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Date: 8/16/2022
NORTHAMPTON – Grow Food Northampton and American Resilience Project hosted a film screening and panel discussion on Aug. 5 to talk about ways in which state and federal governments could better support farms, farmers, and sustainable farming.
The free event included a screening of Roger Sorkin’s new film “Farm Free or Die,” which advocates for transformative agricultural policies that improve farming livelihoods and address the climate crisis. The film follows the stories of farmers on the front line of severe economic and environmental adversity with the hopes of “catalyzing the support for policies that stabilize rural communities, strengthen food security and incentivize soil health and carbon removal.” Additionally, the film analyzes how regenerative agriculture can improve food system resilience against the climate crisis.
Sorkin is the film’s creator and founder of the American Resilience Project, a nonprofit that makes film and media tools to influence public policy behavior and improve civic engagement.
Congressman Jim McGovern, state Sen. Jo Comerford, and Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra gave remarks before the movie, and then a panel discussion moderated by Lilly Lombard, the founding board president of Grow Food Northampton, was conducted afterward. The panel featured Sorkin, Comerford, and Grow Food Northampton Vice President Gaby Immerman.
“We all need to fight for regenerative agriculture,” said Sciarra. “It’s a critically important component in mitigating the climate crisis.”
Regenerative agriculture is a conservation and rehabilitation approach to food and farming systems that focuses on topsoil regeneration, increasing biodiversity, improving the water cycle, enhancing ecosystem, increasing resilience to climate change, and strengthening the health and vitality of farm soil.
Sciarra said that it was important for everyone to come together to talk about the “critical importance” of a “robust” and “resilient” food system at every level, including the local level. “Every member of every community deserves access to fresh, nutrient-filled, local farm-grown food,” said Sciarra. “Especially those who are experiencing food insecurity.”
The local level
“I actually just wanted to cry at the beauty that Grow Food Northampton has brought to our community,” said Comerford.
Sciarra showed equal gratitude toward the work Grow Food has done over the years since its inception over a decade ago. “I think about how much Grow Food has grown,” said Sciarra. “Not just into a fabulous organization, but truly a critical source of food access in our community with programs that are near and dear to my heart.”
According to Immerman, more than half of the carbon that is in the atmosphere now has been emitted in the last 30 years. “Since human beings understood the mess we’re making, we have created a problem, which is now mitigable, but not reversible,” Immerman said. “It’s time for us to all be thinking about what we can do to build, not just mitigation, but also how are we going to build systems to get through the changes that we brought onto ourselves.”
Immerman said that one flaw in the movement for regenerative agriculture is that often it never credits indigenous people for developing the principles of the movement. There is also very little acknowledgment of the harms the system has done to communities of color.
“Regenerative agriculture wouldn’t be necessary if we hadn’t erased and displaced the indigenous people who were stewarding that land all along,” said Immerman. “We can’t heal the land without healing the trauma that was caused to the people that belonged to that land.”
To combat the climate crisis and continue the movement of regenerative agriculture, Grow Food Northampton’s mission is to create a “just and resilient local food system that nourishes [the] community and protects and enriches the Earth.” Their goal is to make sure everyone in the community has access to fresh, local, nutrient-dense food, but they also participate in land access work by leasing their 121-acre community farm to 10 small farms who otherwise would not have access to farmland due to cost restrictions.
Additionally, they also operate a Giving Garden that grows thousands of pounds of food annually for donation to local food pantries and community meal sites; conduct collaborative research projects with academics and others on sustainable and climate resilience-enhancing agricultural practices; and
provide extensive land- and food-based educational programming for children and adults.
Grow Food Northampton also conducts the Community Food Distribution Project that supports local farms by buying their produce and delivering it to community members experiencing food insecurity while also conducting healthy food knowledge and nutrition programming; owns and produces vibrant year-round farmers markets that offer over 30 local farms and other food vendors a venue to connect directly with customers; and runs a SNAP (Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program) Match program to more than double the spending power of SNAP recipients on nutritious local farm products at our farmers markets.
They also offer heavily subsidized Community Supported Agriculture shares to SNAP recipients so they can receive weekly farm-fresh vegetables from Crimson and Clover, the “anchor farm” on the Grow Food Northampton Community Farm; and ensure that all of their food access programming is guided and steered by our Food Access Advisory Committee and participant-staffers, individuals with lived experience of food insecurity.
“Thank you to everybody involved with Grow Food Northampton,” said McGovern. “You feed hungry people, you can serve our land, you support our local farmers and you educate our next generation. Our regional food system is stronger because of the work all of you do.”
The state level
According to Comerford, 168 Massachusetts state legislators have said that one of their major priorities is food system well-being. Comerford – who serves on the Food Policy Council and Food Security Task Force and is the co-chair of the state’s Food System Caucus – said that Massachusetts is one of the most expensive places to make ends meet on a farm.
“I know that empirically from looking at data; I also know it from the stories I heard from many food advocates and the farmers,” said Comerford. “Our farmers lose money every single year … they’re losing money because the price of fertilizer, the price of oil, the price of gas, the price of everything is higher in Massachusetts.”
To better support sustainable farming, Comerford spoke about the Massachusetts Healthy Soil program, which will help the state help farmers complete low and no-till farming practices. This was one of the first bills Comerford passed. “We’re also, for the first time in the commonwealth’s history, counting carbon,” said Comerford. “We put, for the first time, carbon sequestration into Mass. General Law through a provision I filed in the climate bill.”
According to Comerford, the provision found that the state is losing carbon in their soil, and to mitigate this issue, the Healthy Soil Program will increase carbon sequestration, which is the process of capturing and storing carbon dioxide to help reduce the effects of global climate change.
Comerford also spoke of targeted spending, like the Food Security Infrastructure Grant to address the capital needs farmers face on the daily basis, as well as an equity bill currently with the Economic Development Council that addresses the disproportionate economic affects farmers of color face.
“People of color make up 20 percent of the commonwealth and 3 percent of the farmers,” said Comerford. “They actually yield .2 percent of the economic yield. That’s not okay. We’re missing something massive here.”
Comerford said the state is also working on a policy that would prevent non-contiguous farmland from being taxed commercially. Non-contiguous farmland is land that is under one ownership and physically separated from one another by land in a different ownership. “We’re battling that in policy,” she said. “We’re not done, but we have to [battle] so farmers can make ends meet.”
Additionally, Comerford said that the state is working on policy to help microbusiness farmers, and there is also a bill involving no net loss that will help pay farmers to sequester carbon and pay forest owners to keep their trees alive, among other provisions. Comerford said this bill will be introduced next session.
“Right now in Massachusetts, we don’t have a Massachusetts Emergency Management Program for farmers and landowners after they deal with storms,” added Comerford. “We just have to know that the rains are going to come, or there’s going to be drought, or there’s going to be mold. We have to be there through the hard times.”
The federal level
“Fighting climate change is about protecting access to food; it’s about building resilient local food systems and changing the way we farm,” said McGovern. “All of that is incredibly important.”
As of press time, the Inflation Reduction Act, which was recently passed by U.S. Senate Democrats, will be up for vote in the House. The bill aims to curb inflation by reducing the country’s deficit, lowering drug prescription prices, and investing in domestic energy production while promoting clean energy solutions. The bill indicates $370 billion out of the $739 billion authorized with go toward climate change.
“Investments made by this legislation will help ease the burden of adopting soil practices that are good for the land and good for farming operations,” said McGovern. “This is the first step to building resilient food systems across the country to help protect planet and bolster our food supply.”
McGovern said he will also be working with the community over the next year to help pass the Farm Bill, which will also help fight the climate crisis by expansion of conservation programs, among other things.
Additionally, the White House will host a Conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Health this September, which will accelerate progress and drive significant change to end hunger, improve nutrition and physical activity, reduce diet-related disease, and close the disparities around them. It will be the first conference of this nature since 1969.
“We live in the richest country in the history of the world, yet 40 million of our fellow citizens don’t know where their next meal is going to come from,” said McGovern. “As a citizen, I’m ashamed of that fact. Hunger is a political condition.”
To learn more about Grow Food Northampton’s initiatives, visit https://www.growfoodnorthampton.org/. To watch Sorkin’s film, visit https://www.amresproject.org/farm-free-or-die.