"SNAP Doesn't Serve All of the People Who Are in Need" w/ Maria Dominique Villanueva
Growers & Organizers Talk “Beyond SNAP”
Co-founders Christopher Gooden and Maria Dominique Villanueva at Fountain Heights Farms Cooperative’s Heart of the Farm Groundbreaking Ceremony. Image courtesy of The Rose Hat Photography.
What’s up world! We’re back with another episode of Beyond SNAP, a new series from the National Black Food and Justice Alliance. We made this in the face of government refusal to fund food assistance back in November, and we’re using it as a space to gather field lessons so organizers and growers can act now to continue our people’s long march toward self-determination.
In this episode, you’ll hear from Maria Dominique Villanueva of Fountain Heights Farms Cooperative in Birmingham, Alabama. Dominique breaks down how an urban–rural cooperative keeps food moving through free farm stands and stores, what she felt prepared for in this moment, what she didn’t, and why we cannot mistake short-term fixes for long-term security.
She names the risks of resting on restored funding, calls us back to our ancestors and collective power, and sketches a vision of a joyful, sovereign food economy grounded in shared infrastructure, clear roles, and time to be fully human. Let’s get into it!
TRANSCRIPT:
Image courtesy of Fountain Heights Farms Cooperative.
Dominique: My name is Maria Dominique Villanueva, and I use she/her pronouns. I'm here in beautiful historic Fountain Heights, Birmingham, Alabama, and I am one of the co-founders of Fountain Heights Farms Cooperative, a multi-urban farm space here in Birmingham.
NBFJA: Nice. So for some people who may not know necessarily what a farm cooperative is, would you mind explaining to them what it is that you guys do?
Dominique: Yeah, so cooperatives can look very different, but we're all rooted in the same values. So things like transparency and shared risk and shared reward. And so here at Fountain Heights Cooperative, we partner with urban farmers as well as with rural farmers to supply our communities with fresh produce and value-added products from our farms.
And how we all win is urban farmers, we don't have to grow things like sweet potatoes in a small space where scale really does help with balancing profitability, and rural farmers get access to a much larger urban market.
Image courtesy of The Rose Hat Photography.
NBFJA: Thank you so much. And so the context for this interview was, I reached out to you originally at the moment where there's these announcements that, SNAP is going to be halted for the foreseeable future. And since the time that I've reached out to you, there have been some developments with the Supreme Court trying to push back against these decisions. Some states agreeing that they would reload people's benefits for the month. So I just wanted to ask you, looking back to that moment when the announcement was originally made, were there ways that you felt prepared?
Dominique: Yeah, I think I think it's important to name that, although SNAP is a really big, huge program that helps a lot of families, it doesn't close all the gaps and it doesn't serve all of the people who are in need of food access and food assistance.
For example, in our state, one in four people go hungry every day. So that's literally, every fourth house that I walk by, every fourth door, every fourth child that I see walk to school. And, that's, that is, absolutely preventable. And so we've, we've always grown food with our neighborhood and the need in mind, filling gaps in terms of offering a free delivery service, food boxes.
We have a free farm stand that we fill every day. So we were already doing this work, and it was just like, '“Oh, okay, here we go. We gotta recruit a few more folks. And put some more plants in the ground.” It came at a time where most farms are slowing down and so thankfully we're in the South, where we can have almost a year-round growing season.
Image courtesy of Fountain Heights Farms Cooperative.
And we do have farmers who are really committed to feeding our community and even to the point of foregoing what would be their normal kind of break and rest time.
NBFJA: Thank you. That context really helped me understand a lot. Were there ways that you felt unprepared for the moment? Were there any aspects of the sort of work that you do or the size of the task that made you feel like, “Ugh, I wish we had been a little bit more prepared for this?”
Dominique: I think that as farmers, we take on a lot of risk and I think we're always mindful of encouraging other people to grow. We're a 14-space farm system here in Birmingham. But we're not able to feed everyone, and I think that there are huge gaps that could have been filled a long time ago with the right supports, the right local supports, and the infrastructure needed to turn more of these spaces into food-producing areas. So I think on that front, I wish that we would have been locally more prepared.
I think on an individual level it's always like, “Dang, okay. Thought we could, maybe take a couple weeks off. Maybe not have to grow through the coldest part of the season.”
Fountain Heights Farms Cooperative leads a skill share day with the community. Image courtesy of Dawn & Co.
But thankfully we had the skills and the ability and as much infrastructure as we can to be able to meet the moment. I think that I wish that I would've recruited more of our neighbors to grow their own food. And next season we'll be looking into that more of how do we not only do the work that we're doing on the farm, but how do we translate that into people's homes.
NBFJA: If full funding and benefits for everybody is restored right now? And the narrative sort of becomes, “We won, we pushed the government to do the right thing.” Why do you think it's important for Black growers especially, not to rest on the merits of a moment like that?
Dominique: My concern is that we will fall into the same kind of complacency that so many of us moved into after the larger pandemic. And I think that these are the moments that are showing us, in more and more severity, that this is the time, this is the moment for us to be doing this work. And there's not a whole lot that's more important than being able to feed ourselves, to make sure that we have access to clean and safe water.
And that there are so many forces that would keep us in the busyness of proving the numbers and proving the research and proving the, and going back to, show this kind of thing. Instead of actually doing the work of creating this new reality that we want.
Christopher Gooden and Maria Dominique Villanueva during a compost day at Fountain Heights Farms Cooperative in May 2025. Image courtesy of Dawn & Co.
We have never lived in a nation, in a state, in a city, in a neighborhood that has been fully supported by any government or political power. All of us, but especially Black people. And these short-term and stopgap kind of measures are important and they meet an immediate need. But we cannot forget that the ultimate goal is our own liberation and our own sovereignty. And we cannot forget the greed and the wickedness that allows people in power to take things that are not rightfully theirs at their own whim, and until we remember our power and remember our beloved ancestors that remind us again and again of the struggles, their own struggles and our own skills, we will always be at the mercy of these systems and individuals who would keep us in these kinds of bonds. So I hope that as we celebrate that so many people will have access to food through these SNAP, these kind of stopgap programs, that we also are continuing to move forward and take larger strides to and towards that food sovereignty and liberation.
NBFJA: Absolutely. If you could just imagine in your wildest dream, what does a fully self-determined or like sovereign food economy for Black people even look like. Paint that picture for me.
Dominique: I think it begins with honoring the land and revering the work of farmers. I think that when I imagine that kind of a system, I think about the closeness of our relationships with each other and the recognition of everyone's role to play in this food system. I think about well-equipped and shared resources and infrastructure. A thriving supply chain that goes from our rural spaces into our urban spaces. I think about all of the inputs and the farmer adjacent work and all of the people that make the growing and the thriving of plants and livestock a part of that system.
Farmers and community members during a compost day at Fountain Heights Farms Cooperative in May 2025. Image courtesy of Dawn & Co.
I think about a lot of joy on the land, a lot of frolicking that happens. When I imagine a completely sovereign loop for Black people. I think about the amount of time that we regain to be ourselves. To find out and remember who we are. Because we've got all of the nutrition that we need and we step away from the idea that we must produce at every moment and we find a new harmony between ourselves and the land that we steward.
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To learn more about Dominique’s work with Fountain Heights Farms Cooperative, visit this link.