40 Acres Project
Land · Agriculture · Foodways · Legacy
Preserving Black foodways begins with preserving our relationship to the land.
40 Acres Project
Founded by Adrian Lipscombe in 2020, the 40 Acres Project began with a vision to acquire Black-owned agricultural land and create a place where Black farming traditions, foodways, stories, and knowledge could be preserved and passed forward.
The project asks a fundamental question:
How can we preserve a food culture without preserving access to the land that sustains it?
The Work
The Work
40 Acres uses agriculture, food, education, and storytelling as tools for cultural preservation.
Its work has expanded beyond the original vision of acquiring farmland to include collaborations and initiatives centered on:
Black land access and ownership
Agricultural education
Preservation of Black farming knowledge
Black foodways and culinary traditions
Intergenerational storytelling
Farmers and food-system relationships
Youth education
Cultural documentation and archives
The work recognizes that preserving foodways means preserving more than recipes.
It means preserving the land, seeds, agricultural knowledge, techniques, stories, and people that make those recipes possible.
Adrian's Role
40 Acres represents a turning point in Adrian's work.
It brought together questions she had been exploring across architecture, planning, restaurants, agriculture, community development, and food:
Who owns the land?
Who has access to it?
Whose knowledge is preserved?
Who gets to tell the story of American food?
As founder, Adrian developed 40 Acres not simply as an agricultural initiative, but as a platform for examining how land can support cultural preservation, education, economic opportunity, food production, and community.
The project helped establish a philosophy that continues throughout her work today:
Food begins with land, but its legacy depends on people.