One Town’s Race for Sustainable Farming

Most of us know that the agriculture of the future will have to be sustainable. We can no longer afford the “conventional” ways of industrial agriculture: depleting soils, drenching crops with pesticides, and producing cheap but low-nutritional food. Now one town, Northampton, Massachusetts, has truly taken this notion to heart and is racing to purchase 117 acres of prime farmland to expand sustainable agriculture for its citizens. By all indicators, the project—called Grow Food Northampton—is set to succeed.

“Grow Food Northampton came about when we as citizens learned that the city was interested in buying a farm for the purpose of turning it into recreational fields,” Lilly Lombard, Grow Food Northampton board president, told Organic Connections. “We did some quick research and discovered that the land was prime farmland—which means that it grows the highest yield of food for the least amount of energy.”

The land was also historically significant: some of it had actually been communally farmed by abolitionist and women’s rights activist Sojourner Truth back in the 1840s, along with 210 members of the Northampton Association of Education and Industry.

“We brought all this information to the table and it helped to move the political process toward finding a compromise use of the land, and actually to increase the scope of the preservation project to include not only that farm but the neighboring farm,” Lombard said. “Instead of a 37-acre tug of war, it ended up resulting in a 185-acre preservation project that met everyone’s needs.”

Of those acres, 117 are now targeted for sustainable farming—if the land can be purchased in time. A non-profit land conservation organization called the Trust for Public Land routinely purchases such property to keep it from being developed, and then sells it to local interests to continue it. The Trust for Public Land has obtained the farmland but must sell it by January 31, 2011. The buyers? Grow Food Northampton.

“We have a purchase option with the Trust for Public Land to buy up to 117 acres,” Lombard explained. “We have to tell them by December 27 how much land we’re going to go for and put a deposit down on that land. And then we have to come to the table with all of the funds at closing on January 31, 2011. It’s wicked, wicked quick.”

Click here to read the rest of this story at Organic Connections Magazine.