CRRP-Grow Food Northampton
Grow Food Northampton’s mission is to promote food security by advancing sustainable agriculture in the Northampton, Massachusetts area.
November 22, 2019
Grow Food Northampton appreciates the opportunity to submit these comments on the draft Northampton Climate Resilience and Regeneration Plan (NCRRP). In general, the plan is comprehensive
in scope but short on specific strategies for implementation, with many instances of plans to make plans. We believe this plan will remain an abstraction without the inclusion of specific
targets, metrics, and evaluation strategies. We are also concerned that the City’s stated goal of carbon neutrality by 2050 is not adequate to address the urgent climate emergency,
in which drastic cuts to emissions must occur in the next ten years to sustain any hope of avoiding the most dire climate-tipping scenarios.
We would like to see concrete activities and the commitment to strategic partnerships spelled out in this report. Grow Food Northampton sees ourselves as a key partner in Northampton’s
work to build climate resilience; in that spirit, we offer the following proposals to foster a more resilient and just local food system:
Increase local food production:
Promote more local food production through home gardening and community gardening.
Create more opportunities for “help yourself” gardens or other forms of public access gardens and food forests.
Support development of community kitchens that can support small entrepreneurs, and offer opportunities for community residents to learn food preparation and preservation skills.
Develop school/community gardens that function as teaching and learning spaces during the school year, and that are cared for by local residents who will benefit from the produce during
the summer.
Increase use of, and access to, local food
Continue to support and grow Northampton’s robust Farmer’s Market and CSA scene by increasing access to city land, promoting the markets, and reaching out to residents to ensure that
they are aware of SNAP and HIP subsidies that increase their buying power and support local farmers at these venues.
Create supports and incentives for government agencies, schools, churches, and businesses and other institutions to use local food as much as possible.
Foster access to land by food growers:
Assess available open land for possible agricultural use that is congruent with the goals of this plan.
Develop supports, incentives and opportunities for new farmers to acquire land.
Promote sustainable land care practices:
Sustainable land care adds to pollinator health and diversity that is critical for our local food system.
Encourage/incentivize homeowners and homeowner associations to transform lawns into food gardens, meadows, pollinator habitats, or native plant gardens. This can reduce or end the use
of polluting leaf-blowers and lawn mowers, and other unsustainable and damaging practices and products that harm native species.
Manage disturbed land threatened by non-native species that threaten to overwhelm food-producing land.
Commit to sustainable, organic methods to care for public land.
Engage in productive conservation: Grow Food Northampton, Sawmill Farm and the Regenerative Design Group planted elderberry along a section of the Mill River. Elderberry is an underutilized
crop that can stabilize floodplain soils and be processed into several value-added products. This is an attempt to develop cost-effective methods of establishing farm-scale elderberry
plantings by addressing the four main costs: weed suppression, fertilizer, irrigation and labor. If successful, these projects will provide regional farmers with perennial models that
are economically and ecologically sustainable.
Offer educational opportunities: Supported by a state earmark, Grow Food Northampton provides workshops and field trips to K-3 public school students in Northampton. Kids learn where
the food comes from, and learn skills to both grow food and prepare dishes using local, sustainably grown produce. Many adults in our community would benefit from the same opportunity.
Grow Food Northampton can envision many fun and productive strategies to bring folks together to learn about local food and the local food system.
Build community. One of the most powerful lessons in starting a community garden is that staking the plots and preparing the land is the easy part, and building community is the most
important part. Community Gardens are microcosms of cooperation, support, information and skill-sharing, and cooperation around local food that could be a useful model for this plan.
We see many opportunities in the plan for grass-roots participation and collaboration by neighbors at the block and neighborhood level, within local institutions like schools and churches,
as well as in the community at large.
Decolonize the food system. Our current corporate food system is rooted in a capitalist paradigm that privileges those with wealth and access, and punishes those without it. This system
is built on the labor of poor people, often people of color, and on land stolen from indigenous people. It is a system rooted in profit for a few, not health or community well-being.
It reduces biodiversity and employs methods with among the highest carbon footprints of any industry, leading to many negative health impacts, especially for those who work in that
system. It is a system that has erased the knowledge, skills, histories and cultures of people who farmed local land in ways that maintained the health of people and the environment.
Food justice and environmental justice are inextricably linked. Our hope is that the City of Northampton will center the voices of those who are most marginalized and harmed by climate
change.
Thank you for the opportunity to comment on this draft plan. Grow Food Northampton looks forward to the opportunity to partner with the City of Northampton in the work of building climate
resilience in the Pioneer Valley.
Pat James
Interim Executive Director, Grow Food Northampton
413-320-4799 EXT 103
pat@growfoodnorthampton.com