The Challenge
Industrial agriculture’s history of extraction and inequity has led to disconnection with the food system, as well as a lack of optimism for the future of agrofood systems, but Revive the Roots offers a way to change that.
The Approach
Revive the Roots asks the question: how do we make people feel like a more equitable food system is possible? Their home base, Mowry Commons, offers community gardens, walking trails, and a wide variety of agricultural fields and permaculture gardens, which are open to the public.
By The Numbers
Since its founding in 2011, the program has made a significant impact on the community:
- 4000 pounds of fresh produce grown for hunger relief over the past two years
- 5000 volunteer hours contributed to the farm
- Over 7500 visitors annually
- 40 garden plots
- 23 acres open to the public to garden, for special events, and to enjoy the space
Divert food from landfills.
Revive the Roots is a patchwork built from people’s passions, ideas, and care for their land and food. They steward agricultural and green spaces for community education, mindful agricultural practices, and community building.
Program Description
Statement of Impact
Revive the Roots provides unique and educational experiences to thousands of community members each year on-site, rebuilding and nurturing people’s dreams of reciprocal and sustainable food systems, and equipping them with the skills to carry out mindful land-based practices.
Statement of Changes
Through their Farm to Schools program, Revive the Roots provides in-class education, integrated with school curriculums to many students based in Smithfield and surrounding communities. They’ve worked with many community organizations like the Woonasquaticket River Watershed Council to organize clean-ups of the water shed. In partnership with Farm Fresh’s Hope’s Harvest, they have helped grow produce for local hunger relief. Another way that Revive the Roots is an engaged community partner is through their volunteer days, which run from February to November and foster a host of volunteer-led, passion-driven initiatives that allow people to reshape their relationships to the food and land on which they eat and live.
Future Plans
Looking towards the future, Revive the Roots hopes to expand their educational programming while continuing to center sustainable stewardship and care for the land. One of these initiatives will be to teach community members how to build tree guilds, where various plants live in symbiosis to support a fruit or nut tree. These guilds will hopefully sustain polycultures—multiple plants all living in the same area—that will mimic natural ecosystems, promoting insect and soil health, resilience, and biodiversity.
This Rhode Island Story was prepared by Ange Yeung