10forTen-7
Day 7 – Farm Bill “Green Lines” — Shifting the Conversation
Dear friends,
As we celebrate ten years of shared leadership, today we look back at a moment shaped by partnership, curiosity, and the courage to ask a different question.
In 2018, while many faith-based organizations rightly focused on hunger and nutrition programs in the Farm Bill, UUSJ volunteers and partners — including the late Lavona Grow, a beloved UUSJ leader — asked:
Where can we have the most impact? What if faith groups also took the environmental dimensions of the Farm Bill as seriously?
Working with Lavona and other partners, Pablo and UUSJ helped elevate sustainability, champion programs like EQIP, and began to articulate “green lines” — shared expectations for environmental stewardship. By 2023–2024, more and more advocates were using that language.
This is part of our origin story: changing conversations, not just reacting to them.
And so today, in addition to celebrating Pablo, we honor Lavona’s legacy and the volunteers and partners who continue to build on it.
Who Was Lavona Grow?
Lavona Grow was a longtime UUSJ leader and organizational pioneer whose clarity, curiosity, and commitment to justice shaped our advocacy for more than a decade. She served as Board Chair, led the Advocacy Program, coordinated the Capitol Hill Advocacy Corps, and helped build UUSJ’s national Write Here! Write Now! letter-writing campaign.
Lavona brought deep experience from her decades of congressional engagement with the American Association of University Women (AAUW) Capitol Hill Lobby Corps, where she volunteered as a lobbyist beginning in 1986. She was known for her strategic insight, her steady moral voice, and her ability to help volunteers feel confident and grounded in their UU values.
Her leadership strengthened UUSJ in many ways. Strategically, she championed the move to “go national” and become a small but mighty UU federal ministry. Tactically, she had a knack for seeing around the corner — recognizing the Farm Bill not only as a hunger bill, but also as a climate and environmental?justice bill. That insight helped shift how many faith groups approached sustainability and conservation.
Lavona’s legacy continues through the UUSJ Lavona Grow Fund, established in 2026 to support UUSJ’s path forward and ensure her spirit of bold, grounded, justice-driven leadership remains part of our future.
This unrestricted fund strengthens UUSJ’s capacity for:
- national advocacy
- coalition building
- environmental justice work
- training and equipping UU advocates
- strategic initiatives that build a stronger UU justice movement
The Fund ensures that Lavona’s spirit — bold, grounded, justice-driven — continues to shape UUSJ’s future. <<add a button for Contribute to Lavona Grow Fund which will hopefully be an option on the donation page?>
What Is the Farm Bill — and Why Does It Matter?
The Farm Bill is a major piece of federal legislation passed roughly every five years. It shapes:
- nutrition programs (like SNAP)
- crop supports and commodity programs
- conservation and environmental quality
- rural development
- local and regional food systems
While many faith groups have historically focused on hunger and nutrition, the Farm Bill also contains critical environmental provisions, including:
- EQIP (Environmental Quality Incentives Program)
- CSP (Conservation Stewardship Program)
- soil health and water protection measures
- climate resilience and sustainable agriculture investments
These programs directly affect frontline communities, farmers, ecosystems, and long-term climate goals.
By encouraging faith groups to take these environmental dimensions seriously, UUSJ helped broaden the moral conversation around the Farm Bill — connecting food justice, climate justice, and environmental justice in a unified framework.