Maine Farms 2023 by Maine Farmland Trust

maine farms JOURNAL OF MAINE FARMLAND TRUST • 2023

EDITION

Ten years ago, when we put together the very first issue of this journal, I couldn’t fully imagine the cascade of change and growth possible within the container of a decade—sometimes overnight, sometimes in slow motion. The Maine farming and food landscape has evolved over that time, and not always in particularly linear ways. Any given issue of our Maine Farms Journal is a snapshot in time—the farms and projects featured have almost invariably shifted since. Some highlighted farm businesses have switched courses, shuttered for various reasons, or transitioned to different leaders. What felt like promising solutions and ideas have often played out in unexpected ways. And yet, while specific stories and characters have changed over time, many of the themes remain constant. Taken all together, there’s a throughline, a trend toward a future that is more cognizant of the value of farming and the value of the people and land that make farms and food possible. Many of the topics our articles have touched on are still salient, but what we would write today would reveal more complexity—we’ve been pulling on threads only to discover new knots. Certainly, we’ve learned a lot along the way. This 10th issue is a testament to that complexity, to the nature of time, and to the constancy of change. There are no tidy solutions here, only trail markers suggesting paths forward. MFT’s President and CEO Amy Fisher, and VP of Programs, Adam Bishop, outline a fresh way of thinking about the organization’s conservation work in Mapping the Future of Farmland Protection and highlight some of the ways this new thinking is starting to unfold. In Taking Care of the Family and the Farm, Chelsea Conaboy and Yoon S. Byun reveal the

many challenges for farmers accessing health care, especially in rural communities. Farm photographer Kelsey Kobik’s photo essay Farm Ink tells the stories behind the farm-related tattoos that farmers and farm workers wear on their bodies, the bodies that grow food for all of us. My interview with Civil Rights activist Shirley Sherrod explores the intersection between access to land, farming, and social justice so that we might learn from her work organizing farmers and rural communities. And in Field Trials, Marina Schauffler and Brendan Bullock track the research that’s underway in Maine to study how PFAS chemicals impact agriculture, and what more needs to be learned so farmers have the information they need to make decisions. We can’t know what the next decade will bring for farming in Maine, but we can be sure that it will be one of change, and that the stories and snapshots we take along the way will continue to teach us as we feel our way forward into the future. At MFT we’ll keep experimenting, innovating, and adjusting course to meet the challenges ahead. As I move fully into my new role as Director of Farmer Engagement, I’ll continue to listen to and amplify the voices of Maine farms so we can better meet the needs of farmers in MFT’s network, and grow power for Maine’s farming communities. Thanks for learning along with us,

Ellen Sabina, Director of Farmer Engagement, Maine Farms Journal Editor

Cover Farmer Tony Keyes stands next to one of the draft horses at Tender Soles Farm in Richmond. Photo by Kelsey Kobik.

maine farms 3

field

Snippets from the farming landscape

future

Mapping the Future of Farmland Protection ADAM BISHOP AND AMY FISHER

business

Taking Care of the Family and the Farm CHELSEA CONABOY

people

Farm Ink PHOTOGRAPHED BY KELSEY KOBIK 31

Q+A

A Conversation with Shirley Sherrod INTERVIEWED BY ELLEN SABINA 39

land

Field Trials MARINA SCHAUFFLER

editor

Ellen Sabina design

Might & Main writing

Adam Bishop Amy Fisher Chelsea Conaboy Marina Schauffler photography

Brendan Bullock Yoon S. Byun Sara Cannon Molly Haley Clennon King Kelsey Kobik MFT Staff publisher

Maine Farmland Trust 97 Main Street, Belfast, Maine 04915 (207) 338-6575 | mainefarmlandtrust.org info@mainefarmlandtrust.org Printed on 80# Finch Opaque Bright White Smooth by J.S. McCarthy Printers, Augusta, Maine All material © 2023 Maine Farmland Trust The Maine Farms journal is a publication of Maine Farmland Trust, a statewide nonprofit that protects farmland, supports farmers and advances the future of farming.

the field

snippets from the farming landscape food: a recipe for farm comfort Gloria Varney is the co-owner of Nezinscot Farm & Cafe, which received the 2023 James Beard America’s Classics Award: Northeast “I will start by saying that what people come here for is not always the food, which, of course, is always pleasurable for them, but also for the atmosphere that has been created here by this farm. The sense of place was created when Gregg and I decided to open the doors of our farm to the community, giving them all a sense of what it feels and tastes like to be on a working farm and tasting the food that is grown right outside the doors, literally. Using a wide variety of local and on-farm food ingredients is very pleasing to the eye and offers great nutrition. These two factors, along with the friendly farm atmosphere, help drive the direction that I want my cooks to bear in mind when creating dishes in our cafe. I asked my cook and family if there was a dish that most represents Nezinscot. Our BBQ chicken melt was one, our farm cheese and microgreens quiche was another, the tomato apple relish that is served on the side of each being of importance, and lastly, our poutine hash. The poutine begins with pre-roasted herbed red and gold potatoes (either from our farm or neighboring Maine organic growers) that are tossed in a cast iron pan. A bone broth herb gravy is added, along with a handful of our house-made squeaky curds (made from both our cows’ and goats’ milk), a handful of microgreens from our friends at Fryewood Farms, and topped with a dollop of our housemade beet horseradish jam. A biscuit and bread and butter pickles are added on the side. Should you want meat, you would have the choice of our farm-grown chicken, ham, sausage, or BBQ beef. If you are really hungry, you can then top it all with an over-easy egg.” Visit Nezinscot Farm & Cafe: 284 Turner Center Road, Turner, Maine Open Wednesday–Sunday Cafe: 7 am–3 p.m Farm Store: 7 am–5 pm

Haying by Julia Bouwsma

There is no poetry in this work. Sweat flows spine like a river, drowns blackflies in my waistband and chaff splinters fissure skin, arms, and chest until my whole body is a burning barn. Words thicken a blanket of storm clouds, a silence that hangs above our running limbs until it smothers thought. The bales lie in the field waiting. The sky opens its mouth to let its darkness out, and we know this moment only as now: a counting off: one bale passed between six sets of hands, one bale pressed into place beneath the eaves, one truckload and another, our bodies which cannot stop moving even as rain begins to beat its fists against the barn roof, even as thunder sounds the pocketknife thrown to the pile of sheet metal, even as bales spoil in the field until our bodies lost the language for pain—until there is no before us and no after us. The cat’s eyes perch in the blackened barn, two kerosene flares waiting: only the one more bale the cat needs to reach the swallow’s nest. — from Work by Bloodlight (Cider Press Review, 2017) Julia Bouwsma lives off-the-grid in the mountains of western Maine, where she is a poet, homesteader, editor, teacher, and small-town librarian. Bouwsma is Maine’s sixth Poet Laureate and the author of two poetry collections: Midden (Fordham University Press, 2018) and Work by Bloodlight (Cider Press Review, 2017), both of which received Maine Literary Awards for Poetry Book. She is the Library Director for Webster Library in Kingfield, ME.

Ten years of the Maine Farms annual journal: maine farms

maine farms

JOURNAL OF MAINE FARMLAND TRUST • 2014

JOURNAL OF MAINE FARMLAND TRUST • 2016

JOURNAL OF MAINE FARMLAND TRUST • 2017

JOURNAL OF MAINE FARMLAND TRUST • 2018

JOURNAL OF MAINE FARMLAND TRUST • 2018 2017

JOURNAL OF MAINE FARMLAND TRUST • 2017

JOURNAL OF MAINE FARMLAND TRUST • 2016

JOS EPH A. FFIORE JOSE PH A. JOFIORE SE P H A. I O RE

SHE EPSHE JONES LOU SCHELLENBERG LYNN KARLINLOU SCHELLENBERG EP JONESLYNN KARLIN

SHE EP JONES 1

2015

97 Main Street, Belfast, Maine 04915 | OPEN YEAR-ROUND Monday-Friday 9-4

maine farms JOURNAL OF MAINE FARMLAND TRUST • 2019

LYNN KARLIN 2016

2015

2016

2015

2016

1925–2008

LOU SCHELLENBERG

2017 97 Main Street, Belfast, Maine 04915 | OPEN YEAR-ROUND Monday-Friday 9-4

97 Main Street, Belfast, Maine 04915 | OPEN YEAR-ROUND Monday-Friday 9-4

Poster available in the gallery or online at mainefarmlandtrust.org

1925–2008 1925–2008 2018

97 Main Street, Belfast, Maine 04915 | OPEN YEAR-ROUND Monday-Friday 9-4

2018 2018

2017 2017

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EDITION

by the numbers: What kinds of farms are in MFT’s Farm Network?

SHEEP & GOAT

N CTIO HAY

DUC

TIO N

CATTLE & DAIRY

ANIMAL P ROD U

The roughly 400 farms in MFT’s Farm Network represent farming in Maine overall. According to the last USDA Agricultural Census, 40% of farms in Maine primarily raise animals and 60% grow crops. Among MFT-affiliated farms, the split is 34% animal and 66% crops. Here’s the breakdown:

POULTRY & EGG

HOG OTHER & PIG

CRO

OILSEED & GRAIN GREENHOUSE, NURSERY & FLORICULTURE FRUIT & TREE NUT

VEGETABLE

FUTURE

Mapping the Future of Farmland Protection BY ADAM BISHOP AND AMY FISHER IMAGES BY KELSEY KOBIK, SARA CANNON, MOLLY HALEY, AND MAINE FARMLAND TRUST STAFF

We’ve been protecting farmland for more than two decades, and as the world changes our mission is more important than ever. It’s also time to update how and why we do it.

Maine Farmland Trust’s efforts to protect farmland over the last two decades are evident throughout the state. As of this writing, MFT has protected 370 farms with agricultural conservation easements, ensuring the land will remain available and open for farming in perpetuity. This work is critical in a state with a finite and threatened agricultural resource—Maine’s prime agricultural soils are limited in comparison to many states, and our best farmland continues to be targeted for development. Only 3.6% of Maine’s remaining farmland is permanently protected. In comparison, Rhode Island and Massachusetts have protected 25% of their states’ remaining farmland, with Vermont, Connecticut, and New Hampshire each protecting between 15% and 20%. Yet Maine’s farmland is critical to the agricultural future of the entire region, and as development pressure and climate change accelerate, that land is increasingly threatened. Since the Ram Island Conservation Fund made a transformational investment in MFT nearly ten years ago, we have worked toward the goal of protecting 100,000 acres of farmland in Maine. As we approach our goal, what comes next? It’s time to rethink MFT and Maine’s farmland protection goals in a process informed by stakeholders and driven by data. For the past two years, MFT has been reimagining our farmland protection work, adopting a new vision of what successful agricultural conservation looks like. This reimagining means accepting more nuance, considering a greater number of factors when examining farmland protection projects, working with new partners who bring new A bird’s eye view of early fall veggie fields at Liberation Farms in Wales, Maine.

perspectives, and finding new roles for traditional partners. Our shift means pursuing more projects that create equitable and affordable land access, weighing economic and community considerations, and bringing greater transparency to the way we make decisions about farmland protection projects. Above all, we recognize the need to keep our farmland protection work nimble and adaptable to the needs of farmers as the farm landscape in Maine continues to change. Why the shift? Because the world we are living in is not the same world that existed five years ago. Development pressure in Southern Maine is still high, but now migration to rural areas resulting from COVID-19 has driven the value of farmland in many previously affordable parts of the state to prices that are out of reach for farmers. Solar companies are attracted by Maine’s relatively limited regulation and flat, open hay and cropland for industrial-scale development. The unfolding PFAS crisis will have land use impacts of which we don’t yet know the full scale. Climate change impacts are felt in significant and often unexpected ways. The economics of local agriculture evolve in response to national and global influences. And deeply entrenched equity issues in agriculture demand that we reexamine the impacts of our work. MFT’s approach to farmland protection must evolve along with these changes. Over the last two years, through reflection, learning, and conversation internally and with external partners, we have developed new priorities, strategies, and tools. As we move forward, our work will continue to evolve, adapting to the needs of farmers as the farm landscape in Maine continues to change. 6

Farmland Access MFT is working towards a future where affordable farmland is accessible to all farmers who seek to participate in Maine agriculture, where all farm businesses receive the necessary support to thrive, and where our state is home to a diverse and equitable agricultural community. Who has access to farmland in Maine? Who wants to farm in Maine, and are these farmers able to take advantage of MFT’s programming to achieve this goal? Who is being left out? These questions shaped our analysis, and it quickly became clear that we need additional tools and resources to promote equitable access to farmland and to cultivate a more inclusive agricultural community in Maine. Traditionally, MFT’s farmland protection programming required a farmer to own property or be able to access enough capital to become a landowner. However, a 30-year mortgage is often unattainable even for many skilled and experienced farmers. Farmland prices are increasingly out of reach, even with the sale of an agricultural ease-

ment to promote affordability. Institutionalized discrimination creates barriers for many BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) farmers. Beginning farmers often need opportunities and time to develop their businesses, along with support to do so, before they can qualify for a loan to purchase land. In a hot real estate market these barriers effectively exclude prospective farmers from accessing farmland. Achieving a thriving, sustainable, and diverse agriculture sector in Maine means that we must find ways to help farmers overcome these obstacles. This work will require creativity, dedication, patience, higher risk tolerance, and significant financial support.

Below Farmer Ali Hamse in the field at Liberation Farms in Wales. He is also on the Liberation Farms Advisory Board. Opposite Page A still from the animation about agricultural easements MFT is producing with illustrator Sara Cannon for the SBCA community.

PATIENT CAPITAL In 2023, MFT received news of a grant through the USDA’s Increasing Land, Capital, and Market Access program. These funds will be used to provide affordable land access for farmers by offering medium-term lease opportunities and flexible ownership models, coupled with farmer support services to help position farmers to purchase land and succeed in the business of farming. This represents a big shift in our Buy-Protect-Sell model, which previously prioritized resale as fast as possible. A more patient approach, coupled with support, is essential for promoting equitable land access, especially for farmers who are experiencing lack of capital as a barrier to affordable land access.

NEW FARMLAND PROTECTION TOOLS In early 2023, MFT used an Option to Purchase at Agricultural Value (OPAV) to add a new layer of protection on the Wormell Farm in Cumberland, which had been previously protected with a conservation easement in 2016. The OPAV will give MFT the option to buy the farm and resell it to a farmer if future owners attempt to sell the property out of agricultural use. Funds from the OPAV purchase facilitated an interfamily generational transfer of the farm. “We could not have purchased the farm without Maine Farmland Trust’s involvement. We are the fifth generation to own and operate a working farm, and we hope to eventually make our two young children the sixth. It is incredibly meaningful to us

to keep this farm in our family, and have the chance to watch our children grow up on the same active farm where Brendon spent large portions of his childhood.”–Brianna and Brendon Wormell

COMMUNICATING EASEMENT NUANCES ACROSS CULTURES Providing equitable farmland access opportunities for New Americans is essential so that a diversity of Mainers can eat culturally appropriate foods. “Our people rely on fair and equal access to land to grow food for our families, neighbors, and communities. We are a farming people, who find joy, meaning, spirituality, and cultural identity in working closely with the land, and with each other. Somali Bantu history and traditions revolve around our connection to agriculture and to the land, and we are grateful to be grounded in a place to call our home—our collective heartbeat. It is our dream that Maine’s farmland and food system could be made more accessible and supportive to different kinds of people, with different paths to access made a reality.”–Muhidin Libah, Executive Director, Somali Bantu Community Association (SBCA) speaking about Liberation Farms. MFT is working with the SBCA to craft a conservation easement for possible use on Liberation Farms in Wales. To facilitate full community participation in the decision-making process, we are working with illustrator Sara Cannon to produce an animated video to convey the legal nuances of conservation easement restrictions to non-English speakers.

Rural Economic Development Maine realizes the benefits of protecting farmland when that land is home to successful farm businesses that provide the foundation for thriving rural economies and communities. By preventing sprawl and helping to keep farmland active, protected farmland is a critical contributor to the economic vitality of rural Maine and a building block of thriving rural communities. Historically, MFT’s farmland protection work has been responsive—in most cases, farmers motivated to conserve their land initiate the project—and as a result, nearly 25 years into this approach, our state is home to a robust network of over 400 permanently protected farms across all 16 counties. As we move forward, MFT is taking a proactive network approach. We started this shift in early 2022 with the launch of MFT’s Farm Network, a department that unites our stewardship, climate resilience, and business planning into an integrated and farmer-centered agricultural service center. We are continuing this shift by adopting shared geographic priorities for all of our programs based on the identification of clusters of high agricultural economic activity. Farms are most successful when they are embedded in robust farming communities, and

farming as a sector in Maine is most successful when we have multiple strong farming clusters. We are moving into a new phase of farmland protection in which we will proactively seek farmland protection projects in these clusters and build out the protected farmland base as nodes in the Farm Network. Maine’s farm and food sectors are poised for growth and present a key opportunity for economic development that is grounded in Maine’s rural character and communities. By using our farmland protection tools strategically and in tandem with our robust Farm Network, Policy and Research, and Farmer Engagement programming, MFT can help these critical cluster communities foster, promote, and support their networks of local farm businesses to drive local and statewide agricultural economic growth. Our network-building approach will facilitate greater natural connection opportunities between farms so they can support and advance each other and their communities.

MFT's Adam Bishop with Aaron Englander and Carly Williams of Maine Coast Hertiage Trust's Midcoast Farmers Alliance program at the former blueberry facility in Union.

DATA EVOLUTION Over the past year MFT has been analyzing GIS data to identify priority farming communities based on converging concentrations of farm businesses, open agricultural soils, and organizations and businesses that support the agricultural industry. The map to the right represents some of Maine's most vibrant farming communities.

REORGANIZATION FOR IMPACT Because the threats to farmland in different parts of Maine are evolving and multiplying, we reorganized our Farmland Protection staff into two teams that specialize in protecting farmland in different geographic areas of the state: Southern Maine with its well-known challenges from urban encroachment, and Central and Northern Maine. “Although Northern and Central Maine don’t face the same level of small-lot subdivision pressure as seen in Southern Maine, non-agricultural development pressure has increased substantially in recent years. This area is comprised of larger tracts of farmland that are being threatened by large-lot residential and real estate development and increasing demand for land that can easily accommodate industrial-scale energy infrastructure. We need to protect Maine’s most productive farmland from irreversible non-agricultural development.”–Brett Sykes, Assistant Director of Farmland Protection, Central and Northern Maine

INVESTING IN AGRICULTURAL CLUSTERS MFT's 2022 purchase of a former blueberry processing facility in Union was driven by demand from the local farming community. “For years the Midcoast Farmers Alliance had been talking about the need for a centrally located facility that would give local farmers a place to store and market products and produce value-added goods. When the ideal spot became available, MFT acted quickly to purchase the building, taking it off the market and giving farmers the time and motivation to develop a vision for and begin using the space. MFT’s involvement has moved the project forward in a way that would not have been possible without secure access to a dedicated building located in a community with a significant cluster of farms and agricultural businesses, and this project will encourage continued agriculture-centric economic activity in the area.”–Heidi Baker, Brodis Blueberries

Learn more about the agricultural clusters and MFT's strategy at our 2023 Annual Meeting in December.

Climate & Conservation MFT’s work sits at the critical juncture of climate change mitigation–protecting farmland from development at scale–and climate adaptation–supporting farm resilience in the face of evolving conditions. Farmers are on the front lines of climate change. Its impacts on agriculture include extreme temperatures, severe weather, pests, disease, and increased unpredictability that affects farmers’ ability to plan each year. In response, MFT started working with farmers on soil health practices and other adaptation strategies several years ago, and has been advocating for climate-smart agricultural policies and programs for years. Now it’s time to reexamine our farmland protection work in the context of climate change. Protecting farmland from development is an important tool to address climate change. As a state, Maine needs to dramatically increase the amount of farmland protected in order to meet our climate goals. To scale-up will require a significant increase in public funding available for farmland protection and strong partnerships with the state and other conservation entities. In comparison to the rest of the Northeast, Maine lags far behind many other states in number of farms protected by a conservation easement, acres of farmland protected, and the percentage of the state’s existing farmland that is under conservation, as well as the amount of public funding dedicated to farmland protection.

STATE

REMAINING FARM FARM ACRES % OF FARMLAND EASEMENT PROTECTED PROTECTED

At the same time, changing conditions for farmers on the ground mean we need to think through the potential climate impacts on farmland protection projects. We need to prioritize protecting farmland that will be the most resilient to climate change impacts and remain productive land far into the future. To better vet farmland for climate resilience and support farmers as they face climate adaptation challenges, our farmland protection work is increasingly coordinating with the climate resilience work of MFT’s Farm Network team. For the last several years, the Farm Network team has been building upon its pilot soil health program to create a robust suite of climate resilience supports for farmers that will help them adapt their farm planning and practices in the face of threats from extreme and unpredictable weather. This integrated approach—protecting our agricultural land base while at the same time offering comprehensive support and resources to farmers to help them adapt —helps ensure that agriculture in Maine will continue to thrive, and can be part of Maine’s climate solution.

STATE

TOTAL FARMLAND PROTECTION FUNDING

STATE FUNDING

Pennsylvania

6044

611,620

New Jersey

1,845,914,559

1,194,385,386

New Jersey

2821

248,411

Pennsylvania

Massachusetts

942

74,775

21.6

Massachusetts

1,156,534,321

319,623,984

Vermont

796

168,407

New York

230,145,489

Connecticut

399

47,346

17.4

Vermont

Maine

378

54,208

3.6

Connecticut

New York

344

95,738

1.5

Rhode Island

129

8,252

21.6

Maine

651,529,173

1,105,213,366

243,135,421

88,794,121

$ $

0.00

126,584,804

131,842,666

117,549,027

37,143,700

50,222,483

12,574,122

51,320,955

76,488,563

230,145,489

215,378,925 179,215,249

OTHER FUNDING

47,372,583

80,405,327 37,648,361

Above These two charts make clear how Maine is far behind other states in our region in the amount of farmland that's protected and the public funding available for farmland protection. Opposite Page Neal Foley at East Forty Farm in Waldoboro with the cows in their forest pasture, part of the farm's plan to build soil health and resiliency in the face of climate change.

INTERACTIVE GIS DATA + MAPPING TOOLS

HOLISTIC APPROACH DEVELOPMENT

MFT has been developing an interactive tool to assess the climate resilience of farms through GIS data and mapping. "Our expanded vision of farmland protection involves not only ensuring that the land remains open and available for farming but also productive and resilient. The climate risk assessment tool that we are developing will allow MFT staff and farmers to understand and plan for the unique vulnerabilities and resilience and adaptation potential of a farm in the context of climate change." –Sarah Simon, MFT Climate Resilience Specialist

Thanks to a new grant from TD Ready Challenge, MFT is building upon our soil health programming to develop a replicable, holistic approach to climate resilience in agriculture through planning assistance, peer-to-peer learning, design and installation of climate-smart agricultural practices and farm infrastructure, and by encouraging land management practices to strengthen the whole farm ecosystem. We’ll add these more robust climate resilience supports to the wraparound support services we offer for our network of protected farms, like East Forty Farm, a participant in our pilot soil health programming. “In 2016, after months of unsuccessfully looking for a farm that would fulfill the needs for expanding our cheese business while allowing for growing a dairy herd in support of the operation, we found a historic Waldoboro farm that was priced to reflect its waterfront location. MFT worked to make it feasible for us to purchase the farm at a reasonable price. Since buying the property, we have also participated in MFT’s soil health programming, with the goals of increasing our farm’s resiliency in the face of extreme weather events associated with climate change, and helping promote healthy and sustainable grazing practices on our farm. As the farm needs have evolved, we have had the support of a number of programs that have helped to improve both our financial health and the health of the land, which has been critical to our success.”–Allison Lakin, Lakin’s Gorges Cheese and East Forty Farm

STRATEGIC ROLE OF SUPPLY CHAINS Achieving scale in farmland protection is a critical climate change strategy to avoid the emissions associated with development. MFT has traditionally worked farm by farm and is now partnering with food companies to explore whole-supply-chain strategies that may provide a pathway to incentivize farmland protection. In Aroostook County MFT is working with farmers growing for Harvesting Good, a subsidiary of Good Shepherd Food Bank. MFT will help secure the land farmers need to produce at the scale required for this new venture designed to bring healthy Maine produce to a larger year-round market. Protecting the large tracts of farmland will allow growers to scale up production for Harvesting Good and expand the base of conserved farmland in Maine’s top agricultural county at a scale that is not possible with Southern Maine’s smaller farms. “MFT’s involvement in helping farmers access land is critical to the success of a supply chain producing quality local produce, available year-round to Mainers at an affordable price point.”–Matt Chin, President, Harvesting Good

Decision-Making Including more stakeholders in collaboration better serves farms and positions farmers for long-term success. As MFT engaged in self-reflection around our farmland protection work over the last two years, we quickly realized that our different departments were siloed and needed to be more fully integrated with each other and with the farmers we serve. Dozens of MFT staff members connect every day with farmers across the state, but how are we sharing pertinent information with each other in order to best serve farmers? Beyond MFT, how are we engaging with perspectives that can help us shift our work to be more comprehensive and helpful to farmers and inclusive of a diversity of farmers? More effective collaboration and communication with a greater diversity of perspectives is critical. To that end, our internal process for vetting potential farmland protection projects has changed to be more inclusive of all staff. By pulling in more geographic and disciplinary perspectives, we can factor in economic and farm business considerations, a property’s climate resilience, and greater knowledge of the local farming community in a particular area, rather than making decisions based on the characteristics of the land alone. The result is better internal decision-making, more effective communication across our teams, and more support and connection when farmers need it.

Over the course of 2023, MFT’s Farmland Protection and Access team and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Working Group collaborated to explore the role of cultural use agreements at MFT and to assess MFT’s easement template to make sure it was not inadvertently excluding Wabanaki cultural uses of protected farmland. Updates were made to the easement template to specifically include Wabanaki food and medicine production and ceremonial uses of land as traditional uses that are of value to the public, and to clarify that farmers who want to make their land available for these uses are allowed to do so by the easement. Through this process, the team became more aware of accounting for current Wabanaki uses of farmland on properties being protected or on properties abutting those being protected in order to make sure to craft an easement that allows for greater flexibility for possible future uses in those circumstances, such as allowing for possible future divisions that could be executed for Land Back decisions. By taking in more perspectives, we are challenged to think about what “protection” could look like beyond easements.

Farmers and community members tour New Roots Cooperative Farm in Lewiston in 2022. Photo by Molly Haley.

MFT LANDS COMMITTEE EXPANSION Work at the staff level lays a solid base for moving toward including more perspectives on the MFT Lands Committee, the advisory group that evaluates farmland protection projects cultivated by staff, and makes recommendations to our Board of Directors on easement purchases. The Lands Committee includes perspectives that ground our work in deep knowledge of MFT’s history, such as Nina Young, a recently retired MFT staff member. Nina holds a wealth of information and connections all over Maine, especially in Aroostook County. The Committee also now includes fresh perspectives such as that of farmer Caitlin Frame of The Milkhouse, who joined the MFT Board in 2023. “As a new member of the Lands Committee, I'm excited to lend my perspective as a woman in the dairy industry to the important work done by MFT to ensure a future for farming in Maine.”

FARMER-CENTERED PARTNERSHIPS A holistic evaluation of potential farmland conservation projects involves looking at more than just the physical characteristics of the land—it is also important to consider the viability of the existing farm business or the capacity of the property to support a viable farm in the future. “By involving the Farm Network’s farm business planning staff early in the farmland protection process, we’re able to collaboratively assess the specific viability needs of each farm and help ensure a successful outcome. This farmer-centered approach includes working with farmers to help identify their long and short-term goals and challenges and offering resources and support to address them. When working on farmland protection projects, MFT is committed to a long-term partnership with a farmer. Having these types of conversations early and often allows all of us better to support the changing needs of farms over time.”–Tricia Rouleau, Farm Network Director

STAKEHOLDER PARTNERSHIP

Top Nina Young worked at MFT for years as part of the Farmland Protection staff. Bottom Caitlin Frame co-owns The Milkhouse, a dairy farm and creamery in Monmouth that is located on farmland protected with an easement.

MFT is also taking steps to foster better communication with stakeholders in land access work. In March of 2023, MFT hosted a New England Regional Farmland Access Convening centered around exploring new tools and strategies that organizations had developed in response to increasing pandemic development pressure and the need to pursue more equitable farmland access. Participating organizations included many long-established farmland access practitioners in New England, new land trusts and practitioners focused on Land Back and BIPOC land and food sovereignty, and national key partners. Shirley Sherrod, a longtime civil rights and land access advocate, gave the keynote address. Read more in our interview with Ms. Sherrod on page 31.

BUSINESS

TAKING CARE OF THE FAMILY AND THE FARM

For Many Maine Farmers, Health Care is Out of Reach

BY CHELSEA CONABOY | PHOTOGRAPHS BY YOON S. BYUN

lexis MacDonald can’t trace the anxiety and depression she felt creeping up on her last spring to any one thing in particular. Rather, she says, it was an accumulation of things, from the stress of running an organic dairy farm in an era of stagnant milk prices and rising costs, while raising two young children. “Child care is exhausting,” she tells me during a rare window of time when her 2-year-old daughter is napping and her 5-year-old son sits in his father’s lap in the cab of a tractor. “Farming is exhausting. Working with your spouse can be exhausting. And then, seasonal depression absolutely affects me.” MacDonald, who is 40 and started Bo Lait Farm in Washington with her husband, Conor, in 2015, went looking for a therapist who could help. None who were nearby and seemed like a good fit accepted her insurance through the state’s Medicaid program, MaineCare. She stopped looking, but the stress inherent in her life on the farm and the worry about the toll it all takes on her family’s long-term health didn’t go away. The barriers to essential health care in the United States are considerable. For many farmers, those barriers are stacked, one on top of the other, so high that the mental and physical health of farm families and farmworkers—the very people who provide the resources to keep so many others healthy—might be seen as a benchmark for all that needs to change. Farmers “are a small portion of our population,” says Florence Becot, a rural sociologist who studies the health needs of farm families at the Marshfield Clinic Research Institute in Wisconsin, “but they play this crucial role. If we don't have a healthy farm sector, what does that mean for our future?” Most farmers live in rural communities, where access to preventive and specialty care, financial stability, and support for healthy behaviors is limited by geography and an economy dependent on seasonal work. Residents of Maine’s most rural counties have higher rates of physical and mental distress than the more urban ones, considerably higher than national averages, and they experience more deaths from cancer, respiratory disease, suicide and accidental injury, according to an analysis published last year by the Maine Rural Health Research Center. Across the United States, the suicide rate for farmers is about three and a half times higher than it is in the general population, according to the National Rural Health Association. The

Opposite Page Bria MacDonald, 2, stands in the milking parlor at Bo Lait Farm in Washington, ME Above Alexis and Conor MacDonald stand with their children, Bria, 2, and Rory, 5, at Bo Lait Farm in Washington, Maine. In addition to worrying about their finances they struggle with child care. MacDonald felt like she needed a therapist last year but couldn’t find anyone who would accept her insurance so she stopped trying.

financial and physical strain of the job itself are major contributors to farmer mental health. The job is dangerous, involving big animals and heavy equipment. It typically does not come with health insurance or sick leave. The work requires odd hours, luck with the weather and patience with prices that are often beyond a farmer’s control. For migrant and seasonal farm workers, the intensity of the work is compounded by a lack of health insurance for most, limited transportation and a health care system lacking in culturally competent care. Migrant farmworkers were declared essential workers during the COVID pandemic, yet policymakers continue to ignore the health needs of the workers themselves. Then there’s the culture—often the necessity— of putting the farm above all. 16

Left Jenni Tilton-Flood at Flood Brothers Farm in Clinton, Maine. Flood says farm duties plus a health care system that wasn't built for rural people keeps people from taking care of themselves. Right A cow looks out from its stall at Flood Brothers Farm.

“We would never dream of missing a herd check for our animals,” says Jenni TiltonFlood, part of the family that manages 3,400 cows at Flood Bros. Farm, the state’s largest dairy. “The cows come first a lot of times.” Tilton-Flood can tell story after story about watching farmers in and around Clinton turn out when their peers have needed help, to run a farm while a family dealt with a serious illness or grieved a lost loved one. And there are other stories, like the one about her neighbor, who had a stroke and needed surgery but delayed the operation until after his crops were harvested. He let Tilton-Flood keep tabs on him but made her promise not to tell her family. “We know to jump in when someone else needs help, but we also have this innate sense—and need—to not need help,” she says. The ramifications are especially acute when it comes to mental health. Tilton-Flood keeps a wall of photos near the milking parlor of people affiliated with the farm—the extended farm 17

family—who have died, several from suicide, drug overdose or the health effects of substance use. She and researchers studying rural health agree that, while farmers’ reticence toward care is real, it stems in part from their experience interacting with a modern U.S. health care system that simply does not fit the life of farmers. Or of rural communities as a whole, says John Gale, senior research associate at the Maine Rural Health Research Center at the University of Southern Maine. In a broad sense, the cost of providing health care in a rural setting is generally higher per patient. The patient base is smaller and in many places declining, meaning fewer bills over which to spread the overhead of salaries and facility maintenance. Insurance payments to doctors and hospitals historically have not always accounted for those higher costs. That’s one thing, among a complicated mix of economic factors, driving health care consolidation over the past two decades, with independent doctors joining large practices and those practices, along with

small hospitals, joining large urban hospital systems. In Maine and elsewhere, such consolidation has provided some rural hospitals the capital to stay open, but it also has led to a loss of local control, Gale says. In some communities, it has meant cuts or reductions in services (obstetrical care has been especially hard hit). An analysis by KFF, a nonprofit and nonpartisan health policy organization, also found overall increases in health care costs from a drop in competition. The research on how it affects patient care is mixed, and there’s also concern over the effect on providers. The United States is short on doctors, particularly in primary care and adult psychiatry, and the problem disproportionately affects rural communities, according to research by the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration. All of that means that even farmers with good insurance may face long drives and long waitlists. But farmers are much less likely than the general population to have high-quality employer-based insurance. If they do, it’s typically because a family member works off-farm. They are more likely to buy private health insurance through the state marketplace. Those

plans generally have higher deductibles, which mean bigger out-of-pocket costs that may cause some to put off necessary tests and treatments. When Becot, the rural sociologist, and colleague Shoshanah Inwood surveyed more than 900 farm households in 10 states, they found that a majority (55 percent) were not confident they could avoid going into debt if a major injury or illness occurred. This wasn’t a question of having insurance. Nearly all respondents did. But many also had high deductibles. One factor that increased medical economic vulnerability: children. Child health is an important piece of addressing the well-being of farm families, Becot says. When she and her fellow researchers survey farmers about what resources they need in order to manage their mental health, many say access to child care. And when they survey farmers about what resources they need in order to raise children on the farm, many say affordable health insurance. Becot argues that there is a clear economic reason for doing more to address the health and social needs of farm families. “Any challenge at the household level is going to impact the farm business,” she says. Similarly, a

Jenni Tilton-Flood talks about a wall of people who worked on the farm and died, including some from substance use or suicide, at Flood Brothers Farm.

more stable household can help a farm weather a crisis. That’s because there is an exchange—in time and money and resources—between farm and family, she says. They are not separate. Yet agricultural policy and farm programs in the United States typically treat them as if they are. “They look at capital. They look at, do you have the right kind of tractors? Do you have the right kind of knowledge to farm? How can we make you a better business owner?” Becot says. “What this approach has failed to consider are the household level needs.” Every farmer I spoke with for this story can list off the times they’ve had to make the sometimes impossible choice between taking care of the farm and taking care of their bodies or their family’s health. One vegetable farmer told me she limits the income she draws from the farm, afraid of losing the subsidy that helps her buy health insurance, but then she is reluctant to get care because she worries about being about to pay any surprise bills. A dairy farmer told me how pregnancy complications required her to forgo a home birth and

deliver instead at a Portland hospital 90 minutes away. She and her husband had planned to pay someone to milk the cows while she delivered, but they could only afford so much of that help and she ended up with a long induction. Her husband drove back and forth, each time asking the doctor how likely it was she would deliver in the six hours he’d be gone—a stressor for them all. MacDonald experiences the tension between the physical demands of Bo Lait Farm and the physical demands of childrearing. She has tried, unsuccessfully, to find affordable child care nearby. “There are definitely parts where it’s like, this all feels like it makes sense and like this is how it should be, and we’re all together,” she says. “Then there are days where it’s like, ‘This is way harder than it needs to be, and I could feel way less stressed out if I just had three solid hours without the kids.” At Grace Pond Farm, Rhiannon Hampson’s family has health insurance through her role as state director for the U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development program, but she has stories, too.

Conor MacDonald drives his tractor with his son Rory, 5, after fixing it, to bale hay on a field near Bo Lait Farm.

Alexis MacDonald gives her daughter, Bria, water at her home at Bo Lait Farm.

There was the time a doctor told her not to use the hand she’d injured while handling a rowdy heifer, and she knew immediately that wasn’t an option. She iced it and wrapped it and returned to her chores. And when her husband, Gregg Stiner, recently drilled through his hand and needed a tetanus shot, the couple debated about whether to go to the nearby emergency room or the farther urgent care, worrying over the difference in the bill they’d get from each and how much time they’d lose off the farm. But it may be the tradeoffs to come that Hampson worries about most: How will the hard labor of farming and all that deferred rest affect them as they age? In 2018, Hampson and Stiner moved the farm from Monmouth to 82 acres in Thomaston, in part to do more direct-to-market sales of their milk and poultry. One question has driven their planning as they’ve rebuilt the farm infrastructure there: “What do we need to do to this thing in order to be operating it at 60 instead of 45?” “That’s the specter sitting in the corner of the room with you,” she says, “the Ghost of Christmas future.”

Dr. Mike Lambke is a family doctor with Skowhegan Family Medicine and, over the years, has watched too many patients and friends in agriculture face a cascade of health issues as they age. Sometimes it’s because of long-ignored mental health concerns that lead to isolation, substance use and trouble managing the farm business. Sometimes it starts with a heart attack or a relatively minor injury. The acute problem is one thing, but if a farmer has been developing degenerative osteoarthritis, the reduction in activity required in recovery can cause symptoms to rapidly advance. “Everything falls apart,” he says. Farm operations may slow or stop. Equipment may be sold. And that turmoil in the farm business can have a big impact on the wellbeing of younger generations. It’s all connected, family and farm. That’s true for migrant workers in Maine, too, who generally have no health insurance, work for relatively low wages and support families back home. If a farmworker goes to the emergency room or needs a hospital stay, they can end up with a bill for 20

Nate Drummond carries a container of lettuce while harvesting vegetables at Six River Farm in Bowdoinham, Maine. Drummond runs an organic vegetable farm with his wife Gabrielle Gosselin, but cannot afford to provide healthcare for his farm employees. He also injured his hand last year, which, with insurance, cost roughly $7,000 out of pocket. Even while running a successful farm business, the margins are small, and unexpected costs like that can be difficult to cover.

tens of thousands of dollars, and they may apply to the hospital’s free care program to cover those costs, says Dr. Demetri Blanas, medical director of the Maine Mobile Health Program. But many farmworkers are found to be ineligible for such help. Their seasonal wages are used to calculate an annual income that may be much higher than they actually earn, and the family who depends on that income is not accounted for. The Mobile Health Program tries to help patients avoid those bills. The program is federally funded and annually serves about 1,000 patients, primarily from Central America and Caribbean island nations. Mobile medical units travel to the farms that employ migrant workers, during blueberry, wreath-making and apple seasons, and to dairy farms and seafood processing facilities year-round. They provide preventive care screenings and help patients manage chronic conditions, such as high blood pressure, diabetes and arthritis, often aggravated by stress, Blanas says. But there are farms and patients the program can’t get to. 21

Blanas and his colleagues were disappointed when the Maine Senate this year voted down a bill to allow migrant workers to receive MaineCare. The change would have allowed the mobile health program to hire more staff and expand its reach, he says, and it would have given patients more stability and certainty when seeking care from other doctors and hospitals. “It would have radically changed things for us and our patients,” he says. “We rely on these workers to provide us with food, and it’s just a matter of basic human rights.” Health policy in the United States is painfully slow to change. But there are potential bright spots. The mental health and household level concerns of agricultural workers as a whole are getting more attention, Becot says. She pointed to the Women in Agriculture Act, co-sponsored by Congresswoman Chellie Pingree, that became law this summer. It creates a Women Farmers and Ranchers Liaison in the USDA and gives priority to rural development funding aimed at increasing the availability and quality

of child care in farming communities. Maine’s brand new paid leave program can benefit farmers, too. The broad adoption of telehealth services during the pandemic may fill some gaps in rural health care, but it’s not a cure-all and it’s too soon to tell how much it will help, or whom. The fact is, Gale says, “we haven't decided in this country—we think we have, but we really haven’t—we haven't decided if health care is a right or a privilege.” So much is left to market forces that often lack logic. Last year, Nate Drummond of Six River Farm was lifting a pallet from a pinched irrigation line when a tendon in his arm ruptured. He needed surgery, for which he covered about $7,000 in deductible before his marketplace plan kicked in. Drummond says he would like better insurance for his family and to offer coverage to his employees. He and his wife, Gabrielle Gosselin, have looked at their options, but they are expensive and complicated to manage with a seasonal staff. So, he says, it stings when he walks into an upscale brewery and sees people drinking $8 beers alongside

a sign celebrating how the business offers coverage to all its employees. A good thing, certainly, but if the beer market can sustain health insurance for all, why can’t the vegetable market? “Vegetables are food, and food is a necessity,” Drummond says, “and wages are connected to food prices.” If only, he says, there was a market for $10 tomatoes. chelsea conaboy is a health and science writer based in South Portland. Find more of her writing at chelseaconaboy.com and in her Substack newsletter, Between Us.

Left Noelle Koch, an employee at Six River Farm, harvests lettuce. Koch, an SMCC student in horticulture, has worked on the farm for two seasons; the first working as field crew, and the second working as a crop leader. Right Gabrielle Gosselin cuts flowers for the farm stand at Six River Farm.

FARM INK PEOPLE

Some Maine farmers wear their love of farming on their bodies PHOTOGRAPHS BY KELSEY KOBIK

Anna York "Cabbage and bunny palm tattoos (opposite page) were done as a moving away present. Truly I just love the way the cabbages look like big alien flowers and thought the way it paired with a bunny was cute. The dilapidated barn is my Maine countryside living tattoo."

Carolyn Snell "Something that goes with all the vegetables"

Santiago Quiroz "Don't remember my artist's name—he's a good friend of my cousin. I was visiting some of my family in a town named Cajicá, near Bogotá, Colombia. I was missing South Paw Farm and my friends in Freedom, Maine, and decided to commemorate them with a garlic tattoo on my right leg. Lejos de casa means far from home. This is a general 'homesick' tattoo. I've moved a lot over the years, and I feel no matter where I am, I'm still away from one of my homes, the farm being one of them, as I lived/worked there for about 10 years. I got this one while traveling in Vietnam. The majority I've done myself while living at the farm, as a solo treat. They've served me as protection symbols, and reminders of letting go."

Göran Johanson "I got the tattoo as a reminder and representation of where I come from. Even when I am away the farm is still with me. It is my place in the world that I am so thankful for so why not be proud of it and take it with me wherever I go? I plan on getting the remaining veggies from the logo in other areas as funds and time allow. It's kinda like my family crest in some ways, but instead of being all together it will be spaced out. A whole is just the sum of its parts just as I am the sum of everything that goes into my home and the folks I am lucky enough to share it with. I've farmed on Goranson Farm as a son, weeder, harvester, marketeer, equipment operator, mechanic, and owner." Artist Marco, but the art originally by Toki Oshima

Julia Michael "After spending a few years in agriculture, I began to appreciate the profound and cultural relationship I had with food. With an Italian mother and a Greek father, I was privileged to be exposed to real, unprocessed foods from a young age, two of those foods being garlic and artichoke. I often think about the immense time, care, and patience required for such small yields of these two vegetables. The garlic flower and artichoke tattoos serve as a reminder that I am so fortunate to be able to experience and cherish these foods."

Sara Cannon "The sheep is an homage to five gorgeous years farming with my sister at Cannons at Noon Family Sheep Farm. The marbles I got because I find them everywhere (mostly in farm fields). They show up when things are going great and when they get rough. I think they're a reminder to keep truckin'--everything is going to turn out great." Artist Yennika at Fortuneteller Tattoo

Isabel Carlson

Isabella

Jim Buckle

Ray Putnam

Jim Buckle

Jules Bradley

Syndey Gross

Izzy Ruffin

Syndey Gross

Rachel Thieme

Zach Serio

Isabella

Blair Andrews

Tony Keyes "Having tattoos is my way of connecting with my body and with the world I live in—decorating myself with reminders of the foods that sustain us and the animals we share the world with makes me feel powerful and grounded." Artists Kelly Londot, Sacred Fire Tattoo

Tamika Adjemian "I'd always wanted a tattoo. I was 45 and figured, why not now? I had always gardened, grew up with a gardening family, and I always loved beets—so versatile! You can eat the tops and bottoms, cooked and pickled so many ways. I had a job heading up an organic garden program for the 92Y Camps in NY as well as being an active Master Gardener in my community, and joining the board of a newly formed alliance geared toward bringing small farms back into my community. My tattoo was symbolic of my love for growing and eating great food." Artist Ida May

Hanne Tierney "My daughter and I went together to both get our first tattoo. I always smile when I see the footprints of some of our piglets being adventurous in the night. Those little footprints inspired me to make a bit of a timeline on my leg. I have always been attached to animals, as a three year old I had a pet chicken, then progressed to making friends with our family cat, horses were my passion for many years, until being drawn to sheep, dairy goats, then beef, and working much all of my adult life as a hog farmer. The story walks up my leg, and through all my farm animal adventures I have always loved my dogs who are my constant companions through my farming adventures, I have one foot print for each dog I have had." Artist Gemstone Tattoo

Hannah Daman "This is a combination of my parent's barn at the house where I grew up and the barn of the first farm I worked for. I’ve worked on Small Farm in Stow, MA; Goranson Farm in Dresden, ME; Snell Family Farm in Buxton, ME." Artist Ben Mack

Nate Gorlin-Crenshaw "Worked as farm crew and equipment operator on a number of different farms over the years, but currently I manage the pepper variety trials at Johnny’s Selected Seeds, where I’ve worked for 7 seasons now. I grow around 250 different types of peppers every year. I’ve always loved peppers, and have a few different farm and plant-based tattoos so I suppose getting pepper plants was the obvious choice. I also trial cucumbers, eggplant, pumpkins, dry corn, and winter squash, so I suppose I’ll have to get some more tattoos one of these days." Artist Meara Cafferata

Ben Whatley "Just for fun! And because it represents a unique part of my life as a garlic grower. I have since often just pointed at my arm to explain what garlic scapes are." Artist Pete Lavigne

Jim Buckle

Hannah Hamilton

Meg Mitchell

KP (Katie Paul)

Q+A

A Conversation with

Shirley Sherrod INTERVIEWED BY ELLEN SABINA

hirley Sherrod is a national civil rights figure, advocate, and global thought leader in agriculture policy and its impact on Black farmers and the Black community. She currently sits on the Biden Administration’s USDA Equity Commission, studying systemic racism within the Department. A media contributor on race and agriculture, she serves as an important voice in protecting the interest of Black farmers, improving their access to capital and markets, and advocating for policy changes to stem the tide of Black land loss. In March 2023, Ms. Sherrod traveled to Maine to deliver the keynote at MFT’s Northeast Convening of Farmland Access Practitioners, an intimate gathering of individuals and organizations engaged in farmland access work in the Northeast to discuss

the trends and evolutions in this work and to connect and build relationships with new land access organizations that have emerged in recent years in response to land justice needs in our region. In her keynote address, Ms. Sherrod shared the story of New Communities, Inc., which she helped to establish in 1969 as a farm collective on nearly 6,000 acres in southwestern Georgia in response to rampant and devastating land loss among African-American farmers. Recognized as the first modern land trust in the United States, New Communities was founded as an independent, community-run structure to buy, hold, and lease land in perpetuity, based on the belief that a system of land ownership that is designed to prevent loss of land is necessary for realizing political and economic security. Ms.

“The fact is, land is important.” Sherrod’s experience designing a land trust model to secure land access with her community is ripe with lessons for MFT as we reexamine and reconfigure our farmland protection work to prioritize equitable access to land for all farmers. As we think about MFT’s role in helping to grow power for Maine farming communities, we look to Ms. Sherrod’s deep experience organizing farmers and rural communities to gain access to land, resources, and markets. Ellen Sabina, MFT’s Director of Farmer Engagement, met with Ms. Sherrod on Zoom in June to share more of Ms. Sherrod’s story and work on land access, social justice, and organizing with the broader MFT community.

Ellen Sabina: Can you start with a little bit about how you originally got involved with the Civil Rights Movement, and why you devoted so much of your life and energy to organizing around that? Shirley Sherrod: I grew up in a community that even to this day is called Hawkinstown. It's called Hawkinstown because my grandmother's maiden name is Hawkins. I'm not sure when my great-grandparents arrived in Baker County, but I do know they registered to vote in July 1867. So, I know they were there then. My family decided to buy land, which meant working together to help each family unit. My grandmother had about 12 sisters and brothers, and my grandmother and grandfather ended up with about 14. But the goal was to have each family unit owning their own

Above Shirley M. Sherrod peers from the porch of the antebellum mansion at Cypress Pond, which was once home to the largest and wealthiest enslaver in the state of Georgia. (Photo courtesy of W.K. Kellogg Foundation )

Rev. Charles Sherrod (4th from left) and his wife, Shirley (7th from left) hold a meeting with New Communities' staff members in the 1970s. (Photo courtesy of The Sherrod Institute)

land. We never actually added up to see how much it was, but probably somewhere between 4 or 3 thousand acres that all of the family-owned. So, I grew up in an area where I was surrounded by family that owned farmland. And so, we farmed. It was hard work. I picked cotton, and did all of the other work on the farm. In the early years, we didn't have an electric water pump. So, that meant actually pumping the water for all of the animals, and household use. Looking back, it was a good upbringing. But during those years, I can tell you, all I thought of it was that it was hard work, and I wanted to get away from it. The farm was here in Southwest Georgia, in Baker County, probably one of the worst counties around in terms of civil rights, due to sheriffs that we had, who actually ruled everyone and everything. My goal was to get as far away from the farm because of the hard work on the farm, and as far away from Baker County as I could. But things changed on March 15th of 1965, my senior year in high school. My father 33

was murdered by a white farmer who was not prosecuted, because an all-white grand jury refused to indict him, even though there were three witnesses to what happened. So, I made a commitment on the night of my father's death to stay in the South, and to devote my life to working for change. In June of ‘65, the people from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) led by Charles Sherrod, the individual I would marry later, came to help us start the Baker County Movement. My work with civil rights started that summer, and continued all of these years. ES: How does your childhood relate to how your work developed, and how you think about the connection between access to land and social justice? SS: Looking back, I realize I did not have a real appreciation for what we had. I know that we were surrounded by plantations, some really big plantations. One, Ichauway Plantation, was like 33,000 acres, and another plantation about

25,000 acres. And there were many more. And so, I didn't appreciate the fact that we could be a little more independent, as much as any Black person could be, because we were landowners. It meant something. Landowners played a major role in helping to move civil rights forward, not only in Baker County, but other counties where the Movement had started. I think back to the Civil Rights Movement. As people were going to jail, it was the landowners who could get them out. So, as a young child, all I saw was work. But looking back, I realize what land ownership meant during those days, and what it means even today.

trust concept, ‘you won't own anything there simply because you get a lease on the land.' So, we spent a lot of time just trying to help people understand what it meant. And really also working with our folks on how we work together and with each other. So, to that end, we decided we wouldn't adopt a traditional organizational structure where you had a leader. Instead, we worked through committees. So, we had a farm committee, a health committee, an education committee, an industry committee. And, each of those committees was charged with developing the work going forward in this community.

ES: Land access and ownership were central to the New Communities project. How did the idea for New Communities come to be?

ES: What was the role of farming at New Communities?

SS: After marrying Charles Sherrod, I ended up working in the Civil Rights Movement in many of the counties in Southwest Georgia. One of the things that was constantly happening was that people, who lived on land owned by white landowners or plantation owners, would be kicked off the land for participating in the Movement. It happened whether you were trying to register to vote or are trying to get your children to enroll in formerly all-white schools. These people would have to leave their homes, because of their activism. So, we came up with this crazy idea of building our own community. During the summer of '68, eight individuals traveled to Israel to learn about the kibbutz. They came back after their two-week visit and lots of discussions happened. That’s when we made the decision to go forward with creating New Communities, which became the nation’s first community land trust. We got our hands on 5,735 acres of land. Our goal was to make sure we didn't lose the land. That was the driving force behind making it a land trust. The idea of the community land trust meant that people could get a long-term renewable lease on the land. So, that meant you could own your home, but the land it sat on was held separately and, thus, was less vulnerable to being seized or taken away. ES: Thinking about that time in history, this was such new idea and new territory you were navigating. SS: Yes, it was definitely new. And we had a lot of people who were against it. They would tell Black people who were considering supporting the land

SS: Farming was a major part of it. In the end, it became the one thing that we could lean on more than anything else, because there was lots of opposition to the work we were doing. At the state level, there were efforts to try to make sure we were not successful at holding onto this land. We got a planning grant from the U.S. Office of Economic Opportunity to plan the community. And OEO had promised some major funding at the end of the planning phase, which took a year. But by then the opposition to what we were doing had reached all the way up to Lester Maddox, who was then governor of Georgia. Maddox vetoed any funds coming into the state to our project. So, we were left then with a one-year option on the property. We didn't have the money to pay for it all. So, given that we had never had our hands on this much land, we decide we were going to fight to hold onto it. Historically speaking, agriculture was one of the main things we did as Black people, and that's why farming became such a major part of the project. ES: What did farming look like there? What were you growing? SS: In those days and even today, Black farmers have been punished because they could have the same amount of land or close to it, but a white farmer would get more of an acreage allotment from the USDA, and thus, more income from their farm. So, for example, when we bought the New Communities project, there was a 325-acre peanut allotment that was very valuable. It meant whatever you grew on that allotment, the government had to buy it at a support price. In 34

our case, we grew peanuts, corn, soybeans, and sorghum. We didn’t grow cotton. We had eight acres of muscadine grapes, a herd of cattle and hogs, that could be slaughtered, inspected and brought back to the farm to be cured into ham and sausage. There was a greenhouse, two and a half miles of highway frontage on U.S. Highway 19 and a railroad line with a spur that came onto the property. That spur was great, because we could order fertilizer, for example. It was vital because we had problems with local suppliers, especially when we ordered liquid fertilizer. We wouldn't know until the crop was up and growing that what we ordered wasn't what we got. So, we began pulling a sample of the liquid fertilizer for every delivery we received. It’s why having that railroad spur was valuable in that we could order in bulk, get it cheaper, and avoid local suppliers. ES: Eventually, New Communities ended up stopping for a while. Can you talk about why that happened? SS: Well, we were on a roll there for a while. Really farming, expanding the farming operation, paying the land debts, and so forth. We didn’t have enough money to implement a lot of the other plans that were made for New Communities. But holding onto the land was important to us. But then, we ran into drought, followed by a second year of drought. Because of it, we made the decision to go to Farmers Home Administration (a now-terminated government agency housed at the USDA) to try to get an emergency loan like all the other farmers were getting. But when our farm manager and my husband went to the office, which was in Dawson, Georgia, the county supervisor told them, “You’ll get a loan here over my dead body.” That put us into a three-year fight just to try to get an emergency loan. But with continued drought and the size of operation that we had, it was something we couldn't totally overcome. By the time we were finally approved for a loan, it wasn't the amount we needed. It was much less, plus you had to give them a lien on all available assets. That's how Black farmers have lost land over the years. Once the Farmers Home Administration would get a lien on your assets, then they could delay loans or not make loans at all. They could do things to make sure you were not successful with your farming project. And that's exactly what happened to us. They engineered the foreclosure of Prudential, which held our first mortgage. They made sure we didn't pay them. The foreclosure 35

on the New Communities' property happened in 1985. We lost everything. We had assets worth almost $5 million, and they allowed someone out of Atlanta to buy it for $1 million. We later saw the evidence that they actually let the new owner borrow $950,000 of that, so he only put up front $50,000. Then, he proceeded to dig holes and push all of our buildings over into them, before breaking up the land into tracts and selling it. ES: That must've been so hard for your community to come through that experience. How did it impact you, and ultimately influence your work? SS: As I said, I had made that commitment back in 1965, to stay in the South and devote my life to working for change. Finding a place where I could continue that work was something I needed to do. I ended up with the Federation of Southern Cooperatives. Their main office was in Atlanta, and they didn't have a real presence outside of that, especially here in the farming area of Georgia. So, I served as Georgia director for the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, which gave me the opportunity then to use a lot of what I learned growing up on the farm and those years with New Communities. This job positioned me to help farmers, initially here in Southwest Georgia and eventually throughout the South. I focused on Black land ownership issues, helping develop markets where Black farmers were shut out due to racism and trying to find alternatives. For example, we connected with the group Red Tomato near Boston, and actually had farmers here in South Georgia growing seedless watermelons for Boston, Massachusetts. We also talked with Ben of Ben and Jerry's about Black land loss. They wanted to purchase a product grown by Black farmers to go into their ice cream. So, I organized pecan growers to actually work together to sell pecans to Ben and Jerry's. And even still, there’s so much racism everywhere. We couldn't even find a sheller that would work with us. In the end, Ben and Jerry's had to get their major supplier to shell our pecans. We kept running into roadblocks when it came to trying to help our farmers increase their income on the farm. We have to always look for alternatives. And so, that became my work: organizing cooperatives here in Southwest Georgia to get around some of the racism Black farmers were experiencing.

Shirley M. Sherrod announces the conversion of a former grocery store into The Table of Southwest Georgia, a hub connecting underserved farmers and area residents with business, agricultural, and health services. (Photo by Clennon L. King | AugustineMonica Films).

ES: Can you talk about connecting farmers with each other to work together? How has it benefited them? SS: I saw early on that, because of the racism, there is just no way you can continue to just work your plot, and not work with others to survive. It became necessary for Black farmers to work together. Otherwise, they would each just get picked off. If they eventually got a loan with Farmers Home, and some white person wanted their land, the white person would end up with it because Farmers Home would make sure the Black farmer couldn't get loans to survive. To get around that, I needed to try to get our farmers to see that by working together, they could each survive. Just trying to do it on their own was too difficult, especially with all of the barriers put in place for them. I organized my first co-operative in 1987, and that was the Flint River Farmers Co-op, located in Baker County, where I was born. ES: Your work with New Communities and The Southwest Georgia Project continues. Can you talk a little bit about what it looks like today?

SS: So, we lost the land in ’85, but we didn't stop the work, especially through the Southwest Georgia Project, and we didn't give up on having New Communities re-emerge. We just knew there would be a day when the chance to start again would present itself. The Southwest Georgia Project works with farmers in a 14-county area, helping them access programs through the USDA. So, we do lots of workshops through the Southwest Georgia Project, such as assisting farmers in their applications to get approved for high tunnels to extend their growing season, or wells, to irrigate their crop or whatever. The organization also continued its civil rights work from time to time. For example, there might be something happening in a community around education and the Southwest Georgia Project will go in and assist with whatever will be helpful. Through my work with the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, we realized Black land ownership was a major issue. We were losing more farmers and more land. And the discrimination at USDA was directly responsible for a lot of it. So, a lawsuit was necessary. We had discussed this many

Shon and Chiquita Holsey are among the farmers who receive training and guidance from agricultural specialists at The Sherrod Institute. (Photo by Clennon L. King | AugustineMonica Films).

times and made the decision to try to go forward with it. Mind you, there was a lawsuit before the Pigford case. But keep in mind, that the work that was done on that earlier lawsuit set the stage for the big case that was Pigford vs. Glickman in 1997. Once that suit was filed, there was eventually some indication that the government would be willing to settle. That settlement called for two classes of claimants. The first was a farmer filing a Class A claim who, if successful, would receive $50,000, $12,500 toward payment of his taxes on his land and would get priority for USDA programs. The one hurdle that stood in the way of this being an effective solution is that a Black farmer had to find a similarly situated white farmer who received the loans the Black farmer was denied. So, that meant knowing the business of white farmers. 37

Then, there was Class B, which you could file if you had more evidence of the discrimination. With that, you get your day in court. Still, you also had to find a similarly situated white farmer who received loans you were denied. There was a 6-month window by which you could submit a claim. And our organization, the Federation, and some others, were busy trying to get the word out about the lawsuit and provide lawyers the information needed to file a claim. We were about three months into this process. I had been over in Alabama working with farmers there and on my way home that night when the light bulb went off. The thing was you had to have experienced discrimination between 1981 and 1996. “Oh, my goodness, we were farming at New Communities in 1981. New Communities can file a claim in the lawsuit!” So, we did that before the deadline of October 13, 1999, and had our day in court on July 30, 2002. If you had been sitting in the courtroom that day, you would have left it like, ‘We did it!’ We felt like we had won, but we got a letter saying we had been denied. The judge had put a monitor in place so that farmers who were denied could decide to appeal the decision. Of course, we appealed the decision. It took four years for them to go through all of the records to determine what would happen with our case. In 2006, we actually received a letter, documenting all of the things that had been done to us. And when I look at it and read it to this day, it makes me want to cry because it really documents the discrimination that we experienced. Remember, we filed in 1999. And then, we didn't hear anything from October 2006 until the night of July 8, 2009, when we received a call from our lawyers, saying we had won. One of them asked me, “Do you want to guess how much?” I said, “Is it at least $1 million?” She said, “No, it was $12 million.” So, that really gave us the opportunity to pull everyone together again and work on finding more land and continue with the dream that we had from 1962. New Communities ended up purchasing a former slave plantation, 1,638 acres of land that was once owned by the largest slave owner and the wealthiest man in Georgia. Back in the 1800s, he owned about nine or ten plantations and about a thousand slaves. We started planning right away. Production agriculture is one thing. We also had a vision for it to be a research and training facility for young farmers. It’s why we have a lot of training going on out there. The Southwest Georgia Project staff is out in the counties, working with farmers and bringing them in for workshops on growing pecans, rice and a lot of different crops. We've also

recently partnered with the land-grant institutions that are nearby, like Florida A&M University out of Tallahassee, Tuskegee University and Fort Valley State University. With their faculty and scientists, we have all these research projects underway onsite. Meanwhile, because of the civil rights history, and the history of the plantation, there's so much more we can do. When we first purchased it, we had what we called the blessing of the land ceremonies, and we brought together every ethnic group, starting with the Lower Creek Indians, to do a blessing in their cultures. ES: You characterize the work of Southwest Georgia Project and New Communities as fitting into three buckets: Food, Farming, and Human Rights. It seems like those have really been the throughlines of your work. Why do you see those three things as so integral to your vision for the future? SS: The fact is, land is important. Being able to produce the food you need in the way it should be produced is important. I can look back to my grandparents and how their land ownership and farm helped to educate members of my family, who are now doctors and lawyers and so forth. The human rights issue is integral. I think of so many communities that we still work in—I was out in Clay County, Georgia, for example, talking to people in the community there and the issues they face. They didn't have any food for the children during the summer, because no one picked up the summer feeding program, which was important to those kids being able to eat. And there are just so many issues out there like that, where folks don't have the information. Also, the internet in those communities isn’t there or isn't strong, or is too expensive. As a result, people are still suffering, as they have through the years. So, it is important to get out there and work with them to help them make the changes they want to see. Our work brings all of that together, too. I should note that there’s another project we have here we call ‘The Table of Southwest Georgia’. We were given an old Winn-Dixie grocery store building and roughly four acres of land here in the city of Albany. There will be an aggregation site at the rear of the store, so that farmers who grow produce, can bring it in, properly handle and process it and sell it locally, as well as outside of the area. To make it happen, we’ve partnered with a Community Development Financial Institution, who will be working with business owners to make loans. We’ll have as well

a commercial kitchen for food truck owners and so forth. We additionally partnered with the hospital, which doesn’t have a presence currently in that part of town. And that's an area where the largest number of COVID deaths occurred. So, The Table will be home to a health institute, meaning the hospital can work with people before they get sick. In short, it’s a major project that we're developing that's really turned out to be about a $15 million project, and we’re getting close, but are struggling right now to find the last $2 to $3 million to make this really happen. ES: Wow, that sounds like a really amazing project. And maybe that's part of the answer to my final question, which is, as you look to the future, what ideas or projects are you most excited about or giving you hope? SS: Yes, of course, The Table project is one of them, because it helps to bring the city and rural together. You know, the school lunch projects have been great. But if, as a Black farmer, you don't have a facility to properly handle the produce and get it to the school systems in the way that they need it, then you can't participate in those markets. So, that's one exciting, transformative part about The Table project. It will allow more small farmers to grow and participate in the marketplace. At New Communities, I’m excited to not only train young farmers, but to be able to do more about our history. When you take that property, and look at the fact that it was once in the hands of slave owners, and now it's in the hands of the descendants of slaves—there's so much you can teach to our people about where we've been, where we are, and where we need to be going. I've been at this work for a long, long time. It's exciting even now, 58 years later, to have the opportunity to still be trying to make a difference. And now, there are so many different ways we can make a difference, mainly because we have that land base to work from. Today, New Communities at Cypress Pond, as it’s known, serves as headquarters to The Sherrod Institute, and its affiliates, The Southwest Georgia Project, New Communities Land Trust, and The Charles Sherrod Community Development Corporation. Other affiliates include ‘The Table of Southwest Georgia’ and WUTU 88.3 FM. Together, with Sherrod serving at the helm, these divisions carry out the near-60-year-old mission to move Black farmers toward education, access, and economic independence. Learn more at sherrodinstitute.org 38

LAND

FIELD TRIALS: Maine farmers and scientists research how PFAS contamination affects soils, plants and our food BY MARINA SCHAUFFLER | PHOTOGRAPHS BY BRENDAN BULLOCK

Farmers routinely adapt to changing weather and markets, but PFAS contamination (from per-and polyfluorinated compounds) is forcing abrupt shifts in some operations and prompting wide-ranging research into how these persistent chemicals affect food systems. “PFAS is not really of agriculture’s making but agriculture is certainly going to have to deal with it,” observes Marlen Eve, deputy administrator of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service (USDA ARS). When PFAS were discovered on an Arundel, Maine dairy farm in 2016, those tasked with responding found scant guidance. Lack of understanding about this vast class of ‘forever chemicals’ exacerbated challenges for affected farmers, and no federal authorities could tell Maine State Toxicologist Andrew Smith “how much is too much in food,” he recalls. State and university researchers, farmers and independent consultants scrambled to gather and share information. “It’s been really collaborative; we’re

all starting from scratch,” observes soil scientist Andrew Carpenter of the firm Northern Tilth. Maine has identified 78 farms to date contaminated by PFAS from past applications of wastewater sludge. To meet the needs of farmers and consumers, Maine’s “research community has really moved by leaps and bounds,” notes Adam Nordell, a PFAS-affected farmer and a campaign manager with the nonprofit Defend Our Health. Maine’s research on PFAS could expand markedly in coming years, with the prospect of up to $20 million in federal support for a new PFAS research center housed at the University of Maine in Orono, established in partnership with USDA ARS. Work undertaken by Maine scientists may generate far-reaching benefits, given the international scope of PFAS agricultural contamination. In the U.S. alone, roughly one-quarter of all wastewater sludge generated is still spread on agricultural land.

A UMaine test plot on Sue Hunter's farm in Unity, Maine. Side by side 'companion' plantings, as well as solitary control plantings measure uptake levels of PFAS into various crops.

Left Sue Hunter in the farm store at her property in Unity, Maine. Right Control planting of tomatoes alone in the UMaine test plot on Sue Hunter's farm, testing PFAS uptake levels.

A Hard Pivot For Sue Hunter, a Unity resident who has farmed for nearly 50 years, the discovery of PFAS contamination on her land followed repeated losses. Her husband’s death to cancer in 2015 necessitated selling their dairy herd. She leased some fields for several seasons while selling hay and establishing a small market for farmgrown vegetables. Then in 2022, PFAS testing revealed what she terms “crazy numbers.” “It was devastating,” Hunter recalls, to see the land’s productive potential evaporate after “I’ve worked all these years and this hard. And I still have to pay my taxes and insurance.” With help from the PFAS Emergency Relief Fund established by Maine Farmland Trust and the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association, she installed raised beds in her greenhouse to safely grow vegetables for her farm market. PFAS levels vary considerably over the property, Hunter says, because “we farm this place differently in sections of land.” Testing occurred by section so she could compare the PFAS 41

results with management records; “I’ve always been intrigued by science,” she reflects. Hunter wondered whether researchers could use the data and conduct field experiments on-site, while she helped supply equipment and irrigation.

Taking Research into the Field At the University of Maine, Diane Rowland, dean of the College of Natural Sciences, Forestry, and Agriculture, and Rachel Schattman, an assistant professor of sustainable agriculture, shared Hunter’s enthusiasm about that prospect. The University will not knowingly introduce PFAS to existing Experiment Station farms so “we can’t set up experimental conditions that farmers have on their farms now,” Rowland explains. Greenhouse testing can reveal important insights about how plants take up chemicals—such as PFAS tending to concentrate in leafy greens and not in reproductive plant parts like grains, fruits and seeds. However, lab findings “have to be taken out into the field to have confidence in

the results,” says Ellen Mallory, a University of Maine agronomist, a process that “just takes time, [often] several field seasons. The biggest challenge continues to be that very few experiments have been conducted in the field.” Field work is also needed to find means of remediating contaminated soils. Since 2019, the nonprofit Upland Grassroots and the Mi’kmaq Nation have been testing the efficacy of hemp (Cannibas sativa) to draw PFAS from the soil and have learned that it’s a powerful accumulator. Now several teams of university scientists (outside Maine) are experimenting with ways to rid the harvested hemp plants of PFAS.

A Living Laboratory Only small-scale, experimental means currently exist to break PFAS into harmless elements so researchers are investigating what materials could bind the compounds, making them inaccessible to food crops or to absorption in livestock’s digestive tracts. Two University of Maine faculty members in dairy cattle nutrition

and forage science, Juan Romero and Glenda Pereira, are studying potential binders that— when added to dairy feed—could help cows flush out a common PFAS compound, PFOS (the only one Maine now regulates for milk and beef), without affecting their nutritional intake or milk production. To date, Romero says, “we have screened six types of binders and found one that can bind PFOS under conditions similar to those in the digestive tract of cattle. It’s the same one identified in published research going back to 1984 as helping rats and humans eliminate accumulated PFOS.” One material being assessed as a potential PFAS binder in soil is biochar, a byproduct of wood broken down with heat in the absence of oxygen. It acts similarly to the granular activated carbon (GAC) often used in water filters to remove PFAS and other contaminants, explains Ling Li, assistant professor of sustainable bioenergy systems at the University of Maine. GAC is expensive and often sourced from coal or materials such as coconut shell fiber, but biochar can be supplied from Maine forests, making it potentially an affordable and relatively sustainable soil supplement. Another biochar study launched this fall by

Sue Hunter's greenhouse on her farm in Unity. The raised beds were built with funding from Maine Farmland Trust after it was discovered that her farm fields were contaminated with PFAS.

Above Ling Li, Assistant Professor of Sustainable Bioenergy Systems at the University of Maine, advises her students as they lay out a test plot grid at Sue Hunter's farm to study the effect of biochar as a PFAS remediation technique. Below UMaine students add biochar to soil in their test plot grid.

Northern Tilth and Purdue University, using Hunter Farm soils, will test whether introducing biochar to fairly contaminated soils helps limit its uptake into pasture grasses. Alongside Li’s biochar research plot at Hunter Farm is an established plot where Schattman and student assistants grew combinations of lettuce, fescue and tomatoes this past season. She had tissue samples from those plants tested for 36 PFAS compounds, hoping to determine whether intercropping with plants that readily accumulate PFAS—like fescue—can lower levels of the chemicals in neighboring food crops. A team of Maine scientists led by Alexandra Scearce, a graduate student working with Schattman, recently published a review in the journal Biointerphases summarizing the variables affecting plant uptake of PFAS—including chemical factors like soil type and pH, plant characteristics like root structure and leaf area, and the structure of the PFAS compounds present. This understanding builds on work by the Maine Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Maine CDC) and Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry (DACF), which have spent years doing opportunistic sampling on contaminated farms to learn how much of the PFAS in soil ends up in the edible portions of vegetable and forage plants. Field experiments will help researchers refine predictive models, Schattman says, so that farmers can find the safest crop options and combinations in mildly contaminated soils. “Rachel’s project is very dear to my heart,” Hunter observes, “because I want to be able to do vegetables.”

Figuring Out What Works Better predictive models can’t come fast enough for farmers contending with PFAS. For New Beat Farm owners Adrienne Lee and Ken Lamson, who grow organic vegetables in Knox, the discovery of PFAS from sludge applications decades earlier came as “a slap in the face when you’re trying to be so careful about what you put in the soil,” Lee reflects. “We need to feel extra confident that we’re selling a product that we can stand behind,” she adds, and that’s hard when “no one knows specifically much of anything right now.” Nearly all of Maine’s PFAS research has been guided by farmers’ needs, but critical information required for their daily decisions is still missing. Lee wants to know, for example, how best to manage

Adrienne Lee and Ken Lamson on their farm in Knox, Maine, which was among many farms found to have significant PFAS contamination from sludge spreading. The plot behind them was one of the only areas on the farm to never have sludge applied, and it is therefore safe for growing food crops.

spent plant matter containing PFAS. Approaches to remediation require the sort of systemic view farmers have, she says, so that contamination is not simply shifted around. Reliant now on trucked-in water for irrigation, Lee and Lamson have gone from growing leafy greens in field rows to using smaller beds in an unaffected area where added compost and no-till methods reduce the water required. To help compensate for selling fewer greens, they’ve expanded their cut-flower beds and tomato production (since PFAS concentrates in the leaves not the fruits). Farmers need latitude to determine which adaptations for safe food production will fit their farming vision and crop preferences, Lee says; “The solution has to be helping farms find their path.” The state is bearing the high cost for plant tissue sampling on affected farms, typically upward of $250 per sample, but turnaround times of up to eight weeks render results of limited use for that growing season. Beyond data from their own land, Lee says, farmers need access to datasets that are as comprehensive and accessible as possible.

Adrienne Lee in a cut flower greenhouse at her farm in Knox. After discovering that the farm had significant levels of PFAS contamination, cut flowers provided Lee an alternative option to growing food crops.

Researchers are working to standardize sampling protocol toward that end, Mallory says, so that everyone sampling “collects a full suite of parameters. We want to develop really good datasets that people will be using for years and years,” she adds. “We don’t want [future researchers] saying ‘they didn’t record that.’”

Funding Ongoing PFAS Research A PFAS Fund Advisory Committee established by the Maine Legislature, on which Lee, Nordell and other farmers served, recently approved a plan allocating $70 million in state funds to meet a broad spectrum of farmer needs related to PFAS impacts—including $11 million for applied agricultural research. Augmenting those state resources is funding proposed in the 2024 federal budget to create a USDA ARS research center at the University of Maine. If funded, it would help the agency mitigate PFAS threats to agriculture, health and ecosystems. Eve of the USDA anticipates that half the initial funds allocated would help renovate and expand 45

the New England Plant, Soil and Water Research Laboratory in Orono to house the new center. The balance would support up to four new scientific positions through USDA and a comparable number through the University, as well as supporting staff and student researchers. Expanded research efforts could help fill remaining gaps in scientific understanding, such as how soil microbial communities affect PFAS (and vice versa) and how “precursor” PFAS chemicals may transform within ecosystems, elements and organisms into more enduring compounds. Another pressing research gap, both Nordell and Lee underscore, is the occupational exposure farmers face breathing in windblown farm soils and handling contaminated soil.

‘Willingness To Collaborate’ Despite moments of “friction and frustration” in Maine’s quest to understand how PFAS affects agricultural systems, Nordell credits state and university representatives with "a deep commitment to listening to

research questions coming from farmers, and a frequent willingness to collaborate." Working closely with those on affected farms, staff members at the Maine CDC have undertaken field studies, compiled and analyzed data and developed models that DACF can use to guide farmers’ use of contaminated land. Maine CDC has also worked to develop “food action levels” for PFAS in livestock forage and in milk, beef and an array of vegetable, enabling DACF to set regulatory standards. While “talking to the public about chemical exposure is the mainstay of what we do,” Smith, of the Maine CDC, acknowledges, PFAS has placed unusual demands on researchers. Interacting with farmers who have their economic viability and health on the line “has been humbling and personally challenging,” he reflects. “It’s a real tragedy.” Yet through it all, farmers have demonstrated “this amazing can-do attitude,” sharing access to land, equipment, samples, and support and “being patient as we learn their language and farming practices,” he adds. “They’re wonderful collaborators; We wouldn’t have this data without [them].” University researchers share similar admiration and appreciation for the farmers struggling to adapt their management and to research new approaches atop the countless demands they already juggle. Speaking of the partnership evolving at Hunter Farm, Schattman says “As a team, I think we’ve worked well together. And that’s the key. We’re a team.” Maine Farmland Trust is contributing to that collective effort through two grants from a new PFAS Research Fund, which provides supplemental resources for researchers working on affected farms, helping with expenses not covered by other funding sources. The first two grants are for research at Hunter Farm, helping support farmer compensation and biochar purchase and transport. The spirit of collaboration that marks ongoing PFAS research stems from a shared commitment to sustain Maine’s farmland and its thriving local food economy; “There’s so much on the line,” Schattman observes. “We owe it to our state to do the science and do it right to grow food that is safe.” marina schauffler, an independent environmental writer, wrote a fellowship-funded article series on PFAS in 2022, “Invisible and Indestructible.” Read more at marinaschauffler.com.

CROSS-STATE COLLABORATION ON RESEARCH Leading PFAS researchers and representatives from Maine and Michigan—states at the forefront of PFAS agricultural research—exchanged insights this fall at two conferences collaboratively organized by Maine Farmland Trust, University of Maine, Michigan State University (MSU) and USDA ARS. USDA and private funders helped more than 30 Maine representatives (including several affected farmers) attend a three-day symposium at MSU in October. Participants at a subsequent workshop hosted by Colby College heard from symposium representatives and other regional speakers and discussed actions for the Northeast. “These gatherings allowed us to brainstorm potential solutions and identify research needs and resources that are directly responsive to our farming communities,” observed Cheryl Murphy PhD, Director of the Center for PFAS Research at MSU’s Department of Fisheries and Wildlife.

AN OPPORTUNITY TO ADVANCE RESEARCH AT SONGBIRD FARM In fall 2023, almost two years after Adam Nordell and Johanna Davis of Songbird Farm learned that the soils on their farm were highly contaminated with PFAS chemicals, Maine Farmland Trust purchased the farm property. With the purchase of the Unity property, MFT is seeking agricultural research partners to explore long-term solutions for impacted farmers and farmland. “When PFAS contamination was discovered at Songbird Farm, we knew that Maine farmers needed urgent solutions to the PFAS crisis—and we also knew that Maine was at the forefront of a national problem that demands investment in long-term research,” says MFT President and CEO Amy Fisher.

Thank you to the businesses, farmers, and individual supporters whose member support powered our work in 2023. Together we are growing a landscape and economy where farmers and communities thrive. Special thanks to our Fruit level business members for their deep-rooted commitment to Maine’s food and farming community:

Learn more at : mainefarmlandtrust.org