Year-Round Farming in Massachusetts? How the State Is Investing in Solutions.
The state has funded 487 projects, including geothermal-powered greenhouses and electric tractors, to strengthen its food system and make local production more efficient.
By Meg Wilcox
Civil Eats
Oct 31, 2022
Excerpt:
Eastie Farm’s greenhouse will enable the urban farm, which manages three mini-farms and four school-based gardens in East Boston, to extend its growing season and provide a winter classroom for its environmental education program. It expands the organization’s ability to increase food security in the largely immigrant community, with a median household income below the rest of Boston and the furthest average distance to a grocery store.
It is one of 20 greenhouses built at Massachusetts farms over the past two years to increase the availability of locally produced food in underserved communities. A state-funded food security infrastructure grant program, launched at the height of the pandemic, helped pay for the greenhouses, along with 487 other infrastructure projects, ranging from food delivery trucks and freezers to farm equipment to a public housing authority’s vertical farming initiative. The $58 million program aims to make local, fresh food production more efficient and accessible and to mitigate future crises by better connecting local producers and harvesters to a resilient food system.
