Tucked into the maze of Mattapan and its concrete and blacktop urban infrastructure lies an unexpected block, brimming with plants and vegetation like green-oblong bitter melon, or the leafy, hearty callaloo.
Among the power lines and tightly quartered houses sits a massive greenhouse lined with squash and veggies hanging from the ceiling. A 19th century house hugs the raised beds where gardeners diligently tend plots on this crisp fall Boston morning.
The Urban Farming Institute aims to provide communities with the produce they need. Lillian Bonilla-Reyes, the volunteer and education coordinator at UFI, explained that they grow produce often used in Asian, African, and Caribbean dishes. They also grow okra, bok choy, and more, all of which they sell on Fridays at a farmstand where community members can buy produce.
The uniqueness of the model allows for plants that are not commercially prioritized to be distributed to patrons. The UFI even has a paw paw tree, which is the largest fruit grown in North America. It produces massive, custardy, tropical fruit, but is difficult to store and sell in grocery stores due to its lack of shelf stability.
Bridging gaps in food access
These days, a site like that which UFI tends to is increasingly common, with many urban farms and gardens springing up around the city, aiming to help people learn to grow plants. Many of these projects also have their own distribution models, whether that involves selling produce or giving it away.
Importantly, a lot of these farms and gardens are in immigrant communities with histories of redlining and racialized policies that have created today’s disparate food environment. When people of color are forced into certain sections of the city, Bonilla-Reyes said “there are not many intentional resources for those people to be able to access fresh foods or nourishing foods.” UFI, she added, “was founded on the basis that everyone deserves access to fresh food, and to know where your food is coming from.”
According to a 2021 Metro Boston survey by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, “The Boston metro region imports 90% of its food from outside the region.” Those numbers are reflected in the situation on the ground. For example, Morgan Barlin, the director of the Produce for the People program at Eastie Farm, explained that there is only one full-service supermarket serving 60,000 residents in East Boston.
And it’s not just the volume of the food or where it comes from. People in these places also struggle with finding crops that are important to their cultural traditions, so in addition to struggling to find food close to home, many immigrant and BIPOC communities struggle to find the right fresh, nutritious, and affordable crops to use in family recipes.
Kate Brown, a writer, historian, and professor at MIT, explained the impact and importance of community gardens and farms on immigrant communities. “It’s a way to exchange and feel like your culture is seen and heard,” she said. “It’s a way for people who are far from home to feel more at home.”
Culturally relevant produce
To address so many barriers, Produce for the People at Eastie Farm distributes bags of seasonal produce to community members across a sliding scale. Some people pay nothing for these weekly or bi-weekly supplies, while others donate what they can. The program connects the community to local farms, mostly within 100 miles of Boston, and deliberately tries to source produce for community members that is relevant to their cultures.
“A good portion of our free discounted shares are for immigrants, especially for folks who can’t get SNAP due to their documentation status,” Barlin said.
Eastie Farm organizers often survey populations they serve, asking what produce is favored. They also educate community members about the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and the Healthy Incentives Program that allows SNAP beneficiaries to match purchases from local farms or CSAs up to a certain amount monthly.
This means that people can purchase these food bags from Eastie Farm and then get all, or at least part of the cost matched under SNAP, which can make a huge impact, Barlin explained.
Democracy from the ground up
Like at Eastie Farm, the Boston Food Forest Coalition is restoring what its members call “food sovereignty” to residents of Dorchester, Mattapan, and parts of Jamaica Plain. Their approach is focused on teaching residents how to garden and grow their own food, as a means of taking the production and distribution of food back into the community’s hands.
“What we’re trying to do is rebuild what is everyone’s birthright, which is connection to the land and to growing your own food in community with each other,” BFFC Communications Manager Abbey Cahill said. “Part of what we do is just bring people into the process of growing food together.”
BFFC Executive director Orion Kriegman calls this work “rebuilding our atrophied democracy muscles.” Cahill said it teaches people how to work together toward a common goal by using communication skills. These gardens, they explained, also foster common-goal orientation and organization that is often lacking in most densely populated American cities.
“When people come together in gardens, they know each other,” Brown said. “They’re pissed because of the new zoning, or high-end real estate built in their neighborhood, so now they’re already together in the garden. … Now they can mobilize and create communication networks. They have each other.”
