Case StudiesGrowing Power, Milwaukee, Wisconsin: Providing Healthy, Affordable Food to All Communities In Milwaukee, near a large affordable housing complex, 14 greenhouses, livestock pens, and hoop houses stand, filled with salad greens, arugula, beets, tilapia, perch, beehives, hens, ducks, beehives, goats, and turkeys. The project is run by Will Allen, a charismatic farmer who has become a national spokesperson for urban agriculture and a more just food system.
The organization produces food using a sophisticated, organic system, which relies on recycled waste from local restaurants, breweries, farms, and coffee houses, and worms to help generate nutrient-rich compost to help their crops thrive. The organization also uses an aquaponics system that farms fish while breaking their waste down into fertilizer, by filtering the fish tank water through a gravel bed and then a crop of watercress that filters the water a second time. Growing Power distributes the food through retail stores, restaurants, farmers’ markets, schools, and a community supported agriculture program. The CSA offers discounted shares to low-income consumers for $16 a week, for which residents receive enough food to feed a family of up to four for a week. The organization fosters school and community gardens throughout the city, and also provides training, outreach, and technical assistance to share their knowledge across the country, in places like Arkansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Georgia, Wisconsin, Mississippi, and Florida. One example of the organization’s expanding work is the Chicago Avenue Community Garden at Cabrini-Green. Growing Power is collaborating with the city’s Fourth Presbyterian Church to convert an unkempt basketball court into a thriving community garden. Plots are allocated to individual local gardeners. Growing Power supplies the materials, assists in designing and building the space, and provides daily staff and technical assistance during the growing season. Nuestras Raíces: Taking Root as a National Model In the late 1960s and 1970s, many Puerto Rican farmers moved to Holyoke to work in its paper mills and tobacco farms, fleeing an economic recession. But the economy was already changing, and the mills and farms were shutting down as the new workers arrived. The Puerto Rican population stayed, and now accounts for almost 40 percent of the city’s residents. The city has struggled with high unemployment and poverty since its industrial decline, and contains nearly 100 abandoned brownfields. Nuestras Raíces—which means “our roots” in Spanish—is working to counter this dynamic of decline. Founded in 1992, the group has grown from a single community garden to a multifaceted organization. Nuestras Raíces is led by the residents and families who participate in its programs, including community gardens and farms, green jobs training, environmental education, entrepreneurship, youth development, and leadership development. Nuestras Raíces now manages eight community gardens and two youth gardens, and more than 100 families participate. The gardens provide access to affordable food for low-income families: on average families produce more than $1,000 of organic produce per year. Some of the plots are for market production, to supplement incomes by selling produce to local stores, restaurants, and farmers’ markets. The gardens provide opportunities for youth leadership development, as many youth sell the produce at farmers’ markets, design and build nature trails, and participate in garden-centered environmental research and education programs. Beginning farmers go through an eight-week training to write a business plan and can then rent plots. Youth can farm rent-free, and there is a designated youth farm and a program for youth to learn farming techniques from the elder Puerto Rican volunteers. Nuestras provides the La Finca farmers with small loans, trainings, shared resources, and marketing assistance, and then helps them find land and capital to open their own farms. As a result of these efforts, elders have been able to transfer their agrarian backgrounds, Puerto Rican heritage, and culture to the youth in Holyoke. This exchange has built a strong community that has created positive change in Holyoke, leading to greater community stability. Crime has decreased in the Puerto Rican community, and employment and youth leadership has increased. For more information about Nuestras Raíces, see this link. Building Healthy Communities—From Farm to Market In California, Juan Perez, along with his father, Pablo, started a small organic farm on half an acre in Monterey County, California. Today, J.P., as he is known, farms five acres filled with organic corn, cilantro, strawberries, carrots, green beans, and more. Each week he delivers his produce to local families. He keeps his prices reasonable and accepts EBT. J.P.’s farm and business model is a result of support and training from the Agriculture and Land-Based Training Association (ALBA). Many of the aspiring farmers ALBA serves are farmworkers, and have struggled to enter California’s competitive farming economy hindered by language and cultural barriers, few economic resources, institutional exclusion, and a lack of government support. ALBA provides education and land, and connects farmers to resources like business consultants, loan officers, and training in sustainable land management practices. ALBA helps farmers sell what they grow, creating programs to increase access to affordable nutritious foods for low-income residents of Monterey County—many of them farmworkers themselves. Staff members train farmers in marketing and sales and also connect farmers with ALBA Organics, a produce distributor that seeks to open up new direct markets for organic produce and create alternatives for small-scale farmers. ALBA has partnered with local churches and elementary schools in underserved neighborhoods to host farm stands where ALBA farmers sell their produce and has established three new farmers’ markets serving low-income neighborhoods. The organization also promotes ecological and sustainable land management practices through bilingual conservation outreach and education programs. ALBA wants to demonstrate that farming and conservation are not mutually exclusive. ALBA works with farmers to build leadership capacity and influence policymakers. Through their leadership development program, ALBA translates and distributes information about policy changes that might affect farmers’ businesses, coaches them to provide testimony to elected officials, and facilitates networking between farmers and policy coalitions. Transforming Challenge into Assets: Urban Agriculture in Older Core Cities Once thriving manufacturing cities such as Cleveland and Detroit now face huge amounts of vacant land. In Detroit, the population has dropped by more than half since 1950, and the city is demolishing thousands of homes. Detroit’s population has dropped more than half from its peak—from two million people to around 750,000 currently. Similarly, Cleveland’s population has been shrinking over past decades as the city lost manufacturing jobs. The city is now faced with more than 33,000 foreclosures, and is demolishing hundreds of deserted, derelict homes. There are vast tracts of vacant lots, abandoned warehouses, and boarded up houses. But residents are transforming this challenge into an asset through urban agriculture—making productive use of vacant land, and helping ensure that residents can live in safe, vibrant neighborhoods. Detroit Detroit community members have been engaging in urban agriculture to help revitalize Detroit. The Detroit Black Community Food Security Network works to empower African Americans in Detroit—raising awareness about food, where it comes from, who controls it, and the role it plays in building healthy families and communities. The organization has established a four-acre organic farm within the city and organized a food co-op buying club. They also have taken leadership in promoting policy changes, successfully leading efforts to get the city council to create a food policy council and pass a food security policy, and are working to establish legislation protecting gardens and farms; create a program for organizations and individuals to lease land with an option to purchase it in order to encourage sustainability; encourage the city to provide resources for urban agriculture; identify a model state program to support small farms with funding, marketing, etc.; and encourage schools and institutions to purchase local foods. They have provided leadership to the Undoing Racism in the Detroit Food System Initiative, and have been selected as the Detroit Regional Outreach Training Center for Growing Power. In 2008, SHAR (Self Help Addiction Rehabilitation), a Detroit-based organization treating over 4,000 clients each year, decided to expand their approach to addiction treatment by incorporating urban agriculture into its treatment program. SHAR has fostered a collaborative effort involving over 50 organizations, including the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network, and seven universities to help launch one of Detroit’s largest urban farms. The program, Recovery Park, will encompass approximately 30 acres of vacant land and will use the Growing Power three-tier system and have three growing seasons. The efforts’ leaders estimate that this three-tier growing system will generate $25,000 to $35,000 per acre, compared to a traditional farm site which can produce $5,000 to $6,000 per acre. In addition to growing food, the farms will also have a packaging company on site. For example, the farms will grow and package small two to three ounce packages of fruits and vegetables (instead of chips and other junk food) for schools. Just two school contracts for processing these small healthy snack packs will create 150 jobs in around six months. The full model, involving both growing and processing, is estimated to create 2,500 to 3,500 permanent jobs, paying around $10 to $12 an hour, over the next 10 years. The farms within Recovery Park will not use pesticides or fertilizers—making it possible for residents to continue living in the community, next to this city farmland. The collaborative is looking to create bike trails, job training centers, and other community resources in and around the farm, helping to create a thriving community. Cleveland In 2007, Neighborhood Progress, a nonprofit organization working to restore and maintain the health and vitality of Cleveland’s neighborhoods, started a citywide planning initiative to tackle the issue of land vacancies. The group issued a study to identify productive re-uses of vacant land that could build healthy communities, and protect people, current stakeholders, investments, and the value of homes. The highest recommended strategy for vacant land re-use was urban agriculture. Neighborhood Progress is now working with the City of Cleveland to implement agricultural pilot projects over the next several years throughout the city. The most successful pilot projects will be brought up to scale. A total of 66 projects aiming to renovate vacant land have been implemented throughout Cleveland, 31 of which are urban agriculture related (13 are market gardens and the remaining are community gardens, orchards and/or vineyards). The urban farms will provide supplemental income to many farmers and primary income for one or two farmers. While the projects are limited to city-owned land, of the 20,000 vacant lots in Cleveland, the city owns 7,500 – well over one-third of the vacant land. The city has agreed to a five-year lease for the pilot projects, with the goal of transferring title to the community group or individual farmer after the expiration of the lease The City of Cleveland recognizes that converting vacant land into an asset saves the city money in the long run. It costs the city close to $1,000 to maintain a vacant lot including costs to mow the lot, respond to police calls involving crime and violence on the sites, and clean up after illegal dumping. As a result, Cleveland has also been progressively amending its zoning and health codes to provide increased land security to farmers by allowing for composting toilets, onsite sales, changes to fencing requirements, and farm animal and honey bee provisions. The city has also established an agreement with the water department to provide fire hydrant access to urban farms and community gardens, so that farmers can access water without spending $1,500 to $4,500 to gain permanent access to a water line. Cleveland will also be home to the soon-to-launch Green City Growers Cooperative, which will operate a five- acre hydroponic greenhouse that will produce leafy greens and herbs to be sold to nearby grocery stores and wholesale produce businesses. The greenhouse operation will be run as a cooperative and allows opportunities for neighborhood residents/workers to participate at an ownership level, select the board or become board members, and become involved with the cooperative development. It will create 35 to 40 new jobs, all at a living wage. The average wage in the University Circle and Central City area where the workers will reside is currently $18,000. It is estimated that the Green City jobs will build about $65,000 in patronage accounts in eight years. Green City looks forward to eventually expanding its operation beyond the five-acre greenhouse to include a network of greenhouses and related food processing and packaging. All of these urban agriculture efforts work to stabilize the community, and each food dollar kept in the city will help improve the local economy. Urban agriculture efforts in Cleveland have benefitted a strong city council and mayor, and a strong network of community members, planners, public health advocates, extension agents, and other stakeholders. Monthly network meetings advance interest in urban farming and increase the possibilities for improving health and revitalizing neighborhoods.  |
