Since our origins as a species, our food economy has been deeply connected and communal, initially through hunting and gathering, and later through agriculture. Thus, building a resilient local food system in the present day must be focused on members of the community each playing a role they have carved out for themselves and then coming together to share the burdens and rewards of that work. The Ujamaa Bartering Market centers on the latter of these by bringing together Black growers in East Knoxville to share abundances and build tighter relationships within the community through a gift economy, opening a path away from the prevailing money-based economy. We’ll present on the development of the Ujamaa Bartering  Market and other cooperative economic models and invite everyone to brainstorm how cooperative economics might look across our greater region.