Growing a Coalition
By Brett Otis, Green Beverly Project Manager and Coordinator of the North Shore Farm & Food Coalition
When I moved to Beverly in August 2021, my involvement with local food primarily revolved around Monday farmers market visits. Little did I know that just a few years later (thanks to Green Beverly) I’d be connected and actively collaborating with an incredible group of dedicated people working daily to improve our local food system!
That group is the North Shore Farm & Food Coalition (NSFFC), whose mission is to build collaboration among food, farming, educational, and municipal partners to help identify and develop regional opportunities and actions for expanded food production capacity, increased local food security, and reduced carbon emissions.
NSFFC members on a tour of New Entry Sustainable Farming Project, June 2023.
Formed in late 2022 with funding from a USDA Urban Agriculture and Innovative Production Planning Project Grant, the scope of work focused on five communities (Beverly, Danvers, Lynn, Peabody, Salem) and was guided by three broad objectives:
Examine local food production to identify opportunities and challenges to expanding urban agriculture.
Identify and integrate key stakeholders in the research, planning, and feasibility assessment process.
Develop opportunities for urban agriculture and local food production projects.
With over 15 organizations and/or municipal representatives already indicating interest through letters of support for the grant’s application, the funded project just needed someone to lead coordination.
As luck would have it, I’d recently learned about Green Beverly and was interested in getting involved…though the opportunity was admittedly more than I had in mind. Not that it wasn’t of interest (after all, I received my master’s degree a few years earlier focusing on food systems and healthy/sustainable communities), but I worried about giving the time the project deserved outside my full-time job. However, once I met the people who came to the table to form the NSFFC—learning about their efforts and hearing their goals for improving food production and access—I had a good feeling this project would be worth some evening and weekend time.
Fast forward a few years, a couple dozen meetings, brainstorming sessions, knowledge sharing, community events, and hours of research, planning, and resource creation, I’m happy to confirm it was indeed, worth it. To see for yourself, check out the NSFFC Planning Project Summary Report which offers a recap of our activities to date.
To share just a few highlights from our four NSFFC Working Groups -
Growing Spaces: An inventory of existing community gardens, farms, food forests, and other growing spaces, as well as an interactive map identifying underutilized parcels of land that could be transformed into future growing spaces.
Community Engagement: Survey results from over 400 community members about their preferences for, and access to, local food and culturally-comfortable foods, as well as their interest in growing food on their own, or working in the local food system (agriculture or other food sector jobs).
Business and Transportation: Integration with mobile market efforts, and an exploration of infrastructure needs for improved aggregation, processing, and distribution of food.
Policy: Alignment with Massachusetts Food System Collaborative-identified legislative priorities and supporting (through community and stakeholder education and calls-to-action) bills that would benefit our food system throughout the state.
Tying it all together was the Green Beverly-led Cabot Community Conversation event to unpack our local food system and understand how we all have a role to play in its improvement. If you missed it, check out the full recording of this creative, educational, and immersive production.
Encouragingly, we heard several attendees proclaim a new commitment to local food sourcing, gardening, or composting based on what they learned at the event; and a farming coalition member even reported about a dozen new CSA registrations as a result. It was such a fulfilling capstone experience to the two-year planning project.
Although our initial funding period has ended, in many ways we’re just getting started. We’re actively seeking new grants and support to sustain this work, and transition from planning to implementation. We look forward to building upon our research and insights to help meet the needs of our region and develop opportunities for urban agriculture and local food production.
In the meantime, the good news is that NSFFC members report finding value in our networking, sharing, and connecting, and plan to continue their participation. We’re even onboarding new members from outside the initial five municipalities (if you or your organization is interested in getting involved, please let me know!). Together we built a coalition of people and organizations already working tirelessly to improve our local food system, who are now investing extra time and effort to collaborate and move forward together. I’m sure the NSFFC will grow and evolve, but I’m confident that whatever shape it takes, this interconnected people-powered approach will contribute to a better food future–one so eloquently described by Robin Wall Kimmerer:
“Intentional communities of mutual self-reliance and reciprocity are the wave of the future, and their currency is sharing. The move toward a local food economy is not just about freshness and food miles and carbon footprints and soil organic matter. It is all of those things, but it’s also about the deeply human desire for connection, to be in reciprocity with the gifts that are given you.”
So, thank you to all the community members who answered our surveys, participated in project activities, and shared their valuable insights, stories, and experiences. And a special thanks to the following coalition members and friends for their active collaboration during the planning project period: Oliver Aries, Beth Bahret, Alex Berg, Dean Berg, Matt Buchanan, Robyn Burns, Giuliana Cappucci, Ajay Chatha, Paul Crofts, Christina Frei, Kim Gregory, Norris Guscott, Abby Hardy-Moss, James Harrison, Jennifer Hashley, CJ Hughes, Sam Hunt, Teegan Innis, Katie Irelan, Chris LaPointe, Mike Lilley, Julia Long, Jeanette McGinn, Wayne Miller, Kerry Murphy, Christina Olson-Berg, Joshua Quirk, Niamh Rollins, Kirstin Skyrm, Rebecca Smalley, Miriam Stason, Madison Tetens, Andy Varela, and John Wang.
Let’s keep growing!
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