We’ve launched a new membership program!
Alliance membership is free and open to everyone. We welcome individuals from businesses, nonprofit organizations, government agencies, foundations, and the general public to join the movement to cultivate a healthy, sustainable, and just food system in San Diego County.
We intend to build a network that centers justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion.
Alliance Membership
Free
Benefits of Membership
Post to Community Pages
Members can post to our Community Events, Jobs in the Food System, Volunteer Opportunities, and Purchasing Directly from Producers pages. Help create a connected and thriving food system!
Attend Member Social Hours
Meet others passionate about cultivating justice, fighting climate change, and building resilience in our food system. We’ll start by hosting one social hour per quarter, at local businesses around San Diego County.
Get Exclusive Content
Get bimonthly exclusive content, including videos, articles, interviews, and resources created and curated by our team, featuring people and places across our region.
Join Discussions & Conversations with a Digital Community
Interact with fellow members through the Alliance Members’ Facebook Group.
We know not everyone uses or prefers Facebook; however, for the time being, it seems to be the most accessible and familiar platform among our network. Our team weighed options like Slack, Discord, a custom-built forum, listserv, and more. We will continue to learn and adjust as Alliance membership grows.
Get Early or Discounted Registration for Alliance Events
Members will get to sign up first for workshops and gatherings, or get a discounted rate for paid events—including the second Annual Gathering for San Diego County Food Vision 2030, to be held this September.
Participate in Advocacy Opportunities
We think of our members first when we need to call on our community to advocate for policy change! Get alerts for easy actions you can take to help move campaigns forward.
WHY WE DECIDED TO LAUNCH A NEW MEMBERSHIP PROGRAM
The San Diego Food System Alliance originated several years ago to weave a network of San Diegans passionate about resolving issues across our food system—shrinking agriculture and fishing sectors, increasing barriers to farming, rising food waste and food insecurity, growing challenges for local food businesses—and offer a space to connect, learn, and share opportunities. The earliest version of Alliance membership centered a small, select group of mostly White nonprofit professionals.
Since then, the Alliance has transformed. Our staffing and leadership, governance, culture, and the very way we think about how to transform the food system—by cultivating justice, fighting climate change, and building resilience—have shifted. With the changes we’ve seeded and nourished in our organization over the last five years, we recognize that we need to create a new infrastructure for our network as well: one that is inclusive, works toward equity, and represents the diverse movement for food system transformation in San Diego County.
Rather than opening membership to select people, or charging a fee for participation, our reimagined Alliance membership is for everyone—because we need everyone participating and speaking up for a more just, sustainable, and resilient food system. This new structure is designed to acknowledge our interdependence, engage grassroots individuals and organizations, elevate those marginalized by dominant systems, and build collective power and ownership to make real changes in our food system.
Last year, together we completed San Diego County Food Vision 2030, our region’s plan and movement to cultivate a healthier, more sustainable, and more just food system. Food Vision 2030 is more than a set of goals, objectives, and strategies about our food system. It is also one of many seeds planted in our region from which a powerful movement toward change has sprouted. There has long been a movement of small farmers, fishermen, workers, organizers, small business owners, and eaters who have worked and self-organized in San Diego County to cultivate justice, fight climate change, and build resilience through food—and it is growing.
By creating this new membership program, we hope to lend some support—gardening stakes, if you will—to help ensure that the movement thrives and grows.
We invite you to join us this summer!