Having regular access to enough safe and nutritious food is critical for normal growth and development. This need is exponentially heightened when living with a complicating disease, raising children, or carrying for nursing a baby. Over a quarter of the world’s population is severely or moderately food insecure and, ironically, most are small-scale farmers.

Ensuring farmers have access to healthy, culturally-appropriate food, which is produced in an ecologically sound and sustainable way is central to our program. DIG regularly adapts our model to best support our farmers, in whatever unique context they find themselves, to reclaim the power to provide for themselves, their families, and their communities while equally caring for the land.

Our intervention is part of a global movement for food sovereignty. By equipping farmers with the knowledge and resources to cultivate their own healthy, culturally relevant foods in sustainable ways, we are supporting local decision-making power over production, circulation, and consumption of food.

Seeds are the foundation for food sovereignty, and DIG’s program begins and ends with seeds. We not only put physical seeds in our farmers’ hands, but by the end of the program, the farmers themselves become seeds for continued growth and expansion.

Farmers take their enhanced knowledge to their broader community. The model ripples outward on onward, without any additional cost or intervention.

DIG’s intentional design embeds a path to dignity and social cohesion for uniquely marginalized communities, and promises community scale.