Fertile Ground Food Cooperative, a Black-led, community-owned grocery project, is nearing construction after more than a decade of organizing in southeast Raleigh, North Carolina.
Here’s what to know
According to WUNC, the initiative began in 2012 as a cooperative cafe idea and later expanded into plans for a full grocery store. The site beside the JD Lewis Multipurpose Center on Garner Road is also expected to provide shared community space.
An Instagram post by Localize founder Zephyr Zoidis (@zephzoid) highlighting the effort noted that both Kroger stores in Southeast Raleigh closed in 2013, leaving the area without a full grocery store.
As grocery options dwindled, the project became more urgent. Meisha Gayle, a Fertile Ground board member who moved from Jamaica to southeast Raleigh, said routine shopping often meant traveling farther or paying more for lower-quality food.
Ben Jones, Fertile Ground’s communications manager, said the point is to let southeast Raleigh residents shape their own food access instead of depending on outside companies that have not seen value in the neighborhood. More than 1,000 members hold ownership stakes in the co-op and vote on major store decisions.
More background
WUNC reported that more than 145,000 Wake County residents face hunger, according to the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina. About one-third are Black, and local organizers say that disparity helps explain why the co-op is seen as both a food-access project and an economic one…