Growing Places Garden Project

Grow: healthy food (aeroponic tower farm, freight farm, community farm, school and community gardens. Participants grow produce for the school nutrition program, home delivered produce program, employees, for themselves or for donation.

Engage/educate: elevate residents as food system leaders. Support youth programs for grades pre-school through high school by providing a variety of experiences: Growing, cooking, harvesting, packaging, distributing local produce to underserved residents, youth leadership (root leaders), and entrepreneurship opportunities.

Aggregate and distribute: purchase food from local farms then distribute to underserved residents via snap/hip accessible farmer markets or mobile markets, home-delivery, and through partners. Growing Places purchased 146,217 units of local produce from 38 Massachusetts farmers, of which 33 are from the ncm region, for dissemination through distribution channels to underserved ncma residents. Secured $299,866 for 16 small underserved ncma farmers to extend the Growing season and mitigate climate change. Conducted crop planning with 17 ncma farmers to synch Growing and distribution in the local food system. Initiated a "fresh box" food promotion program that provided 220 boxes weekly of fresh local produce worth $45 each to emergency food partners that serve food insecure households. Increased the home delivered produce and mobile market distribution by 14% compared to the prior year. Initiated a wholesale produce sales program to 7 institutional customers.

Other programs including food hub facilities and the greening the gateway cities program