Tag Archives: food

Press Release: Salt Lake City supports community-led organizations to increase healthy food access

The New American Goat Club was a 2023, 2024, and 2025 community organization recipient. Photo credit: Ashley Detrick

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June 26, 2025

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Salt Lake City continues to increase residents’ access to fresh, healthy, affordable, and culturally relevant food by funding 12 community food projects through the Sustainability Department’s 2025 SLC Food Microgrant program. 

This year, over $56,500 in funding was granted to community-led projects aligned with recommendations from the City’s Resident Food Equity Advisors Program.  

“We often talk about building a more resilient Salt Lake City, and this is one way we’re doing it—by supporting neighbors and community groups who grow food, share knowledge, and improve access to locally sourced, culturally meaningful foods,” said Mayor Mendenhall. “These microgrants are small investments with big returns for our health, our environment, and our connection to one another.” 

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Getting A Fresh Perspective on Farmers’ Markets 

By SLCgreen Intern Kate Kuwahara

Photo credit: Downtown SLC Farmers Market

The holiday season is upon us! This can be a time to gather with loved ones and enjoy some great food, often bringing recipes we only enjoy once or twice a year. Holidays can also be a great place to start when rethinking long-held traditions, habits, and how our actions can impact our community. Food waste is a major issue in the U.S. even outside of the holiday season. About 40% of all food produced in the U.S. never gets eaten, and this amount increases by an additional 25% between Thanksgiving and New Year’s!  

However you celebrate, we encourage sustainable habits around gathering for the holidays, from food waste to decorations. And what better place to start than buying local food! Salt Lake City’s Winter Farmers’ Market returns on Saturdays beginning November 9th and will operate weekly from 10AM to 2PM through April 19th (closed November 30th and March 15th). SLCgreen’s summer intern Kate Kuwahara visited the Downtown Summer Farmers’ Market for the first time and shares her new perspective on farmer’s markets and learning more about our food systems. 

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Healing and Building Community Through Food: The Food Justice Coalition

By SLCgreen Intern Frances Benfell

Jeanette Padilla Vega, Food Justice Coalition’s Founder, teaches a cooking class as part of community enrichment programming.

According to Jeanette Padilla Vega, the founder and CEO of the Food Justice Coalition (FJC), humanity’s greatest unifier is food. As she put it, her organization is “trying to change the world one rice bowl at a time.” As I observed her community cooking class and the aromas of her vegan chicken curry filled the air, I believed in her food’s world-changing power.  

The FJC was one of 13 community organizations awarded a Salt Lake City Food Equity Microgrant this year.  

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Food Not Bombs Is Working to Alleviate Food Waste & Hunger in Salt Lake City  

By SLCgreen Intern Kellen Hunnicutt

There is a difference between what is safe to eat and what can be sold at a grocery store. Best-by and sell-by dates are not designed to be safety dates; rather they’re reference points indicating when foods may have the best flavor or quality. Similarly, bruised or oddly shaped foods may be rejected by grocery stores, even though they’re still nutritious and safe to eat.  

Food Not Bombs is a global organization committed to food recovery, equity and mutual aid. The Salt Lake City chapter has been operating continuously since 1999. The group has built relationships with local food providers such as Natural Grocers, Good Earth Markets, and City Cakes Bakery. Each week, volunteers pick up food from these locations that is edible but unsellable to redistribute to the community.  

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Salt Lake Canning Co. takes excess fruit from neighborhood trees and turns them into shelf-stable staples for seniors 

by SLCgreen Intern Charles Bonkowsky

In the summer, the Salt Lake Valley is ripe with fruit. Through farmers’ markets or programs like the Green Urban Lunch Box, people all over the valley are able to enjoy it. But come winter, that fresh supply dries up.  

Katie Lawson’s Salt Lake Canning Co. is working to fill that gap: in 2021 and 2022, the organization canned hundreds of jars of local fruit for distribution to senior citizens, and with the money received from Salt Lake City’s Food Equity Microgrant program, she hopes to do even more this year. 

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Sabores de Mi Patria: Sharing Traditional Gardening Practices with the Community 

By SLCgreen Intern Emma Johnson

Image of sign in garden. Sign has text: Sabores de mi patria. Three sisters - MILPA. Calabaza, maiz, frijole.

In mid-July, Wasatch Community Gardens is filled to the brim with lush green vegetable plants, vibrant swaths of flowers, and stooping trees laden with fruit. It is mostly organized into neat sections and rows, but a verdant patch on the southeast edge, boasting many different textures and massive sunflowers reaching to the sky, is more freeform.  

This is the Growing Traditions section of the garden, designed for the Sabores de Mi Patria program with Artes de Mexico en Utah to represent traditional agricultural practices from Mexico and other parts of Latin America. Sabores de Mi Patria translates to “flavors of my homeland.”  

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The Rainbow Garden: Celebrating Diversity in People and Produce

By SLCgreen Intern Iris Tang

Priya Chidambaram, founder of Vanavil Gardens stands behind a garden bed in her backyard.

Vanavil Community Garden, one of the 2023 food equity microgrant winners, is located in the Ballpark area and is run by Priya Chidambaram. Priya started the Vanavil Community Garden as a renter; with her landlord’s approval, she transformed the yard into a garden and built a community around it. Since then, Priya has purchased her own house in the Ballpark area and relocated the gardens there.  

Priya named the garden ‘Vanavil’ as it means ‘rainbow’ in her native language, Tamil. The name initially came from the desire to grow colorful and diverse crops such as yellow tomatoes and purple carrots. However, Priya notes the name has grown to represent inclusivity as well. 

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Old Traditions in a New Land: New American Goat Club Allows Youth to Connect to Family Cultural Practices 

By SLCgreen Intern Emma Johnson and Staff Jude Westwood

On Salt Lake City’s West Side, near the old water park, lives a sizable herd of goats. The same piece of land also houses sheep, chickens, beehives, and many garden plots filled with a variety of plants.

Although the Farm is managed by Roots, Utah’s first farm-based charter school, fifteen of the goats on the property are owned by the “The New American Goat Club.” The Goat Club is a summer educational program for refugee and immigrant youth interested in learning about goat husbandry. It’s also one of SLCgreen’s 2023 Food Equity Microgrant awardees.  

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Salt Lake City Announces Food Equity Microgrant Awardees 

Today Mayor Mendenhall and the Salt Lake City Sustainability Department announced the list of groups that have been awarded funding through the SLC Food Equity Microgrant pilot program, which launched earlier this year.  

The new grant program provided $35,000 in total funding to increase residents’ access to fresh, healthy, affordable, and culturally relevant food by supporting community-led projects aligned with the recommendations from the City’s Resident Food Equity Advisors’ 2021 Report. Projects led by and serving those who identify as members of groups that have been most negatively impacted by the food system were prioritized for funding, and accessibility and equity were central to the program’s design and goals. 

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Introducing Salt Lake City’s Harrison Community Garden! 

Last month, we celebrated the opening of the Harrison Community Garden with Mayor Erin Mendenhall, Council Member Darin Mano, Wasatch Community Gardens, and the Salt Lake City Public Lands Department. Located along 700 East at Harrison Avenue, just south of Liberty Park, the newest addition to Salt Lake City’s family of community gardens provides plots for as many as 50 gardeners to grow vegetables.  

This is the eighth active garden in Salt Lake City boundaries established under our Green City Growers program, which identifies vacant or under-utilized City property with access to a water line and other conditions that support a successful and sustainable community garden. The City partners with local non-profit Wasatch Community Gardens to manage and run the gardens on Salt Lake City property through this program. 

Every community garden is a labor of love, but the Harrison Garden overcame multiple obstacles to ultimately receive funding from the City’s Capital Improvement Program (CIP) to make it a reality. (Pssst… community applications are due Sept. 30, 2022 for the next round of CIP funding). 

Community gardens are more than just for the growers!  

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