By TAMMIE SMITH Richmond Times-Dispatch

• Nov 18, 2018

Urban farms cropping up all over Richmond are more than backyard gardens on steroids.

Joe Jenkins and his wife, Whitney Maier, were growing more organic vegetables in raised beds in their backyard in North Richmond than they could eat, so he started taking some to his job at a restaurant to give to co-workers.

The chef there said the arugula was better than what he was getting from vendors and that he wanted to buy it from Jenkins.

Jenkins and business partner Josh Dziegiel operate Bow Tide Farms, which grows and sells arugula, mixed greens and other produce to about half a dozen Richmond restaurants.

At Shalom Farms’ new Westwood urban farm in North Richmond, mostly volunteers work there, including those that recently helped farm manager Katharine Wilson harvest sweet potatoes — produce that went to food access initiatives such as a healthy corner store project, mobile markets and local food banks.

After the harvest, the fields became a classroom as Wilson talked to a group of elementary school kids about the farm and had them help pull up rows and rows of leftover sweet potato vines to go into a compost pile.

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The urban farming phenomenon is creating agricultural entrepreneurs — agripreneurs — who are passionate about growing healthy, tasty food locally using methods that are sustainable and that minimize impact on the environment.

The farms are a mix of commercial enterprises and charitable operations.

“It’s similar to many small businesses. The profits don’t start rolling in when you put up your nameplate,” said Sally Schwitters, executive director of local urban farm pioneer Tricycle — Urban Ag Culture.

She has seen a shift from urban farms created as feel-good enterprises to those focused on customers and buyers.

Tricycle — Urban Ag Culture, a nonprofit that started its first urban farm more than a decade ago in Church Hill, has updated its programs accordingly.

The organization is about to graduate its second class of urban agriculture fellows who have spent a year learning crop growth and management and farm business management. The training program is offered in partnership with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Bon Secours Richmond Health System.

“We have courses on how to develop your business plan, how to get a loan, marketing and promotion of your business. We’ve seen that shift,” Schwitters said.

“A lot of this is customer demand where it has moved from this romantic notion to what consumers truly want. Our restaurants, our small grocers, our large grocers all want to be able to source more locally produced food. We as consumers are demanding that,” she said.

Some past fellows have gone on to start commercial urban farms such as Creighton Farm LLC and Hazel Witch Farm, Schwitters said. Operators of both also are working other jobs as they build their businesses, she said.

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Jenkins and Dziegiel are just finishing their first growing season at Bow Tide Farms at the corner of Brook Road and Wilmington Avenue in North Richmond.

From the start, their plan was to sell to restaurants instead of trying to hit all the farmers markets. Both still work full-time jobs in hospitality. They are self-taught farmers, learning from other farmers, books and videos, and Dziegiel interned at a farm in Canada in summer 2017, Jenkins said.

“Our business plan was basically to go in and say both Josh and I have been in the restaurant industry. We know a lot of the chefs. We saw the product that was out there, and we felt like that we could do something better,” Jenkins said.

They took samples to local restaurants and pitched their products, including arugula and salad mixes, to chefs.

Their clients include the three Tazza Kitchen locations; Mama Zu; SB’s Lakeside Love Shack; Julep’s, where Jenkins works; and Edo’s Squid, where Dziegiel works.

“At this point, we are doing a little better than breaking even with a little less than half a growing season,” Jenkins said in an interview in October.

“We didn’t have water until after June. We didn’t have power until after mid-August,” he said.

They are leasing the land that had been used for softball. It’s been just the two of them and one other person hired to come in one day a week to help with harvests, Jenkins said.

He said they have spent about $15,000 getting the farm up and running. Having the water lines installed cost about $8,000.

They bought a piece of equipment called a paperpot transplanter, which sells for about $2,800, to speed up planting. Using the machine, they can put 264 small plants into the ground in 15 to 20 minutes, work that would take the two of them 90 minutes if done completely manually.

They raised some of the startup funds through a crowdfunding campaign. Contributors got membership in the farm’s Community Supported Agriculture organization.

They sell their arugula for about $10 a pound, Jenkins said. Heirloom tomatoes were priced higher than cherry tomatoes. During a typical week, they processed between 180 and 220 pounds of greens, he said.

“There is a number that you can go through that everyone has,” Jenkins said. “There is a kind of set price across the board in Richmond. You can say this is the average of what everyone is paying. That’s kind of where we priced our things out. We tried to look at it as one of those beds is usually worth between $400 and $500. So once it’s completed its cycle, we want to see that it’s made $400 or $500.”

On a recent morning, Dziegiel delivered an order of arugula that has been harvested, washed and dried the day before to The Big Kitchen, a new concept in Scott’s Addition in which fully prepared meals are made, kept chilled and then packaged in containers that allow for a pop into the microwave or oven once at home.

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Shalom Farms, a nonprofit with volunteers providing most of the farm labor, limits to 10 percent the amount of its produce to be used to earn income, said executive director Dominic Barrett.

Last year, the organization’s primary farm in Powhatan County grew over 220,000 pounds of produce, food that was distributed through the organization’s food access programs.

The group’s new Westwood site began farm production on about half of the 5 acres available. It’s probably the area’s largest urban farm, though because of its size and use of tractors, Barrett said they don’t call it an urban farm.

“We just call it a farm. It’s not that it’s not an urban farm. We think people typically think of smaller scale, more attentive growing, often raised beds [as urban farms]. What we are doing there resembles more traditional rural agriculture in many ways but just placed in a city setting,” Barrett said.

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At Virginia State University, urban agriculture expert Leonard Githinji said part of a 12-week certificate program in urban agriculture that VSU offers focuses on how to make urban farm enterprises successful.

Participants get the benefits of research-proven methods. One project underway there now is comparing growth of 14 varieties of sweet potatoes.

“You learn how to grow stuff in the most optimal way, but then you need to have a market,” said Githinji, an assistant professor and extension specialist in sustainable and urban agriculture.

He has seen some interest in indoor hydroponics systems that don’t use soil, but the higher initial investment can be a deterrent.

“With those, you can get produce fairly quickly, in a couple of months, while people who are growing in the ground it may take longer because of preparation and depending on the season,” he said.

Githinji also said the urban agriculture movement is more than a fad.

“In my opinion, it’s here to stay for a couple of reasons. There is a high demand for produce, and now there is also this movement of people wanting to consume locally grown produce. The more they understand the benefits of locally grown produce, they have the demand to buy food grown within their neighborhoods,” he said.

“There are also people out there who want to have a small business to serve other people,” Githinji said.

More than 60 people have gone through the certificate course that meets from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on consecutive Saturdays. The next session starts in May.

To finish the programs, participants have to complete 80 hours interning with community farms or co-ops in order to receive certification. So far, 23 have completed the requirements to be certified, said Cynthia Martin, education support assistant for the cooperative extension program at Virginia State.

Martin said she knows of at least four participants who have started farms. Others have talked about family land they would like to farm.

“Their dream is to go back,” Martin said. “The passion is there, but the land has been sitting there with nobody doing anything.”

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Challenges to the growth of urban farms include land-use policies and infrastructure, said Duron Chavis, community engagement coordinator for Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden. Chavis for years helped drive grass-roots efforts to establish community gardens in Richmond.

“The city has a great deal of vacant property, close to 1,000 or more vacant parcels that the city owns. The Maggie Walker Community Land Trust is working to identify parcels of land that cannot be turned into affordable housing that could be turned into urban ag enterprises,” said Chavis, who is on the board of the trust. Land toxicity can be an issue, as well.

“There are a lot of harsh chemicals that pollute urban land. That has to be mitigated before you can produce food,” Chavis said. “There have been conversations about indoor farms. None of them have gotten traction here in Richmond.”

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Initiatives such as the Real Local RVA and businesses such as Ellwood Thompson’s Local Market and Little House Green Grocery are important to the survival of urban farms, experts say.

Real Local RVA’s members are small independent grocers, restaurants, farmers markets and others, and the organization emphasizes locally produced food. This year’s annual farm tour highlighted four Richmond-area urban farms — Tricycle Urban Ag, Bow Tide Farms, Community Food Collaborative and Lakeside’s Tiny Acre.

Little House Green Grocery on Bellevue Avenue in Richmond gets in produce almost daily from local farms, said store owner Erin Wright. It carries products from over 50 local vendors, including bakery products, prepared foods and home goods.

“There are so many reasons why urban farms are important,” Wright said. “The environmental impact. When we can buy directly from farms, we can reduce the amount of packaging and the amount of food miles that the food travels, making it more nutritious and more delicious. We can reduce waste because we are simply getting it fresher.”

Connections are made between consumers and producers who know each other, she added.

“We are able to talk directly to farmers and find out what is going on with them, what they are excited about and what their challenges are, and pass that along to the consumers as a real look at the impact of their purchasing power,” Wright said.