‘Soil Syndicate’ wants more people to see waste as a resource

A coalition of urban farmers, educators, and environmental advocates are working to transform food scraps into fertile soil and community strength.

Project Sweetie Pie and KilimoMax Solutions hosted the launch of the Soil Syndicate on Saturday, Aug. 23, at Oak Park Neighborhood Center in North Minneapolis. The event showcased composting techniques and invited residents to join a citywide movement to reduce waste and build healthier soils.

The Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders, a flagship program of the U.S. Government’s Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI), brings emerging leaders from Sub-Saharan Africa to the United States for academic and leadership training. Among this year’s fellows is Alexandron Msigala, founder of KilimoMax Solutions, who said his agricultural advocacy work in Tanzania naturally connected him to the soil beds of Minneapolis.

“The fellowship aligned perfectly with the work I do back home: building capacity and empowering youth and women in agriculture,” Msigala said.

In Tanzania, Msigala partners with the Ministry of Agriculture on a program called “Building a Better Tomorrow,” which links young people and women farmers with land, financial resources, and technical skills. He said his placement in Minneapolis felt like a natural extension of that work because of the parallels with Project Sweetie Pie’s mission.

“Our goal here is to inspire communities across the Twin Cities to see waste as a resource and join the movement for healthier soils and stronger local food systems,” he said. “We showcased backyard bin composting, vermicomposting with worms, and black soldier fly composting.”

Victoria Downey, a geography instructor at Anoka-Ramsey Community College, said she hoped the demonstrations showed residents how simple composting can be. “I was super excited that there’s an opportunity to show how easy it is to get started,” Downey said. 

“I do vegetable scraps, coffee grounds and eggshells, but we also have multiple streams of organic recycling. It’s important that people understand the system and how to act within it…especially in urban communities, where that empowerment has been removed.”

For Jeffrey Mejia, a summer intern with Project Sweetie Pie, the effort represents both environmental stewardship and personal growth. Mejia helped plan the event alongside Msigala, who introduced him to composting with black soldier flies.

“It’s something that everybody can do at home,” Mejia said. “The reason why it’s important for North Minneapolis is because there needs to be more effort in giving back to the earth. People are wondering what to do… This gives them something.”

Johnny Rowland, another Project Sweetie Pie intern, said the program’s importance goes beyond soil health. “As Black people, we’re really disillusioned with nature and agriculture because of historical trauma,” Rowland said. 

“What we do is reintroduce our community to these traditions through the youth. It’s an opportunity to decolonize that frame of thinking by showing them the tradition behind it and giving them broader examples of people who are spearheading agriculture, so they don’t just think of slavery whenever they see the land.”

Alongside composting, city officials highlighted another soil-boosting method: biochar. Jim Doten, carbon sequestration program manager for the City of Minneapolis, said the city is building a biochar facility near the University of Minnesota to repurpose waste wood from utilities and park systems.

“These are trees cut down due to disease or storm damage, so no worries, no healthy trees,” Doten said. “Instead of burning the waste, we convert it into biochar, which is stable for hundreds to thousands of years. It sequesters carbon and makes an amazing soil amendment.”

Doten said the city hopes to make biochar more accessible for residents, particularly in environmental justice communities, and has partnered with groups like Project Sweetie Pie to apply it in urban agriculture projects. 

“Urban soils are typically depleted,” he said. “Biochar brings them back to life by improving soil health, drought resilience, and food production. We see it as a way to reduce health disparities by improving access to healthy food.”

Project Sweetie Pie, founded in 2010 to advocate for North High School when it faced closure, has since grown into a nonprofit incubator for urban farming, horticulture, and green business creation. With the Soil Syndicate, organizers hope to build a network of composters, growers, artists, educators and neighbors who see soil restoration as both an environmental and social justice effort.

The free kickoff event ran from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., giving attendees a chance to learn, connect, and share ideas on composting, biochar, and local food resilience.

For more information, visit www.projectsweetiepie.org.

Jasmine McBride welcomes reader responses at jmcbride@spokesman-recorder.com.