Sustainable Agriculture is the practice of growing food in a way that preserves and enhances the environment, provides economic opportunity and good health for individuals and communities, and connects people to the land around them.  It generally avoids chemical pesticides and long-distance travel, striving instead to create fresh, healthy produce for local consumption.  Sustainable Agriculture focuses on both processes and produce.  It’s about the systems that create our food—who grows it, where, and how—as much as it is about the food itself.

The Food Project strives to create personal and social change through Sustainable Agriculture.  We farm in a way that grows the best possible food, and grows the next generation of youth leaders along with it.  Please read on to find out how.


Suburban Agriculture
The Food Project Rural Farm is currently operated on thirty-one acres of conservation land approximately 15 miles outside of Boston, in the town of Lincoln, Massachusetts.  Twenty-seven acres of this are available for vegetable production and the remaining four acres include a composting area, greenhouse, tractor storage area, irrigation pond, and our CSA distribution area. Operation of this site is made possible through a continuing partnership with the Town of Lincoln's Conservation Commision and resident support.

Urban Agriculture
In Boston, we grow on 3 pieces of land in the city's Dudley neighborhood and manage a rooftop production garden at the Boston Medical Center.  The Dudley neighborhood pieces are all within a few blocks of each other and of our urban office.  West Cottage is our largest urban site at 1.4 acres.  On Langdon Street, we grow on .6 acres. Our Albion site is 3,000 square feet and the Rooftop Garden covers 6,000 square feet. Operation of these sites is made possible through continuing partnerships with the City of Boston, the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI), community residents and the Boston Area Health Education Center (BAHEC).

Urban Education and Outreach
Through our public education programs we remediate lead-contamined gardens and mentor backyard gardeners in providing safe, delicious, and healthy food for their families.

Hunger Relief
We deliver our produce to four distribution streams: a Community Supported Agriculture program (CSA), two Farmers’ Markets, internal distribution and shelters and soup kitchens. Through distributing our produce we aim to increase the accessibility of locally grown, healthy produce in the Greater Boston Area.

CRAFT
The Food Project helped launch an agricultural training program for apprentices, interns, and workers on farms in the Eastern Massachusetts area.

Links to Sustainable Agriculture Resources
There are thousands of great resources online. We have focused on mostly regional links.