KEEPERS OF THE FIELD COLLECTIVE
Worker-led food systems built to last.
Keepers of the Field Collective is a growing network, comprising three interconnected organizations working on national food access, farmworker rights, and relational food systems education.
What We Do
We grow food, protect workers, and build the knowledge base needed to sustain food-sovereign communities. Our three organizations operate together under shared fiscal infrastructure, which means lower overhead and tighter coordination.
Our Membership
Our Impact
Together, the Keepers of the Field Collective reaches communities across Colorado, across the country, and in over a dozen countries through shared programming and digital infrastructure.
Why This Model
Every tree needs healthy roots before it can grow branches or a canopy. FrontLine Farming is the root system of the Keepers of the Field Collective, the fiscal and operational anchor that holds everything else up.
From that foundation, Project Protect extends like branches through Colorado's agricultural landscape, circulating resources and support to farmworkers across six regions. And otherWise spreads like a canopy, drawing in new energy through education and sending knowledge outward to practitioners around the world.
This structure keeps overhead low and keeps every part of the collective close to the communities it serves. It also means your investment can move across scales. A grant to FrontLine Farming can support urban farm operations in Denver, the statewide worker advocacy network, or free education resources reaching people in over a dozen countries. We are transparent about how that works and glad to align funding to your priorities.
Who Leads This Work
The broader collective is led by practitioners with deep roots in food justice, agroecology, and community organizing. Staff across all three organizations reflect the communities they serve.
Fatuma Emmad, MA
Fatuma Emmad is the CO-Founder, Executive Director and Head Farmer of FrontLine Farming. She serves as President of Mile High Farmers and is a Co Convener for Project Protect Food Systems Workers. She is a lecturer in the Masters for Environmental Studies Program at CU Boulder. Before becoming a farmer, Fatuma was a political scientist who engaged in issues affecting farming communities such as the push for genetically modified seeds across Southern and Eastern Africa.
Damien Thompson, PhD
Damien Thompson, PhD the Co-Founder and Director of the Center for Food Justice and Health Communities. He also is the Sustainable Food Systems Specialization Lead for CU Boulder’s Masters of the Environment Program. In addition to his training in anthropology, Dr. Thompson also holds a certification in Permaculture Design, an Advanced Permaculture Design certification and a 200-hour Yoga Alliance Teaching Certification.
Nicole Civita, JD, LL.M
Nicole Civita is the founding Executive Director of otherWise. She has spent over a decade teaching and leading at universities including the University of Colorado Boulder, Johns Hopkins, and Sterling College, and has worked on food waste, agricultural revitalization, and farmworker justice efforts across the country. She is the co-author of Feeding Each Other (Collective Ink, 2023) and the founder of EcoGather, a global learning network that eventually grew into otherWise.
Connect with Us
Fill out our funder interest form to tell us about your giving priorities. We will follow up with information specific to your program area.
For the contact section, please ensure all team email addresses are properly linked
Or reach Fatuma directly: fatuma@frontlinefarming.org