‘We can’t wait for corporations to provide food for us’
Danielle Guerin farms three plots of land in Indianapolis with her Soul Food Project, and seeks to teach kids the craft and help solve food deserts.
Robert Scheer, Indianapolis Star
Danielle Guerin is in the business of growing.
Over the past eight years, her Indianapolis-based nonprofit and Soul Food Project has grown leaders, community and, of course, food.
The urban farm spans 2 acres scattered across four sites in Irvington, Martindale-Brightwood and United Northeast. Across the city, Guerin teaches young people, apprentices aspiring farmers and trains adults in the field of sustainable agriculture.
She’s also spent these years building food security across Indianapolis, feeding nearby communities through farmers markets, food pantries and CSAs.
There is paperwork to be done and funding to apply for, but Guerin is still outside almost every day, working the farm.
She’s the only full-time farmer at Soul Food Project right now — federal funding freezes, cuts and delays destabilized the nonprofit’s usual operations. This year, Soul Food Project had to suspend its apprenticeship program.
We drove out to one of the Soul Food Project farms in August to learn how she’s navigating the uncertainty. Her answers are edited for brevity and clarity.
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What is an issue in your field that keeps you up at night?
We’ve had a rough season this year just because of all the federal funding stuff. The way executive orders have been coming down have been causing a lot of chaos in the nonprofit field at the moment. Not just for us, but everywhere.
There are pauses in federal funding payments and there have been delays, so when you’re a nonprofit relying on that money it causes a lot of stress and uncertainty because you don’t know if it is coming or not. And it’s been that way all summer. We’ve had to make some tough decisions when it comes to our labor.
There have been times where I thought, ‘Is this it for us, are we going to be calling it quits because we can’t survive this administration?’
What makes you proud to work in your field?
The impact.
What keeps me going is the impact we’re having when it comes to people who are eating the food we are growing, and the stories we are hearing of people trying new foods and just knowing they have access to food they normally wouldn’t have had access to.
We go to the pantries and deliver to the seniors, and they are excited about what we’re doing. The next day they might come in with the food that they cooked — with our food — and give it to us to eat.
The community we’re building makes me happy and proud to be in our field right now.
What advice or encouragement would you give someone who might not be interested in the outdoors?
I wasn’t when I first started. I was a city girl.
I was not raised on a farm, I grew up in Indy and lived here in the city. When I first started in the outdoor world of farming, it was not my skillset or my “thing.” I was very much a girl who liked getting her nails done.
But I think the first step is going to a farmers market and just getting out there, meeting the farmers and knowing where your food comes from.
My brother isn’t an outdoor person whatsoever, but he still supports and understands what it takes to get our food from the ground to our table.
Even if you don’t want to be out in a garden or outside getting dirty, just understanding where your food comes from is a strong step.
What is your favorite environmental fun fact?
I don’t know why I get so much enjoyment from showing this video. Purdue University made this video a long time ago and it’s called Hornworm Meets Alien.
Tomato horn worms are a pest, but there are some wasps that are beneficial. Wasps lay eggs on the worm and they pupate inside the worm and they hatch out of their skin.
By the time you see the white sacs (cocoons) on the worm, the worm is already dead. The larvae feed off of the worm then hatch and continue the process.
IndyStar’s environmental reporting project is made possible through the generous support of the nonprofit Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust.
Sophie Hartley is an IndyStar environment reporter. You can reach her at sophie.hartley@indystar.com or on X at @sophienhartley.
Dining and Cooking