BOLT is Creating a New Legacy for Black Agriculture in Oregon
“With two thirds of Oregon’s agriculture land changing hands over the next decade, we have a unique opportunity to change what a farmer looks like and who gets to thrive,” shared Qiddist Ashé, co-founder and executive director of Black Oregon Land Trust (BOLT).
BOLT is a community land trust that provides affordable land access and culturally responsible agriculture education for Black and brown people. BOLT acquires land, holds it in trust and ultimately matches the land with farmers at secure and affordable rates.
Recently, BOLT acquired a 45-acre property to create an incubator farm for new farmers. Starting with five farmers in their first decade of farming, the incubator farm will help overcome common barriers to entry, like land access and finding markets for their products. Ultimately, the incubator will have space for up to 10 farmers.
BOLT’s new after-school program works mainly with elementary students after school and on breaks to giving them opportunities to build relationships with nature. BOLT staff brings kids to the farm every month and shares information about seed saving, Black land and farming history, the origins of CSAs and more.
“In the African diaspora, people have often been displaced or forced through slavery to have a relationship with land,” said Qiddist. “We’re breaking down barriers for what it means to steward land—nurturing and nourishing an ancestral practice that’s life giving.”
In total, BOLT owns five properties spanning about 113 acres, including farms, the incubator space and a 10-acre property for Indigenous farmers who are using dry farming practices to grow medicine and food. All are within10-minutes of each other, with a long-term vision of creating similar cultural and educational hubs across Oregon.
“Our inception was in summer of 2020,” shared Qiddist. “We came together as a group of women in the community who saw how land, food security, environment and economic security are related to each other. That created the idea of having a land trust. For a long time, Oregon was an exclusionary state where Black people weren’t allowed. Now, we’re shifting the narrative and the experience of who gets to grow food.”
BOLT received a 2025 OGC Mission Fund grant. Qiddist shared that, “We’re using the grant to support our new incubator farm. We’re setting it up with things like a cold storage unit, irrigation, soil testing and cover cropping, and just generally getting things ready for farmers to be on the land in a way that can really hold them.”
OGC’s Mission Fund Grant Program promotes equity in the food system, educating youth and more. Black Oregon Land Trust is just one of the many organizations the Mission Fund supported in 2025. Find a list of all our 2025 grant recipients here.
