El Departamento de la Comida
Environmental protection organization · Caguas ·
Agroecological collective supporting local farmers with plant-based fare
Agroecological collective supporting local farmers with plant-based fare
"El Departamento de la Comida, which collaborates with dozens of small farmers. 'The vision and the dream is for more Puerto Ricans to be able to feed Puerto Rico and to connect with ancestral practices and decolonial practices.'"
"An agroecological collective and nonprofit founded in 2010 that has evolved from a CSA to a food hub, a beloved restaurant and pop-up organizer, and—after Hurricane Maria—into a volunteer brigade and a regenerative agroecology organization. It is known for innovative plant-based fare served at restaurant locations and pop-ups, a public-facing organizer who led relief and farm-recovery efforts, and a quieter culinary lead who sources ingredients, cooks for brigades and benefit events, and translates the project’s food-sovereignty mission onto the plate. The group’s newly purchased farm property outside San Salvador (Caguas) is being developed with minimal solar power and rainwater catchment, and the nonprofit plans interconnected programs—community gardens, agroforestry and permaculture projects, a resource library for farm tools, seed production, and a future kitchen and communal housing—as it rebuilds infrastructure and support for Puerto Rican producers." - Keia Mastrianni
"Founded by Tara Rodríguez Besosa as one of Puerto Rico’s first community-supported agriculture programs, this sustainability-minded project evolved from aggregating island produce for families and restaurants into a vegetarian café and retail hub housed in a converted garage and later a beachfront space. It sought to prove that a local, agroecological food system was possible—offering classes, workshops, and partnerships with community gardens—before Hurricane Maria flooded and heavily damaged the restaurant in September 2017, after which the partners put the operation on pause and the shuttered site suffered repeated break-ins. The organization pivoted from a fixed storefront to networked resilience work: its leaders helped launch a Resilience Fund to send brigades to farms across the island and staged pop-up dinners to reconnect producers with diners and revive the project’s mission of food sovereignty and community rebuilding." - Martha Bayne
Veronika B.
Benjamin B.
Bryan
Scott and Allison Fratcher and T.
Jami B.
Blachy D.
Sergio M.
Keesha C.
