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Date: 7/25/2023
NORTHAMPTON — Floods across the commonwealth over the past couple of weeks have left indelible marks on farms and their current livelihood.
As of July 17, around 75 farms across central and Western Mass. have been affected by the floods, including more than 2,000 acres of land.
One of those farms affected, Grow Food Northampton, is feeling the weight of the recent devastation after the Mill River jumped its banks on both sides of the organization’s Community Farm on the morning of July 10.
The Mill River reached 14 feet when it overflowed onto the farm, and it brought about 4 to 5 feet of water.
Grow Food’s Community Farm, the largest community farm in Massachusetts, features land that is mostly leased to farmers from communities marginalized and harmed by the conventional food system and industrial agriculture. According to Grow Food’s website, this land can be leased for time periods from 1 to 99 years.
According to Alisa Klein, Grow Food’s executive director, the flooding on July 10 impacted eight of their 10 farms. Two of them lost crops completely, while the other six lost between 20% and 80% of their crops.
Additionally, 300 of Grow Food Community Garden’s 325 plots were heavily wounded during the flooding. According to Grow Food’s website, the garden is typically a place for community members to have their own garden plot so they can grow their food organically.
Grow Food’s Giving Garden, where 9,000 pounds of organic produce is fostered for donation to food pantries and community meal sites was also destroyed, according to Klein.
“That was a mix of perennial and annual crops, things like garlic and strawberries and asparagus...we’ve lost the plants that would produce for many years,” Klein said, of the Giving Garden.
A lot of infrastructure was ruined, too, according to Klein. Water pumps were completely lost, and irrigation systems were irreparably damaged.
“There’s probably close to a million dollars in loss between crops and infrastructure,” Klein said.
Additional rainfall on July 16 caused the Mill River to reach a height of 12 feet, and more water seeped onto Grow Food’s Community Farm, but not to the extent of what occurred on July 10.
The aftermath of the flooding is being felt in a multitude of ways. Aside from the Community Farm and Garden, Grow Food also operates other programs including a free mobile farmers’ market, and a Tuesday farmer’s market behind Thornes’ Marketplace. There is also general day-to-day maintenance that must be addressed, too.
With the flooding though, Klein said her staff has been 100% focused on recovery efforts, meaning everyone is “stretched thin” at this point. She added that the majority of the staff is essentially working double time trying to balance recovery efforts with day-to-day activities.
“Everybody has to step up and provide immediate emergency needs and it takes people away from what they’re doing on a day-to-day basis,” Klein said. “Our food access staff that does the free mobile farmers markets to low-income housing has been working double time because they’re coming to the farm to do clean up and then they’re going out and doing the mobile markets.”
Klein said that Grow Food is continuing its programs like the Tuesday market and the food access programming for low-income housing, but the stress levels on the staff are incredibly high at the moment.
“I have two grants to do in the next two weeks, and I haven’t been able to write the grant proposal,” Klein said. “So, it just means that all of our focus and energy has been going towards the emergency relief piece as opposed to everything else we need to do to keep the organization going.”
According to Klein, the road to recovery is happening in two major ways. Firstly, she said Grow Food is asking people to sign up and volunteer for work parties to assist with clean up, which they can do on the Grow Food website.
The organization also set up a recovery relief fund with hopes of raising $100,000 for specific priorities. According to Klein, the money will help supply farmers to rebuild and make their farms more resilient in future flooding. The recovery funds will also go toward food-insecure gardeners that lost all the plants that they grow.
“We will be helping out food insecure gardeners with funds so that they can purchase local food from other farms that weren’t affected by the flood,” Klein said. “They really rely on the food that they grow for sustenance for themselves and their families.”
Klein said that any money left over will be used to replace infrastructure that was lost and build better buffer zones so the water does not erode the banks like it did during the flood.
One of the farms leasing on the Grow Food Community Farm, the New Family Community Farming Cooperative, also started its own GoFundMe page to help their Somali Bantu farmers recover from the flood.
According to their website, the NFCFC encompasses a group of Somali Bantu farmers from Springfield and Connecticut that sells to underrepresented communities to help them have access to healthy foods like fruit and vegetables. They conduct two farmers markets in Springfield and West Springfield.
“The timing of the flood was inconvenient and devastating, as most of the crops farmers planted were a few days/weeks away from being harvested and sold at farmers markets in two low-income neighborhoods in Springfield and West Springfield,” reads the GoFundMe. “The value of the crops is immeasurable, as farmers engage in labor-intensive farming with no to minimal machinery, and travel over 20-plus miles to their farm sites weekly.”
The NFCFC has a goal of raising $30,000 to help supplement the farmers’ lost income and help prepare them for the next growing season. As of July 21, over $18,000 has been raised.
Aside from those efforts, Grow Food, as well as other farms, are hoping to secure relief funding from the state.
On July 20, the Healey-Driscoll administration announced the creation of the Massachusetts Farm Resiliency Fund, which is a partnership between philanthropic organizations and private foundations intended to support Western and central Mass. farms impacted by recent flooding and strengthen farm resiliency in the long term.
“As someone who sees the devastating impacts of the recent flooding every day, I am extremely grateful for the quick efforts of the Healey-Driscoll Administration and the United Way of Central Massachusetts to put the Massachusetts Farm Resiliency Fund in place,” said state Sen. Jo Comerford (D-Northampton). “We must continue to take concrete steps to help the farmers who so desperately need our quick action and sustained efforts to help in their recovery, and so I am continuing to work closely with the senate president and Senate Ways and Means to include additional significant funding for farm relief in the coming days.”
Readers can donate to Grow Food’s relief fund by visiting the fund’s website: https://givebutter.com/gfnfloodrelief?. Readers may also visit the Grow Food general website to sign up and help volunteer for cleanup: https://www.growfoodnorthampton.org/ways-to-help-with-flood-recovery/.
Lastly, readers can also help the NFCFC with their own efforts by visiting their GoFundMe page: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-somali-bantu-farmers-recover-from-flooding.