Cofa House, seed starting, and the politics of growing food

Photo taken during the workshop by Sal Miller 3/2025

This Cofa House phenomenon has been on my radar for a few years now (under different names). It’s always been a space I’ve promoted to folks who are looking for a space for community and new friends even when I’ve really only attended one other time for only a few minutes. Finally, I was not only able to attend, I was excited to lead a conversation and workshop about starting seeds. From a mostly outsider’s perspective, Cofa House is not quite a skill share, not quite open community dinners, not quite a hippy kumbaya space. A little bit of each of these, but a lot more too. It’s been a huge draw for creatives, political conversations, and a ton of music. When I heard there were folks interested in growing their own food, I wanted to jump in.

In our current society, the ability to grow our own food is a privilege and a political act. There are so many layers to these politics, including having the knowledge, space, time, purchasing power, and food preparation experience. I’m going to share a little about each of these things so that we can have a common understanding of at least some of the aspects of food politics.

Knowledge

For so many modern humans in the US, it is perfectly normal to grow up without any understanding of food systems including where our food comes from. It’s normal to find out that very few people know that carrots grow in the ground, tomatoes come in SO MANY COLORS other than red, and the disgusting/terrible ways that livestock is raised and prepared for us to eat. A lot of the discrepancy of knowledge started with the Industrial Revolution, people moved off farms and into cities, leaving other people to produce larger and larger amounts of food on the recently vacated land. Living in an urban environment (under ideal conditions) is actually the best for slowing and preventing the climate crisis - as long as we’re walking, riding bikes, and/or using public transit. As long as all areas of cities are given political and financial support and there’s equitable access to education, jobs, and a social safety net. I was lucky to grow up in an urban space (Toledo) with parents who liked gardening (mom did the veggies, dad did the landscaping, I did both). I saw where my food was being grown, my parents talked to me about how fruit and veggies grew and basically forced me to try new things. My second job was in a locally owned grocery store that focused on locally produced food. I learned a lot there, we were expected to know how everything tasted and to be able to share our produce knowledge with our customers. 

Space

Who has access to the most available growing space in your community? Although it’s not always used for gardens, it’s almost always the wealthy. Folks who rent are rarely able to have their own gardens. If a person is renting a house, they may not know how long they are staying and it’s possible the landlord won’t give permission to plant directly in the ground. Although community gardens continue to be established, the wait lists are long and often spaces are taken by those same wealthy folks with huge yards that don’t want to mess up their landscaping with an ugly edible garden. And we all know it is an enormous hurdle to be able to buy a home at this point in history since out of state corporations are buying up every available house in order to rent them out and live off the profits of a “passive” income. It’s great how that business venture is creating housing scarcity, driving up home prices, and closing the market to mid-level and lower income people (said with heavy sarcasm, to be clear). At this point in my life, I’m able to own my home, but it only happened because one of my partners and my mom helped me with the down payment. And it was before Covid hit and the market blew up. However, I was always a renter before owning and over the last few decades I helped to start 2 community gardens in Chicago where I maintained a plot and I had connections who helped me secure a spot in a community garden here in Cleveland Heights. I grew plants in pots in mini balconies and hidden behind bushes in apartment courtyards. Can’t stop, won’t stop trying to grow food. 

Time

During the workshop on Sunday, I mentioned that one of the things to keep in mind with starting seeds is our own capabilities and capacities. Growing our food from seeds takes a lot of time. Especially when we’re super excited and we aren’t sure what to expect. Over the recent handful of years, I’ve needed to dramatically cut back what I’m growing from seed or buying as a seedling. Buying seedlings cost more money, especially if you’re doing what you can to also support local and stay away from [right wing] GMOs - I say it that way because of course, GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms) in and of themselves are a very weighted topic, depending on how you consider the pros/cons. But I’ll talk a little more about that in the next section. In this case, I’m mostly wanting to acknowledge that depending on our perceived gender, the social class we belong to, as well as our perceived race, we may have more or less literal time available to grow seeds. In addition, many of us are on the neurodivergent spectrum, which can also impact our bandwidth and mental health. As I’ve learned to take better care of myself and not give in to outside pressure, I’ve learned that it’s ok if I have a larger percentage of purchased seedlings instead of homegrown. Because of the multiple layers of food politics, all of these issues are interconnected. 

Purchasing power

That’s a perfect segue into a comment about financial earnings/class consciousness. I recently made the transition from a fairly well-paying professional role at an academic institution (tenured position as a librarian, but was also teaching faculty), to an hourly/part time/at will employee. I’m literally making ¼ of what I made in my previous job (I was making almost $85k because of the additional contract roles I took on, on paper my salary was closer to $70k/year). I thought I was scraping by at the time, but I would still only buy seedlings from growers that met my highest ethical standards. Now, when I’m in this hourly role (usually making closer to $24k/year), I have to give myself more flexibility to spend money where I can. 

Another example of the politics of where we choose to spend our money (and to which business owner), is seed brands. At one end of the spectrum are the most affordable and accessible seeds, those would be something like Burpee seeds or something from Dollar General (which, no lie, has some amazing gardening products sometimes). These are massive corporations who probably fund our government officials and likely treat employees as awfully as possible. On the other end of this seed spectrum are rare seeds, heirloom types, seeds directly from farmers who are working to better the environmental impact of farming, and possibly indigenous seed. Once you start moving away from the most accessible seeds, you will likely run into a company that is referred to as Rare Seeds or Baker Creek. This company knows its audience well, they’re targeting well-wishing middle class folks, likely white people in particular. They pull on the audience with slick and colorful images of Black and Brown folks - probably immigrants (not migrant) who are working their farm and give the vibe of sharing and caring for community. However, if you do a little digging into the ethical practices of this brand, you’ll quickly find that the charities they fund are required to have their recipients sign religious statements of dedication to Christ before they will receive aid. They knowingly shared photos of a man deeply affiliated with white supremecist hate groups as part of a social media post and have never apologized or seemed to care what that would mean for customers. And lastly (that I know of), Baker Creek has also stolen seed from Indigenous groups and rebranded them as their own in order to profit from the heritage and labor of these native farmers. To be clear, I learned of all of this through various sources including some socially active indigenous leaders. I would encourage anyone who is interested in this topic to try to see what you could find about any company that you’re buying from. 

Food preparation 

My sibling who lives in Detroit worked for an organization called Detroit Food Academy (DFA) for years. It was a nonprofit that was focused on food justice and teaching young people how to cook their own food. It was an after-school program with a ton of hands-on practice for everything from selecting produce, reading recipes, different cooking styles, and potentially if students were interested it was a great direct path into cooking professionally at local restaurants. My siblings and I grew up with a lot of home cooked food, both of our parents cooked and baked, mostly based on who was home from work first (usually my dad) and occasionally my mom would try to cook a little outside of our comfort zone - curries, szechuan, or even greek or middle eastern food. Looking back, this was an incredibly important foundation for me and a huge privilege. There is a fairly narrow slice of families that regularly cook food every night of the week and at some point encourage their children to do the same. 

As an additional layer of context to the politics of gardening that of course is tied to other things like time and money, after growing your food, you need to know what to do with it. Some folks easily incorporate small harvests of lettuce or tomatoes into their summer meal planning, but if you want to continue to increase the yield of your garden you may need to get creative. Knowing how to cook and preserve your harvest is so important. Even some of the lower-skilled practices of drying or freezing may require additional storage space. Pickling, canning, and fermentation are great options, but again may require learning more, having the correct equipment, and at minimum enough space for your preserved items. In years when I’ve had little bandwidth, these final steps become a huge hurdle to me as well and unfortunately I let food rot. Luckily, I do quite a bit of composting and try to remind myself that I’m at least diverting food waste from landfills and creating fertilizer to promote new growth. 

By identifying even these few things to consider in the politics of growing your own food, I don’t want to turn anyone away from the practice. These are some of the things I’ve learned over many decades and in combination with additional layers of formal education and self-guided research. I share this info to remind people that it’s actually harder to stay apolitical or politically neutral. For the purposes of this article, I didn’t fully delve into the historic racism and land grab from Black and Indigenous farmers, the politics of GMOs, gendered landscape practices, and the corporations that restrict access to seed and knowingly use chemicals that cause harm to the earth and living things. There is so much more here that has been written about by many other more knowledgeable people. I just tried to give at least a taste of some of the things running through my head about gardening. The practices of our everyday life and each decision we make involve politics and differing amounts of privilege. At the end of all of this, I’m including my slides from the evening as well. I’ve added additional notes and hope to do more to share knowledge in the future.