Seed Award Spotlight: Grow Moore Produce

This series features recipients from the most recent round of Seed Awards, sharing their paths to entrepreneurship, the values that guide their work, and the ways their businesses contribute to stronger, more resilient communities. Each profile offers insight into the leadership, creativity, and commitment required to build and sustain food businesses that serve both local markets and the broader public good.

In the most recent award cycle, Michigan Good Food Fund distributed nearly $300,000 in seed grants to 18 Michigan-based food and farm businesses. These investments extend beyond capital support, recognizing the essential role these enterprises play in strengthening Michigan’s food system, advancing equity, and supporting long-term economic growth.

Among this year’s awardees is Grow Moore Produce Cooperative, a collective of Black farmers carrying forward the legacy of their neighbor and friend Roxanne Moore Jones through community-rooted, organic food production. Motivated by a commitment to food sovereignty, compassion, and knowledge sharing, the cooperative is working to ensure its neighbors have access to nutrient-dense food grown by people who look like them and live alongside them.

Keep reading to learn more about Grow Moore Produce Cooperative and the powerful vision guiding their work.

Shared by: Victoria Llorens, Grow Moore Produce Cooperative, Detroit, Mich.

What does being selected as a Seed Award winner mean to you personally, and how does it reflect on the journey of your business so far?

Being selected as a Seed Award winner is a great step forward for our collective as we build out the infrastructure we need to move as a more cohesive unit and an aggregation hub to grow and sell more produce. As a collective of 11 farms that have been slowly and deliberately building out our business model, being resourced to develop infrastructure as well as SOPs feels like a huge success. Through this award, we will be closer to opening our membership to new farms with a strong foundation already developed. Our Detroit community deserves farmers who farm with them in mind, and this resourcing will lead us to grow and do even more in our community.

In what ways will the Seed Award funding support your immediate and long-term business goals?

This award will support us in continuing to build out our systems for aggregating produce locally. As smaller-scale farmers, it can be difficult to be competitive with larger-scale farmers. Growing as a collective and strategizing together opens sales channels to us, which gives us a chance to scale up operations. Taking time with this award to develop strong systems early on will give us a strong foundation as our collective continues to grow in both members and sales.

Can you share your vision for the positive changes this award will enable you to make in your business and the broader community?

Our member-farms are spread out across Detroit, rooted in the communities we grow food for by growing up here, hiring from the community, doing food giveaways, hosting events, and providing green space. This allows us to tap-in across Detroit, and also can be tricky as we move as a cohesive co-op. This award will resource us to continue building out our aggregation site for our member-farmers to collect our produce for collective sale. In addition to the community fridge we utilize, we will be building out a collective wash-pack so we can streamline food harvested from the field to bag. We will strengthen relationships with local buyers and markets, and standardize operations for unitizing and selling.

What led you to start your business? What motivates you to do what you do?

We hold the loving memory of Mama Roxanne Moore Jones in the work we do in building out our collective. She envisioned a group of Black Farmers working together through shared resources and sales channels to provide our neighbors with food and skills. We are motivated by the weaponization of food and countering that with community, knowledge sharing, and mobilizing. Our communities are deserving of culturally relevant and nutrient-dense food grown by people who look and live as they do. We are motivated to be in relationship to the land, to the food we grow, to our neighbors, our healthy bodies, and Nguzo Saba.

Want to support the farmers of Grow Moore Produce Cooperative and stay connected to their work? Follow them on Instagram to learn more about their mission and find ways to get involved.