Climate Corps America: The Urban Farms Transforming How America’s Most Vulnerable Communities Eat

Louise Boyle

The microwave plays a significantly more important role to urban farming in Baltimore than you might first imagine.

“Our butternut squash comes from a seed which makes it little and easily microwaveable,” Gwen Kokes, food and farm programme director at Civic Works, told The Independent. “For our [customers] this is really important as it might be too expensive to turn on the gas to cook or the oven might not be working.”

The squash, along with a range of produce, is grown at Real Food Farm, one branch of Civic Works urban service corps program in Maryland’s largest city.

The farm started about a decade ago and spans eight acres in northeast Baltimore with four fields, more than 100 fruit trees, a greenhouse for seedlings, and eight “hoop houses” which, for the uninitiated, are a sort of passive greenhouse with crops planted directly in the soil but sheltered by heavy-duty plastic sheets stretched over frames.

The farm produces 5,000 pounds of fruit and vegetables each year to be sold for reduced cost at farmers’ markets in low-income neighbourhoods across Baltimore. A mobile market, operating out of a box truck, also visits all 12 senior centres in the city.

“In total, we distribute about 100,000 pounds of food every year,” says Ms Kokes. “We buy from other urban farms in a 50-mile radius, prioritising Black-owned farms. Sometimes we have donations from Hungry Harvest, a programme to reduce food waste from grocery stores, and we’ve been adding pantry and hygiene items so that it’s more of a one-stop shop.”

Civic Works is part of AmeriCorps, the federal agency for service and volunteering programmes in the US. To tackle the climate crisis, President Biden has called for “reinvigorating and repurposing” the agency into a so-called “Civilian Climate Corps” to provide jobs while ramping up clean energy and sustainability to “heal our public lands and make us less vulnerable to wildfires and floods”.

“Biden’s plan could be huge for us,” Ms Kokes said. “I think it can grow exponentially. There’s plenty of demand for these jobs.”

The non-profit also runs programmes to mentor students, fix up abandoned houses and makes homes safer for seniors by doing minor DIY like adding handrails and ramps.

AmeriCorps estimates that its existing network –  25,000 participants in about 130 programmes – could be scaled up to 500,000 young people and veterans over the next five years.

Around 19 million people in the US live in “food deserts”. The term is believed to have been coined in Scotland in the early 1990s by a public housing resident, referring to areas where healthy, fresh options are scarce and packaged and fast food has proliferated.

The term is now seen as having negative connotations, implying that “low healthy food access is a naturally occurring phenomenon, rather than the result of underlying structural inequities”, according to a 2018 study by John Hopkins. (Baltimore residents told researchers they preferred the term “Healthy Food Priority Areas”.)

Researchers also point to the systemic racism at the heart of Americans’ access to food. It’s difficult to improve diet and health, for example, if prices for nutritious food are far beyond your budget, and there’s no public transport to take you stores.

“The fact that predominantly black neighbourhoods, on average, have fewer stores and poorer quality [food] compared to their white counterparts means something,” Ashanté M. Reese, professor of sociology and anthropology at Spelman College who studies race and food inequity, told HuffPost .

Baltimore is one of America’s poorest cities. In 22 of the city’s 668 Census tracts, at least 40 per cent of residents live below the poverty line. Even before Covid, the unemployment rate in the poorest neighbourhoods hovered above 15 per cent, triple that of wealthier areas.

Lack of access to healthy food in Baltimore is one layer of racial inequality that has plagued the city since the early 20th century, when deliberate policies were put in place to separate the city’s white and Black residents.

In the city’s Greenmount East neighbourhood the average life expectancy is around 66 years while four miles away in the wealthier Roland Park, the average life expectancy is 84 years, according to Kaiser Health News.

That’s where organisations like Real Food Farm step in. Those who are unemployed or on low-incomes and using government nutrition assistance programmes get double the value for their dollar if it’s spent at the farmers’ market, for example.

Urban farms not only promote healthy eating but have the ability to transform industrial cities.

“Motor City” Detroit, once the backbone of the car industry, has suffered a well-documented decline since its mid-20th century heyday. But its industrial wastelands have been transformed by urban farming with at least 1,400 farms and gardens in the city. In Pittsburgh, Hilltop Urban Farm is set to become the largest urban farm in the country. Baltimore has around 17 urban farms and upwards of 75 community gardens that grow food, according to Baltimore magazine.

Civic Works’ role on the frontline of food insecurity meant that its teams were well-positioned to adapt during the Covid pandemic, delivering boxes of fresh produce and basic necessities to the most vulnerable at no cost. They also worked with public bodies and local charities to deliver donations.

“During lockdown, Baltimore City public school system had to get rid of those little cartons of milk really fast. We have thousands of customers so we focused on getting those out to them,” Ms Kokes said.

From March through the end of July, the programme’s teams ran a free programme delivering boxes of produce, meals and hygiene kits to about 1,000 households a week. They went on to launch a discounted local produce programme, delivering boxes with about $15-$20 of food for $5 with free delivery, mostly to seniors.

Urban farms will play a role in mitigating how climate change impacts urban areas. Cities are often several degrees hotter than rural areas due to the “urban heat island effect” caused by dark-coloured roads and buildings. Increasing vegetation cover can help curb rising temperatures.

Urban farms can also lower the risk of flooding during heavy downpours and help retain water in dry areas, according to a paper in the journal Earth’s Future.

Research in 2018 from Arizona State University and Google found that urban agriculture could save the energy equivalent of 9 million home air conditioning units and produce up to 180m tonnes of food globally. Along with supplying almost the entire recommended consumption of vegetables for city dwellers, it would cut food waste and reduce emissions from transportation of produce, the study found.

Maryland is among the states most vulnerable to climate change, facing both rising sea levels and heightened storm intensity. Government data predicts that Maryland’s sizeable farming community could suffer costly losses during extreme droughts and heat waves.

Ms Kokes says that more extreme and unpredictable weather has impacted their operations in recent years.

“With day-to-day farming, we have to get ‘swamp ready’,” she said. “2018 was the worst for Maryland farmers as the rain was astronomical. We took a huge hit. It was very humbling because we had to reckon with our limitations, and partner with others to be a reliable source of food.

“Irregular weather patterns especially in the spring make it really difficult to know when to plant. We’ve [also] had early frost in October. Our farmer Stewart is a very smart, science-oriented guy and thankfully, there’s resources that we can lean on to translate this unpredictability into clear language.”

Around 3,000 students from kindergarten to high school have visited Real Food Farm over the years to learn about agriculture. Separately, programmes like Future Harvest are preparing the farmers of the future. But it’s important that Real Food Farm’s mission stays relevant to the communities they are in, Ms Kokes said.

“Environmentalism, from our perspective and our work, has to be people-focused,” she said. “We’re not talking about weather patterns when people are hungry and just want affordable produce in their neighbourhood.”

Farm to Fork: This Millennial Urban Farmer Grows Vegetables On Carpark Rooftops in Singapore

Singapore Announced New Measures in April Aimed At Speeding Up Local Food Production Over The Next Six Months To Two Years.

By Vulcan Post

June 25, 2020

The ongoing battle against the COVID-19 outbreak and the resultant lockdowns imposed in many countries worldwide have put the spotlight on Singapore’s dependence on food imports and its vulnerability to global supply shocks.

The government has repeatedly assured its citizens that Singapore has sufficient food supplies, amid bouts of panic buying that gripped the country when Singapore raised the DORSCON level to Orange.

Although the panic buying has now eased, another cause for concern is that Singapore has a population of about 5.7 million people but it only produces about 10% of its food needs.

To tackle this food crisis, Singapore announced new measures in April aimed at speeding up local food production over the next six months to two years.

This includes providing a SGD 30 million grant to support production of eggs, leafy vegetables, and fish in the shortest time possible, and identifying alternative farming spaces, such as industrial areas and vacant sites.

As part of that project, the Singapore Food Agency (SFA) and the Housing Development Board (HDB) have launched a tender in May for rooftop farms on public housing car parks.

This means that the rooftops of a handful of multi-story carparks in Singapore will be converted for use to farm vegetables and other food crops from the later part of this year.

Farming hits the roof

The move to find alternative farming space in land-constrained Singapore is part of their strategy to meet the country’s 30 by 30 goal, which is to produce 30% of its nutritional needs locally by 2030.

Local agritech startup Citiponics did not take part in the tender this time round, though it piloted SFA’s multi-story carpark rooftop farm project in Ang Mo Kio last year.

According to Danielle Chan, co-founder of Citiponics, its 1,800 square metres farm atop the carpark at Block 700 in Ang Mo Kio Avenue 6 can grow between three and four tonnes of vegetables a month.

They grow up to 25 different types of vegetables naturally without the use of pesticides.

“We currently specialize in growing our own crossbreed of lettuces—Georgina Lettuces—and have also been growing other varieties such as nai bai, Italian basil, and Thai basil based on customers’ requests,” said Danielle.

Sharing more about the Ang Mo Kio site, she said they have been steadily producing pesticide-free vegetables on a monthly basis, supplying to nearby residents and consumers islandwide.

View fullsize

Rooftop farm in Ang Mo Kio. Photo courtesy of Citiponics via Vulcan Post.

Beyond contributing to local food production, this pilot project has also generated “positivity,” which stems from community involvement when visitors get to know and see their food source.

“It brings us great joy to see the senior citizens enjoying their time as they work on farming activities as well as the support we have received from visitors who come to our community markets to self-harvest their produce,” said Danielle.

She added that they hire senior citizens from AWWA Community Home as well as part-time workers to help with farm maintenance.

“We believe that even if one does not have the technical agriculture know-how, they should be able to contribute to food production as well.”

Citiponics is a Singapore-grown urban farming company that started in 2016, which aims to grow safe produce through its zero-waste farming process.

It is co-founded by Danielle and her family friend Teo Hwa Kok, who has a “rich experience in agriculture.”

When agriculture meets tech

The 26-year-old is a National University of Singapore (NUS) graduate, who has worked in technology startups across Singapore and New York, as well as technology consulting companies such as IBM.

But with her tech background, why did she choose to be a ‘farmer’?

“I grew up in an agricultural environment and as such, the farm was always my playground. Growing up, I never had to worry about buying vegetables from the supermarket or doubting my food source. I had the blessing of getting all my vegetables supplies directly from the farm,” explained Danielle.

“Having personally witnessed the wastage as well as the inefficiencies in the traditional farming industry, I knew I wanted to go back to the farming industry to change the way farming is done traditionally as well as to share the blessing of the farm-to-table experience with others.”

Her tech background didn’t go to waste though. She made it a point to integrate technology into Citiponic’s farming processes.

View fullsize

Citiponics at NTUC FairPrice. Photo courtesy of Ministry of Trade and Industry via Vulcan Post.

They have a proprietary vertical farming technology called Aqua-Organic System (AOS). It falls under a solid-based soilless culture, which is different from the likes of traditional farming and hydroponic farming system.

As every drop of water is kept in a close loop within the growing system, it helps to minimize water consumption, using one-tenth of hydroponics water consumption and one-hundredth of traditional farming water consumption.

Due to its vertical nature, it is also able to be seven times more productive than traditional farming.

As it is specially designed to provide a natural farming environment in order to preserve the nutrients value and natural taste of the vegetables, the technology is also pollutant-free and pesticide-free. It’s also anti-mosquito breeding, which makes it very suitable for farming within community and neighborhood areas.

“The AOS farming technology removes the complex technicalities of farming and we wanted to keep it that way to allow people of all ages and backgrounds to have a great experience when they get to farm with our systems,” said Danielle.

COVID-19 does not pose a huge business challenge

All of Citiponic’s farmed produce are segmented to home deliveries, nearby residents, and selected NTUC FairPrice outlets.

Despite their limited farming space, Danielle said that they see a constant stream of supply and sales.

It’s not so much a business challenge, she added, but the need to adapt to the new normal, hence the introduction of home deliveries and engaged logistics channel.

Although COVID-19 does not greatly impact its business, it serves as a timely reminder on the importance of accelerating our local food production.

This pandemic serves a time for us to reflect on how we can enhance our food resilience strategies.

Singapore steps up to be more food resilient

As Singapore is still largely dependent on food imports, the rooftop farming tender and local food production grants are definitely the right steps forward.

According to SFA, Singapore currently secures food supply from about 170 countries.

For instance, Singapore now imports oranges from Egypt, milk powder from Uruguay, eggs from Poland and shrimps from Saudi Arabia as part of its efforts to broaden food supplies.

Danielle is well-aware that food security, food sustainability and food safety are global issues, so she hopes to bring Citiponics’ farming solution to more countries.

View fullsize

Citiponics’ Georgina lettuce sold at NTUC FairPrice. Photo courtesy of Citiponics via Vulcan Post.

“We are not only focused on food production, but also becoming an agritech solution provider. We have developed agriculture technology and designed farming solutions that are suitable for tropical countries, and hope to extend the applicability of our expertise and farming technology to temperate countries as well,” she added.

Citiponics is also looking at scaling its operations to enhance its contribution to local food resilience and grow more communities through the introduction of hyperlocal Citiponics urban vertical farms in various neighborhoods of Singapore.

“We envision Citiponics as a supportive environment that is able to cultivate the next generation of urban farmers and agritech innovators.”

This article was first published by Vulcan Post.

View fullsize