October Harvest

The leaves are turning and the light is shifting--sure signs of the season. As we settle into shorter days and cooler temperatures, we’re adding a lot of these books from Food Tank’s Fall Reading List to our own. We’d love to know what’s on your fall reading list, too! Drop us a line at outreach@mainefarmlandtrust.org with your recommendations!

READ

Through his work with the I-Collective, Neftali Duran is using indigenous wisdom to educate eaters and address food inequity. “If there is something positive that we can take out of this whole pandemic, it is that we have to work on local food movements. To make sure that they are an intrinsic, essential part of what the food system looks like going forward.

We have to be able to support small farmers, new farmers of color, Indigenous farmers. We have to be able to provide loans and land grants for farmers of color all across the country.”-Civil Eats

Already at risk of COVID-19, America’s farmworkers labor through climate change-fueled wildfires, facing smoke, fire and heat hazards. In the San Joaquin Valley, “hundreds of thousands of men and women continue to pluck, weed, and pack produce for the nation, as temperatures soar into the triple digits for days at a time and the air turns to a soup of dust and smoke, stirred with pollution from truck tailpipes and chemicals sprayed on the fields…” -Civil Eats & The New York Times

Mainers experienced hazy, smoky skies due to the western wildfires, a reminder that we’re all connected, even thousands of miles apart. Climate change has impacted Maine farms this summer, too. Most of the state is currently experiencing severe drought conditions, which threaten harvest yields and will have consequences for fall and winter farm activities. Aroostook County is one of the hardest hit counties in the state, and the drought will likely result in a smaller potato harvest. - News Center Maine & NECN

We loved seeing the town of Bowdoinham ditch “the tradition of awarding one person with the “citizen of the year” award to collectively honor the town’s farmers for their efforts to feed a community during a global pandemic.” - Portland Press Herald

LISTEN

Did you catch Leah Penniman’s keynote at the virtual Common Ground Country Fair? Hear more from Leah and others working on growing justice in the food system in this great podcast episode - To the Best of Our Knowledge

WATCH

Did you listen to the 1619 podcast? If so, you’re probably familiar with the Provost family, African-American sugarcane farmers who saw the unravelling of their livelihood due to discrimination and harassment. “It’s a personal story, but one that speaks to the wider narrative of systemic and insidious racism that exists within the American farming industry. Learn more about their story in this new short documentary film, CAIN.