Who We Are

The Landless Farmers started with a simple idea: how do we help people without space to garden grow their own food and have agency over what they eat?

Inspired by the work of the Gangsta Gardener, Ron Finley, Kate (they/she) and Nicole (she/her) created the Landless Farmers to share their love for growing their own food. As two apartment dwellers growing food on rental plots at the local community garden, they have learned ways to grow beautiful food with little to no land. They hope through the Landless Farmers to spread ideas and knowledge on how everyone can do the same thing. Through empowering communities to create beautiful gardens rooted in permaculture principles, they hope to form more resilient communities who have agency over what they eat. They hope to teach their community new ways to look at food: to make the act of growing food an act of love and celebration, while recognizing that none of us are experts and we can all learn from one another.

Through sharing zines, art, and other knowledge they hope we can step outside of capitalism and empower every community to heal the land we live on and create beautiful gardens that will feed us all.

Our mission

Empowering communities to grow and access nutritious food through education, art, and community gardening.

Our vision

One day we hope to see food systems rooted in a sustainable, symbiotic community. We want to be true allies in food justice, to see a world where everyone in our community has agency in the food they eat, how it’s grown, and is connected to the community that grew it. Where the act of eating is joyful, fun, stress-free, and celebrated because it naturally supports our community needs. Our vision is to find the joy in all of this through art, storytelling, and sharing our passions. This should be fun and from the heart. This isn’t work - it is living.

Our values

  • The cultivation of food systems that provide healthy, affordable, accessible and sustainably grown food for all while dismantling the structural barriers to these human rights.

  • Symbiosis [greek]: living together; companionship.

    How food is grown and distributed equally benefits the environment and its community members.

  • Each unique individual is seen, celebrated, and heard within a space of solidarity and belonging.

  • Learning how to grow food to create sustainable and just food systems while also incorporating the unlearning involved in order to dismantle our current unsustainable and unjust food system.

  • Each individual has the education, tools, ideas, support and self-worth to grow their own food, or have a voice and say in how their food is grown.

Meet the Team

Kate and Nicole met in 2022 working together at a foodbank. Immediately, they both realized their shared passions for gardening and creating community. Together they worked to come up with the Landless Farmers.


  • Founder (They/She)

    Kate is a young professional within the nonprofit sector who’s passionate about outdoor education and combatting food insecurity with youth. They have worked teaching youth groups how to use regenerative farming practices to grow food together. She has her own community garden plot on the Northside of Madison Wisconsin where she tries new farming techniques and let their creativity flourish. When not gardening they love to roller skate and take their dog for hiking and kayaking adventures.


  • Founder (She/Her)

    Nicole’s passion for sustainable food systems began while she was teaching English in South VietNam. She experienced the beautiful chaos of the local farmers markets and a community whose “hello” was to basically ask “hey, have you eaten yet?” Prior to that, she never really had much of a relationship to food. After coming back to the states, her curiosity took her to interning on an organic CSA farm, studying permaculture design in Guatemala, becoming deeply fascinated by the restaurant industry, and currently contemplating community while working at a foodbank. She practices her love of sustainable systems at her community garden plot. Outside of that, you’ll probably find her enjoying a beer at a local bar while studying (you guessed it) plants, outside hiking and slowly learning to identify plants, or enjoying time at home with her partner.