Several area farms in MOFGA s new Maine Organic Marketplace in Freeport sunjournal.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from sunjournal.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The Great Recession gave rise to an innovative model for meeting Maine’s food needs with local resources. The number of residents experiencing hunger had grown markedly by 2010 just as donations of shelf-stable foods declined due to increased efficiencies in the grocery trade.
After importing travel-weary produce from farms out West, Good Shepherd Food Bank attempted to meet the growing demand with supply from struggling Maine farmers. Kristen Miale, who now leads Good Shepherd, recalled that the food bank’s staff then “did something incredibly smart; they approached farmers to ask, ‘How can we design this so it works for you?’”
Owners of New Roots Cooperative Farm in Lewiston have been awarded two grants aimed at tackling systemic racism in Maine, bringing the farmers closer to their goal of owning the land they farm.
New Roots is a Somali Bantu-led cooperative farm that s been in operation since 2016, and sells produce both wholesale and retail to the Lewiston-Auburn community and in southern Maine. A $50,000 grant from the Elmina B. Sewall Foundation to the farm is part of the foundation’s emergency Twin Pandemic grant program, aimed at the disproportionate impact that COVID-19 and systemic racism have had on Maine’s communities, particularly Black, Indigenous and People of Color.