On Fertile Ground

Planting seeds in fertile ground. Nurturing young, fragile seedlings. Patiently awaiting growth. Harvesting the fruits of labor.

These are more than farm terms; they are meaningful metaphors that are part of the everyday vocabulary at The Food Project, a Massachusetts nonprofit organization that grows organic produce and distributes it through a variety of community programs and a farmers' market.

And though the group is not a "faith-based organization" with any religious affiliation or directly religious principles, The Food Project is like a living parable, a testament to the uniting spiritual power of the land and the positive force it exerts on the people who work it.

The Lincoln, Mass.-based Food Project was founded in 1991 as an experiment in how creating sustainable agriculture can have a byproduct other than healthy produce—a unifying sense of community that can span racial and socioeconomic barriers. At the Project, young people from posh suburbs work together with youth from some of Boston's most troubled neighborhoods to farm the land. They follow the path of fresh, organic produce from seed to the farm stand or dining table, and share their harvest with soup kitchens and homeless shelters in the area.

Today the organization—which hopes to harvest 200,000 pounds of produce this year—includes a dizzying array of paid fellowships and internships, suburban farms and urban community gardens, and summer and year-round programs that are aimed at creating a generation of youth who are committed to organic farming, sustainable agriculture—and each other.

Part farming cooperative, part small-business training ground, part environmental justice advocate, part interracial dialogue, The Food Project is a seed that is sprouting many shoots, both in the United States and globally. Last January, the Project sent a delegation to the World Social Forum and Via Campesina conferences in Porto Alegre, Brazil, and the group is in conversation about replicating its success in countries including Mexico and Korea.

At the heart of the program's success—the number of applicants for the summer internship has increased each year—is a unique sense of spirituality that, while understated, pervades the group's activities.

Greg Gale, the program director at The Food Project, is a graduate of Harvard Divinity School and a Quaker. Instead of becoming an ordained minister, he found his own ministry in environmental and housing justice work before coming to The Food Project. Gale has formulated a set of philosophical and spiritual principles that undergird The Food Project's work. At the heart of these is a reverence for the earth and humility at realizing that soil, weather, and seeds are out of human control.

"This food comes from the earth," Gale said. "When you labor with the earth, you can't have mastery over it, you have to work in partnership with it." Gale says that there is often an inverse relationship between being in control of the natural world and truly benefiting from its fruits. "People value healthy food. The less healthy you are willing to have your food, the more you can have mastery over nature," he said.

The Food Project believes that human beings can have mastery over some things, like decontaminating urban garden plots from lead and other toxins. In addition to the 31 acres the group farms in Lincoln, they now farm 2 1/4 lead-free acres in Roxbury, a city neighborhood that more often makes news for urban problems like poverty and crime than for community initiatives and farmers' markets.

"To me, farming is similar to trying to be faithful," Gale said. "God asks us to try to unearth and face and be who we were made to be without believing we can control all the outcomes, but working in partnership with God."

For the young people who till the land and staff the modest offices at The Food Project, the lessons that Gale and other leaders teach them are as valuable as they are challenging to learn. And many of the youth develop a spirituality all their own from their work with The Food Project.

Wil Bullock is a 22-year-old who lives in Dorchester, another city neighborhood with its share of typical urban problems. An African American who attends services at his neighborhood's Southern Baptist church every Sunday, Bullock says that his faith is a perfect fit with his work at The Food Project.

"My religious belief is that I was created by God," says Bullock, who is seated in a conference room just feet away from a giant pile of freshly harvested lettuce sitting in the Lincoln offices waiting for a home. "To actually have the opportunity to work in the soil, in the dirt—to create and give life to these vegetables, it's really amazing," he said. "It's a way to come face to face with creation."

Bullock, who has worked with The Food Project since 1995, is ebullient with the meaning he gleans from the work. "How many different vegetables God gave humans to nourish themselves with!" said Bullock, who, as part of his fellowship at the Project, is currently working at the group's commercial kitchen developing recipes and marketing concepts for fresh salsa that is sold at local co-ops and health food markets. "That shows me how much God loves us, how much he cares about us, how much he nurtures us."

Seated across the table from Bullock is Beth Mullen, an 18-year-old recent high school graduate who has worked for The Food Project for two years, first through the summer program, then a series of internships. While Mullen was raised in the Congregational Church, she says that her spirituality is a garden of ideas from Eastern philosophy, her church, and her political beliefs.

"I believe that people should be treated with respect, and I believe that people should have the right to be heard," she said. "People should have a connection to the land—I believe in human dignity, I believe in peace."

The Food Project doesn't have to be overtly religious to share in those values, Mullen said. "We're a very humanitarian organization. That sort of spiritual side of me has been cultivated at The Food Project because we share the same values," she said.

And you can be sure that Mullen uses the word "cultivated" as more than a farm term.

Holly Lebowitz Rossi, a Sojourners contributing writer, lives in Arlington, Massachusetts.