Besides allowing us to stay healthy and prevent illness, food grown through agroecological approaches is being used around the world to help people heal and get better. Growing foods without using chemicals provides refugees in Syracuse, US with a path towards mental and spiritual healing from past trauma. Women and youth living with HIV/AIDS northern Tanzania are growing and eating therapeutic and nutritious foods. Food Pharmacy in the Netherlands is pioneering a ‘food-is-medicine’ approach rooted in the soil-human health connection for people suffering from type 2 diabetes. Biodiverse gardens in India are combating anaemia, malnutrition and other health problems caused by monoculture rice production. “The turning point came when we highlighted the savings associated with reduced primary health care costs.”
Short story 1
The healing power of food cultures: A story of a New American woman farmer
I visited Julienne in her home on a sunny fall morning in upstate New York. As we sat in her living room, her youngest baby nestled in her arms, Julienne began to share her journey — a story of resilience, loss and hope.
Julienne’s life has been shaped by displacement. She was born in a camp in the Congo to parents who fled Burundi in the 1960s, and her family spent years in another camp in Tanzania when conflict forced them to flee yet again. Life there was harsh, and while rations of corn, rice and oil were provided, they were neither adequate nor culturally relevant. Gardening on small plots became a means of survival for Julienne – a way to access fresh produce and to maintain cultural traditions.
Julienne was in her mid-twenties when she arrived with her family in the United States in 2008. She soon joined the Syracuse Refugee Agriculture Program (SyRAP), part of the non-profit organisation RISE (Refugee and Immigrant Self-Empowerment). Since its inception in 2016, SyRAP has enabled over 60 participants from countries including the Congo, Burundi, Afghanistan, Nepal, South Sudan and Somalia to grow culturally appropriate foods without using chemicals, both for subsistence and for markets, on a vegetable farm and three community gardens in the Syracuse area.
“My children prefer American food,” she laughs. “So I modify our traditional dishes to suit them."
Julienne’s determination to have control over what her family eats is clear when she speaks about her work with SyRAP and her backyard garden. “Growing my own food gives me a sense of satisfaction,” she explains. “In our village back in Congo, we farmed from sunrise to sunset, ate what we grew, and breathed fresh air unlike in the city. I want my children to understand that.”
Like other New American farmers, Julienne finds immense satisfaction in growing, harvesting and preparing food that reflects ancestral traditions and nourishes both bodies and spirits. She explains that in her culture, every part of the crop is used for meals. The flowers of bean, cassava and potato plants are used for stews and soups; the cassava stalks for firewood; and root tubers for main dishes like ugali, fufu and hot pot meals.
In turn, these food practices sustain health, minimise waste and honour the earth. “People in my culture don’t often get sick because all the food we eat is fresh and grown without chemicals.” However, adapting to the food culture in her new country has not been easy. “My children prefer American food,” she laughs. “So I modify our traditional dishes to suit them. I give them options in the hope that they will continue with our food culture.”
For Julienne, the gardens she has spent time in – both in refugee camps and in the US – have served as sanctuaries during challenging times, providing a path towards mental and spiritual healing from past trauma. They have allowed her to be agroecologically attuned, to connect with her ancestors, and to uphold her relation to the land.
She sees this as part of a larger movement to preserve food cultures and to attain food sovereignty. “Accessibility does not mean acceptability,” she reminds me. Her story, and those of others like her, remind us that food sovereignty is more than access to land and seeds – it is about connection to culture, to the earth, and to each other.
Author: Mercy Oppong, affectionately called Esi, is currently pursuing a PhD in Environmental Science at SUNY ESF. Contact: moppong1@esf.edu
Julienne’s instructions for brewing healthy rosemary tea – and many more recipes from New American farmers – can be found in ‘The New American Kitchen’ cookbook.
Short story 2
Cultivating dignity in Tanzania: A garden for women and youth living with HIV/AIDS
Helen Tibandebage Nguya had a dream: to create a space for the intersection of healing, empowerment and food production. In 2010, she opened TRMEGA, a centre for Training, Research, Monitoring and Evaluation on Gender and AIDS, which is surrounded by a half-hectare garden in the village of Maji Ya Chai in Northern Tanzania. Today, the garden raises awareness about the importance of a balanced diet for its 24 vulnerable and marginalised participants. They are all living with HIV/AIDS; most are women, specifically widows, and the rest are unemployed youth.
"We grow more than just food: we grow dignity, resilience, and a future where no one is left behind"
In Tanzania, most people eat too many carbohydrates and starchy foods like maize, soya and millet, as they are cheaper than other foods. In Helen’s garden, the participants learn agroecological practices to cultivate ‘dawa lishe’: therapeutic and nutritious foods including amaranth, sweet potatoes, cowpeas, beans, black nightshade, okra, sugar cane, moringa, watercress and yams. They also cultivate fruit trees, including guava, pawpaw, sugarcane and passion fruit, and medicinal and aromatic herbs such as artemisia, rosemary, basil, rosella, lemon tea grass, neem, African marigold, wild sunflower, plumeria and aloe vera.
The garden is not just a place of learning; it’s a space of healing. Women regain their strength, both physically and mentally, and they develop new skills that become the foundation of new gardens and small businesses where they can sell the products they produce. To facilitate this multiplication of gardeners and gardens, TRMEGA supplies free inputs – such as local seeds –and offers trainings in organic composting, mulching, and the use of plant-based repellents.
Although there is great potential for scaling up this model by initiating healing gardens in other regions of Tanzania, financial constraints have made this challenging. Nonetheless, Helen continues to host ‘training of trainers’ sessions so that people around the country are educated to run these gardens.
Although many of the participants arrive in isolation and despair, they are empowered by learning the necessary skills for cultivating healthy food and medicinal herbs. By working collectively, they create strong support networks that help them to challenge the stigma of HIV/AIDS and restore their dignity. In Helen’s words, “We grow more than just food: we grow dignity, resilience, and a future where no one is left behind.”
The impact of this work is profound. Families that once faced food insecurity now enjoy nutritious meals. Women who once felt powerless now lead initiatives. Helen’s dream has shown that by centring care, empowerment and local knowledge, we can build resilient food systems that nourish and heal both people and the planet.
Authors: Reguli Damas Marandu is an agroecology officer with WWF Tanzania and the national coordinator of Slow Food in Tanzania. Cristina Laurenti is a researcher at Switzerland’s Research Institute of Organic Agriculture; she is also a board member of Agroecology Europe and a co-founder of RHEA, which aims to promote soil-human health.
A longer version of this story is available here. Contact: regulidamas@gmail.com
Short story 3
Food Pharmacy: Healthy food for patients in the Netherlands
Through the new Food Pharmacy initiative in the city of Rotterdam, the Netherlands, 40 patients with type 2 diabetes are receiving fresh, local and organic food boxes each week, as well as plant-based recipes, culinary workshops with chefs, and coaching from dietitians in their neighbourhoods.
Food Pharmacy is part of a 2025-2026 study in collaboration with the University of Rotterdam’s Erasmus Medical Centre, which is monitoring participants’ health. The nutrient density of carrots, potatoes and leafy greens is examined through the Soil2Guts research programme of Leiden University. We will receive the first results at the end of April 2025.
Being able to collect biomedical data shifts the approach of such initiatives from the social to the healthcare domain, offering high-impact possibilities
Our starting question was: How can we connect organic agriculture and healthcare at a system level? Our response was Food Pharmacy, with a mission to redirect some of the 700 billion euros spent annually on managing chronic disease in the European Union towards accelerating agroecology and regenerative land transitions. We aim to do this by increasing demand outside of the ‘premium product market’ for products grown using these practices.
Importantly, Food Pharmacy makes nutrient-dense local produce accessible to those who often have the fewest possibilities to consume it yet need it the most. For this reason, only people with type diabetes 2 and limited financial means were selected for this research. Despite being one of the first projects in the Netherlands and Europe to implement a ‘food-is-medicine’ approach rooted in the soil-human health connection, this is a widely used solution in the US.
The main challenge in running the Food Pharmacy is the lengthy and bureaucratic process of obtaining medical ethical clearance and gaining the trust of the local community to perform medical research. Additionally, securing funding for such a trial takes at least a year. Our recommendations for those who want to start a Food Pharmacy programme are to use the resources and proof that has already been generated in the US and to find an academic partner to help you arrange a medical study. Being able to collect biomedical data shifts the current approach of such initiatives from the social to the healthcare domain, offering high-impact possibilities for farmers and patients as well as systemic innovation.
Over the next two years, we will be working in partnership with various organisations to create a financial model with a municipality or province related to the outcomes of the Food Pharmacy. We will evaluate the health and economic benefits of the programme, and establish a financial mechanism that allows local governments to pay in advance for the health costs saved.
Author: Zuzanna Zielińska is an environmental nutritionist and co-founder of HarvestCare, a purpose-driven business facilitating food-as-medicine programmes. Contact: zuzanna@harvestcare.eu
Watch a video about Food Pharmacy’s work to connect soil health, nutrient density and human health.
Short story 4
Biodiverse gardens amidst rice monocultures foster nutrition security in India
Raichur, also known as the ‘Rice Bowl of Karnataka’, has long been a land of contrasts. Once a dryland, the region was transformed in the 1960s and 1970s by the Upper Krishna Project, which brought irrigation and new economic opportunities and a shift to cash crop monocultures like rice, cotton and sunflowers. However, this came at a cost. Native species of millet disappeared, soil and water were depleted, and malnutrition and anaemia persist today, especially among women and children.
Since the late 1980s, a remarkable change has reaffirmed the potential of agroecology even amidst monocultures. Together with families, our organisations have implemented biodiverse gardens – small backyard spaces of about 40 square meters that were previously vacant or used to dump waste – featuring a mix of vegetables, fruits, medicinal herbs, edible ‘weeds’ and pollinator-friendly plants. Medicinal herbs like holy basil, Mexican mint, heart-leaved moonseed and local varieties of spinach were specifically chosen to combat anaemia, malnutrition and other prevailing primary health care issues including the common cold, headaches and minor injuries.
Women find pride and purpose in using these spaces to nourish their families, generating income and reclaiming agency with every harvest
Despite the challenges of monoculture rice farming, convincing conventional farmers to adopt an agroecological approach in their backyard gardens was not easy. Rice monoculture farming is deeply entrenched. We started out by emphasising the health benefits of an increased use of medicinal herbs and a reduced reliance on chemicals, but the turning point came when we highlighted the savings associated with reduced primary health care costs related to anaemia. Slowly but surely, families began to recognise the immense potential of these gardens.
Over time, families found that they were saving up to $4.81 weekly on food expenses, and surplus produce increased household incomes by 30%. The initiative grew organically – more than 500 backyard gardens were established over the course of two years and the establishment of seed banks has empowered families to sustain the model.
These gardens are more than food sources. Butterflies and bees have returned, microclimates have improved, and the reliance on market-bought foods has decreased. Women find pride and purpose in using these spaces to nourish their families, generating income and reclaiming agency with every harvest.
In Raichur, although most farmers still earn their livelihoods from monocultures, these agroecological gardens stand as beacons of hope for the potential to address malnutrition, ecological degradation and unsustainable food systems around the world.
Authors: Nivedita Arumugasamy, Madhu R. Kolkar and Shivalingappa S. Ghanti work with the Biodiversity Collaborative in collaboration with Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment and Prarambha in India. Contact: nivedita.arumugasamy@atree.org
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This article is part of Issue 2-2025: Cultivating health and healing
