ABOUT FIG
How we started
FIG launched in 2014 as “Food Issues Group,” a sustainability study group for chefs and food business decision makers.
Over time, FIG has evolved into a collective that marries study with action, and welcomes anyone in our food system who is interested in transformation. We are all decision makers!
We’ve kept and deepened our love for our name, which is now simply FIG or FIG NYC. Fig trees — found all over Brooklyn — contribute to healthy forest ecosystems. And the nutrient-dense fruit is actually not a fruit at all, but a ball of flowers. (For pollinating purposes, each of the 750+ fig species has co-evolved with their own unique wasp species over the past 60 million years.)
Like our namesake, we aim to do our work from a place of healthy interdependence, imagination, and thoughtful pollination.
Our Mission
FIG is a grassroots collective of people working to transform the food system from within. FIG stewards, supports, and connects equitable and sustainable food work across New York / Lenapehoking, with collaborations beyond.
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We facilitate members of the food industry {workers within the food system} coming together to study the systemic barriers to equity, justice, and sustainability and come up with creative solutions. We provide people with the time, tools, and peer partnership vital to operationalizing their values. We cultivate spaces in which people are encouraged to think whole system change and talk concrete daily practices.
We cultivate a diverse network of rich relationships through which the knowledge and resources shared shape our collective action.
FIG builds critical bridges between the food world and social healing/justice organizing and frontline community organizations, boosting capacity and increasing accountability.
We are creating the conditions for the future we yearn for; community-controlled regenerative food systems as part of thriving solidarity economies.
