King County Farmers Collectives Grow Community and Food Sovereignty

When David Bulindah migrated from Kenya to the United States in 2000, he struggled to find the foods he'd eaten for most of his life — amaranth, kunde, jute leaves, goat meat, cornmeal for ugali — foods he felt nourished his body better than what he found in American supermarkets. For over a decade and a half, he made do as best he could. Then he moved to Washington in 2016 and met Dickson Njeri, another Kenyan immigrant, at a dinner party, where they talked about the difficulties of getting certain foods that so many of their community members had traditionally shared. They wondered, Bulindah said, "How do we get opportunities to grow that?" Later that year, they founded Wakulima USA.

At first, the organization was composed of Bulindah, Njeri, and four other farmers, mostly other East Africans, tending crops in a greenhouse that the nonprofit Living Well Kent let them use. As word spread, their project became popular. "When people found out that people were growing food within our community," said Bulindah, "they were very interested in getting to find those foods, or getting opportunities to grow them." And just like the plants it tends, Wakulima itself began to organically grow.

Partnerships with Highline College and the City of Des Moines, Washington, helped the organization get small plots at Sonju Community Garden and Mary Gay Park. As Wakulima matured, King County launched an initiative to convert the 30-acre Horseneck Farm near Kent into a shared tract of land that could incubate farming organizations and businesses focused on supporting immigrants and refugees. Wakulima was one of the lessees, now tending 4 acres at Horseneck under a five-year term that runs through 2026. Each of these opportunities was a welcome advance that helped Wakulima better serve its community, but Bulindah always had one objective in mind: "To have our own land."

"My vision board had said at least 20 acres of land," he said. At the end of last October, thanks to a grant from the King County Conservation Futures program, he and his team closed a deal that made this vision a reality.

"Whatever you put on your vision board and believe," said Bulindah, "it will happen."

Acquiring farmland is no simple feat, especially for BIPOC farmers. "The cost of farmland is skyrocketing," said Nayla Jiménez Cabezas, who directs the Farm to Farmer program at the Washington Farmland Trust. Her program aims to help farmers access resources, acquire land, and build their businesses and organizations. Her team currently assists 16 different farmers collectives that aim to not only grow food and build businesses but support and uplift the communities they come from. "It is people creating connection, creating habits and opportunity, learning together, repairing the soil, growing food for their communities," Jiménez Cabezas said.

Many of these collectives, including Wakulima USA, are based in the Seattle area and serve Black, Indigenous, Asian, and Pacific Islander communities in King County. But they often can't do this on their own, especially for immigrant-run organizations that aren't familiar with certain bureaucratic systems or may need help understanding the technical language of a grant application or wording their responses correctly. "Sometimes," Bulindah said, "when I'm trying to say something, somebody might not get it because I'm thinking in like two or three languages before my mind can get that into English."

The support Bulindah and his team have received from Washington Farmland Trust and others — like the King Conservation District, the King County Department of Natural Resources and Parks, and Highline College — helped Wakulima succeed in its application for the Conservation Futures program and ultimately purchase Canter-Berry Farms, a 23-acre U-pick blueberry farm outside of Auburn whose owners wanted to retire. As the organization takes control of the farm, it plans to keep tending most of the berries and keep the farm running as it has been, and Wakulima has established an advisory board that will help shape and inform what it'll do with the remaining acreage.

But sometimes, even with the right support, fairy tale endings like that don't always happen for organizations seeking to bring food sovereignty to their communities. The Common Acre, an Indigenous-led nonprofit focused on land restoration, cultural programming, and Native food access, had a different experience when it started to apply for the same grant opportunity, with Washington Farmland Trust helping them navigate the application. Ultimately, though, it wasn't that its application was rejected, but that the program would have restricted its vision for the project.

"In your application, you have to say who you will give your land to if you sunset as an organization," said Talia London, The Common Acre's executive director. As an Unangan Alaska Native who grew up on the Lummi Reservation, London holds tribal sovereignty as a core value that guides and informs her work. "I asked, can we give it to a tribe?" she said. "And they told us, no, they're not eligible." No one she contacted could tell London why tribes weren't eligible beyond simply pointing her to what the Washington State law says. In the end, the nonprofit decided not to apply.

London and The Common Acre haven't given up on one day acquiring land, though, so long as they can raise funding that would allow them to steward the land as they see fit. Once the organization purchases its own plot, it hopes to build a cultural center with a commercial kitchen and an open space where it can host events indoors and out to gather community. Having land would also allow it to expand its efforts to restore native plants and host more cooking workshops focused on local edible plants, like chocolate lily and camas.

That vision and those pursued by other land-based organizations and farmers collectives ultimately merge the essential work of food justice with that of climate resilience and environmental justice by using farming practices that restore the land while expanding the local food system. Perhaps more importantly, these organizations help ensure their communities have access to healthy foods at a time when grocery prices are relentlessly rising and the presidential administration is threatening funding for federal food assistance.

But, as Jiménez Cabezas pointed out, these organizations create impacts that are even more expansive: "These groups are so enriching of community, and create space for things that aren't happening anywhere else."