Harvesting for Seed: Questions of Land & Liberation
A Community Farm’s Parting Gift to the Movement
Over the past decade, Grassroots International built up a special relationship with Movement Ground Farm (MGF), a land-based project based in Rhode Island working at the intersection of food, justice, access, and healing. MGF brought together a cross-section of BIPOC-led social justice organizations, which served as Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) distribution sites throughout Boston and Providence. Grassroots International was among the distribution sites in the farm’s early years, with a number of staff members continuing on as CSA members and supporters of the farm.
The relationship between Grassroots International and MGF was deeply reciprocal, giving our staff members an opportunity to engage locally in the work of food system transformation that the organization supports more broadly, while building meaningful global linkages for MGF. As one MGF member reflected, “For MGF, being a working farm really tied us to our locality and made it challenging to reach out to connect to broader movements. Connection to Grassroots International allowed us to learn more about and feel connected to peasant movements in the Global South…”
Movement Ground Farm envisioned a community organizing model where food and land could become anchors of sustainability, retreat, and connection for community organizers and social justice networks and organizations – and worked tirelessly over a decade to put this vision into practice. While we are saddened by the news of Movement Ground Farm’s closure and sunset, we would like to amplify the beautiful gift they are giving back to the movement: Harvesting for Seed: Questions of Land & Liberation, MGF’s lessons about power, collectivity and land ownership. The intention behind this gift is perhaps best captured in this line from it: “We believe that endings have the ability to honor the work, the compost of one organization creating soil for the next.”
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