to act.
The North Memphis Food Power Plan seeks to build a self-sustaining food system governed by and accountable to North Memphis residents. This plan is not about temporary fixes or corporate charity. It is about reclaiming the food power that existed before it was consolidated into a few corporate hands.
Food is political, economic, and cultural power. Reclaiming control over food production and distribution is essential to restoring community autonomy, wealth, and health.
Key concepts
To build food power, we focus on two pillars of the local food system
Food production
This includes the growing, processing, packaging, and preparation of food—whether through backyard gardens, church-based plots, urban farms, or community kitchens. It also includes the labor, knowledge, and care required to keep those systems running.
Food Distribution
This refers to the channels through which food reaches people. It may include bartering, exchange, farmers markets, farm stands, produce trucks, food pantries, mobile groceries, but ultimately, this refers to a neighborhood-owned cooperative store. Distribution is where food becomes economically and socially meaningful. Distribution is how food gets from the soil to the table.
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