Grow Food Northampton Land Justice Commitment

This statement is a commitment that will evolve as we work toward a just relationship with this land and our community.

This land that holds us, shelters us, and nourishes us, is a living being with dignity and agency. For thousands of years, Indigenous people cultivated a relationship with and relied upon this land to sustain their communities. European settlers’ genocide of Nonotuk, Nipmuck, and Pocumtuk people and the theft of their land has led to this moment in which we are now the stewards of this land. 

More broadly, European colonizers’ systems of capitalism and plantation agriculture – including here in New England – uprooted people from their homes and land in Africa, enslaved them, and stole their labor to build this nation’s industrialized food system. To this day, the national food system exploits the labor of people of color, is a central contributor to the climate crisis, and continues to force people off the land.

As its current land stewards, we have come to love this land that is the Grow Food Northampton Community Farm. To embrace our love, we must hold ourselves accountable for both past and present harms, including our ownership of the land. We must discern how to move into a just relationship with the land, the descendents of the Indigenous peoples and enslaved Africans, and migrant laborers who continue to be the backbone of – and exploited by – an unjust food system. 

As we explore land back and reparations, our work is to support people to re-establish their relationship with the land as a teacher, and place of nourishment and livelihood. Grounded in this land, we continue our work for a local food system that centers freedom, dignity, community, and sovereignty for all.