May Change for Change: Grow Food Northampton

Grow Food Northampton's (GFN's) mission is to create a just and resilient local food and farming system that nourishes our community and protects and enriches the earth. GFN's core values are racial, economic, and environmental justice. They work along a public health continuum to both respond to the immediate needs of community members grappling with food insecurity, and create long-term, foundational solutions for the local food system.

Grow Food Northampton believes in food sovereignty for all: a local food system in which every member of our community has access to nutrient-dense local foods, the dignity to choose one’s own food, the ability to grow one’s own food and the agency and power to participate in the local food system with a sense of shared community, care for one another, celebration, and joy.

Grow Food Northampton's three core components of programming are: food access; land access and stewardship; and community education. Specifically, GFN:

• Dismantles oppressive systems in our local food system and shifts power to community members marginalized and harmed by the industrialized food system;

• Provides access to nutritious, affordable, and culturally relevant local food to ALL members of our community through our weekly, year-round farmers markets, SNAP Match program, and their Free Mobile Farmers Market that distributes free local farm food to community members grappling with food insecurity;

• Mentors and assists residents of low-income housing to grow their own food in 11 community gardens adjacent to where they live;

• Stewards and offers prime organic farmland on the GFN Community Farm to community gardeners and farmers, prioritizing farmers of color, to grow food for themselves and the community; and

• Provides all-age learners with diverse food, gardening, and farming education opportunities focused on understanding our shared role as stakeholders in caring for land and waterways, for each other, and for ourselves in growing and eating nourishing food.

Click here to learn more about Grow Food Northampton: https://www.growfoodnorthampton.org/