Our Work
BOLT is committed to eliminating the systemic barriers that continue to prevent Black communities from securely accessing land, because we believe that land sovereignty is the key to achieving our visions of food justice, generational wealth and health, cultural preservation, and thriving communities.
Our vison
Black farmers and land-stewards in Oregon collectively own their land, securely and permanently. Through right-relationship with the land, they build their soil, their health, their wealth, and their sovereign communities for generations to come.
OUR PILLARS
Our three pillars provide the foundation for our work at the intersections of food, land, and racial justice.
Land Access and Preservation: Through holding land within our trust and transferring stewardship to Black farmers and land-tenders, we ensure that future generations will have access to housing, food, land, and community stability. This requires both a tending to conservation and restoration of land, orienting to ancestral agricultural practices that nourish, rather than deplete the earth.
Farming and Food Justice: We believe that supporting farmers is key to building thriving, sustainable food systems. Knowing that discriminatory policies and practices have historically limited Black farm ownership, we commit to improving access to land, mentorship, training and infrastructure so that Black farmers can thrive as they grow food that nourishes communities.
Cultural Sovereignty: As people who are descended from indigenous lands of America, Africa and beyond, we are dedicated to reclaiming the ways our ancestors have been connecting to the land generations before colonization. We are dedicated to implementing sovereign structures for ourselves and our children in order to achieve a lifestyle with the land that is sustainable and healthy for our people first and foremost.
WHAT IS A LAND TRUST?
A land trust is an organization which acquires land to meet community needs through conservation, farming, and housing. A land trust sees land as a public good, rather than something to be privately owned. There different types of land trusts, namely conservation trusts and community trusts. BOLT is a community land trust focused on providing agricultural land to Black farmers and land stewards. Through BOLT, we are centering the importance of land access and security, while shifting the language of privately "owning" land, to collective land stewardship, with responsibility and accountability to community and the earth.
OUR LINEAGES
We come from a long lineage of communal land tending: the first Community Land Trust was established in 1969 by Black sharecroppers in Georgia, to secure access to agricultural land and economic opportunities for Black farmers. This trust, called New Communities, as well as contemporary Black farm communities like Soul Fire Farm inspire our work. Through BOLT, we honor of the resilience and strength of our ancestors who persevered and held onto their agricultural roots.