Agroecology Commons

Community Education: Services Provided: Education in agroecology through apprenticeships, seed grants, and farmer-to-farmer skill-shares. People Benefitted: 288 Program Activities: The Bay Area Farmer-to-Farmer Training (BAFFT) & Farmer Mobilization Program- BAFFT - Agroecology Commons (AC) organized an 12-month apprenticeship program serving 12 beginning and evolving farmers who are BIPOC, LGBTQIA, Femme, and working-class humans focused on land stewardship,small farm production, cooperative marketing, and food sovereignty.We also organized and implemented a seed grant program for ten BAFFT graduates and farmer educators to support community projects for agroecology and food sovereignty. Farmer-to-Farmer Skillshares- AC organized seven 1/2 day learning exchanges and trained 238 young and beginning farmers, majority BIPOC. Training topics included soil health and fertility, goat stewardship and cheese making, bee hive resilience, rotational grazing, and cooperative organizing for land stewardship.

Land Stewardship:Services Provided: Development of incubator farm and tool lending library for beginning farmers, tool trainings People Benefitted: 35 Program Activities: BCS Trainings, Book review, STLT daikon processing day, incubator preparation, soil health building via compost production and spreading mulch, planting covercrops, building production beds, building irrigation system, developing and stocking tool lending library, planting and tending to native pollinator crops and hedgerows.

Networks and Solidarity: Services Provided: Educational networks for agroecology and community food sovereignty development People Benefitted: 146 Program Activities: Three networking and community development events were organized. Two were for farmer wellness that offered healing and wellness services directly to farmers and one for international solidarity on behalf of food sovereignty in Nicaragua and Cuba.