Three months after the death of their leader, a local nonprofit is moving forward.

In July 2022, the leader of Memphis Tilth, 49-year-old Mia Madison, died in a car crash.

Memphis Tilth operates three local gardens and aggregates food from more than 20 farmers within 150 miles of Memphis; the farmers’ produce is sold in community-supported agriculture (CSA) bundles to individuals, restaurants and institutions in Memphis. This subscription-based service is known as Bring It Food Hub.

Mia Madison, executive director of Memphis Tilth, dies in car crash

The organization was preparing to merge with For The Kingdom (FTK) — a Christian community center and social services organization — when Madison died.

“I talked to Mia Friday (July 8). We were talking about how to draw up the agreement, the research that we need from Memphis Tilth,” said Torrey Bates, the executive director of For The Kingdom and now Memphis Tilth. “We were moving forward. Then Monday morning, I get the call, and I hang up the phone, like, ‘You got bad information.’”

Madison, to her colleagues, family and community, was more than an asset.

“She was an example of the importance of an individual, that you can make a difference,” said Corie Walker, operations manager of Memphis Tilth. “The joy of pushing the boulder up the mountain, the joy in getting that little step further — she embodied that.”

Madison, a North Memphis native, worked as a geographer for the U.S. Census Bureau before coming to Memphis Tilth in June 2019, four years after the organization’s founding. With her, she brought a history of grassroots work she had amassed, including at the Chelsea Avenue Farmers Market. 

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According to her coworkers, Madison wove a network of stakeholders and community members into a symbiotic force for community improvement.

“She was a tour de force in connecting the spaces,” Walker said. “That was Mia. We needed someone able to talk to a farmer one day, then attend a United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) meeting the next. She could go through those worlds so seamlessly, and I think that’s what really made the Tilth work come to life.”

Madison’s directorship of Memphis Tilth led the organization into a new era of “collective action,” as Walker describes it, culminating connections with farmers and government figures from her various former careers into partnerships for the nonprofit. Madison’s work, Walker said, has succeeded in supporting local agriculture while making fresh, local produce more accessible to urbanites.

“In order to support local food, you have to support local farmers. In order to support local farmers, you have to support the local environment.

“You get a better quality product that’s more nutritious. We distribute weekly, so it goes from field to table quickly, cutting the supply chain.”

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Madison was also passionate about self-driven learning; she helped spearhead several agriculture education initiatives, called Urban Agriculture Academy. Its five-week introductory course is designed to immerse children and adults in the urban farming and sustainability industry.

But Madison’s sudden death halted her work abruptly and left her team uncertain about the future of Memphis Tilth.

“We’ve had a tumultuous year after losing Mia,” Walker said. “It was hard to keep operations going. How do you prepare for the loss of someone so integral to every single part of your organization?”

After Madison died, Bring It Food Hub took a two-week hiatus to allow the team, which included her mother, Ada Binion, to bereave her. But there wasn’t much time to idle.

“The week she died, we sent out our Bring It Food Hub bags to our members, because (Mia) wouldn’t have wanted the food waste,” Walker said.

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Walker said that, even in their attempts to keep business as usual, the outpouring of support for Memphis Tilth in the wake of their loss was unprecedented:

“Everyone was so supportive and understanding and really have been so loving. It actually felt like a community dealing with a loss — not just a service provider and client dealing with logistics. They really had patience and grace for us during this tragedy.”

In the spirit of Madison’s determination, a new chapter for Memphis Tilth has been emerging from the ashes of its loss.

In 2020, For The Kingdom launched a program called “Feed The Block” with the intention of addressing food-deserted and disenfranchised communities throughout Raleigh. 

“We started with meals,” Bates said. “Out of meals, we started thinking about how we could acquire land throughout Raleigh and Frayser that could be fit for agriculture.”

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Once Bates and Madison were connected through a mutual contact, the two leaders immediately saw a parallel alignment between each organization’s mission.

“Eight months ago, Mia and I connected, and it became an immediate bond,” Bates said. “I know now that it was almost like she was passing me her baton. She stood in my backyard during that initial tour and was like, ‘I’m supposed to be here with you.’”

Not long after their decision to merge — and relocate Memphis Tilth’s Suzette Street headquarters to FTK’s Raleigh location — Madison was gone. But for Bates, the legacy she left behind came with schematics for its future.

“For us, it’s a no-brainer. It makes it hard doing it without her, but she left us a plan,” he said.

When asked how he will carry on the legacy Madison left behind, Bates said:

“The repairing of the breach has to do with being able to grow local. We purchased, in December, 24 acres for the development of what we call an ‘agri-hub,’ directly across the street. It’s the blend of agriculture and barrier-free housing for families, children and those who have aged out of foster care.”

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Memphis Tilth has made some more immediate tweaks to improve the efficiency and efficacy of its largest project, Bring It Food Hub.

“We recognized that there were some cracks in our infrastructure. We were spending more on each bag than we were making,” Bates said of the CSA subscription. “Due to the hard work of Crys Riles (new Bring It Food Hub manager), they were able to assist us with reassessing what goes in our bags.”

Bates said that the Food Hub will also offer free delivery of CSA bags to their customers through DoorDash, a move that will conserve the bandwidth of the staff, as well as bridge access to the subscription service to those without transportation.

As Memphis Tilth and For The Kingdom open a new chapter as one entity, their leadership hopes to build upon the foundation that’s been laid and to keep Madison alive through the expansion of her vision.

“Sometimes grief causes us to catch our breath — it’s so real,” Walker said. “We have so much love for Mia; it’s hard to see all the fruits of her labor without her. I try to hold onto the good parts of my grief — my memories, how she made me feel, her energy, her tenacity, her bravery, her humor, the little moments and let go of the hurt parts; it’s still a process — and we try to honor that process together.”