This week, we were honored to receive the New Generations Award at the Salute to Excellence celebration hosted by the Center for Nonprofit Excellence of Middle Tennessee.
This recognition celebrates our Growing Together Farmers Market, a cornerstone of The Nashville Food Project’s Community Agriculture Network and a living example of what it means to cultivate belonging through food.
For more than a decade, Growing Together has supported refugee and immigrant farmers in Nashville. These skilled agrarians from Burma, Bhutan, and beyond bring deep agricultural knowledge and rich food traditions to our shared city. With access to land, tools, training, interpretation, and markets, these farmers are reclaiming agricultural heritage, building economic independence, and nourishing their communities.
In 2024, seven farming families cultivated more than 30,000 pounds of produce on a single acre of land, earning nearly $92,000 in total income and growing their CSA program by 67 percent from the previous year. Each seed planted is more than a crop. It is a story of resilience, hope, and homecoming.
Launched in the spring of 2025, the Growing Together Farmers Market is the only market in Nashville located on an urban farm stewarded by immigrants and refugees. Nestled in the heart of the city’s International Corridor in Antioch, the market connects cultures through shared food traditions. Shoppers find familiar flavors from around the world, such as Nepali mustard greens, roselle, and long beans, alongside Southern staples like collards and kale.
The market also serves as a model of partnership and accessibility. The Nashville Food Project manages point-of-sale systems, provides multilingual signage, and promotes the market citywide so that farmers can focus on growing and connecting with their customers. Each week, this small corner of Antioch becomes a meeting place of stories, flavors, and futures, a vision of what a just and sustainable food system can look like.
We are deeply grateful to the Center for Nonprofit Excellence for this recognition and to our growers, partners, and volunteers who make this work possible. The New Generations Award honors their hands, hearts, and courage and reminds us that the next chapter of Nashville’s food story is already being written in the soil.
Because when we grow together, we do not just grow food.
We grow belonging.