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Urban Farming Combats Food Deserts In Southeast Fort Worth With Community Empowerment
On the western edge of Glencrest Civic League in Southeast Fort Worth sits a property that soon could become an epicenter of education and agriculture for the community.
By Brooke Colombo
August 5, 2021
On the western edge of Glencrest Civic League in Southeast Fort Worth sits a property that soon could become an epicenter of education and agriculture for the community.
There sits a three-and-a-half-acre farm, Mind Your Garden, manned by husband and wife Steven and Ursula Nuñez, 38.
Several days a week, Steven heads to local grocery stores to pick up their unsold and undesirable produce. Much of it is still in edible condition while the rest is buzzing with flies and dripping with juice as the pair unload the crates to weigh them.
“It’s a lot of work. It’s hard work,” Ursula said. “But it’s good work and we like to work and it’s therapeutic.”
Today’s haul was on the high end for the farm. The most they’ve received is over 1,000 pounds. of discarded produce. The couple composts the produce to use as fertilizer.
They’ll add it to their terraced gardens to prepare the soil for planting in fall. For now, they’re sowing the seeds for an urban farm, with which they hope to combat food scarcity and promote healthy living.
Steven loads and unloads produce onto a scale. His truck bed was full with various fruits and vegetables, some still in edible condition. (Brooke Colombo | Fort Worth Report)
Cardboard from the discarded produce and recycled wood make up the terraced beds. The Nuñezes try to make the farm as sustainable as possible. (Brooke Colombo | Fort Worth Report)
Steven turns over the soil in the terraced garden beds to show how the compost enriches it. While they weren’t planting anything for the summer, some of the composted produce has sprouted new plants. (Brooke Colombo | Fort Worth Report)
In 2013, the Nuñezes bought the property, which once belonged to Steven’s parents. The house on the property eventually became their home. But Steven always planned to make the backyard into a garden.
Steven’s passion and expertise began when he studied abroad in Guatemala, where he learned about urban agriculture. He then attended a workshop from the National Center for Appropriate Technology designed to teach veterans about agriculture.
These experiences inspired him to pursue a master’s degree in landscape architecture from the University of Texas at Arlington. Steven and Ursula also received certifications in permaculture and Ursula has a background in education.
The Nuñez family sits in their backyard where they have coffee each morning and brainstorm ideas to serve their community. Steven said the farm is his greatest passion and they want it to be their lifestyle and business. (Brooke Colombo | Fort Worth Report)
While looking for a thesis topic, Steven learned about food deserts in Southeast Fort Worth, where some residents didn’t have sufficient access to food. The Nuñezes said they feel the best way to address this is through an educational shift in the community.
“Food is what brings all of us together,” Steven said. “We can be a facilitator for the community to come in and have healthy food options and the education and social community building aspect.”
Mind Your Garden is now one of a handful of community gardens in the Grow Southeast network, an independent initiative that helps farms reach success.
About Glencrest and Southeast food deserts
Not all of Southeast Fort Worth is a food desert, but some of its census tracts meet the federal definition for one. In order for a census tract to be a food desert, according to the USDA’s Food Access Research Atlas, it must meet two criteria:
The poverty rate must be 20% or higher, or the median household income must be at or below 80% of the median household income for the region.
At least 500 people and/or at least 33% of the households must live more than a half-mile from a large grocery store or supermarket in urban areas.
Food deserts usually have an abundance of convenience stores, fast-food restaurants and liquor stores.
A QT, Popeyes and Burger King sit on the Southbound side of HWY 287. The majority of food sources for the Glencrest Civic League are located in this area and are fast food, liquor or convenience stores. (Brooke Colombo | Fort Worth Report).
Save A Lot, located at 3101 E. Seminary Drive, is the only grocery store within the neighborhood’s boundaries. It’s considered a small grocery store and only part of its half-mile service radius extends into the neighborhood boundaries. (Brooke Colombo | Fort Worth Report).
Foodland is a large grocery store located at a Foodland at 3320 Mansfield Highway. It is the only large grocery store within a half-mile service radius of Glencrest Civic League. But just a small portion of the neighborhood is in this radius. (Brooke Colombo | Fort Worth Report)
Linda Fulmer, the executive director of Healthy Tarrant County Collaboration, who partners with Grow Southeast, has lived in Fort Worth since 1980 and remembers the shift of Southeast Fort Worth to a low-income area.
“(Southeast Meadowbrook) was an aging community with homes built in the 1930s and 1940s that were mainly occupied by aging original homeowners,” she said. “At that time there were eight grocery stores within three miles of my little house. Today only one of those stores remains in operation.”
Original homeowners in the area died or moved away, and the homes became available for rent by lower-income families. Many residents take their money to stores outside of the area, Fulmer said, which “erodes the shopper public for what stores remain.” Grocery stores are not a high-profit business, she said, so the stores look for a high density of residents with disposable income.
Glencrest Civic League is about five miles southeast of downtown Fort Worth and South of Highway 287. There is one small market (a Save A Lot food store at 3101 E. Seminary Drive) and one large grocery (a Foodland at 3320 Mansfield Highway) within a half-mile-service radius of the neighborhood limits.
Both are located at the southernmost edge of the neighborhood, making them less accessible to the majority of the neighborhood. Steven’s thesis, published in December 2018, found 70% of the neighborhood’s food sources are located at its southernmost tip. His thesis also found 9% of residents did not have at least one vehicle for their household.
“Part of understanding food insecurity is also understanding the demographics of the communities,” said Jesse Herrera, CoAct’s founder and executive director, who works with Grow Southeast. “Historically, there have been effects one could attribute to redlining or other systemic oppressions that have led our communities to the path they’re on.”
With 29% of households below the poverty line, Glencrest Civic League is considered a low-income neighborhood, according to census tract data. This is about double the poverty rate in Fort Worth (14.5%) and more than double the rate in Tarrant County (12%). Sixty-one percent of residents have a household income under $50,000.
The neighborhood is 56% Black, 36% Hispanic, 4% white, 2% Asian and 2% Pacific Islander. Of its 466 residents, 11.6% of the population has veteran status.
While lack of food options is an issue, so too is poor infrastructure. A lack of sidewalks, lack of exterior lighting and inefficient or insufficient bus routes can make it difficult to access food, Herrera said.
“If your food takes you an hour, two hours, three hours to get to and from there — that’s assuming these routes would actually be open by the time an individual gets off work— that’s part of what leads to food scarcity,” Herrera said.
The area’s economy affects food insecurity. Herrera said it’s harder to come across well-paying jobs in the southeast. Money goes toward rent first, and putting food on the table can be difficult with a minimum wage job.
The effects of food insecurity and little access to nutritious food have greater implications for the residents’ health, as Steven and Ursula have experienced.
“Steven’s family has a history of diabetes, and my family has a history of heart disease, which are both food-related diseases,” Ursula said. “I didn’t understand that with the food you consume, there are effects to unhealthy eating.”
A healthy diet can lead to a longer life, lower risk of obesity, heart disease, diabetes and some cancer, as well as help with chronic diseases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Steven and Ursula said despite exercising and training for marathons, it wasn’t until they changed their eating habits — cutting out alcohol and turning to a plant-based diet — that they saw a difference in their health.
How community urban farms address food scarcity
Though putting more grocery stores with healthy, affordable options in a more accessible place seems like the obvious solution, Nuñez suggests in his thesis this would have little effect on the buying choices of residents. The biggest factors are cultural background, tradition, education, custom and habit, his thesis argues.
“The whole nutritional education is extremely important,” Steven said. “It’s a long and tough journey to live a healthy lifestyle. For our community, some people just don’t know how to cook or eat healthily. They see fast foods and convenience as their only option. They need that strong support from their community to be successful.”
Community farms aren’t just about selling produce to residents, Herrera said. Rather, the farms also empower residents and boost the local economy to lift these communities out of poverty.
Once the farmers are equipped with successful business models, the farms could create opportunities for secondary and tertiary markets like neighborhood composting services and niche restaurants or cottage industries, he said.
“We’re looking at this through the lens of entrepreneurship and trying to create resources that support,” Herrera said. “These farms have the ability to create a lot of jobs.”
The future of Mind Your Garden
Steven points to a map they’ve created for the future layout of the farm. This includes plans for an orchard, a chicken coop and additional terraced garden beds. (Brooke Colombo | Fort Worth Report)
Ursula and their daughter Alejandra walk across their backyard from their home. The house, built in 1948, was the first property on the block. This space behind it will serve as a workshop and classroom to educate residents when the farm opens to the public. (Brooke Colombo | Fort Worth Report)
A retention pond is on the Northside of the property. The pond existed before they purchased the property. They plan to deepen it with the money they won in the Fort Worth Hispanic Chamber of Commerce’s pitch competition. (Brooke Colombo | Fort Worth Report)
Though it’s not open to the public yet, Steven and Ursula have already planned how they want to get the community involved on the farm.
They have a handful of volunteers helping build infrastructure to ready the farm for planting and a public opening. Preparing for the fall has been more than just physical labor, he said. Farming has allowed him and the volunteers to dig deep with each other.
“It’s a therapy session when we’re out here,” Steven said. “We’re out in nature. We’re working, sweating, talking about food insecurity and health. By the time they leave, we’ve had a pretty deep conversation. That’s definitely the community outreach aspect of it.”
To provide that experience to other residents, they intend to have gardening spaces where the community can get their hands dirty, as well as outdoor classroom space.
They will have a “healthy hour,” which will be like a happy hour focused on inviting the community over to eat and discuss their health.
“When we went plant-based and stopped drinking alcohol, we realized almost every social thing revolves around eating or drinking,” Steven said. “There’s a need for people looking to have a healthy lifestyle but still want to socialize.”
The Nuñezes said it’s an honor to be able to provide for their community and share what their farm will have to offer.
“This is a lifestyle business, not a part-time business or hobby. This is our life,” Steven said. “It means so much to us to get to express ourselves, our creativity, and be of service.”
Lead Photo: Ursula and Steven Nuñez unload hundreds of pounds of discarded fruit from local grocers to weigh. This fruit will get composted in the pile behind them to create nutrient-rich soil for planting. (Brooke Colombo | Fort Worth Report)
USA: MASSACHUSETTS - New Partnership Will Serve Meals For 400 Youth Per Day
Town to Table, a Boston-based container farm company, announced a partnership with the Boys & Girls Clubs of Metro South, an organization that accommodates kids in out-of-school-time hours
Town to Table, a Boston-based container farm company, announced a partnership with the Boys & Girls Clubs of Metro South, an organization that accommodates kids in out-of-school-time hoursy
Town to Table, a Boston-based container farm company, announced a partnership with the Boys & Girls Clubs of Metro South, an organization that accommodates kids in out-of-school-time hours.
"Together, we are operating two Freight Farms that will serve community members, food pantries, non-profits organizations, and the Clubs’ Kids Café Healthy Meals program which provides meals for 400 youth per day and serves more than 100,000 meals annually," said Town to Table on their LinkedIn page.
The farm will also be used as an educational resource to provide hands-on learning experiences for Club members with curricula-focused food systems, food justice, nutrition, and sustainability.
For more information:
Town to Table
https://towntotable.com
Boys & Girls Clubs of Metro South
Publication date: Fri 11 Jun 2021
Indoor Farming Industry Gets Boost From COVID-19
The coronavirus pandemic has caused a major shift in dining out and led many Americans to become more familiar with their kitchens than ever before
By Steve Bradley
The coronavirus pandemic has caused a major shift in dining out and led many Americans to become more familiar with their kitchens than ever before. In fact, according to the 2020 “America Gets Cooking” report commissioned annually by Hunter, a food and beverage public relations and marketing communications consultant, more than half (54 percent) of Americans report they are cooking more during the pandemic. 1
Thirty-nine percent said in a survey they are trying to eat healthier, with many saying they are becoming adventurous in the kitchen, trying new ingredients, brands, and products. 1 Salads and vegetables are two of the top five food items survey respondents say they are preparing more.
This presents a tremendous opportunity for grocers to meet this demand for preparing meals at home, as well as a growing desire to maintain a healthy diet during the pandemic to assist in fighting off the unwanted pounds associated with staying at home.
Fresh produce can play a key role in eating healthy but is not something that can easily be ordered through an online retailer like non-perishable goods. Shoppers like to hold and visually inspect produce for freshness, firmness, crispness, color, and other desirable characteristics.
In short, fresh produce is a primary driver of traffic into grocery stores.
Additionally, consumers also want to know that what they are buying can be trusted. Salmonella, e-coli, and other pathogens have unfortunately made their way into our fresh produce supply, causing massive recalls, illnesses, and even deaths. Consumers want to know they are buying a safe product and – increasingly – want to know more about where it came from and how it was grown. Words like “organic,” “non-GMO” and “locally sourced,” have become part of everyday language for many Americans.
Leading indoor farming companies, like BrightFarms, offer hydroponically grown, “cleaner than organic” packaged salads that results in a higher-quality product that consumers can trust. Even produce labeled “organic” has likely been treated with chemicals such as pesticides and herbicides. This also means the consumption of water, land, and costs associated with shipping produce are dramatically reduced. Additionally, locally grown means the quality is preserved through a much shorter shipping process, while also relying on less fuel due to shorter travels to market.
Controlled-environment agriculture ensures produce is not subjected to the whims of nature, such as drought, excessive rain, or other weather patterns.
In many ways, the BrightFarms’ model of bringing local produce around the U.S. into commercial stores has the potential to disrupt the multi-billion-dollar leafy greens industry. Few people could have likely imagined 10 years ago that hailing a taxicab would no longer be the “go-to” for getting around town. Similarly, corporations, with the ability to look around corners and see the future, are re-imagining how consumers get high-quality local produce onto dining room tables.
We need to feed a growing population in a more efficient way – not tied to any one certain geographic area. Investments in cleantech-focused on resource efficiency, resiliency, and adaptation. Local, sustainable, controlled environment produce consumers can trust gives us that opportunity. We believe it is possible to make the world a better place – building a better future for the next generation – while also growing business and creating jobs.
Steve Bradley serves as vice president of Cox Cleantech at Cox Enterprises, Inc. based in Atlanta, Georgia.
GREENHOUSE VERTICAL FARM BUSINESS TECHNOLOGY CLIMATE HYDROPONICS
Hunter. (2020). SPECIAL REPORT, America Gets Cooking: The Impact of COVID-19 on American’s Food Habits. [Food Study]. Retrieved from https://bit.ly/38DIhsR
PUERTO RICO: Indoor Vertical Farming Jumpstarts Agribusiness
Francisco Santana founded Grupo Vesan in 2015 with a simple concept: farming differently and more effectively. He looked to indoor vertical farming and became the first company in Puerto Rico to adopt that model
Grupo Vesan Seeks To Provide Food Security
With Sustainable Practices
Unlike other lettuce produced in Puerto Rico, the ones grown via vertical farming are unaffected by saltpeter, a naturally occurring nitrate. Courtesy of Grupo Vesan
January 13, 2021
A small business in the southern region of Puerto Rico is seeking to revolutionize agribusinesses with sustainable practices while providing food security and reducing the need for imported produce.
Francisco Santana founded Grupo Vesan in 2015 with a simple concept: farming differently and more effectively. He looked to indoor vertical farming and became the first company in Puerto Rico to adopt that model. As previously reported by THE WEEKLY JOURNAL, indoor vertical farming allows farmers to generate fresh food items in a controlled environment with smaller required spaces.
“Everything is with artificial lights and it works with 62 degrees F of temperature. It is a completely different environment. We regulate the humidity and even the oxygen level is controlled. The concept of all these parameters is completely different from what one usually finds in the market,” Santana explained.
In its beginnings, Grupo Vesan started with a 40-foot wagon and is now producing a variety of fruits and vegetables in Canas Industrial Park in Ponce, working with a 20-foot ceiling and 14 different parameters that allow for a broader range of products. Even after Hurricane Maria devastated nearly 70 percent of the island’s hydroponics, the company stood strong.
As such, Santana hopes that more agribusinesses incorporate this system so that residents have access to fresh food in times of crisis. “One of the benefits of this system… is that it provides food security. What we project is that agriculture should move indoors,” he said.
“Agriculture in Puerto Rico is not where it should be. That is the main issue of food security tied to this subject of indoor vertical farming. On the other hand, at the technology level, we are the pioneers in this process. We promote the idea of impacting the agriculture of Puerto Rico for new generations. [The idea that] new generations are not going to go to traditional agriculture; that is not true. We have, for example, an alliance with the Catholic University of Ponce and they send students here. They are working in air conditioning, in a white coat, like a pharmacist. They are doing scientific research, but they are really doing agriculture,” he added.
Islandwide Agriculture
Another benefit of indoor vertical farming is that it can be employed virtually anywhere in Puerto Rico, regardless of the soil’s fertility or if the area is prone to flooding or droughts. In fact, Grupo Vesan was founded while the island was experiencing a drought that prompted the Aqueduct and Sewer Authority (Prasa) to ration water.
Indoor vertical farming is also tied to the concept of “urban farming,” which is gaining popularity in Europe. That is, residents in any corner of Puerto Rico, including the San Juan metropolitan area or beachy municipalities like Dorado, can start their own agribusiness.
Likewise, this type of farming can be applied in spaces labeled as “brownfields,” which are areas that are contaminated and, therefore, unsuitable for traditional farming practices. Grupo Vesan even sells wagons for these purposes because one of their aims is to popularize this technique.
Environmental Impact
According to Santana, if more agribusinesses emerge with this model, the island would drop its carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions because there wouldn’t be a need to transport fresh food via long distances. “It also provides fresher food to consumers and businesses like restaurants could apply the farm-to-table concept,” he said.
Moreover, Grupo Vesan packs its agricultural products with its roots in a pouch with water. This allows the product to have greater longevity, thus reducing food waste and allowing for financial savings by not having to purchase fresh fruits or vegetables as often. As an example, Santana stated that the lettuce produced by his company can last “two or even three weeks” without spoiling.
Apart from lettuce, Grupo Vesan also grows spinach, tomatoes, cilantro, peppers, broccoli, carrots and a variety of other agricultural products.
“Revenue, a sense of community, and environmental impact; those are the components of a sustainable company. In our case, we don’t use any insecticide or pesticide, none of that. Our products are practically organic,” he affirmed.
He added that the company is currently developing a project to grow strawberries, noting that indoor vertical farming could eventually minimize the need to import foods that can’t be grown in Puerto Rico via traditional farming.
Reporter for The Weekly Journal. She is a journalist with experience in social media management, translations, and digital marketing.
Follow Giovanna Garofalo, The Weekly Journal
The Mexican Tec Graduates Who Are Using Vertical Farming To Eradicate Hunger
Vertical farms use 90% less water than traditional agriculture and can meet the challenge of feeding more than 9 billion people
Vertical farms use 90% less water than traditional agriculture and can meet the challenge of feeding more than 9 billion people
Por Susan Irais
January 11, 2021
Not all fruit and vegetables can be grown using this technique, but a great variety can. (Photo: Courtesy of Verde Karma Fresh)
Every night, seven million people go to bed hungry in Mexico. It is estimated that the coronavirus pandemic will cause that figure to increase. According to the latest report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), 130 million people will be affected by chronic hunger worldwide by the end of 2020.
Unfortunately for Mexico, the traditional agricultural industry uses a lot of resources and wastes a large amount of what it takes from the land.
For example, 34% of total production ends up in landfills due to inefficiencies during processing, storage, and transportation. What’s more, 40 billion liters of water are wasted annually due to poor irrigation.
“Fresh” products travel 300 to 1,000 kilometers and have already lost 45% of their nutritional value by the time they hit the shelves. But there is a complementary option for agriculture: vertical gardens.
Vertical Farming
“Vertical farming –in controlled environments– is a method of growing in vertically stacked layers, optimizing growing conditions and soil-less cultivation techniques, such as hydroponics,” says Leo Lobato Kelly, CEO of Verde Karma Fresh, a vertical farming company from Monterrey, Nuevo León.
The modern concept of vertical farming was proposed in 1999 by Dickson Despommier, Professor of Public and Environmental Health at Columbia University in the United States.
Due to climate change, this method has become a real alternative for countries like Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, the Netherlands, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, and now, Mexico.
Karma Verde Fresh (KVF) has spent the last five years developing farming systems and growing a variety of vegetables, sprouts, and seedlings in Monterrey, Nuevo León. “This has been achieved through an association with two universities and Tec graduate agronomists, using natural substrates, in this case: tezontle (volcanic rock). This substrate can be washed without contaminating the soil. By substituting mineral products, you allow fields to regenerate themselves, which is highly beneficial to the soil,” says the CEO of Karma Verde Fresh.
Not all fruit and vegetables can be grown using this technique, but a great variety can be (Photo: courtesy of Karma Verde Fresh).
Vertical farming systems use 90% less water and 95% less space than traditional farming and are 100% herbicide and pesticide-free. “Our crops can be adapted to any space, which allows us to be closer to the consumer, reduce our carbon footprint, and promote local purchases that are fresher,” says Leo Lobato.
Vertical farms keep crops fresh for longer, so they don’t lose any nutrients, using state-of-the-art LEDs that are extremely energy efficient. Energy can also be generated from renewable sources and this creates job opportunities.
Traditional Agriculture Plus Vertical Farming
“Vertical farming is another option within the agricultural industry, though it is intended as a way of complementing rather than replacing traditional agriculture,” adds Tagino Lobato from KVF.
Not all fruit and vegetables can be grown using this technique, but a great variety can be, “enough to have a balanced diet,” according to Leo Lobato.
For example, KVF produces lettuce, microgreens (mustard), Ballerina lettuce, Alexandria lettuce, peas, beetroot, large-eared lettuce, radish, Italian lettuce, and sunflowers, as well as others such as astro arugula, rocket arugula, spinach, coriander, chard, strawberries, and tomato seedlings.
Vertical farms are very beneficial. For example, they use 90% less water than traditional agriculture and they can be built anywhere, which means many spaces could be repurposed. (Infographic: Karma Verde Fresh)
This type of initiative hopes to feed the 150 million people who will be living in Mexico by 2050, of whom approximately will be in 80% urban areas, according to FAO estimates.
Karma Verde Fresh saw a great entrepreneurial opportunity in vertical technology. “We need this in all communities because we all need to eat better without damaging the planet. Vertical farming in a controlled environment has many possibilities. We can take it to schools or food bank centers,” says the co-founder of Verde Karma Fresh.
The company wants to make this innovation in agriculture available to everyone, so they are looking to make the technology accessible. For example, “we already have one of these vertical farms in Dr. Adriana Elizondo’s house in the Linda Vista neighborhood of Guadalupe in Monterrey. She’s farming with this prototype from her bedroom,” says Leo.
Karma Verde Fresh has two versions of the growing system: one for crops (KVF-AG6) and one for seedlings (KVF-AG10). (Photo: Karma Verde Fresh)
Mexico, The Land of Opportunity
The Lobato technology has already made deals with 20 international universities to take their equipment and establish laboratories. “By involving universities, we are hoping to find Mexican ingenuity that will produce better technology and create more employment opportunities in all Spanish-speaking countries,” he says.
KVF doesn’t just want to sell the technology but also to lower the costs by using Mexican technology. Sources of financing are being set up for all of the entrepreneurs who wish to take vertical farms to different levels.
The end product from vertical farms promotes local purchases that are more nutritious (Photo: Courtesy)
GUAM: Small Urban Farms Can Be An Oasis For Underserved Neighborhoods
Adrian Higgins | The Washington Post
October 15, 2020
I ate the last of the season's potatoes the other day, and it's not a bad harvest achievement when you consider I dug the lot in July from a bed no more than 15 feet long. I've eaten many meals over the summer where the bulk of my plate has come straight from my small community garden plot in the city.
It is amazing how much you can grow in a small space if the soil is good and you stay on top of tasks such as watering and weeding. But even in a pandemic-driven planting year full of homegrown potatoes, beans, and carrots, you have to face reality. If you relied on most urban veggie plots alone to feed yourself, never mind a large family, you'd be forever tightening your belt.
FLOWER GARDEN: Dominic Hosack, left, and Scott Kratz, of Building Bridges Across the River, take in the flower garden at the National Children's Center urban farm in Washington on Oct. 2. Adrian Higgins/The Washington Post
This is why I've had my doubts about whether urban agriculture can meet the challenge where it is most needed: in poorer, food-insecure neighborhoods.
Rosie Williams is in charge of such a garden, in an expansive side lot of the National Children's Center, an early-learning and educational development provider in Southeast Washington.
The garden packs a lot in. There are almost 70 raised planter beds, each four by eight feet and filled with deep, rich soil. That's a lot of growing area; the beds generate bushels of edible plants for most of the year. A shed houses tools, a single beehive is active, a few fruit trees ring the area, and one side is devoted to little benches for little people. The center, which normally houses classes for 188 children up to age 5, has been closed because of the pandemic, though a limited reopening is in the works.
Williams, a teacher and the garden coordinator shows me cool-season veggies growing in the fall, young plants of kale, collards, cauliflower, broccoli, and red cabbage. In other planters, mature plants are seeing out the season in robust vigor. The most obvious is a single pepper plant – now taller than Williams – whose leaves hide unripe green chiles that hang like ornaments. This is a mighty hot pepper from Trinidad named Scorpion, she said, and I have no doubt that it has a sting in its tail.
Nearby, a Japanese eggplant is full of purple streaked fruit. Along another path, Williams stops to lift a wayward cherry tomato vine and places it back in its bed. "I don't like to step on my babies," she said.
Elsewhere, wizened sunflowers have had their day. "We bring the kids out, we show them how to plant seeds, what the plants need," she said. "It's getting folks exposed to the garden." Food from the garden is used in the center's kitchen.
Thus the children (and their families) get a sense that food comes from the soil. This is not so obvious a connection in Ward 8. In this corner of the capital of the United States, there is one full-service grocery store for 80,000 people, and access to something as basic as fresh vegetables is limited.
"We have a lack of grocery stores," said Jahni Threatt, the CSA market manager for the nonprofit Building Bridges Across the River. "In Wards 7 and 8, we have three grocery stores." Residents eat from fast-food chains or out of convenience stores and liquor stores. "The food that's available isn't necessarily healthy," she said. Under Community Supported Agriculture programs or CSAs, growers provide direct weekly harvests to subscribers.
'Through the lens of equity'
The Baby Boomers Urban Farm that Williams coordinates at the National Children's Center is one of seven in a network of city farms east of the Anacostia River, including a one-acre farm run by Threatt's organization at THEARC, the arts, education, and social services campus at 1901 Mississippi Ave. SE.
This one farm produced as much as 1,600 pounds of food this year, but to provision its CSA program, the Building Bridges group turns to an additional 10 farms within 50 miles of the city, most of them Black-owned, said Scott Kratz, vice president.
AN OUTDOOR CLASSROOM: The urban farm functions as an outdoor classroom for almost 200 children and is a portal for sources of fresh vegetables for families in a predominantly Black area of Washington with just one grocery store. Here, the pollinator garden is shown on Oct. 2. Adrian Higgins/The Washington Post
The CSA runs three seasons of subscriptions, and bags are picked up on Saturdays at THEARC. The spring season was canceled because of the pandemic, but the summer and fall ones have been heavily subscribed and will provide food for more than 400 families this year. The season has also been extended, from the end of this month to the end of next. Lower-income subscribers get a reduced rate, and families on assistance get the food free, Kratz said.
This is heartening because the pandemic has hit the city's poorest wards the hardest. Many residents have underlying health issues related in part to their diet, and many are front-line workers or rely on the gig economy, putting them at greater risk of contracting the novel coronavirus, Kratz said. Ward 8, which is 92% Black, so far has the highest number of virus deaths in the district, with 127, according to city-data. Ward 3, 81% White, had 34 for the same period.
"We need to make sure that the programming we have is coming through the lens of equity and making sure the access people need is available to everybody in the community," said Dominic Hosack, farm director of Building Bridges.
I am rethinking my sense that mini-farms in the city are of limited value. They are, rather, a key portal into a larger infrastructure of food-security efforts.
Beyond their utility, they are places of deep reconnection, to the soil, to food, and to communities. In the food deserts of big-city America, they are the oases.
Lead photo: CHECKING ON HER BABIES: Garden coordinator Rosie Williams checks a pepper plant at the National Children's Center urban farm in Washington in October 2020. Adrian Higgins/The Washington Post
Tags Farm Rosie Williams Food Agriculture Gardening Vegetable Garden Plant Pepper Veggy
Fresh Greens From A Shipping Container In Alaska’s Aleutian Islands? Believe It
A young family has begun selling the first year-round, locally grown commercial produce in the unforgiving climate of Unalaska in the Aleutian Islands. Aleutian Greens co-owner Blaine Shaishnikoff said last week that two storms had just blown through the community — and the lettuce and herbs, nestled inside shipping containers set up as hydroponic farms, were unscathed
November 11, 2019
A young family has begun selling the first year-round, locally grown commercial produce in the unforgiving climate of Unalaska in the Aleutian Islands.
Aleutian Greens co-owner Blaine Shaishnikoff said last week that two storms had just blown through the community — and the lettuce and herbs, nestled inside shipping containers set up as hydroponic farms, were unscathed.
“You wake up and there‘s a couple inches of snow on the ground, and it kind of makes you think about it for a minute,” Shaishnikoff said.
Shaishnikoff, 28, and his wife, Catina, grew up in Unalaska, the treeless island community where fresh produce is shipped in from Seattle, more than 2,000 miles away.
“It takes a lot of shelf-life off of the product,” Shaishnikoff said.
Sometimes grocery stores run out of certain vegetables. Members of the community have long discussed how fresh produce is hard to come by, he said.
The Shaishnikoffs started Aleutian Greens with funding from the Aleutian Housing Authority. The plants are grown hydroponically inside standard shipping containers.
Aleutian Greens is growing lettuce, herbs and other produce in shipping containers in Unalaska. The plants are grown hydroponically. (Photos provided by Aleutian Greens)
Each shipping container measures 40 feet long, 8 feet wide and 9 feet 6 inches high. A single container can produce 450 heads of lettuce every week or combinations of leafy greens and herbs.
So far, the butterhead and green leaf lettuces have been popular, Shaishnikoff said. They are also growing parsley, dill, arugula, kale, chives, basil, Thai basil, cilantro, bok choy and mizuna, a spicy mustard green.
Since its first harvest Oct. 28, Aleutian Greens has been selling to the Grand Aleutian Hotel and Harbor View Bar and Grill for their restaurants.
In January, the company will expand its reach, and Unalaska residents will be able to buy the produce at Alaska Ship Supply, one of two grocery stores in town.
“Being able to buy and sell locally grown fresh produce is something that you never even thought would be an option in the Aleutians,” Bob Owens, Alaska Ship Supply owner, wrote in an email.
Unalaska‘s 4,400 residents live about 800 miles southwest of Anchorage.
Imported produce takes two weeks to arrive from Seattle, Owens said. With Aleutian Greens, the store will have the produce on the same day it is harvested.
“Slight difference,” Owens wrote.
Owens wrote that the prices will be comparable to produce already on the shelves.
The growing units came from Anchorage-based company Vertical Harvest Hydroponics, which specializes in creating vertical farms in shipping containers.
Why shipping containers? Cameron Willingham, Vertical Harvest Hydroponics founder, and Chief Technology Officer, offered two reasons.
First, shipping containers are tough — “pretty much bombproof” — which makes them ideal for rough conditions, Willingham said. Second, the farms must be small enough to fit on a barge or plane to be shipped to rural Alaska.
The hydroponics systems are set up for quick-cycling plants like herbs and greens. “We never set out to compete with carrots or potatoes,” Willingham said, which can be stored longer.
“We set out to go after the crops that just don‘t travel well, that just don‘t grow in the winter up here, that just don‘t store,” Willingham said.
The two containers sit on land owned by the Aleutian Housing Authority that was previously vacant – and happens to be a “stone‘s throw” from Shaishnikoff‘s house, he said.
So far, the couple operates the business along with a couple volunteers. Shaishnikoff has kept a second job working at a rock quarry, he said.
In late November, a third shipping container was en route to Unalaska that will be used for harvesting and packaging, Shaishnikoff said.
“That‘s really going to benefit us,” Shaishnikoff said.
Our Food Is Killing Too Many of Us
And Americans are sick — much sicker than many realize. More than 100 million adults — almost half the entire adult population — have pre-diabetes or diabetes. Cardiovascular disease afflicts about 122 million people and causes roughly 840,000 deaths each year, or about 2,300 deaths each day. Three in four adults are overweight or obese. More Americans are sick, in other words, than are healthy
Improving American Nutrition Would
Make The Biggest Impact On Our Health Care
By Dariush Mozaffarian and Dan Glickman
Mr. Mozaffarian is dean of the Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy. Mr. Glickman was the secretary of agriculture from 1995 to 2001.
August 26, 2019
The Democratic debate on health care has to date centered around who should be covered and who should pay the bill. That debate, which has been going on for decades, has no clear answers and cannot be easily resolved because of two fundamental realities: Health care is expensive, and Americans are sick.
Americans benefit from highly trained personnel, remarkable facilities and access to the newest drugs and technologies. Unless we eliminate some of these benefits, our health care will remain costly. We can trim around the edges — for example, with changes in drug pricing, lower administrative costs, reductions in payments to hospitals and providers, and fewer defensive and unnecessary procedures. These actions may slow the rise in health care spending, but costs will keep rising as the population ages and technology advances.
And Americans are sick — much sicker than many realize. More than 100 million adults — almost half the entire adult population — have pre-diabetes or diabetes. Cardiovascular disease afflicts about 122 million people and causes roughly 840,000 deaths each year, or about 2,300 deaths each day. Three in four adults are overweight or obese. More Americans are sick, in other words, than are healthy.
Instead of debating who should pay for all this, no one is asking the far more simple and imperative question: What is making us so sick, and how can we reverse this so we need less health care? The answer is staring us in the face, on average three times a day: our food.
Poor diet is the leading cause of mortality in the United States, causing more than half a million deaths per year. Just 10 dietary factors are estimated to cause nearly 1,000 deaths every day from heart disease, stroke and diabetes alone. These conditions are dizzyingly expensive. Cardiovascular disease costs $351 billion annually in health care spending and lost productivity, while diabetes costs $327 billion annually. The total economic cost of obesity is estimated at $1.72 trillion per year, or 9.3 percent of gross domestic product.
These human and economic costs are leading drivers of ever-rising health care spending, strangled government budgets, diminished competitiveness of American business and reduced military readiness.
Fortunately, advances in nutrition science and policy now provide a road map for addressing this national nutrition crisis. The “Food Is Medicine” solutions are win-win, promoting better well-being, lower health care costs, greater sustainability, reduced disparities among population groups, improved economic competitiveness and greater national security.
Some simple, measurable improvements can be made in several health and related areas. For example, Medicare, Medicaid, private insurers and hospitals should include nutrition in any electronic health record; update medical training, licensing and continuing education guidelines to put an emphasis on nutrition; offer patient prescription programs for healthy produce; and, for the sickest patients, cover home-delivered, medically tailored meals. Just the last action, for example, can save a net $9,000 in health care costs per patient per year.
Taxes on sugary beverages and junk food would help lower health care costs. Credit: Jenny Kane/Associated Press
Taxes on sugary beverages and junk food can be paired with subsidies on protective foods like fruits, nuts, vegetables, beans, plant oils, whole grains, yogurt and fish. Emphasizing protective foods represents an important positive message for the public and food industry that celebrates and rewards good nutrition. Levels of harmful additives like sodium, added sugar and trans fat can be lowered through voluntary industry targets or regulatory safety standards.
Nutrition standards in schools, which have improved the quality of school meals by 41 percent, should be strengthened; the national Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program should be extended beyond elementary schools to middle and high schools; and school garden programs should be expanded. And the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which supports grocery purchases for nearly one in eight Americans, should be leveraged to help improve diet quality and health.
The private sector can also play a key role. Changes in shareholder criteria (e.g., B-Corps, in which a corporation can balance profit versus purpose with high social and environmental standards) and new investor coalitions should financially reward companies for tackling obesity, diabetes and other diet-related illness. Public-private partnerships should emphasize research and development on best agricultural and food-processing practices. All work sites should demand healthy food when negotiating with cafeteria vendors and include incentives for healthy eating in their wellness benefits.
Coordinated federal leadership and funding for research is also essential. This could include, for example, a new National Institute of Nutrition at the National Institutes of Health. Without such an effort, it could take many decades to understand and utilize exciting new areas, including related to food processing, the gut microbiome, allergies and autoimmune disorders, cancer, brain health, treatment of battlefield injuries and effects of nonnutritive sweeteners and personalized nutrition.
Government plays a crucial role. The significant impacts of the food system on well-being, health care spending, the economy and the environment — together with mounting public and industry awareness of these issues — have created an opportunity for government leaders to champion real solutions.
Yet with rare exceptions, the current presidential candidates are not being asked about these critical national issues. Every candidate should have a food platform, and every debate should explore these positions. A new emphasis on the problems and promise of nutrition to improve health and lower health care costs is long overdue for the presidential primary debates and should be prominent in the 2020 general election and the next administration.
Lead Image: Cheeseburgers at a White House picnic in 2018. Credit Alex Edelman/Getty Images
Dollar Stores Are Taking Over the Grocery Business, and It’s Bad News for Public Health and Local Economies
A new report shows growth of dollar stores in low-income and rural communities furthers inequity and pushes out local businesses.
BY CLAIRE KELLOWAY
Posted on: December 17, 2018
Today, there are more dollar stores in the United States than all Walmarts and Starbucks combined. These low-priced “small-box” retailers, like Dollar General, offer little to no fresh food—yet they feed more Americans than either Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods, and are gaining on the country’s largest food retailers.
Detailing the explosion of dollar stores in rural and low-income areas, the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) recently released a report that shows how these retailers exacerbate economic and public health disparities. The report makes the case that dollar stores undercut small rural grocers and hurt struggling urban neighborhoods by staving off full-service markets.
ILSR also argues that the proliferation of dollar stores is the latest outgrowth of an increasingly concentrated grocery sector, where the top four chains—Walmart, Kroger, Ahold-Delhaize, and Albertsons—sell 44 percent of all groceries, and Walmart alone commands a quarter of the market. These dominant chain stores have decimated independent retailers and divested from rural and low-income areas, as well as communities of color.
A Dollar General in Morgantown, West Virginia. (Photo credit: Taber Andrew Bain)
“Earlier trends in big box store [growth] are making this opening for dollar stores to enter,” says Marie Donahue, one of the report’s authors. “We’re seeing a widening gap of inequality that’s a result of wealth being extracted from communities and into corporate headquarters… Dollar stores are really concentrating in communities hit hardest by the consequences of economic concentration.”
“Before this report, I had no idea that dollar stores were proliferating in this way,” says Dr. Kristine Madsen, Faculty Director of the Berkeley Food Institute. But, she adds, “it doesn’t surprise me that these incredibly cheap stores may be the only choice for people [who] may be choosing between medicine and rent and food.”
Dollar General did not respond to a request to comment for this article.
Profiting Off Customers in “Food Deserts”
Two companies, Dollar Tree (which acquired Family Dollar in 2015) and Dollar General, have expanded their footprint from just under 20,000 stores in 2010 to nearly 30,000 stores in 2018, with plans to open yet another 20,000 stores in the near future. Dollar General alone opens roughly three stores a day.
Most of these new stores are in urban and rural neighborhoods where residents don’t often have access to fresh fruits and vegetables. In 2015, in fact, Dollar Tree and Dollar General represented two-thirds of all new stores in “food deserts,” defined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) as low-income areas where a third or more of residents live far from a full-service grocery store. Dollar General predominantly targets rural areas, though it s beginning to compete with Family Dollar, which is ubiquitous in urban food deserts.
Profiting off these left-behind places is baked into dollar stores’ business plan. In 2016, low-income shoppers represented 21 percent of Dollar General’s customers but 43 percent of their sales. Dollar General executives publicly described households making under $35,000 and reliant on government assistance as their “Best Friends Forever.” When discussing growing rural-urban inequality, Dollar General’s CEO said “the economy is continuing to create more of our core customer,” i.e., more struggling rural families.
Undercutting Independent Grocery Stores
Some, including dollar-store executives themselves, argue that a low-cost retailer seeking to go where no one else will benefits underserved communities. But ILSR argues that dollar stores are not a true solution to hunger or food insecurity. Furthermore, the group says, they do nothing to promote food sovereignty, or people’s right to control the production and distribution of their own food.
Inside a Dollar General store in Eldred, Pennsylvania. (Photo credit: Random Retail)
“To the extent that dollar stores are filling, in some ways, a need in communities, I think that is true in the short term,” says Donahue. “But really our research is demonstrating … those foods aren’t as good quality as full-service grocers or independent local stores, which may be able to connect to local farmers and the larger food system.”
Dollar stores sell predominantly shelf-stable and packaged foods. Four-hundred-and-fifty Dollar General locations are experimenting with an expanded refrigerator section to respond to a demand for more fresh fruits and vegetables. But, to date, the fresh and frozen offerings that do exist in these stores consist of processed meats, dairy products, and frozen meals. In other words, customers don’t have the same wide selection as they do in a traditional full-service grocery store.
“Grocery stores have more variety and a higher quantity of healthy foods than do dollar stores,” says Dr. David Procter, director of the Rural Grocery Initiative, a program of Kansas State University’s Center for Engagement and Community Development.
Despite their reputation, dollar stores don’t provide the best deals either. They often sell products in smaller quantities to keep a low price tag and draw in cash-strapped buyers. But when comparing per-ounce prices to a traditional grocery store, dollar store customers tend to pay more. Reporting by The Guardian found that the prorated cost of dollar store milk cartons comes to $8 per gallon, for example.
Dollar store customers do, however, find genuine value in things like greeting cards, pasta, coat hangers, and other everyday home goods. But this very cost-cutting is what makes dollar stores uniquely brutal competitors for smaller independent grocers.
“There’s very little money made on all kinds of segments of the [independent] grocery store, but where [grocers] do make their most money … is in paper goods and dry goods,” explains Procter. “That is really the heart of Dollar General … and it’s cutting into the largest profit area of the grocery store, that’s the real challenge.”
By sucking away this source of revenue, dollar stores tend to drive out the few independent grocers that remain, especially in rural areas. ILSR’s report found that “it’s typical for sales [at local grocery stores] to drop by about 30 percent after a Dollar General opens.”
Additionally, a survey by the Rural Grocery Initiative found that competition from large chain stores is the single largest challenge facing independent rural grocers. In the ’90s, Walmart was their main challenger; now Dollar General is moving in where even Walmart wouldn’t go, pushing out more local businesses.
The Benefit of—and Fight for—Small, Local Stores
Residents lose more than fresh foods when their local grocery store disappears. They lose jobs, local investment, and a voice in their food choices.
According to federal data, small independent grocers employ nearly twice as many people per store when compared to dollar stores. “When you have a hometown grocer owned by people who are committed to that community, not only are all the decisions made locally, but all of the profits stay in that town,” says Procter. “Some of the money that’s being generated in Dollar General stores is going to their headquarters in Tennessee, and the decisions about whether or not that [store] stays open or what they offer is being made by out-of-state corporate decision makers.”
A Dollar Tree store in Cheshire, Conn. (Photo credit: Mike Mozart)
In addition to undercutting existing stores, the proliferation of dollar stores can shut out new entrants. This is a particular concern in low-income urban areas and communities of color. ILSR’s report features the case of Tulsa, Oklahoma, where there’s a 14-year life expectancy gap between residents in the predominantly Black north Tulsa neighborhood and residents in the predominantly white south Tulsa neighborhood. ILSR found that dollar stores have “concentrated in [Tulsa] census tracts with more African American residents,” and community members are not happy about it.
“I don’t think it’s an accident they proliferate in low socio-economic and African American communities,” Tulsa City Councilor Vanessa Hall-Harper told ILSR. “That proliferation makes it more difficult for the full-service, healthy stores to set up shop and operate successfully.”
However, Tulsa’s story also provides a glimpse of hope into what some communities can do to halt the invasion of dollar stores. Hall-Harper worked to pass zoning ordinances that would limit dollar store development and encourage full-service grocers to set up shop. She rallied residents to protest the opening of a new Dollar General and join city council meetings to show support for a temporary dollar store moratorium. City council passed the moratorium and the zoning changes seven months later. North Tulsa will soon have a new grocery store, operated by Honor Capital, a veteran-owned company that has a food-access mission. Rural communities in Kansas have similarly organized and leveraged city council to halt a proposed Dollar General.
“It’s great to see a community really fight for this ordinance and show up to public meetings and hearings and challenge those traditional systems that would have just approved development for more dollar stores in the area,” says Donahue.
Top photo: Outside a Dollar General in Fort Hancock, Texas. (Photo credit: Thomas Hawk)
Cities Can And Must Work To End Food Deserts Within Their Communities
By Mayor Debra March - - Wednesday, October 10, 2018
Limited access to healthy food continues to affect urban communities across the U.S., including the City of Henderson, Nevada, where I am privileged to serve as mayor.
Nearly all of the food consumed by the 2.1 million residents and 42 million annual visitors to the Las Vegas Valley, where Henderson is located, comes from somewhere else. This is a necessity given the environment of our drought-burdened Mojave Desert home, which makes growing fruits and vegetables for residents and visitors challenging.
In addition, many economically challenged areas across the nation, including our own, lack access to supermarkets with affordable fresh vegetables, fruits and other nourishing foods, so residents rely on neighborhood corner stores and fast-food chains that offer few fresh food options. As a result, despite being a vibrant community with a robust economy, safe neighborhoods and high student achievement, Henderson is not immune to the development of food deserts or food insecurity.
But hope is on the horizon. Among the strategies we are implementing to increase access to healthy food in economically challenged neighborhoods is the incorporation of urban vertical farming. This is an innovative process that sustainably produces exponentially greater numbers of crops while using significantly fewer land and water resources, making it a viable option for our desert home.
Even under normal conditions, our hot and arid climate — which averages less than 4 inches of rain a year — make it very challenging to grow produce. But through hydroponic watering and microclimate controls for crop cultivation, vertical farming can use up to 90 percent less water than traditional farming methods. This is a critically important benefit for a region that finds itself in the 18th year of a serious drought, with no relief in sight.
Vertical farming is an emerging industry, and the private sector is eager to encourage its development as evidenced by an increasing number of vertical farms being built across the country. And just recently, Oasis Biotech opened its doors in Las Vegas, joining Urban Seed Inc., which opened in 2016.
Oasis Biotech, located near Henderson, is producing 9,500 servings of green salads per day from its 200,000 square-foot facility that houses the equivalent of a 34-acre traditional farm. The healthy food produced there supports local resorts, casinos and a national supermarket chain. Before this development, all local produce was usually supplied by distant farms in California and Arizona. In addition to added cost, produce shipped to Southern Nevada often loses vital nutrients and freshness during transport.
Being able to access locally produced and vertically farmed leafy greens and fruits for their restaurant salads allow these resorts to decrease reliance on produce shipped by truck or train. This change helps reduce air pollution and cuts carbon emissions while also promoting increased water conservation and sustainable farming techniques.
In addition, vertical farms like Oasis Biotech and Urban Seed Inc., will be able to tailor their produce to the specific need of its resort and supermarket partners and go from farm to table in 24 hours, which will create more nutritious, better tasting and diverse options for their clientele.
Henderson is taking a multifaceted approach to resolving issues that contribute to the lack of fresh produce experienced by our residents — an issue that can often lead to major health concerns including diabetes, hypertension and low student performance.
We recognized the importance of working with community stakeholders to effectively meet the challenge of providing all residents with access to healthy food. We incorporated this goal into the City’s “Henderson Strong” comprehensive plan and made this healthy food strategy a key component of the revitalization plan for Pittman, one of the City’s oldest underserved neighborhoods.
Part of this approach also includes working to attract new supermarkets and expanding existing stores. We’re also supporting school and community gardens and mobile farmers markets. The City Council also will consider an urban agriculture ordinance to support and facilitate larger scale and more sustainable food production — like vertical farming — in our city.
We have an exciting opportunity that will allow us to address the challenge of food deserts and food insecurity in our urban centers with vertical farming that takes place 365 days a year and produces food closer to where it’s consumed. But we must keep in mind that continued growth of this industry will not be possible without the assistance of public and private funding to support the infrastructure needed to develop it.
While there is no quick and easy panacea for the lack of healthy food options that residents across the nation face on a daily basis, forward-thinking municipalities like Henderson are actively implementing community-supported programs and exploring new technologies like vertical farming that will provide our most vulnerable families with healthier options.
• Henderson Mayor Debra March, a former councilwoman, was elected to Nevada’s second largest city in 2017. Please follow @debra_march and @cityofhenderson.
Transforming Food and Health in Native Communities Through Vertical Farming
Transforming Food and Health in Native Communities Through Vertical Farming
July 5, 2018
7 Generations, a Washington State-based AgTech farm development and food distribution company is introducing indoor vertical farms to Native communities across the United States. The company’s big vision is to transform the health of Native communities by bringing AgTech education and indoor vertical farms into Native American classrooms.
The initiative consists of a STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) curriculum for K-12 students, a Grow Healthy Food Road Tour, and a business incubator indoor vertical farm. The goal of the initiative is to help Native communities achieve local food security, energy independence, improve wellness, and increase economic development, with a focus on youth. “The Native youth AgTech initiative takes a culturally correct, systems approach in addressing three pressing needs in Indian country related to—Food, Energy, Jobs,” Ted Treanor, Co-Founder of 7 Generations, says.
Native American reservations often don’t have access to healthful, nutritious, and affordable food options. American Indian and Alaskan Native tribal members also face increased rates of poverty, suicide, diabetes, and other chronic diseases, as well as chronic unemployment, low graduation rates, water shortages, and the lowest income of any ethnic group in the U.S. Native youth are particularly vulnerable in facing these challenges, as well as economic opportunity and access to the necessary resources to create thriving food and agriculture businesses.
According to Ted Treanor, 7 Generations, numerous social impact organizations, major corporations, and ag universities see an opportunity to work with young food AgTech (STEM) scholars from Native communities to ensure the creation of the next generation of Native professionals in food and agriculture, and to provide them with the necessary tools to thrive through the STEM AgTech initiative.
The initiative involves providing solar power modules and indoor gardens to classrooms for three-hundred tribes, providing a twenty-foot container farm for seventy-five tribes, and a STEM curriculum consisting of AgTech farming, regenerative agriculture, food safety, food and nutrition, farm economics, and renewable energy. The STEM curriculum offers “hands-on learning about nutrition, renewable energy, and environmentally responsible sustainable farming as the priorities that will lead Native youth to higher education and employment opportunities.”
The initiative also includes a 12-state Grow Healthy Food Road Tour across reservation-dense areas in Indian country, touring each of the reservations in an all-electric powered semi-truck equipped with a fully operational vertical farm and solar array. Eugene Wilkie, a Native American and Co-Founder of 7 Generations, says, “By taking the farm to the People, we are assured that over an academic school-year, many Native Americans will be exposed to clean solar energy and healthy indoor vertical farming, which will improve the adoption of this initiative—a new way to honor the old ways”. There will also be a business incubator indoor vertical farm pilot that will be sited on one reservation. If successful, the pilot will be replicated on other reservations and will become a catalyst for creating many year-round jobs.
Indoor farm systems offer significant benefits to at-risk Native American youth and Native communities, including access to year-round, healthy, non-GMO, pesticide-free, fresh produce while using less water. The indoor farms and STEM curriculum also provide social capital, community well-being, civic engagement, and a brighter future, “The STEM AgTech initiative is inspiring a new generation of informed consumers, who are armed with education and hands-on experience that leads to higher education, job certifications, and future career opportunities, in other words—Hope!” says Eugene Wilkie of 7 Generations.
US (MO): Aquaponics Facility To Alleviate Food Desert
US (MO): Aquaponics Facility To Alleviate Food Desert
Nonprofit Nile Valley Aquaponics is raising fish in a Kansas City food desert—and they’re creating jobs, providing healthy food and promoting sustainable urban farming in the process. To help the nonprofit lead the community to greener and healthier living, American architecture and engineering firm HOK designed the Nile Valley Aquaponics Facility, which could double the annual harvest to 50,000 pounds of fish and 70,000 pounds of vegetables.
The building would be constructed using sustainable building methods and feature resource-saving systems such as rainwater cisterns and a wind turbine.
Designed to cover a 0.7-acre lot, the Nile Valley Aquaponics Facility aims to expand the nonprofit’s food production capacity and introduce additional eco-friendly farming features. The urban farming effort not only gives the community greater access to fresh produce and fish but also provides low-income youth with economic and educational opportunities through jobs, lessons, field trips and mentoring.
The new facility would include two new greenhouses that could increase the output of fish from 25,000 to 50,000 pounds and the production of vegetables from 35,000 to 75,000 pounds. A third greenhouse would be used for education.
Read more at Inhabitat (Lucy Wang)
Publication date: 6/22/2018
Giant Garden Comes To Food Desert – Growing Food, Jobs And More
Giant Garden Comes To Food Desert – Growing Food, Jobs And More
POSTED: June 22, 2018, BY ERIN IVORY
CHICAGO -- One of the Chicago's biggest food deserts now has one of the biggest gardens in town.
The project was a collaboration between Lawndale Christian Health Center and the Chicago Botanic Garden. It resulted in The Farm on Ogden, a 20,000-square foot facility built to grow produce to feed the community.
"The three pillars of this space is food, health, and jobs," said Botanic Garden Urban Agriculture Vice President Angela Mason.
The "Farm" is a massive indoor gardening space for Lawndale Christian Health Center patients, community residents, and urban farm trainees and entrepreneurs. It will also serve as the new home for Windy City Harvest's urban agriculture training programs for almost 300 youth and adults annually.
The Farm on Ogden will sell affordable produce year round and sponsor a Veggie Rx program that offers free produce and nutrition education for Lawndale Christian Health Center patients.
It has an opening celebration is Saturday, June 23rd from 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. at 3555 W. Ogden Avenue.
More information on their website.
Hydroponics, Sustainable Solution in Agriculture Now in Togo
Scott Massey is a graduate of Purdue University as well as the founder of Heliponix LLC; his startup. This developed startup is a kitchen tool, which grows garden vegetables all year and he believed it would offer sustainable solutions to many farmers.
Hydroponics, Sustainable Solution in Agriculture Now in Togo
by Denis Opudo | June 15, 2018
Scott Massey is a graduate of Purdue University as well as the founder of Heliponix LLC; his startup. This developed startup is a kitchen tool, which grows garden vegetables all year and he believed it would offer sustainable solutions to many farmers. Recently, he traveled to Togo in Africa so that he could lead a workshop, to enlighten Togolese on developing an agricultural method, which offered sustainability. Therefore, this program was based on the hydroponic system at the University of Lome.
In Togo, most of the citizens depend on subsistence farming, and it is crucial for the country to improve its agriculture for the sake of improving the yield without investing a lot of capital. As a result, this compelled Massey to bring hydroponic into this country because it involved growing plants in liquids through utilization of the soil. This farming system is good because it uses less water for the whole year at a much faster rate.
Massey conducted this program with the help of his friend Delia Diabangouaya whom he met at Purdue University. With the help of the Mandela Washington Fellowship Reciprocal Exchange Component, the two had lectures at the University of Lome so that they could enlighten students on the hydroponic technology so that they would implement this farming back at home. Some of the problems incurred during the development of this farming system are language barrier, and differences in measuring units between Togo and the US. However, locals who were familiar with the landscape solved this problem.
This program provided the locals with lectures regarding funding of the entrepreneurial ventures, principles of hydroponics, and 3D printing. Massey communicated with the help of a translator, and the participants had the chance to experience the building of the taught systems. The participants were able to record some of the critical procedures, and the organizers of this lecture created an open-source design, which had manuals written in different languages. Therefore, this program would help many subsistence farmers in Togo and Africa at large in producing more food produce all-round the year, guaranteeing food security.
Heliponix Tackling Global Food Crisis With Household Appliance
Heliponix Tackling Global Food Crisis With Household Appliance
When Scott Massey’s dreams of a tropical internship dried up in the Texas dust, a bigger dream materialized. The Evansville native and Ivan Ball of Owensville founded Heliponix to tackle the challenge of global food insecurity through their GroPod appliance. The problem, as Massey explains it, is this: “We already allocate 50 percent of American land use and 80 percent of our freshwater consumption to agriculture, but the United Nations is predicting we need to increase global food outputs by 70 percent by 2050 to avoid a global food crisis.”
To help them go after their idea, they pursued funding through the Elevate Purdue Foundry Fund. Heliponix received an Elevate-funded $20,000 Black Award in 2017 and an $80,000 Gold Award in May 2018.
Massey’s telling of how the two-man Southwest Indiana team uncovered the root of the problem, developed a marketable solution, and are gaining financial momentum and credibility is an entrepreneurial story many founders will relate to and can learn from.
Tell me your business story so far. How did you get where you are with Heliponix?
I was introduced to CEA (controlled environmental agriculture) in 2017 at Purdue University during my junior year as a mechanical engineering student. Ivan Ball and I were working on a NASA-funded research study under Dr. Cary Mitchell. CEA is a hydroponic farming technique that is three times faster and uses 95 percent less water year-round than conventional farming. There were still a number of technical hurdles to be overcome for this technology to have a meaningful impact in yields of food production, the largest being the outrageous energy cost. The indoor lighting needs prevented indoor agriculture from being a financially viable enterprise without dependence on government subsidies.
After coming to grips with the unfortunate reality that the technology wasn’t ready for mass adoption, I went to the career fairs at Purdue looking for a summer internship. I thought I had finally gotten my break after receiving an internship offer as a project engineer in Hawaii. Although the location on the contract I signed said “TBD,” I was told the final details of my housing arrangements were being finalized — I was dumb enough to believe that.
I was instead reassigned to renovate Section 8 government housing in El Paso, Texas, along the border to Juarez, Mexico. My primary responsibility was to oversee a Spanish-speaking workforce for labor jobs such as toxic asbestos removal. Many of the workers had previous gang affiliations, and narcotic use was rampant. The section of El Paso I managed was called the Angel’s Triangle, situated between the Franklin Mountains, the US Army’s Fort Bliss, and a border wall to Mexico. This portion of town was originally called the “devil’s triangle” due to the gang activity, narcotics, and prostitution.
The city of El Paso is a desert in more ways than one — it’s also a food desert.
Needless to say, I wasn’t thrilled about my reassignment from Hawaii at first, but it was a very enlightening experience that I’m glad I went through. The city of El Paso is a desert in more ways than one — it’s also a food desert. A food desert is where a low-income, inner-city area is so far away from grocery stores with fresh food that the residents resort to fast food for every meal. The result? Higher obesity rates and health complications. I began to ask myself, “Why do food deserts exist?” The simple answer is that low-income areas aren’t profitable places to run a business, such as a grocery store. However, the root reason behind this is much more complex. I began to look into why fresh food was too expensive for these food deserts, and the results were alarming. Farming is very expensive in terms of resource consumption, and it’s the consumer who ends up paying the price.
In the United States, we throw away 40 percent of the produce grown. What’s most alarming is that we’re producing at capacity, but we’re failing to deliver before it perishes because food goes bad over time. I realized that food deserts could be the tip of an iceberg that would only become more common as urban centers grow with the human population.
It was at this moment that I truly became aware of the perpetual cycle of food deserts.
- Residents are placed into government housing in a food desert.
- Residents become obese due to poor food options nearby.
- Residents become more dependent on government funding for medical care for obesity-related health complications.
If the funding existed to purchase these appliances, would it be so crazy to think that an appliance that could grow fresh produce could break this cycle?
The cycle was ironic. We were installing brand new appliances in government housing complexes, and shipping out the functional appliances. If the funding existed to purchase these appliances, would it be so crazy to think that an appliance that could grow fresh produce could break this cycle? What if a recurring revenue business model could be built on subscriptions to seed pods? That’s when my fire was truly lit. I began researching prior art patents, existing products, and meticulously cataloging customer complaints for competing devices on the market to devise a turnkey appliance that grew food with the same level of maintenance as a Keurig coffee machine.
I discovered that there was a flood of cheap novelty devices in the market that served more as decorations than useful products that actually gave the user legitimate yields. Essentially, they were flower pots disguised as “groundbreaking devices” that required users to buy their own lights and HVAC equipment. Additionally, many of these low-quality products — some made of cardboard — had major food safety concerns because of the cheap materials that acted as perfect growing mediums for toxic E. coli or fungi.
This highlighted the importance that the world did not need another decorative flower pot, but instead needed an appliance that serves as an automated, miniature greenhouse. This would be no small undertaking. The knowledge requirement for design for manufacturability, software architecture, electrical engineering, fluid mechanics and industrial design was steep. Although Ivan and I were capital poor when we founded the company, we were rich in ambition and human capital at our disposal at Purdue.
What have been some pivotal moments in the development of Heliponix so far?
We’re competing with the financials of soil and sun farming, so what became the Heliponix GroPod had to be very energy efficient to be cost competitive. In my research, I discovered that vertical farms were the only financially viable method. We needed to be able to place a vertical aeroponic tower inside of a miniature greenhouse, and the tower had to rotate, with plants accessible 360 degrees around it.
I filed multiple utility patents on this concept we affectionately call “rotary aeroponics” (now a trademarked name). During our growth trials, we thought we were miscalculating our growth rates. Our device demonstrated a 300 percent increase in efficiency compared to other factory farms and was 500 times more efficient than conventional soil farming, which is typically limited to one harvest a year. These results that have been repeated time and again.
Our first break occurred when we unexpectedly won our first business plan competition at Ball State University in the fall of 2017. After walking away with a nondilutable $5,000 check, I asked myself, “Why stop?” Ivan and I applied to every business plan competition we could find, and were featured at the Forbes AgTech Summit. To date, we have won under close to $200K in funding from business plan competitions in the form of grants or convertible note investments.
Some figures in the entrepreneurial space looked down at us for not raising a massive investment round. But after solving all technical hurdles, and selling the first GroPods, we’ve proven that this isn’t necessary. I’m a firm believer in bootstrapping a startup until the critical mass has been established. Nondilutive funding mechanisms or convertible debts were a much better strategy for Heliponix. Revenue is truly the cheapest form of capital.
The moment I began eating most of my own food from my GroPod was the inflection point that I realized we would be OK, and we were ready for sales.
However, this wasn’t achieved without extreme commitment and emotional testing to overcome all technical hurdles. The worst problems in a product design are long-term problems that only occur after several months of continual use because you thought it wasn’t a problem anymore. Fortunately, our perseverance paid off by not quitting. The moment I began eating most of my own food from my GroPod was the inflection point that I realized we would be OK, and we were ready for sales.
What do you think the value is of having resources like Elevate in Southwest Indiana?
The primary reason we’ve been able to launch Heliponix without a major investment to date is because of our ability to leverage our network. Eric Steele [Elevate Entrepreneur-in-Residence, Southwest Indiana] has made instrumental introductions to former Whirlpool engineers who possessed an intimate understanding of appliances with fluid control systems, among many other influential business developers. At times in our product development process, we felt lost. While we had the skills to make a physical product, a simple conversation with an individual rich in intellectual capital proved to be incredibly valuable.
The Purdue@WestGate [an economic development accelerator formed by the partnership between WestGate Authority, Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane Division (NSWC Crane), Purdue University and Purdue Research Foundation] location and Innovation Pointe are the two of the most overlooked resources for starting a business to make all of these introductions and find funding mechanisms for new businesses.
Why focus on a problem that seems far in the relative future? Why is it important or interesting to tackle a huge problem like global hunger?
My biggest fear is a life played safe, wondering what could have happened if an opportunity was pursued fully.
Working in Texas was a lower point in my career. I woke up one day and could see my entire career in front of me doing the exact same job until the end of my life. At that moment, I asked myself, “Would I be happy on the day I die with the life I lived in this career?” The answer was no, and I realized I had a unique opportunity to risk failure for the opportunity to change the world for the better. My biggest fear is a life played safe, wondering what could have happened if an opportunity was pursued fully.
The timing couldn’t have been any better for a product that makes consumers self-sufficient for produce production. Droughts and food safety concerns are predicted to become much worse with a growing population expected to reach 9.7 billion in 2050 — an additional 3 billion humans. I was always aware of the daunting task to bring the GroPod to market, but I also knew that the world needed a practical solution to food insecurity, and our persistence would pay off.
Entry into the mainstream agriculture marketplace is daunting. The discussion of food insecurity has become political with polarized sides offering biased data vs. anecdotal evidence. Agriculture (one of the oldest professions) is ripe for disruption and requires an outsider’s perspective to design an entirely new solution that eliminates the entire supply chain in an industry that is inherently resistant to change.
To put this in perspective, we already allocate 50 percent of American land use and 80 percent of our freshwater consumption to agriculture, but the United Nations is predicting we need to increase global food outputs by 70 percent by 2050 to avoid a global food crisis. The California drought was caused by the sheer volume of water consumption for its massive, growing population. At Heliponix, we see this as an opportunity to thrust mankind into the third generation of agriculture of farming appliances as we begin to hit the guard rails of the human population limit.
Food insecurity is not a future problem. I have personally seen the overwhelming evidence in the food deserts plaguing inner city areas in the USA, and children suffering from extreme malnutrition while working overseas in West Africa to build low-cost hydroponic farms. I strongly encourage anyone skeptical about this to accompany me on my next trip to Africa, or volunteer at a local food pantry. It has been a challenge to convince decision makers in the U.S. that famines are not unique to the developing world, but it is difficult to convince someone to invest in water conservation technologies who has never experienced a drought. A population explosion combined with drought could just as easily put a developed nation into a food insecure state.
Fortunately for us, I don’t need to convince most decision makers of the facts. What we focus on is selling a product to solve food deserts one home at a time as a scalable solution. In the not-so-distant future, we will have scaled to solve an entire city’s food desert with our current business trajectory.
To learn more about Heliponix and GroPods, visit heliponix.com. To reach the Entrepreneur-in-Residence in your region, contact Elevate Ventures.
Founder of Purdue-Affiliated startup Travels To Africa To teach Togolese About Using Hydroponics For More Sustainable Farming
June 13, 2018
Founder of Purdue-Affiliated startup Travels To Africa To teach Togolese About Using Hydroponics For More Sustainable Farming
A young Togolese boy helps build a hydroponic system during a workshop led by Scott Massey, a founder of Heliponix LLC, and Delia Diabangouaya, quality manager of Choco Togo. The workshops, held at the University of Lome in Togo, sought to help residents of the small West African country create sustainable agriculture methods. (Photo provided) Download image
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – A founder of a Purdue University-affiliated startup that makes a kitchen appliance that grows garden vegetables year-round traveled to Africa to lead a hands-on workshop to help residents of Togo, a small West African country, create sustainable agriculture methods.
Scott Massey, a Purdue graduate and founder of Heliponix LLC, and Delia Diabangouaya, quality manager of Choco Togo, the first chocolate production facility in Togo, led the workshop on hydroponic systems at the University of Lome in Togo, Diabangouaya’s alma mater.
Togo, a country that has about 7.5 million residents, is one of the world’s poorest countries, with many people surviving on subsistence farming. It has struggled with capital shortages to purchase irrigation equipment and fertilizers, which in turn, reduces the nation's potential yields.
This has created a need for sustainable agricultural methods that will increase yields without requiring extensive capital investments. Diabangouaya and Massey explored ways they could bring hydroponic technologies from the United States to West Africa.
Hydroponics is a method of growing plants in liquids with the use of soil. Most hydroponic systems are indoors in seasonal climates or outdoors in tropical environments, meaning they can grow produce year-round, using 95 percent less water, and can grow produce three times faster without the use of pesticides if contained.
“I thought it was a great opportunity to share what I know and help the people of Togo,” said Massey, a Purdue University mechanical engineering technology graduate.
Scott Massey (center, with sunglasses), a founder of Heliponix LLC, poses with residents of Togo who took part in a hands-on workshop on hydroponics in the small West Africa country, where many people survive on subsistence farming. The workshop was funded by the Mandela Washington Fellowship Reciprocal Exchange Component. (Photo provided) Download image
Massey met Diabangouaya while she was at Purdue University for the Mandela Washington Fellowship, a flagship program of the Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI) that empowers young people through academic coursework, leadership training, and networking. They explored ways they could bring hydroponic technologies from the United States to West Africa.
Massey and Diabangouaya sent a proposal to the Mandela Washington Fellowship Reciprocal Exchange Component to hold hydroponic technology lectures and workshop builds on the University of Lome campus for students to bring the technology to their homes. Funds were provided to finance Massey’s travel and to buy materials to build the first Heliponix farms in Africa.
Upon arriving in April, Massey quickly learned the challenge of designing outside of the United States because everything in Togo is in metric. He also had no knowledge of what materials were readily available to the average Togolese person in their marketplaces.
“This became a difficult design challenge. If the design I shared had a single part that was unobtainable, then the entire design was worthless, and would have no lasting impact,” Massey said.
He had a preliminary design drafted but needed to get his hands dirty and boots on the ground to make a theoretical design into a practical solution for food insecurity.
“We immediately went to the market, and utilized my network of contacts to find a plumber and students at the International Agricultural Association of Students who knew the landscape and could help negotiate deals for our material purchases. The farm design had to be low-cost, highly productive, and easy to assemble,” Diabangouaya said.
That’s when Massey realized he needed to revise his design.
“I needed a realistic plan that could be scaled across the country. Fortunately, I had a team of farmers, students, and tradesmen to interview to find out more information about their design constraints. Although I left the USA to teach lectures about this technology, I learned more than I could ever teach from those facing the reality of resource consumption,” Massey said.
After procuring materials, Diabangouaya organized lectures at the University of Lome and the Woelab technology incubator, where Massey taught lectures about funding entrepreneurial ventures, 3-D printing and the fundamentals of hydroponics with the help of a translator. They then held workshops for lecture participants of various backgrounds to see a system be physically built.
“I am not fluent in French, so the language barrier made it difficult at times to teach technical concepts,” Massey said. “I was discouraged to see blank faces look back at me as I held up materials for the first workshop, and felt like I was losing the audience’s attention. … Then something amazing happened. Hyppolyte Awadi, the plumber who provided valuable insights for the design stood and began teaching the assembly process the audience.”
Participants pulled out their phones to record the instructions. By the second workshop, Massey and Diabangouaya watched students assemble the next Heliponix farm independently without any oversight.
“The knowledge transfer was complete, and it was clear many farms were to be built long after Scott left,” Diabangouaya said.
Massey said they have open-sourced this design in a complete manual in as many languages as possible.
“This will allow anyone in Africa to build their own system, and improve upon the designs as its user base rapidly expands. This Heliponix system would cost $300 to build, could continue producing crops even when the power goes out, requires four square meters and can grow about 250 kilograms of vegetables on an annual basis.
“Our progress in Africa will not be tracked in dollars earned, but instead the number of mouths fed and lives saved from hunger. Most of the countries in Africa import a significant portion of their food, so this isn’t just an issue of environmental sustainability,” Massey said. “This is a national security threat for these countries if their food supplies are cut, so they need to become independent.”
Purdue Research Foundation contact: Tom Coyne, 765-588-1044, tjcoyne@prf.org
Source: Scott Massey, scott@heliponix.com
Bill To Boost Urban Agriculture In Illinois Heads To Rauner’s Desk
Bill To Boost Urban Agriculture In Illinois Heads To Rauner’s Desk
Alex Ruppenthal | May 29, 2018
(Linda from Chicago / Creative Commons)
Legislation that could help break up food desserts in Chicago and other cities across the state passed the Illinois Senate last week and now awaits the signature of Gov. Bruce Rauner.
The bill would allow local governments to provide incentives such as reduced water rates and utility fees and property tax abatements for farmers in “urban agriculture zones” established at the municipal or county level.
After passing the Illinois House by a vote of 86-22 in April, the bill passed the state Senate on May 23 by a unanimous 55-0 vote, sending it to Rauner’s desk for final approval.
“[The legislation] will help open doors for urban farmers to supply healthy foods, grow valuable jobs and revitalize land in communities needing extra support,” said Rodger Cooley, executive director of the Chicago Food Policy Action Council, in a statement. The nonprofit aims to increase access to healthy foods in underserved Chicago neighborhoods.
Introduced last year by state Rep. Sonya Harper, D-Chicago, House Bill 3418 would apply to organizations or individuals who grow produce or other agricultural products, raise or process livestock or poultry or sell a minimum of 75 percent locally grown food.
According to the bill, sales tax from agriculture products would be deposited into an urban agriculture zone fund, and monies collected in the fund would be specified for a county, municipality or school district.
Harper has previously said that the money could be used in a variety of ways, such as for educational programs focused on nutrition or to support businesses and farms.
The legislation has received support from both environmental advocates and groups focused on increasing access to healthy foods in urban areas.
“This bill will make farm dreams a reality for many urban growers,” said Liz Moran Stelk, executive director of the Illinois Stewardship Alliance, which advocates for local food and farms, in a statement. "It levels the playing field for producers across the state to access and afford land."
A separate piece of legislation introduced by Harper and passed into law last year requires Illinois to track food deserts, or areas lacking fresh fruit, vegetables and other healthy foods.
Contact Alex Ruppenthal: @arupp | aruppenthal@wttw.com | (773) 509-5623
Western Dakota Tech Grads Seek Solution To Food Deserts
Western Dakota Tech Grads Seek Solution To Food Deserts
May 24, 2018 | By JOHN CONWAY
RAPID CITY, S.D.
Food deserts in Rapid City are nothing new, but they were back in the headlines last year when three full-service grocery stores announced they were closing their doors.
Now, a group of young engineers and entrepreneurs think they have found a cost-effective solution to the problem. And they're finding it right here in Rapid City.
The closure of Prairie Market and two Family Thrift grocery stores in October greatly expanded the food deserts of Rapid City. Food deserts are places where people do not have reasonably convenient access to full-service grocery stores that sell a variety of nutritious food options.
In the absence of full-service grocery stores, convenience stores - which are abundant in these areas – have become a primary food source for the local residents. Mary Corbine, food security manager with Feeding South Dakota, says this situation is far from ideal.
"Convenience stores just don't have access to all the nutrition that a person needs, and they tend to be more expensive," Corbine said. "So, therefore, they're utilizing [more of] people's resources."
And without that balanced nutrition, people in food deserts tend to have higher rates of preventable disease.
"If you are eating higher calorie foods, [processed foods] and higher sugary foods, you probably will have more obesity, more heart disease and also more diabetes due to increased weight," said Cindy Gates, a clinical dietitian at Regional Health Rapid City Hospital.
The problem caught the attention of electrical trades students at Western Dakota Technical Institute (WDT). They are using their skills to develop a new system to help provide healthy food options to the residents of food deserts all year.
"The great thing with our system is that we can set it down there within the communities,” said Nick Smith, a member of the WDT aquaponics team. “Therefore, we eliminate the transportation costs of getting food to them."
Aquaponics is a combination of aquaculture and hydroponics. An aquaponics system raises fish and uses the fish excrement to feed plants. An aquaponics system produces not just fresh fish, but also fresh fruits and vegetables more effectively than traditional agriculture. The system can grow produce anywhere in the world, year-round.
"The yield first would be much greater than a normal garden, like a community garden,” Smith said. “We can grow plants twice as fast and produce about three times as much as a normal garden."
Aquaponics isn't new, but it has required a lot of human labor to operate and maintain the filters and pumps and monitor things like water levels. The WDT aquaponics team is working to automate the system, requiring less human input.
"We pretty much train the computer to do [the work] for them,” Smith said. “The computer takes care of all that, and all they have to do is come in and harvest [the produce]."
The system, if successful, will also recycle its own water and bring year-round fresh food to not only food deserts, but actual deserts where water is scarce, reducing the cost of nutritious food options.
"The only water input we have is when we initially build it,” said Joseph Cattin, another member of the WDT aquaponics team. “After that, it should be totally off the grid and not need any other input."
The team also hopes to eventually develop a solar power source for the system, allowing it to be installed in areas without access to electricity, making the system entirely self-sustaining.
The team’s work on the aquaponics technology has won them a spot as a finalist in the National Science Foundation Community College Innovation Challenge. They will travel to Alexandria, Va. in June to present their project to industry and members of Congress.
Good Life Growing Wants To Bring Back North City, One Micro-Farm At A Time
FEATURED
Raising North St. Louis
Good Life Growing Wants To Bring Back North City, One Micro-Farm At A Time
By Tiffany Shawn
James Forbes, Micah Pfotenhauer, James Hillis and Jack Redden work in one of the hoop houses of Good Life Growing at the corner of Sarah and Evans avenues in the city's historic Ville neighborhood.
Photo by Wiley Price / St. Louis American
According to the USDA, food deserts are parts of the country void of fresh fruit, vegetables, and other healthful whole foods, usually found in impoverished areas. This is largely due to a lack of grocery stores, farmers’ markets, and healthy food providers.
The local business Good Life Growing is combatting urban decay and food insecurity by way of urban farming. Located northwest of Saint Louis University in the city of St. Louis, it is working to bring healthy food to local food deserts. Sitting on almost two acres, Good Life Growing is focused on methods of organic farming, like aquaponics, hydroponics, and aeroponics.
"We convert vacant, neglected urban spaces into thriving, productive micro-farms,” said co-founder and CEO James Forbes.
Aquaponics is the combination of aquaculture (raising fish) and hydroponics (the soil-less growing of plants) that grows fish and plants together in one integrated system. Aeroponics is the process of growing plants in an air or mist environment rather than soil.
“I got my start in sustainable agriculture accidentally after graduating from Mizzou’s College of Agriculture and Natural Resources in ‘08, but I never planned to use the degree," Forbes said.
He was inspired to learn more haphazardly while watching an episode of "Doomsday Prepper" about surviving the apocalypse by using a solar panel and junk to make an aquaponics system. After his college days, Forbes and friends would practice building systems in one another’s backyards, and it was mind blowing.
“You can catch rainwater and raise fish and plants in any setting – rural or urban, indoors and outdoors, hot or cold," Forbes said.
City dwellers often have to live by way of convenience, lacking access or education to obtain healthy food.
"People load up on unhealthy food, which is why I think North St. Louis has such a higher rate of diabetes, liver failure, heart disease, obesity, asthma, etc.,” Forbes said. “It’s a compounding problem. Convenient food is not actually cheap. It adds up over the long run, and adds insane medical bills and prescriptions."
Poor health can lead people to self-medicate, which may lead to addiction, then fueling crime and narcotics trafficking.
“Because people living in food deserts lack access to food and dignifying work, it leads, from my observations, to the many social issues plaguing society today," Forbes said.
Good Life Growing aims to inspire, train, educate and incubate aspiring social enterprises to take up empty, blighted land that developers and investors ignore and turn them into thriving food-production organizations.
"I hope that people copy our urban farming model and spread it in every economically and resource-depressed part of the planet,” Forbes said. “Food injustice, to me, is one of the greatest tragedies that exist in the developed world, and I believe St. Louis is a microcosm.”
Forbes realizes it takes a village to improve the village.
His mentor, Ellis Bell, a 5th generation sharecropper from Mississippi, supported Forbes’ vision while he worked for him.
“He hired me on to his insurance brokerage and had me focused on agricultural insurance. I attended St. Louis Agriculture Club meetings with him,” Forbes said.
“From those meetings I got hooked up with the developers working on Farmworks, met a ton of great people and ultimately got access to our property in The Ville. I thought blending his concept of connecting youth to agriculture in an urban setting would be a good way to repurpose property and provide a skilled trade component. Lastly, he had me pursue expanding his non-profit organization that aimed at getting rural African-American youth exposed to agricultural studies so they can get access to the growing agriculture business sector.
He also relies on his aunt Ruth Smith, former president and CEO of Human Development Corporation of Metropolitan St. Louis, for daily guidance, community engagement and empowerment, and Alderman Sam Moore helped navigate city politics. His partners Matt Stoyanov, Bobby Forbes, and James Hillis, constantly help him to improve operations, and Roy Roberson, Jack McGee, and Janette Kohl are North St. Louis residents who keep him informed.
"On one acre of land, a family can generate over $40,000 a year. One acre equals three vacant lots in the city,” Forbes said. “They just have to learn how to grow, wash, package, and sell. With urban agriculture, we can introduce a new system of self-sustainability, healthier food options, occupied land, rising property values, better housing and schools, legal enterprise – and more businesses will move in."
Forbes noted that urban farmers with small plots face obstacles getting into the for-profit sector of the agriculture industry.
"It’s been historically geared to wealthy, predominantly white, rural people. I tell kids in The Ville all the time that there is a $5.2 trillion pie in food retail/production, and 99 percent of that is coming from the top 10 percent of the wealthiest food producers. The bottom 90 percent don't even touch the industry because we all assume farmers are poor and work too hard,” he said.
“I hope to see 1,000 families get into micro-farming, unify under a local collaborative of brands, retake and then reinvest in their communities. I'd then hope that, with good health and money, North St. Louis and other blighted urban cores can begin the long journey of unraveling systemic oppression."
Urban Farm Tax Credit Plan Gets Illinois House Approval
Urban Farm Tax Credit Plan Gets Illinois House Approval
By SAM DUNKLAU • APR 30, 2018
City Farm vegetable garden and the Chicago skyline
PIUSH DAHAL VIA FLICKR / HTTPS://CREATIVECOMMONS.ORG/LICENSES/BY-SA/2.0/
The Illinois House has voted to allow tax breaks for those who take vacant land and use it for urban farming. The aim is to give an economic boost to the state’s low-income areas.
The idea comes from state Representative Sonya Harper, a Democrat from Chicago. She explained during the debate that the people she represents on the south and west sides of the city live in food deserts. That means they don’t have easy access to fresh food.
But what those neighborhoods do have is vacant land.
“Now what people are doing is they’re putting that land back to productive use, and actually reviving the local economy and bringing jobs to an area that is depressed and does not have them," she said.
Harper’s bill would allow city governments across the state to offer special incentives like tax abatements and lower utility rates. But there would be limits on the dollar amount of those incentives. Some Republicans say less tax money coming on those properties could result in higher taxes for everyone else.
The Chicago Democrat says the aim is to give people in low income communities a reason to grow their own food and create jobs.
“One of the biggest reasons why we use urban agriculture is to put our vacant land back to productive use, especially in communities that are food insecure or food deserts," she explained. "In those same communities we have tracts and tracts, and even acres, of vacant land that’s just sitting there.”
The bill now moves to the Illinois Senate.