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About
Our Purpose
Advocates for Urban Agriculture provides support resources and education centering growers, farmers, earth stewards, land and water. We reimagine our relationships to land, labor, and our food system while honoring Indigenous Sovereignty, Black liberation, LGBTQIA+ freedom, Disability Justice, and Immigrants’ rights.
We’re dedicated to fostering a sustainable and thriving agricultural community.
Our initiatives support growers through comprehensive programs that enhance soil health, provide essential water access, and offer invaluable mentorship. By resourcing farmers with capacity building grants and technical assistance, we aim to create a resilient, productive, and environmentally-friendly urban farming ecosystem.
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What drives us
Our Values
We acknowledge that the food system is built on a legacy of white supremacy, colonization, exploitation, genocide and violence. It is a system that legitimized the enslavement of African descendants, the genocide of first nations and indigenous people, and continues to discriminate and exploit against people of color that are farmworkers, many of whom are immigrant workers and incarcerated folks. With this as the background to our work, we are committed to dismantling these unreckoned legacies and putting into practice the following values to create a more just and equitable food system.
[Image: Valentine Espinoza, soil sample collection]
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We believe that justice is necessary to reimagine our current food system. Justice means that all people are given equitable access to resources, wealth, well-being, and opportunities while simultaneously repairing the harm done upon communities historically disenfranchised by a legacy of white supremacy and violence. We strive for justice by creating and advocating for the redistribution of access, wealth, income, and economic opportunities to historically disenfranchised communities and creating accountability processes with directly affected people to repair harm.
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We believe that those directly affected by issues should be at the forefront of creating and leading solutions. We work to make space and focus on BIPOC leadership to shift power towards those directly impacted. We do so by creating accountability processes to center BIPOC leadership and make our work more accessible.
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The process by which an individual, community, or other entity controls their own life or lives. The right to make your own decisions without interference from others. Particularly around issues directly affecting your life; Sovereignty- the full right and power of a governing body over itself, without any interference from outside sources or bodies.
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Chicago is part of the traditional homelands of the Council of the Three Fires: the Odawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi nations. Many other tribes—such as the Miami, Ho-Chunk, Sac, Fox and Menominee—also called this area home. The land is also a site of trade, gathering and healing for countless other Native nations throughout time immemorial. By making a land acknowledgment, we recognize that Indigenous peoples are the traditional stewards of the land we now occupy. In all that we do, we honor the history of this region, the traditional stewards of the land, and demonstrate a profound care for Earth. For our communities to truly thrive, the health of our Earth must be prioritized and upheld. Our care for Earth motivates our desire to honor and reflect the cycles of nature in our programming and policy efforts (biomimicry).
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We work to advance policies, facilitate programs and funding opportunities, and foster collaborations that support sustainable economic development for Chicagoland farm businesses and the regional food system as a whole. We primarily work to support small, independent food producers whose growth will contribute to the advancement of food sovereignty and the sustainable economic development of local communities.
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We take action to reinforce our individual values of trust, respect, and responsibility by advocating for community development and awareness. We believe that all people should have access to health, wellbeing, wealth, justice and opportunity. We demonstrate the interconnectedness of urban agriculture to encourage participation and understanding of others.
our staff + Board
Meet the Team
Meet the AUA team, a group of passionate and talented individuals dedicated to revolutionizing agriculture through engaging programs and thoughtful advocacy.
Bea Fry
Program Steward
Bea hails from St. Paul, Minnesota and is a recent transplant to Chicago. They hold a B.A. in International Relations and a B.S. in Food Studies from Syracuse University. Their background includes research on violations of the Human Right to Adequate Food and Nutrition for transgender people of color. Bea is passionate about creating and maintaining a food system which is equitable for the LGBTQIA+ community and racial minorities, promoting the integration of international human rights rhetoric into the foundation of local food systems.
Email: Bea@auachicago.org
Viviana Okakpu
Co-Operations Steward
Viviana is a farmer rooted in Chicago’s south side. They are passionate about food and medicine sovereignty, reduction of soil and water toxicity, and generative economics. They hold a B.A. in Environmental Studies and History from Oberlin College and has furthered her agricultural education by farming throughout North and Central America. They co-founded the community garden and 501(c)3 Cooperation Operation and The Chicago Mushroom Company, LLC. They ground their work in a deep love for Chicagos land, water, and people.
Email: viviana@auachicago.org
Jazmin Martinez
Co-Operations Steward
Jazmin is a farmer from La Villita/Little Village neighborhood in Chicago and uses They/them pronouns. They are an owner-worker of Catatumbo Cooperative Farm currently located in South Chicago. They have previous experience working in social services providing crisis and trauma-informed support and connecting individuals and families to resources. Additionally, their background involves organizing within the immigrant rights movement. Through their work, they saw a need to create economic opportunities for historically excluded communities and was drawn to urban farming, particularly within a worker-cooperative model. Their work is grounded in reverence for the land and hands that feed and nourish us. They are committed to connecting urban agriculture with broader social justice movements to envision and create other possible worlds.
Email: Jazmin@auachicago.org
Tucker Kelly
Water Access Steward
Tucker (they/them) began farming in 2010 on an organic farm in Ohio. Their area of focus for the last six years has been providing vocational training for ex-offenders and young adults with disabilities in an urban agriculture setting. Their joys: cycling, high summer, and chocolate.
Email: water@auachicago.org
Valentine Espinoza
Soil Health Organizer
Valentine Espinoza is a Humboldt Park community farmer who devotes their time, ancestral knowledge, and care towards building more sustainable practices for growing food and herbal medicines. Val is a self-taught farmer focusing on soil ecologies and collaborating with other growers across Chicago.
Email: valentine@auachicago.org
Board of Directors
Dakarai Howard
Director
Senior Policy Advisor, Illinois Department of Agriculture
Elena Terry
Treasurer
Founder, Wild Bearies
Alex Frantz
Director
Director of Local & Sustainability, Midwest Foods
Megan Wells
Director
Adult Education and Workforce Consultant
Dr. Akilah Martin, PhD
Director
Interdisciplinary Planner, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
Selma Sims
President
CEO, Gardeneers
Fawn Pochel
Director
Co-Founder, First Nations Garden
Rosie Fitz
Secretary
Director of Operations & Culture, HEAL Food Alliance
What guides us
Accountability
We strive to take ownership of how our collective and individual actions permeate into our relationships with the community we serve. We hold not only one another, but ourselves responsible for acting in such a way which fosters a Chicago food system prioritizing honesty and integrity. We initiate honest conversations about violations of rights, responsibilities, and dignities throughout Chicagoland with the explicit purpose of creating space for growth and eventual remedy.
[Image: A&P Paradise Garden, a farming retreat in Pembroke Township, IL]
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Grower Programs
Learn about our programs.
At our core, we are dedicated to fostering a sustainable and thriving agricultural community in Chicago. Our initiatives support growers through comprehensive programs that enhance soil health, provide essential water access, and offer invaluable mentorship. By empowering farmers with capacity building grants and resources, we aim to create a resilient, productive, and environmentally-friendly urban farming ecosystem.
[Image: Dr. Israel and Dr. Martin with AUA at the African Heritage Garden]