Mission
The New American Sustainable Agriculture Project (NASAP), a program of Cultivating Community.   NASAP's mission is to assist immigrant and refugee farmers to build successful farm businesses that are consistent with their culture, lifestyle aspirations, and individual goals. The NASAP provides class room and field based trainings for both farmers and gardeners. NASAP currently operates a training farm site at Packard-Littlefield Farm in Lisbon.

What we do
NASAP is a community based agricultural initiative with multiple collaborators including some of the most socially disadvantaged farmers in the USA.  The long term goal of the project is to encourage and support socially disadvantaged farmers to successful own and operate their own farms businesses. To that aim, NASAP provides training, on-farm workshops and one-on-one consultation to recently resettled refugee and immigrant farmers living in the greater Lewiston and Portland areas.

The NASAP growers are Latino, Somali and Sudanese farmers and gardeners who are excited about the opportunity to begin farming in the U.S. and look forward to producing for local markets.  NASAP assists participants to grow in the Maine climate while also promoting culturally appropriate food production. Sustainable production practices and direct marketing are important components of the program.

 Check out our photo slideshow on Flickr!

Read and listen to farmer interviews conducted by youth in our summer program.

 Read about us all over the web!

NASAP's innovative model has been featured in publications from The New Yorker to PBS News, from documentary to newsprint.  Here's a snapshot of some of our coverage, plus a few more links for more information:

There is My Home -- In 2011, Lanes Island Film released this powerful documentary telling the story of two NASAP farmers as the use agriculture to create roots in Maine.  The film picked up the Audience Choice Award at its premiere at the Lewiston-Auburn Film Festival.

A Harvest of Hope -- Flypmedia's cool interactive web-based magazine profiles several immigrant farming projects nationwide, including NASAP.

New Roots in America, an in-depth look of the stories of NASAP participants from one of our original funders, Heifer International.

PBS published a great profile titled Letter from Maine: New in Town back in 2007.

In 2011, The Portland Phoenix ran a wonderful short biography of one of NASAP's farmers and his love of food - on the farm and in the kitchen.

Photovoice -- Back in 2008, a NASAP intern captured the voices of NASAP farmers through photo ethnography.  The original presentation is still available here.

Risk Management Video -- This short YouTube video profiles the NASAP project's teaching and training approach.

Looking for more?

Immigrant and refugee farming is taking place in every corner of the country.  In 2011, The New York Times and Atlantic Monthly both ran excellent stories profiling the work of several of our partners. Check out When The Uprooted Put Down Roots about a similar project in San Diego and Refugees Put Down New Roots for a view of the work in Kansas City.  

If you want to explore more projects around the country, one of our funders, RAP-P, maintains a list of other funded refugee agriculture projects, and keeps up a blog here. The National Immigrant Farming Initiative is also one of our original partners.

Finally, if you're interested in more background resources about the Somali-Bantu population, you should definitely visit Colby College's wiki, created by Prof. Catherine Besteman who spent extensive time in Somalia before its civil war.   There's also a short article from Newseek, an award-winning film about Lewiston called The Letter, and a recent book called Somalis in Maine: Crossing Cultural Currents, which features NASAP in one of its chapters.

 

Our Funders
The New American Sustainable Agriculture Project (NASAP) is supported by USDA and the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR).  Previous funders have included  Heifer International, the Sunshine Hill Family Fund at the Maine Community Foundation, and Whole Foods customer donations.