Black Food Hub & Producer Network · In development

A building is not a food system.

A cooler is not a market, and a Black neighborhood address is not community ownership. What Root Life, Liberated Land Cooperative, and the New Haven Black Farmers Collective are building is infrastructure in the right order: buyers first, producers paid, workers owning equity.

From the published Food Hub & Producer Network codices — evidence-ranked, sequence-disciplined.

The sobering math: hubs below ~$800K–$1.75M annual throughput rarely break even; only 73% of U.S. hubs broke even in 2025. Our answer: a right-sized Cooperative Marketing Hub, built demand-first.

The Sequence Is the Strategy

Twelve steps, in order, each earned before the next.

Owned in layers, governed by many

Producers, workers, consumers, and community members each hold real board seats. Land follows the anti-displacement path: lease first, then a community land trust or cooperative purchase.

Founder safeguards, written down: firewall pricing, independent board seats, metered space, disclosed conflicts, anti-capture succession rules.

The Producer Network

Grow with us. Sell through us. Own it with us.

For Black and Afro-Indigenous growers across Greater New Haven: aggregation, buyers you can’t reach alone — Yale dining (12–24-month reality, stated), CT farm-to-school ($800K+/yr) — free MBE/SBE certification help, and rules that keep the hub from becoming your middleman.