To the editor:
I enjoyed reading Joshua Archer’s recent article covering 45 Somali Bantu farmers during their tour of County farms with the Maine Community Foundation and Northern Maine Community College.
The prospect of young, energetic families with agricultural skills and an eagerness to pursue small-scale farming bodes well for our local traditions, providing access to fresh goods throughout the state, maintaining school enrollment rates, and bringing resiliency to our communities in the face of continuing outmigration and an aging population.
According to the American Farmland Trust’s “Keeping Farmers on the Land Report” (2016), 29 percent of Maine farm operators are aged 65 and older. Ninety two percent of these senior farmers do not have a young farmer working with them, suggesting that the future of many of these farms is uncertain. About 410,300 acres of Maine farmland is stewarded by senior farmers without young successors.
By welcoming young farmers — regardless of their origin — we can provide a better opportunity for our working farmland to be maintained and operational. By providing immigrants with the chance of gainful occupation, we can support our local economy with the prospect of new jobs created and localized food networks feeding those in our area schools, shelters, restaurants, and community supported agriculture shares. Examples of this have already been seen through Somali-operated cooperative farms downstate, such as New Roots Cooperative Farm in Lewiston and Packard-Littlefield Farm in Lisbon.
During the last USDA Agricultural Census, Maine saw an increase in the number of farms in large part due to new Somali-operated farms in Androscoggin County. For the sake of maintaining the farming backbone of Aroostook County’s economy, it is clear that we all must be supportive of any farming family willing to take on that cause.
Should these Somali Bantu families choose to move here, I look forward to welcoming them warmly and respectfully.
Dianna Leighton
Fort Fairfield
