About The Food Project

At The Food Project, we believe that everyone has the right to fresh, healthy, affordable food. Our goal is to transform the food system into a more just, community-engaged model that supports food security for all while connecting diverse communities to each other and to the land. 

Since our founding in 1991, The Food Project has grown into a nationally recognized, non-profit organization that works at the intersection of youth, food, and community. Young people are the driving force of The Food Project and work on our farms and with community members to realize the right to food that nourishes our communities and the planet we share.

Each year, we employ 140 teenagers in this vital work on 70 acres of urban and suburban farmland across eastern Massachusetts where they grow 200,000 pounds of fresh fruits and vegetables and use this food to enact innovative food system initiatives that increase access to fresh, healthy food for all. 

We focus this work in the two communities we are most deeply connected to: Boston’s Dudley neighborhood and the City of Lynn. 

Our Mission

The Food Project’s mission is to create a thoughtful and productive community of youth and adults from diverse backgrounds who work together to build a sustainable food system. Our community produces healthy food for residents of the city and suburbs, provides youth leadership opportunities, and inspires and supports others to create change in their own communities.

Our Vision

We envision a world where youth are active leaders, diverse communities feel connected to the land and each other, and everyone has access to fresh, local, healthy, affordable food.

Land Acknowledgement

We all live on Indigenous land. The Food Project’s farms and offices reside on land traditionally stewarded by Massachusett and Nipmuc tribes. The current food system is built on a foundation of genocide, land theft, exploitation of labor, and appropriation of knowledge and culture. We honor the land stewardship, sustainable agriculture, and relationships that native folks have held for thousands of years and continue to hold. We are not experts in this work, and recognize our organizational and individual need for continuous learning and building of new partnerships. We are in solidarity with Native activists and commit ourselves to support their efforts to regain land sovereignty.

What does our work look like?

The Food Project works at the intersection of youth, food, and community in Greater Boston and the North Shore. The organization was founded with the vision of teens from diverse backgrounds coming together on a sustainably managed farm to cultivate the land, build authentic relationships and feed those in need. Over three decades of operation, The Food Project has employed over 2,000 youth, supporting them to become empowered leaders leading and engaging others in creating personal and social change. On 70 acres of urban and suburban farmland, we cultivate and harvest fresh, sustainably-grown produce and distribute this harvest through farmers markets, box share programs, hunger relief partners and more. We build and install raised bed gardens and provide support to new gardeners, enabling city residents to grow their own fresh produce. We have propagated our program models for over a decade, training roughly 1000 individuals at 300 organizations through past and ongoing initiatives.