Southside Community Land Trust

Left to right, Executive Director Margaret DeVos, Senator Jack Reed, City Farm Steward Rich Pederson, Board President Rochelle Lee, and Administrative Manager Tammy Kim at City Farm’s EAT event, June 2024

Introduced in the 2024 legislative session by Senator Jack Reed, the EAT (Expanding Access To) Local Foods Act builds on a successful model that benefits RI food producers and consumers alike. At a June visit to SCLT’s City Farm, the Senator addressed a coalition of local food systems stakeholders. “The EAT Local Foods Act would strengthen our regional food system and help local farmers and fishers put delicious and healthy food on more tables while growing their markets. It’s a win-win,” said Reed. The bill would create a perennial grant program for state and tribal governments to procure local foods for distribution to nearby hunger relief programs, leveraging government purchasing power to support local economic development, build resilient local food systems, and combat food insecurity.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the USDA created the Local Food Purchase Cooperative Agreement (LFPA) grant program and provided $900 million for food purchasing efforts, helping to strengthen local and regional food systems across the country. RI has seen over $740,000 in LFPA funds invested into the local food economy, with 58% going directly to historically underserved producers. This includes $190,000 paid to farmers in the SCLT network in 2023 alone, fueling our Produce Aggregation and Veggie Rx programs which regularly delivered free produce to 9,750 food insecure households last year.

Farmer Sienna Viette of Open Farms Retreat said LFPA “has not only provided access to fresh, locally-grown produce for [our] community, but also increased our resiliency as a small farm by providing a stable source of income throughout the growing season.” Indeed, the EAT Local Foods Act aims to codify LFPA’s positives, as Viette notes. “The EAT Local Foods Act would permanently provide funding to ensure small farms such as ours will continue delivering fresh foods to community members who have the least access to them.”

Nine farmers and gardeners in SCLT’s network recently completed a six-week Technology Basics course, gaining practical skills to help navigate daily digital life. This training series was made possible through a partnership with the Providence Public Library (PPL), which supplied a laptop for each participant and instructors who could give focused support to learners.

SCLT hosted the sessions in the community training space at our 404 Broad Street Healthy Food Hub in Providence. From late January to early March 2024, learners gathered once per week for two to three hours. Sessions covered online essentials like security practices and scam recognition, website navigation, account setup, and email basics. Designed for our growers, participants also learned about reliable places to shop for farm and garden supplies online and what the typical ordering process entails.

SCLT staff were led by Administrative Manager Tammy Kim and Urban Edge Farm Manager Ben Torpey. The opportunity was widely promoted to our network of over 40 farmers and nearly 400 community gardeners. In the neighborhoods where SCLT works, 50% of residents speak a language other than English at home. And 34 different languages are spoken on our properties. Meanwhile, most resources to build digital skills are available exclusively in English. Tammy and Ben arranged for interpreters so the program could help non-English speakers overcome two barriers – tech literacy and English literacy.

Because of the success of our pilot partnership, SCLT hopes to again work with PPL to bring this equitable and accessible programming to more of our neighbors.

Beginning farmers using farm tools to improve the quality of soil and the produce they grow.

The nearly 400 growers in SCLT’s community gardens network will get a boost this spring, thanks to a farm tool grant from the Southern New England Farmers of Color Collaborative (SNEFCC). The organization brings together stakeholders who want to increase the success of beginning farmers of color across the region’s six states. For the last three years, SNEFCC has made grants that aim to support these farmers in developing the skills, resources, and capabilities needed to build and sustain successful farm enterprises.

Approaching his first anniversary as SCLT’s Community Gardens Network Associate, Blong Yang authored the successful proposal for the tool stipend.  The award will enable Blong and Community Gardens Network Director Andrew Cook to purchase close to $5,000 in tools like rakes, shovels, loppers, digging forks, and rototillers. These have been identified as the top needs on an ever-evolving wishlist of resources requested by gardeners whose produce feeds their families and their communities.

In 2023, food grown by SCLT farmers and gardeners ended up on the plates of over 23,250 people, at least 97% of whom live in low-income communities where fresh, healthy, and delicious food is hard to find and harder to afford. An average of 32% of residents in the communities we serve live in low-access census tracts, meaning they live more than a mile from a source of fresh food. Outside our garden walls, the fresh foods commonly available are not culturally familiar to the people living in these communities, where 32% of residents were born outside of the US. The small and urban growers in our network and across the state are vital to meeting the needs of our food-insecure neighbors.

This year’s SNEFCC Tool Stipend grant was particularly competitive, and SCLT is grateful to have been a recipient. SNEFCC makes these stipends available as part of a grant awarded by the USDA’s Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program (BFRDP). SCLT is a past and current recipient of BFRDP grants. We’ve used the funds, among other purposes, to fuel our Farm Apprentice program. Apprentices are beginning farmers who are matched with an experienced farmer – often someone they already know – and are compensated for participating in an immersive and unique career readiness curriculum that includes linguistically appropriate agricultural business management training. In 2024, with our BFRDP funding and with support from the SNEFCC stipend, we’ll continue to support seven Apprentices who participated in the program last year, all of whom identify as people of color.

Gratefully, this stipend alleviates some of the tool needs for the hundreds of people working the land in SCLT’s 22 gardens across Providence, Pawtucket, and Central Falls. However, the need for shareable, reliable, well-maintained tools remains an ongoing issue for our network of growers. Check out our Resource Wishlist and consider making a donation of your new or gently used tools to support the work of our growers.

Properties & Equipment Coordinator Dan Roberts (left) and Community Garden Network Associate Blong Yang survey a successful bed rebuild while Food System Intern Frank Jolifier prepares the next.

Backed by our Burnett Community Garden and neighbored by residences and an elementary school, Greenwich Garden this winter received its first major facelift since SCLT established the green space in 2011. Led by Andrew Cook, Community Garden Network Director, and Blong Yang, Garden Network Associate, the project brought together SCLT staff, Greenwich gardeners, and volunteers from partner organizations who got their hands dirty to help make important improvements to the busy garden.

Twenty gardeners cultivate 38 plots at Greenwich Garden. A majority of them live within walking distance, by design. Greenwich’s gardeners are mainly individuals and families, with a few who sell their produce at local markets. In the garden, you’ll hear Swahili, Kirundi, and French spoken. The Garden Network team worked with Marie Uwera to develop the project. Uwera has served as Garden Leader since its 2011. With a network of 22 community gardens in the Providence, Pawtucket, and Central Falls area, the team maintains an active priority list of projects and is kept busy addressing them throughout the year.

Some garden bed walls had been replaced here and there through the years, but after more than a decade of piecemeal patches, the garden’s years were showing. The goals in the remodel were many. Eliminating redundant pathways between plots increases plantable space. It also means fewer bed edges to maintain, meaning the project is less expense in the long run. Before the revamp, walking paths disrupted the distance between beds and barrier fences; now, gardeners can plant climbing plants and use the fences to trellis their growth. The project is climate smart, too, with the design shown to provide better temperature modulation and improved water retention.

Lending a hand to Andrew and Blong, several other SCLT staff picked up shovels and pitched in. We owe special thanks to volunteers from UNFI, who weren’t afraid to dive into the project, helping with everything from hauling lumber to weed whacking. Youth Staff from SCLT’s Pawtucket Youth Program spent a shift clearing the site and readying it for the coming growing season.

Interested in a plot? Read more about our Community Gardens program.

We bid farewell to Jenny Boone, longtime Grants & Communications Manager, in December as she embarked on two exciting and intertwined adventures: grandmotherhood and retirement. For the last eight years, Jenny has been deeply committed to the mission of the organization. A gifted writer and caring colleague, Jenny joined a much smaller SCLT team than the one she left. One of six staff in 2015, she used her many talents to steward funding that helped to sustain and grow the organization over the years into the multiprogram, 24-member staff team it is today.

In her newly free time, Jenny will be working to complete requirements to earn Master Gardener certification. The Rare & Unusual Plant Sale was what brought Jenny to SCLT years before joining our staff, and we are so grateful that she’ll be lending a hand for this spring’s 32nd annual sale. Best wishes and stay in touch, Jenny!

On the solid foundation Jenny leaves behind, we’ve made some exciting changes to our Advancement team early in 2024.

In January, SCLT welcomed Marcel De Los Santos to the role of Grants & Communications Manager. Marcel brings 15 years of development experience, including grants management, multimedia communications, and stakeholder engagement. With a particular passion for food security and a record of working with diverse audiences, Marcel is committed to developing opportunities for others. Marcel supervises SCLT’s Federal Grants Coordinator Grace Feisthamel and Grants & Communications Coordinator Sam Shepherd; both joined in early 2023.

Josselyn Velásquez-Florián, who has served as SCLT’s Development Coordinator for the previous three seasons, has accepted the position of Development Director. Informed by her two decades of nonprofit experience, Josselyn looks to deepen our connections to community, diversify the organization’s membership, and support the continuous improvement of SCLT’s programs and services.

Development Director for the last decade, Shana Santow has moved into the role of Senior Philanthropy Advisor. Shana will strengthen her longstanding relationships with corporate and private supporters and build new partnerships with mission-aligned collaborators to help advance SCLT’s work across the state.

Margarita Pons (right) harvests beans with husband Teo on their plot at SCLT’s Urban Edge Farm, one of several sites the pair farms in small scale, including their yard in South Providence.

We need your to help change tax relief programs for farms in Rhode Island. They were written over 30 years ago and prioritize midsized and large scale agricultural operations while leaving out the small and urban farmers who are vital to our local food system. Put simply, larger agricultural producers are eligible for certain tax exemptions. But these benefits do not exist for the more than 250 community gardens, urban, or small farms in operation in our state today, many of which are operated by low-income farmers of color.

The state has set goals to increase local agricultural production and land conservation. Agricultural tax relief programs, as currently designed, do not accomplish these goals. Including small and urban farms will support them to meet critical community needs like economic opportunity, nutrition security, and education.

The Rhode Island Food Policy Council‘s 2024 legislative agenda focuses on addressing this inequity with the Small & Urban Farmer Success bill. The bill proposes farms working less than five acres and earning less than $3,000 in annual income are eligible for tax breaks designed specifically to support their operations. SCLT has been central to this effort, spearheaded by Food Access Associate Amelia Lopez, who works with farmers, gardeners, community partners, and legislators to bring attention to the disparities facing small and urban farmers. SCLT heads to the State House on March 28, 2 to 4:30pm, for the RIFPC’s first annual Advocacy Day to highlight this bill.

While these proposed incentives would have minimal impact on the state’s tax revenue, they would significantly – and positively – affect farmers’ abilities to invest in their farm businesses and, in turn, building resilience in our food system.

Click to read more about the RIFPC’s 2024 legislative agenda and learn how you can get involved in the movement to support small and urban farmers in our state.

SIGN THE LETTER to RI Senate President Dominick Ruggerio and Speaker of the House Joe Shekarchi and encourage them to secure tax relief for local farmers in 2024.