{"id":402378,"date":"2021-01-04T12:25:24","date_gmt":"2021-01-04T09:25:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/?p=402378"},"modified":"2021-01-04T12:25:44","modified_gmt":"2021-01-04T09:25:44","slug":"somali-immigrants-closer-to-owning-30-acre-farm-in-lewiston","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/somali-immigrants-closer-to-owning-30-acre-farm-in-lewiston\/","title":{"rendered":"Somali immigrants closer to owning 30-acre farm in Lewiston"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>LEWISTON, Maine <strong>(SONNA)<\/strong> \u2014 A group of African immigrants that leased 30 acres of land to operate a cooperative farm in Lewiston is one step closer to owning the land.<\/p>\n<p>The group that leases the land off Outer College Street is the recipient of two grants totaling $80,000. That means the New Roots Cooperative Farm has obtained nearly $120,000 of its goal of $200,000 to complete the purchase.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHaving ownership changes everything for me and for the community I serve,\u201d Jabril Abdi, one of the New Roots farmers,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sunjournal.com\/2020\/12\/23\/lewistons-new-roots-farm-receives-80000-in-grants\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">told the Sun Journal<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s really an amazing feeling that our kids have a chance to inherit a unique farmland right here. Nothing makes me happier.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Abdi and three other Lewiston men who came from Somalia in the early 2000s held a ground-breaking ceremony in August 2016 after leasing 30 acres from the Maine Farmland Trust. The land was part of the former Gendron Dairy Farm.<\/p>\n<p>The new grants include $50,000 from the Elmina B. Sewall Foundation to respond to the disproportionate impact that COVID-19 and systemic racism have had on Maine\u2019s communities and $30,000 from an anonymous donor-advised fund at the Maine Community Foundation.<\/p>\n<p>If they reach their goal of $200,000, then the money would be used to buy the land, equipment and infrastructure.<\/p>\n<p>Source: AP<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>LEWISTON, Maine (SONNA) \u2014 A group of African immigrants that leased 30 acres of land to operate a cooperative farm in Lewiston is one step closer to owning the land. The group that leases the land off Outer College Street is the recipient of two grants totaling $80,000. That means the New Roots Cooperative Farm [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":402380,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6,78],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-402378","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=402378"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402378\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":402381,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402378\/revisions\/402381"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/402380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=402378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=402378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=402378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}