Tompkins Weekly, 12-13-23
By Katie Church
The Youth Farm Project is a local organization entering its 15th year. Since 2010, we have been mobilizing the next generation of leaders towards transformative actions for food sovereignty. Our programs encourage young people to build loving relationships with the land, themselves, and each other while growing nutrient rich food for the community. By providing free produce to neighborhood food pantries, we fortify local food and address food insecurity. The Youth Farm Project offers young people a sanctuary where they can feel free! Free to discuss real issues affecting us, free to connect to the land and to their own power. Our programs train the next generation of farmers, improve civic engagement, empower young activists, support mental health in young people and center the experiences of black and brown youth.
Our farming is centered in soil-healthy practices, which in turn are animal and human healthy practices. We acknowledge that these practices and techniques were born, developed, improved upon, and then stolen from indigenous communities. White colonial settlers adopted farming practices from the people who were already here, generations of Haundenosaunee farmers, and also appropriated the Haundeosaunee knowledge and skills.
The word “resilience” has been used so frequently in recent times. The awareness that existence as we know it is tenuous is burgeoning to the forefront, and in the scramble to preserve ourselves as humans, we are grasping at what could be possible. The Youth Farm Project sees sustainability and resiliency as an interactive process that includes the physical health of the soil, water, and forests, and the fabric of our communities and the systems that care for them.
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