Farm and Conservation Land for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color Self Determination and Sovereignty in Rural Massachusetts

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Commodities

Practices

• Education and Training: on-farm/ranch research, technical assistance
• Sustainable Communities: community development, community planning, community services, ethnic differences/cultural and demographic change, infrastructure analysis, partnerships, public policy, quality of life, sustainability measures

Issue:

(a). Nearly 97% of farmland ownership or farmers in MA identify as white and the majority of these lands are held in trusts, conservation, nonprofits and land-grant institutions that are also majority white owned/operated.

(b.) BIPOC farmland in rural MA is nearly non-existent due to the generational legacy of land displacement and systems of government sanctioned land possession in MA.  As a result, BIPOC communities have been extremely marginalized in our ability to access both land and funding to contribute to sustainable agriculture, research and educational landscape in ways that honor our self determination and/or sovereignty. 

Objective:

(a) Over a 2 year timeframe, The Farm School, a nonprofit in central MA, NEFOC LT and Mt. Grace LT will participate in research geared to name, define and articulate the organizational, state and federal policies and practices within their organization that have contributed to/ have maintained the current racial demographic breakdown of farmland ownership in rural MA.  A timeline will be developed in order to implement a variety of policies and practices devoted to outcomes that lead to BIPOC owned farmland/land access and land transfers. 

(b) Funding for research dedicated towards incentives leading to greater land access and land transfers to BIPOC farmers/non-profits is an essential first step to: 1. Leveling the playing field  2. Create a greater allocations of NESARE resources to a broader demographic of racial, ethnic and cultural recipients and 3. Move beyond such a narrow demographic pool of sustainable agriculture, research and education contributors.

Objective: Over a 2 year timeframe,

(a) The Farm School, a nonprofit in central MA, NEFOC LT, Mt. Grace LT and East Quabbin LT will participate in research geared to name, define and articulate the organizational, state and federal policies and practices within their organization that have contributed to/ have maintained the current racial demographic breakdown of farmland ownership in rural MA.  A timeline will be developed in order to implement a variety of policies and practices devoted to outcomes that lead to BIPOC owned farmland/land access and land transfers. 

(b) BIPOC participants have been marginlized from grants and resources like NESARE, largely due to the fact that access to permanent and long term access to land in MA is near nonexistent. As an essential first step to attaining a greater distribution of grants and resources allocated to BIPOC recipients, this project and similar projects of research dedicated towards initiatives leading to land access and land transfers to BIPOC farmers/non-profit recipients will help activate pathways to free the space and let go of policies that block BIPOC access so that BIPOC communities can take a permeant seat shaping the sustainable agriculture, research and education indicatives of the future.