FrontLine Farming / Acequia Institute Capstone Highlight

We’re honored to highlight FrontLine Farming this October for Women’s Small Business Month. FrontLine in its own words is “a food justice and farmer advocacy group led by womxn and BIPOC individuals.” Its Co-founder and Executive Director is Fatuma Emmad. Fatuma not only works with FrontLine and is a professor in the MENV program, she also owns and operates her own sustainable landscaping company. FrontLine Farming is located in Metro Denver with a goal of creating broader equity and food access across the food system through urban farming, education, policy initiatives, direct action and a deep seeded respect for land and ancestors. ^[1]  

As a Capstone team, we are fortunate enough to be partnered with Frontline Farming to assist in the creation of an agricultural exchange program for high school youth. As students in the Sustainable Food Systems specialization, we were excited to work with and learn from FrontLine Farming because of the organization’s dedication to food security, food justice, and food sovereignty. While growing amazing food (we know, we’ve sampled it!), they utilize practices that respect and protect the earth. FLF uses no till/conservation tilling practices, drip tape irrigation for water conservation, cover crops, companion planting and encourages biodiversity in each of its three locations.

The Field Exchange Program was inspired by a few major problems we are facing within our food system. The first problem is our aging farmers. As reported in the 2017 Census of Agriculture, the average age of a farmer is 57.5, which has only increased since the 2012 census. Secondly, of the total producers in the United States, 64% were male and 95% were white identifying. ^[2] The program seeks to provide potential avenues for BIPOC youth to get involved in agriculture, and understand the complexities that exist in our food system. As more conversations happen around regenerative agriculture and sustainable farming practices, it is important to remember that many of these methods have been used for centuries by indigenous peoples and are also rooted in the knowledge brought to the United States by enslaved Africans and immigrant laborers, from China to Mexico. In order to attract youth to agriculture, we must acknowledge the associated generational trauma and provide safe environments for learning.

Lastly, this project aims to address the urban/rural divide. For those unfamiliar, the urban rural divide is a common narrative told in the United States drawing contrast between urban and rural communities. Within the narrative, rural spaces are identified as white, poor, technologically illiterate and uneducated, whereas urban spaces are labeled as diverse, wealthy, technologically advanced and educated.^[3] Recently this narrative has gained traction as polarization has grown within media, news, politics and academia, pitting urban against rural and vice versa. In addition to the problems with polarization, this narrative is limiting and erases the voices of those who do not identify within this binary.

In the completion of our capstone project we will critically analyze the limitations of this narrative, for both urban and rural communities that don’t fall into the perceived definitions of how they should exist in these spaces. As a Capstone team we hope by the end of our project we will have laid the groundwork for a program to assist youth in engaging with the food system.

FrontLine farming, as well as our other partner the Acequia Institute, are rooted in equity, justice and community. Women’s Small Business Month is a great opportunity to highlight our Capstone Project as one of the many innovative projects FrontLine is a part of.

“We work at the intersection of food because we know that food shapes cultures, societies, where we work, and how we are valued. Our work to create changes in the food system is one way in which we can bring greater structural change and equity to systems that articulate profit as the only motivation.”- FrontLine Farming