They Left The City To Start A Farm, And This New Wave of Farmers Is Urban-Raised, University-Educated And Committed To Environmental Practices

By Cristina Petrucci

July 20, 2021

Many have chosen to leave the city to improve work-life balance, have more space or find more affordable housing. Choosing to leave the city to switch careers and become farmers? Yes, this is also happening.

Going from urbanite to full-fledged farmer is one giant leap of faith. A 2018 Statistics Canada report said that the proportion of younger people and women taking up farming has increased.

The profile of the typical Canadian farmer is changing. These new farmers are typically urban-raised, university-educated, and have a strong commitment to environmental and sustainable practices. And many do not have a family history or background in farming.

“I never had a green thumb,” said Aminah Haghighi. “I could barely keep houseplants alive.” Haghighi is the founder and head lettuce of Raining Gold Family Growers, established in January 2021 and based in Hillier, Prince Edward County. She is currently farming a quarter of an acre and has a direct-to-consumer sales approach. Starting in January, Haghighi had to be quick on her feet to determine what she could sell at that time.

“I came up with the idea of selling microgreens as that is something you can grow indoors under lights on shelves,” she said. Her efforts paid off. She had a total of 80 CSA (community-supported agriculture) subscribers and raised just under $10,000 in revenue. “That was the first time I felt connected with the community, because they wanted to see me succeed,” she says.

Ultimately, what led her to become a farmer is her keen ability to solve problems and to do it as quickly as possible.

Oh, and the pandemic also played a major role.

“A few weeks before the first lockdown in Ontario, my second daughter was born,” she explained. “Everything was slowly coming to a halt all over the world, and I didn’t really know what grocery stores would look like and we all thought the world was basically ending.” That’s when Haghighi decided to rip up the grass in her Toronto home and start growing in her small backyard garden.

Providing food security for her family during the whirlwind that was the first few months of the pandemic, and having something of her own, was why she started gardening. “As a mom who had no control over my body or control over my time, this was sort of a way to regain control in my life.”

Questions of food security and sustainability also crossed Judy Ning’s mind during the initial months of the pandemic. Along with her husband Hans and their two children, they left Montreal to pursue their dream of having a homestead.

“Our hospitality business took a major hit, and we made the decision to give that up, sell our house, and chase our dream 10 years ahead of time,” Ning writes.

Paper Kite Farm was born in February 2021 with their first seedlings and, in June, they started selling their garden veggies and ready-made meals and beverages at the Picton Farmers’ Market every Sunday.

Their farm is situated in North Marysburgh, Prince Edward County, and the Ning family are currently farming a quarter of an acre while also raising laying hens.

Ning had a rural upbringing and is ethnically Hmong, a hill tribe people. “We are found all over Southeast Asia and my parents were born in Laos,” said Ning. “Farming was and still is a huge part of the Hmong culture. While I didn’t always appreciate the garden in my youth, I’m now doing my best to tap back into my heritage.”

Her husband, Hans, is of Tawainese heritage and, as such, the Ning family are growing several Asian varietals in their row beds, such as bok choy, mizuna, napa cabbages and yard long beans. They are also growing berries and fruits in their food forest and permaculture beds.

The path to farming is not easy. The uncertainties and lack of control when dealing with crops have created pangs of self-doubt. “I want to quit everyday,” said Haghighi. “Ten times a day I’m like ‘Oh my God, what am I doing?’ but then 25 times a day I think this is totally what I’m supposed to be doing.”

On the operational front, issues like tackling insects without the use of pesticides, choosing the right soil for seedlings and managing the upfront costs of equipment are hard to ignore.

“In the early days getting financing was one of the biggest hurdles that we faced,” said Stephanie Laing. Laing and her partner, Heather Coffey, founded Fiddlehead Farm in 2012 and grow more than 50 types of vegetables year-round in their market garden of 10 acres in Demorestville, Prince Edward County.

Laing found that most lending institutions were used to farms that were “hundreds to thousands of acres” in size, not the smaller operations such as Fiddlehead.

Fortunately, Laing and Coffey could rely on the assistance of their families to co-sign the mortgage on their farm. They also relied on grants, which they’ve taken advantage of for some early infrastructure, such as their wash station, irrigation pond and some equipment.

It had always been a goal for Laing and Coffey to start a farm. With their respective environmental studies and landscape ecology background, as well as “WWOOF-ing” (Willing Workers on Organic Farms) for two years, they felt ready. They decided to settle in Prince Edward County to be midway between their families in Newmarket and Montreal.

“I think for our first six to eight years we didn’t take a single vacation; we just worked non-stop,” said Laing. She recalled how “overeager” they were initially, adding a flock of laying hens and a handful of pigs along with turkeys and ducks. Financially that was not viable, so they focused solely on their market garden and increasing their CSA membership.

Despite the hurdles in their early years, Laing is satisfied with where they are now. “I am happy with what I do for a living,” she said, “I would love it if it paid a bit better, but I really enjoy the work.”

With almost 10 years running their farm, Laing’s advice for new farmers, or those looking to become farmers, is to treat it as a business. “One of the reasons we have been successful is because we have always paid really close attention to our finances.” They’ve always “planned down to the penny,” ensuring that their farm is both survivable and sustainable.

They are now able to enjoy the fruits of their labour and set money aside to invest for things down the road, like getting the farm to be as off grid as possible.

She encourages new farmers to ask themselves what they want from the farm: to either work full- or part-time for it. “It’s a business and it’s also really involved with your life, and you need to think of those two things together,” she adds.

“I have a crazy amount of people that message me all the time saying that I’m living the dream and they wish they could do what I’m doing,” said Haghighi.

Vertical Farming: Ugandan Company Develops Solution for Urban Agriculture

We speak to Lilian Nakigozi, founder of Women Smiles Uganda, a company that manufactures and sells vertical farms used to grow crops in areas where there is limited space.

Image from: How We Made It in Africa

1. How Did You Come Up with the Idea to Start Women Smiles Uganda?

Women Smiles Uganda is a social enterprise formed out of passion and personal experience. I grew up with a single mother and eight siblings in Katanga, one of the biggest slums in Kampala, Uganda. I experienced hunger and poverty where we lived. There was no land for us to grow crops and we didn’t have money to buy food. Life was hard; we would often go to sleep on empty stomachs and our baby sister starved to death.

Growing up like that, I pledged to use my knowledge and skills to come up with an idea that could solve hunger and, at the same time, improve people’s livelihoods, particularly women and young girls living in the urban slums. In 2017, while studying business at Makerere University, I had the idea of developing a vertical farm. This came amid so many challenges: a lack of finance and moral support. I would use the money provided to me for lunch as a government student to save for the initial capital of my venture.

I managed to accumulate $300 and used this to buy materials to manufacture the first 20 vertical farms. I gave these to 20 families and, in 2018, we fully started operations in different urban slums.

2. Tell Us About Your Vertical Farms and How They Work.

Women Smiles vertical farms are made out of wood and recycled plastic materials. Each unit is capable of growing up to 200 plants. The product also has an internal bearing system which turns 360° to guarantee optimal use of the sunlight and is fitted with an inbuilt drip irrigation system and greenhouse material to address any agro-climatic challenges.

The farms can be positioned on a rooftop, veranda, walkway, office building or a desk. This allows the growth of crops throughout the year, season after season, unaffected by climatic changes like drought.

In addition, we train our customers on how to make compost manure using vermicomposting and also provide them with a market for their fresh produce.

Image from: How We Made It in Africa

3. Explain Your Revenue Model.

Women Smiles Uganda generates revenue by selling affordable, reliable and modern vertical farms at $35, making a profit margin of $10 on each unit. The women groups are recruited into our training schemes and we teach them how to use vertical farming to grow crops and make compost manure by vermicomposting. Women groups become our outgrowers of fruits and vegetables. We buy the fresh produce from our outgrowers and resell to restaurants, schools and hotels.

We also make money through partnering with NGOs and other small private organisations to provide training in urban farming concepts to the beneficiaries of their projects.

4. What Are Some of the Major Challenges of Running This Business?

The major challenge we face is limited funds by the smallholder farmers to purchase the vertical farms. However, we mitigate this by putting some of them into our outgrower scheme which helps them to generate income from the fresh produce we buy. We have also linked some of them to financial institutions to access finance.

5. How Do You Generate Sales?

We reach our customers directly via our marketing team which moves door to door, identifying organised women groups and educating them about the benefits of vertical farming for improved food security. Most of our customers are low-income earners and very few of them have access to the internet.

However, we do also make use of social media platforms like Facebook to reach out to our customers, especially the youth.

In addition, we organise talk shows and community gatherings with the assistance of local leaders with whom we work hand in hand to provide educational and inspirational materials to people, teaching them about smart agriculture techniques.

6. Who Are Your Main Competitors?

Just like any business, we have got competitors; our major competitors include Camp Green and Spark Agro-Initiatives.

Image from: The Conversation

7. What Mistakes Have You Made in Business and What Did You Learn From Them?

As a victim of hunger and poverty, my dream was for every family in slums to have a vertical farm. I ended up giving some vertical farms on credit. Unfortunately, most of them failed to pay and we ended up with huge losses.

This taught me to shift the risk of payment default to a third party. Every customer who may need our farms on credit is now linked to our partner micro-finance bank. By doing this, it is the responsibility of the bank to recover the funds from our customers and it has worked well.

8. Apart from This Industry, Name an Untapped Business Opportunity in Uganda.

Manufacturing of cooler sheds for the storage of perishable agricultural produce is one untapped opportunity. Currently, Ugandan smallholder farmers lose up to 40% of their fresh produce because of a lack of reliable cold storage systems.

Providing a cheap and reliable 24/7 cold storage system would dramatically reduce post-harvest losses for these farmers.

From A Landfill Site To An Urban Farm: The Transition That Kept A Thai City Fed During COVID-19

15 Jan 2021

Rina Chandran Correspondent, Reuters

• An urban farm in Thailand, built on a former landfill site, has been helping feed nearby residents during the COVID-19 crisis.

• Many residents of Chiang Mai, where the farm is based, lost their tourist-dependent jobs during the start of the pandemic.

• It could provide model of how to turn unused spaces into places that benefit the whole community.

• Urban farming is an important tool in promoting sustainability and tackling food insecurity.

An urban farm developed on a former landfill site in northern Thailand boosted the food security and livelihoods of poor families during the coronavirus pandemic, and can be a model for unused spaces in other cities, urban experts said on Thursday.

The farm in Chiang Mai, about 700 km (435 miles) from the capital Bangkok, took shape during a nationwide lockdown to curb the spread of the coronavirus last year, when many of the city's residents lost their tourism-dependent jobs.

Supawut Boonmahathanakorn, a community architect who works on housing solutions for Chiang Mai's homeless and informal settlers, approached authorities with a plan to convert the unused landfill into an urban farm to support the poor.

"We had previously mapped the city's unused spaces with an idea to plant trees to mitigate air pollution. The landfill, which had been used for 20 years, was one of those spaces," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

"Poor families spend more than half their earnings on food, so when their incomes dried up, they were struggling to feed their families. This farm has been a lifeline for some of them," he said, pointing to neat rows of corn and morning glory.

Coronavirus lockdowns worldwide have pushed more city dwellers to grow fruit and vegetables in the backyards and terraces of their homes, and forced authorities to consider urban farming as a means to boost food security.

In Chiang Mai, after authorities approved the farm plan, an appeal on social media resulted in donations of plants, seedlings and manure from residents, Supawut said.

With diggers loaned by the city, Supawut and his team cleared some 5,700 tonnes of rubbish on the 4,800 square-metre (0.48 hectare) plot that lies next to a canal and a cemetery.

The land was levelled, and a rich topsoil added to offset the degraded soil. The farm opened to the community in June.

About half a dozen homeless families, students from a public school and members of the public grow eggplant, corn, bananas, cassava, chilli, tomatoes, kale and herbs, Supawut said.

"In cities, we have lost our connection with food production, but it is a vital skill," he said.

"Urban farms cannot feed an entire city, but they can improve nutrition and build greater self-sufficiency especially among vulnerable people. They are important during a pandemic - and even otherwise," he added.

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Supawut Boonmahathanakorn stands by the urban farm he helped create.

Image: Thomson Reuters Foundation/Rina Chandran

Come together

Urban agriculture can potentially produce as much as 180 million tonnes of food a year - or about 10% of the global output of pulses and vegetables, according to a 2018 study led by Arizona State University.

Rooftop farms, vertical gardens and allotments also help increase vegetation cover, which is key to limiting rising temperatures and lowering the risk of flooding in cities.

While land in cities is scarce and expensive, rooftops and spaces below expressways and viaducts can be repurposed, said landscape architect Kotchakorn Voraakhom, who designed Asia's largest urban rooftop farm in Bangkok.

"We need imagination and greater flexibility in our laws to turn such spaces into urban farms," she said.

"The Chiang Mai farm is a sandbox - it shows it can be done in even the most unlikely of spaces if the government and the community come together," she added.

For Ammi, a homeless indigenous Akha woman who has lived at the farm since July, the corn, melons and cabbage that she grows have fed her and her husband, and provided a small income.

"It gives people like me an opportunity to be self-sufficient," she said. "We need more such farms in the city."

Lead photo: The farm provides a model of how to turn unused spaces into places that benefit the whole community. REUTERS

This article is published in collaboration with Thomson Reuters Foundation trust.org

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Farmers Markets Across the US Face Potential Economic Crisis from COVID-19

Across the US, farmers markets operators–the organizations and individuals who plan, coordinate, and run America’s farmers markets, are engaging in herculean efforts to protect their communities from COVID-19. But even as interest in local foods spikes nationwide, many market operators face the double threat of increased costs to operate during a pandemic, in addition to declining income. To make matters worse, many aren’t eligible for current federal relief efforts.

Farmers markets have always been a hub for innovation. When farmers have opted or been forced out of the traditional supply chain, farmers markets have served as a lifeline to their business, filling a vital role to move their goods from field to plate. Now, in this time of crisis, farmers markets are at the forefront of adapting rapid solutions and innovation to protect staff, customers, and community. Apart from these efforts, emerging research suggests sunlight  effectively kills COVID-19, adding more support to the idea that farmers markets may be the safest place to shop for groceries during the pandemic: 

“There are benefits to visiting a farmers market in light of coronavirus in terms of the fact that you’re outside, there’s fresh air moving and the supply chain is shorter,” said Yvonne Michael, an epidemiologist at Drexel University School of Public Health. “…so I would definitely encourage people during the coronavirus to visit a farmers market.”

But changes come with both increased costs and decreased revenue for organizations that run farmers markets. According to a Farmers Market Coalition member survey, 74% of respondents reported decreased income, while 93% report added costs, including the purchase of PPE for market staff, rental of more handwashing stations, new software or services, and additional staff to rearrange market layouts and monitor customer traffic. The need to reduce the number of vendors to enforce physical distance requirements, while other vendors are unable to attend markets due to health concerns, age, and labor shortages, points to a steep decline in revenue for market organizations. In a similar survey by the California Alliance of Farmers Markets, nearly 20% of respondents reported concern that they may not survive the economic impacts of COVID-19.

“We expect to lose almost $200,000 by the end of the year” said Kate Creps, Executive Director of the Heart of the City Farmers Market, in San Francisco, an organization that distributes $1.5 million in food assistance through its markets each year. “Only 50% of our vendors are able to continue selling during this crisis. At the same time, we anticipate over $60,000 in additional expenses to maintain strict social distancing protocol to protect customers, vendors, and staff.”

To make matters worse, farmers markets operators have largely been left out of relief efforts, both public and private. “Farmers markets are probably the safest place to shop now, but that hasn’t happened by accident. It’s thanks to the committed efforts of the community based farmers market operators who deliver for their communities,” said Ben Feldman, Executive Director of the Farmers Market Coalition, a nonprofit representing 4,500 farmers markets across the country. “These are very lean organizations and we are close to a breaking point for many of them, especially if they continue to be shut out of support other sectors of the economy are receiving.”

The impact of losing farmers markets would be massive. Farmers markets facilitate an estimated $2.4 billion dollars in sales for farmers each year. “Without direct assistance for our state’s farmers markets, many of which already operate on a shoestring budget and an all-volunteer staff, we risk losing this vital outlet, drastically affecting the livelihoods of farmers,” according to Robbi Mixon, a farmers market manager and Director of the Alaska Farmers Market Association. “Small to medium scale farmers are the cornerstone of local food systems. If farmers markets disappear, these farmers lose market access and economic stability”

“We are imploring state and federal governments to keep farmers markets in their mind as they develop relief packages,” said Feldman. “Please help markets keep their communities safe and thriving.” 

For more information:
Farmers Market Coalition
farmersmarketcoalition.org

Monday, May 11, 2020

VIDEO: The Microgreens Show | Episode 9 | Farmers Market

September 12, 2019

Emerald Garden Microgreens talks about the benefits of participating in Denver farmers markets.

About Emerald Garden Microgreens:

https://www.emeraldgardens.farm/

While a grad student at MIT, health and personal challenges led me to leave school. I moved to Colorado when Dave, a childhood friend, pitched it as the ideal place to regroup. After landing a landscaping job, I envisioned cultivating communities by increasing access to delicious fresh food; inspired, I started planting microgreens. The more micros I grew, the more of them I ate; the more I ate, the better I felt! My health improved dramatically—even my outlook and mood shifted.

I finally experienced the renewal I had been seeking. With Dave as co-founder, we took a huge leap of faith and established Emerald Gardens Microgreens in 2017. Our mission to invigorate lives and transform communities through fresh food resonated and we developed a loyal following. Ever grateful to live our passion, we're eager to keep expanding and sharing our harvest.