Spread World PEAS

On Thursday Neenah and I attended the New Entry Sustainable Farm Tour in Dracut, Massachusetts. The tour was arranged by World PEAS (People Enhancing Agricultural Sustainability). We and about 100 other curious visitors were invited to see how the New Entry Sustainable Farming Project trains people with limited resources who have an interest in small-scale commercial agriculture, to begin farming in Massachusetts AND to see how the food that the World PEAS CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) sells is grown. This is the second year that Neenah and I have been members of the World PEAS CSA and it was quite exciting to meet the people who grow our veggies and to see how the whole operation works.

We visited two working farms where a number of current trainees manage acre-sized plots (an acre is A LOT of land) to grow a variety of crops for market, to learn how to grow food organically, and to prepare to get their own commercial farms up and running. It was a beautiful day to be out - sunny, mild and dry. Of course, the nice weather belied the struggles the farmers have had with this year's unusually wet weather. Large areas of the farms were unusable because they were still too wet. Worse, the outbreak of late blight has devastated this season's tomato crop, especially for organic farmers. Nevertheless, the farmers we met were happy to share their experiences and answer questions.

The farmers we met with were a testament to the breadth of this program:

• A group of young people from inner city Lowell who are part of UTEC (United Teen Quality Center), a safe-haven program for youth development and grass-roots organizing. Teens involved in the UTEC Fresh Roots Program grow and cook healthy food to feed and educate their community. This group manages a two-acre organic vegetable plot in Dracut and a commercial kitchen in downtown Lowell. THEY DO COMMERCIAL CATERING for anyone in the Merrimack Valley. In fact, they prepared a full buffet for our visit, using the food they had grown, and it was incredible.
• Bill the farmer, an affable man and quick to laugh. When asked how he had come to the New Entry program, he said, "Through the unemployment office." He was out of work and needed to change directions. Now he's preparing a business plan for his own farm. He provided us with a bumper crop of peppers this season, and was one of the very few organic farmers to actually get red tomatoes!
• Adisson from Haiti. Adisson is a trained agronomist with experience in managing coops. He and his teenage daughter are growing a variety of vegetables with the idea of going back to Haiti to teach others how to grow food without pesticides.
• A Korean woman who already has a full time job and but manages her farm on the weekends.
• A number of farmers from southeast Asia who are experimenting with ways to grow tropical crops in Massachusetts.

The New Entry program and the World PEAS Coop represent a remarkably progressive approach to sustainable and socially just agriculture. Their goal is to advance local, organic agriculture by helping small scale farming operations by immigrants and others of modest means succeed. This is more than just environmentally friendly agriculture; it is a program to help empower otherwise marginalized people to help themselves and others.