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Iowa's Small Farms Are a Treasure. Why Won't Regulators Leave Them Alone
Earlier this week, members of the Polk County, Iowa, Board of Adjustments decided not to force the lone for-profit farm in Des Moines, the county's largest city, out of business.
Iowa's Small Farms Are a Treasure. Why Won't Regulators Leave Them Alone?
"It seemed like every time we had a conversation with our county we had to spend thousands of more dollars to stay in compliance with their regulations."
Baylen Linnekin | March 24, 2018
Earlier this week, members of the Polk County, Iowa, Board of Adjustments decided not to force the lone for-profit farm in Des Moines, the county's largest city, out of business.
While that sounds like the county played nice, the truth is that the small, beloved farm, Dogpatch Urban Gardens, faced this grave crisis for no legitimate reason whatsoever.
Farm owners Jenny and Eric Quiner launched Dogpatch "to promote health/nutrition, enhance the community, environmental conservation, and instill family values for their children." Last year, Dogpatch's second in business, the farm "produced over 7,500 pounds of organically grown food," an impressive amount given its quarter acre of active farmland.
But regulators' growing demands on Dogpatch have proven costly and legion. According to The Des Moines Register, among the changes the county required or sought to require of Dogpatch were creation of a site plan; installation of restrooms, a septic system, a paved parking lot, and fencing; the planting of dozens of trees; and creation of "a berm in accordance with a flood plan for the area, a[l]though they'd already spent $7,500 adding drainage tile to mitigate the threat of their crops flooding."
This week's hearing was described as the thing that could "tip the scale on whether the couple's two-year-old business ultimately succeeds or fails."
The Quiners say they're happy with the outcome of this week's board meeting. But uncertainty over the future of their business has proven costly. The couple has spent about $10,000 so far and anticipates even after the board's decision this week that their that the costs will rise.
"The added costs due to our county regulations have put some of our new business ideas on hold as we had to shift our focus to regulatory compliance rather than enhancing our business endeavors," Jenny Quiner told Reason.
But it's not just the money, Quiner says.
"Aside from the financial aspect, this past year has been very stressful," she says. "There were a lot of unknowns with the business and it seemed like every time we had a conversation with our county we had to spend thousands of more dollars to stay in compliance with their regulations."
One thing is certain about Dogpatch: locals have been quick to eat up Dogpatch's bounty.
"The local restaurants who utilize her organic produce are a who's who of the Des Moines culinary scene," the Register reported this January before regulators came calling. The paper also included Jenny Quiner on its list of "People To Watch for 2018" and notes she's "a leader in the Des Moines food scene."
I traveled to Des Moines in fall 2016. On that, my second trip to Iowa, I served as a guest faculty member at a student food-law summit at Drake University Law School and also gave a book talk at the city's great Beaverdale Bookstore.
Des Moines is a foodie heaven. It boasts easily the best farmers market I've been to in the United States. Downtown's Iowa Taproom features 120 Iowa craft beers (not a typo) on tap.
But costly regulations like those that have to threaten Dogpatch are frustratingly common in the area.
Polk County is also home to Clare Heinrich, a teen beekeeper. It was just before my 2016 visit to Iowa that I learned Heinrich's hometown, Urbandale, had ordered her to get rid of her bees, claiming the bees amounted to illegal livestock.
"It's hardly a stretch to suggest that we should be making it easier for local farmers to connect with eager consumers," I wrote in an op-ed that appeared in The Des Moines Register. "And yet rules so often do the opposite."
Small farms such as Dogpatch are becoming increasingly rare in Iowa. "Iowa farms are dwindling in number and growing in size," the Register reported in 2014. According to USDA data, Polk County lost more than 20 percent of its farmland between 2007 and 2012.
Dogpatch and other small farms in Iowa and across the country already face uphill battles as they fight for consumer dollars. The last thing they need is for regulators and regulations to simply pile up more existential obstacles.
Photo Credit: Dogpatch Urban Gardens
Baylen Linnekin is a food lawyer, scholar, and adjunct law professor. He's the author of Biting the Hands that Feed Us: How Fewer, Smarter Laws Would Make Our Food System More Sustainable (Island Press 2016). Linnekin serves on the board of directors of the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund.
BrightFarms Hydroponic Greenhouse Coming To Abilene, Texas
BrightFarms Hydroponic Greenhouse Coming To Abilene, Texas
by Lindsey Ragas
Thursday, March 22, 2018
ABILENE, Texas — A new business is coming to Abilene and it's expected to bring in more than a dozen new jobs to the Big Country.
BrightFarms, a company looking to build a state-of-the-art hydroponic greenhouse, is behind what KTXS News referred to last week as Project Ladybug.
BrightFarms choose Abilene as the place for its first hydroponic greenhouse farm in Texas, which will not be a traditional greenhouse because it will grow food that people can buy at local grocery stores.
"[This greenhouse will be] a very large glass structure that produces consumable greens: foods, spinach, lettuce, herbs, things of that nature," said Justin Jaworski, Executive Director of the Abilene Industrial Foundation.
“The plants themselves are suspended above a water basin that is nutrient-rich and only the roots touch," said Kim Tarrant, Chief Administrative Officer of the Development Corporation of Abilene.
The greenhouse will be built at Access Business Park, which is located right across the street from Abilene Regional Airport.
The Abilene City Council gave the approval on Thursday and the DCOA approved $2.3 million for this project last week. The DCOA asked BrightFarms to invest $17 million, with the DCOA matching 10% of the company's investment, along with 21 acres of land worth $600,000.
The new hydroponic greenhouse is expected to bring jobs to Abilene and offer health benefits for its employees.
"We'll include a creation target of approximately 24 jobs in year one and we hope by year three we'll grow a little bit more in those terms, but those jobs are on average paid in the $18 range."
By 2023, they hope to create and maintain up to 34 jobs. Construction on the hydroponic greenhouse might begin this summer and it's expected to be fully operational by next year.
Urban Agriculture Firm Gotham Greens Will Double Its Footprint In Chicago
The site is near Gotham’s existing rooftop greenhouse, the largest commercial one of its kind in the world, on top of the Method soap factory in Pullman Park which opened in 2015.
Urban Agriculture Firm Gotham Greens Will Double Its Footprint In Chicago
March 16, 2018 | Staff Writer
A rendering of the 140,000-square-foot commercial greenhouse now under construction in Chicago’s Pullman neighbrohood.
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Gotham Greens broke ground yesterday on the first phase of a 140,000-square-foot greenhouse facility in the Pullman neighborhood on Chicago’s south side. The state-of-the-art indoor farm will be built on vacant land at the former Ryerson industrial site, which is being acquired from Chicago Neighborhood Initiatives (CNI), the Pullman-based nonprofit developer.
The site is near Gotham’s existing rooftop greenhouse, the largest commercial one of its kind in the world, on top of the Method soap factory in Pullman Park which opened in 2015. CNI could receive up to $3.35 million in tax increment financing for site preparation and infrastructure. “These are exciting days for Pullman,” said David Doig, president of CNI who credits Pullman’s renaissance with “good bones and great energy.”
Once completed, the greenhouse facility would be the largest ever built in Chicago and will create 60 full-time jobs. The expansion reflects the company’s success growing and selling premium quality produce year-round in technologically advanced indoor farms. The company’s greenhouses yield 30 times more produce per acre than conventional field production while using 10 times less water.
“Thanks to the leadership and hard work of Mayor Emanuel, Alderman Beale, the City of Chicago, CNI and all of our community partners, Pullman has been a great place to innovate and do business,” said Viraj Puri, co-founder and CEO at Gotham Greens. “We’re producing millions of pounds of fresh produce annually for national and local grocery stores and foodservice operators across Chicagoland, far exceeding our expectations. This is the ideal time for us to expand our presence in the Midwest, and Pullman is the ideal place for us to do so.”
“With unparalleled road, rail infrastructure, abundant vacant land, 20-minute proximity to the Loop, complemented by the venerable housing stock and historic buildings, Pullman is becoming the destination where more people are choosing to go to live and work,” said Doig. “Along with great leadership from Alderman Beale and a great partnership with Mayor Emanuel, Pullman is the ‘ultimate comeback’ community.”
Attending the groundbreaking for Gotham Greens’ new 140,000-square-foot greenhouse were (from left to right, starting third from the left) Illinois State Representative Nick Smith, 9th Ward Alderman Anthony Beale, Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Gotham Greens CEO Viraj Puri, Gotham Greens CFO Eric Haley, Pullman resident and Gotham Greens employee Jenny Mitchell, CNI President David Doig and CNI Board Chair Pastor Merlon Jackson.
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This Startup Is Using AI To Bring “Post-Organic” Farming To The (Urban) Masses
Bowery’s “brains” are found in its propriety system called FarmOS. Using vision systems and machine learning, FarmOS monitors the crops 24/7, collecting data about water flow, light levels, temperature, and humidity. Bowery growers can then use the data to make adjustments to the environment, which will impact color, texture, and taste. The system also alerts growers when plants are ready for harvest.
This Startup Is Using AI To Bring “Post-Organic” Farming To The (Urban) Masses
March 22, 2018
Kale: great for your health, not so great for the taste buds. Sometimes I wonder if people eat it because they actually like the taste or because it’s so trendy.
That issue may soon become irrelevant, however, thanks a company called Bowery, which is using artificial intelligence (AI) to tweak crops’ color, texture, and even taste.
Billing itself as “The Modern Farming Company,” the New Jersey-based indoor-farming startup will soon open a second facility it says will be the most technologically sophisticated in the world. Sounds like a brazen claim, until you look at what Bowery actually has cooking, and, farming, at its forthcoming facility.
Bowery’s “brains” are found in its propriety system called FarmOS. Using vision systems and machine learning, FarmOS monitors the crops 24/7, collecting data about water flow, light levels, temperature, and humidity. Bowery growers can then use the data to make adjustments to the environment, which will impact color, texture, and taste. The system also alerts growers when plants are ready for harvest.
All of those elements and more roll up into what Bowery founder Irving Fain recently called “post-organic produce”—Bowery commands the entire process of raising produce, from seed to store, and grows crops in a fully controlled environment that doesn’t have to rely on chemicals, pesticide, or human intuition to ensure quality of crops. Sure, the name’s a little much, but the concept grows more promising each year, thanks to factors like cheaper LED lighting, better data analytics, and concepts like vertical farming, which is predicted to be worth $13 billion by 2024.
And while they’re not all using the “post-organic” label, there are plenty of others exploring the possibilities of farming in fully controlled, indoor environments.
Also in New Jersey, AeroFarms has a 70,000-square-foot facility, where it grows bok choi, arugula, watercress, and other greens, including kale. The company closed a $40 million Series D funding round at the end of 2017, bringing in IKEA Group and Momofuku’s David Chang as additional backers.
Meanwhile, indoor farming startups abound in Alaska, where growing produce outside is pretty much impossible in the depths of winter and anything shipped is often close to spoiled upon delivery. Alaska Natural Organics operates a 5,000-square-foot farm that grows butter lettuce and basil. Vertical Harvest Hydroponics designs systems that can be grown inside shipping containers and distributed across the state, including hard-to-reach areas. Both companies are based in Anchorage.
And in Kyoto, Japan, a “vegetable factory” is run by robots and grows 30,000 heads of lettuce per day. The company, Spread, says that it recycles 98 percent of its water and, because the factory is sealed, doesn’t have to rely on pesticides or chemicals.
What sets Bowery somewhat apart—for now, at least—is that it has gone beyond simply monitoring water supply and temperature with its ability to adjust things like taste, texture, and even blemishes on produce. With the U.S. alone throwing out about 50 percent of produce grown annually, a proprietary system like Bowery’s could seriously be leading the way in terms of indoor farming’s impact on overall agriculture.
Tags: Ag Tech Data Insights Modern Farmer Topics Robotics, AI & Data
Successful Crowdfunding For Plantagon’s City Farm
Successful Crowdfunding For Plantagon’s City Farm
2nd March 2018
Plantagon's Urban Greenhouse
Plantagon launches its first City Farm in the Swedish capital Stockholm following a successful crowdfunding campaign. It will be the first of ten city farm units to be built by 2020.
Under the iconic Dagens Nyheter Tower building (DN-Skrapan), up to 30 metric tonnes of high quality food will be produced yearly – from a location previously being used as a newspaper archive.
The City Farm project – underground farming in cities – kicked off in January 2018 with a crowdfunding campaign at FundedByMe, and we succeeded beyond our target by raising SEK 4.4m (~€435,000) from 559 investors, reaching 119% of our financing goal.
The first facility is now in operation and will be followed by ten more before 2020.
“The reason for the crowdfunding campaign was that we believe people who care about the future of cities, food production and the health of our planet should be given the opportunity to be a part of the solution,” says Owe Pettersson, CEO of Plantagon International.
“To us, it is important to create and expand together, showing that we are a movement for healthy sustainable food. Together, we can make a difference and we are very happy that the campaign succeeded and for the great response!”
70% of the crop produced in the City Farm will be herbs and spices and 30% will be especially nutritious vegetables, like different cabbage and salad varieties. The harvest will be sold to local grocery stores, restaurants and through our own shop in the same building as our City Farm. Our produce will be distributed and sold within 900 meters of the farm, thus minimizing transportation.
Creating a sustainable business
CEO Owe Pettersson
We aim to start up two new City Farms during 2018, with more to follow in 2019-2020. Our first City Farm is placed under a large office building, DN-Skrapan. By capturing the heat from the LED lights that helps the plants grow – heat that normally would have to be vented out and require air conditioning to keep ideal conditions for the plants – we can send it into the heat system for the building to keep it warm through the winter, making a “win-win” situation where we supply heat instead of paying rent.
Plants need carbon dioxide to grow and where traditional greenhouses burns fuels to provide it, we use the carbon dioxide from human exhalation in the offices that we send to the farm, and fresh oxygen from the plants is sent back to office workers.
Large-scale underground urban cultivation means that real estate companies will be able to charge more for premises that otherwise would not generate particularly high income, and could add a ‘green’ profile to their property portfolio.
The Plantagon City Farm saves 99% of water consumption compared with traditional agriculture, and carbon dioxide emissions are reduced to almost zero, while 70% of the energy used is reused. By saving and reusing resources, production costs are reduced so that the price of food becomes affordable.
A response to the needs of the future
According to UN estimates, about 70-80% of the world’s population will live in cities by 2050. Already 80% of the world’s agricultural land is in use. As more and more people move to ever-expanding cities, production will be driven by what we need to eat, but move further and further away from us. The result will be longer transport times, increased dependence on fossil-based fertilizers and more high-intensity farming on the limited farmland that remains.
Plantagon® City Farm Stockholm is a response to the need for new solutions for sustainable food production that can provide a growing urban population with food while maximizing the use of the existing spaces. Cultivation takes place in a controlled environment, without pesticides and herbicides. The farms are run by Plantagon Production Sweden AB, a subsidiary of Plantagon International AB.
City Farm: vertical farming combined with office space
Sustainability strategist Sepehr Mousavi
A new type of greenhouse for vertical farming; an international Centre of Excellence for Urban Agriculture; a demo-plant for Swedish clean-tech and a climate-smart way to use excess heating and CO2 from industries. That is what we are working on in the city of Linköping, Sweden: a 17-story office building combined with a greenhouse.
Two-thirds of the building will be office space that can be rented, and, as in the City Farm, heat from the greenhouse will warm up the building during winter. The plan is to open it in 2020 or 2021. Plantagon is also planning a similar solution for Singapore, where the lack of land for farming means that most of the food is imported from other countries. Plantagon has, since its very first day, been working from a global perspective, where the construction of our intangible assets such as patents, industrial designs, and trademarks is very important. On the other hand, we are building our future business model on the license revenues from the technology that we are now developing.
Plantagon aims to be the world’s best developer of smart food systems for the city. R&D and the resulting technological innovations are the principal factors for Plantagon International’s business success.
Plantagon International’s innovation strategy involves benefiting from technological innovations by using the full range of intellectual property rights in the development of urban agriculture globally.
Special Report Author Details
Author: Owe Pettersson, Sepehr Mousavi
Organisation: Plantagon International
Telephone: +46(0)8-410 165 60
Email: owe.pettersson@plantagon.com
Email: Sepehr.mousavi@plantagon.com
Website: Visit Website
Website: Visit Website
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Mobile Farmers Market Offers Affordable, Accessible Produce To Gainesville, Florida Residents
Fresh Wagon is a United States Department of Agriculture-funded project that provides fresh produce to Gainesville residents at a low cost. The wagon has been in business for two years, according to Bruce Waite, executive director of Common Thread Alliance
Bruce Waite, executive director of Common Thread Alliance, in front of the Fresh Wagon. The Fresh Wagon, a project of Common Thread Alliance, delivers fresh produce to low-food-access areas. (Audrey Alonso/WUFT News)
Home / Health and Science / Mobile Farmers Market Offers Affordable, Accessible Produce To Gainesville Residents
Mobile Farmers Market Offers Affordable, Accessible Produce To Gainesville, Florida Residents
March 1, 2018 Health and Science
The smell of fresh produce filled the air of the parking lot on the north side of Nationwide Insurance Thursday morning. A white trailer with bold, green letters that read “Fresh Wagon” across the side, displayed a variety of fruits and vegetables for Nationwide employees to choose from.
Fresh Wagon is a United States Department of an Agriculture-funded project that provides fresh produce to Gainesville residents at a low cost. The wagon has been in business for two years, according to Bruce Waite, executive director of Common Thread Alliance.
Fresh Wagon is a service of the Food Oasis Project, which is a program of Common Thread Alliance. The alliance is a nonprofit organization and is a farmer-producer that operates in Melrose, FL. The workers of Common Thread go out weekly and aggregate produce from nine partner farms, Waite explained.
The Fresh Wagon facilitates a relationship between local farmers by making it available for small family farms to have the opportunity to build sustainable revenue, according to Waite.
On Thursdays, the wagon goes to a number of companies and employers, such as CH2M Hill, Nationwide Insurance, UF’s College of Public Health and Health Professions and the Malcolm Randall VA Medical Center.
On Fridays, the wagon goes to numerous Housing and Urban Development-sponsored locations in East Gainesville, from housing that focuses on people with disabilities to the elderly to families, Waite explained.
“Part of our research is trying to connect the issues associated with state, federal and corporate employees that may be struggling to make ends meet,” Waite said. “And [they] may be deferring their utilization of fresh food, because it’s expensive.”
“So even though they (employees) come here (Nationwide Insurance) every day to work, [the question is]: Do they go home to a neighborhood that doesn’t have a supermarket for them?”
Students and employees walk along the circle drive of the College of Public Health and Health Professions, located at 1225 Center Drive, as the Fresh Wagon trailer pulls up and parks around noon Thursday. The farmers open the doors on the side of the trailer and pull out the shelves of produce.
Within five minutes, a crowd of people lined up to begin picking their produce, a green basket in hand. Students walking by stop to observe the wagon, eventually picking up a basket or plastic bag to start picking.
“It’s easy to come by and get fresh food while at work,” Anne Bogar, a UF Health Shands Hospital employee, said. “I don’t have to deal with the insanity of the local market by where I live.”
The farms listed on the Fresh Wagon Website are as follows: Barnes Farm located in Hastings; Blue Sky Farm and Brubaker Farms located in Elkton; Brown’s Family Farm and Frog Song Organics located in Hawthorne; Full Circle Farm located in Melrose.
“We load about 32 to 34 different fresh fruits and vegetables by Wednesday of every week,” Waite said.
He explained that Common Thread received an inquiry from the City of Gainesville around six months ago about positioning the wagon in locations where more people can access it.
He mentioned that so far there has been no update on the inquiry but assured that the alliance is willing to discuss expanding.
The idea of Fresh Wagon came from a concern about food proximity in neighborhoods where people lacked the access, according to Waite.
“Over time, it has also grown to encompass a strong interest in working people and their lack of proximity and inconvenience of getting fresh food while working,” Waite said.
To locate the areas where additional access to fresh produce is needed, the program employs Neighborhood Deprivation Indexing. It looks at 17 different socioeconomic measures and enables Common Thread to map those measures in four quadrants of health risks, Waite explained.
“People lack access to transportation. Even though there is bus service available, it’s a challenge [to grocery shop],” Waite said. “We’re trying to strengthen those communities. We’re trying to foster independence.”
Tags AGRICULTURE ALACHUA ALACHUA COUNTY BUSINESS CITY OF GAINESVILLE DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE EAST GAINESVILLE FLORIDA FOOD DESERT FRESH WAGON GAINESVILLE HAWTHORNE SHANDS HOSPITAL TRANSPORTATION UF UF HEALTH UF HEALTH SHANDS UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA USDA
Salads Straight From The City
Salads Straight From The City
Prof. Dr. Andreas Ulbrich from the University of Applied Sciences Osnabrück brought along exciting new scenarios for the future of urban spaces to this year’s Ahlem Forum. These concepts revolve around plant production directly in conurbations: for example vegetables that grow vertically between residential buildings or in floating greenhouses in Hamburg Harbour.
by Specialist Editor Katrin Klawitter
Grow where you sell: ‘My Smart Green Supermarket’
In Ahlem Ulbrich presented a shopping centre as a possible model where greenhouses were located on the roof. Named ‘My Smart Green Supermarket’, garden production systems are an integrated part of the concept in this vision. “This is a way to combine shopping and production locations – including the recycling of materials, for example with a circuit that uses the CO2 produced in the shops for the plant production”, says this expert. He is also convinced that it would thus be possible to make horticultural production more transparent again for the consumer as well as making an important contribution to a higher degree of self-sufficiency.
According to Professor Ulbrich vegetable production knowledge is now so sophisticated, also through the use of LED lighting spectra, that different, ‘personalised’ products could be made for various consumer demands and customer groups – for example firm tomatoes with a particularly good taste or vegetables with a particularly high level of certain substances could be produced to order.
Of course, urban production will not be sufficient to cover actual demand, Ulbrich conceded following a question from the audience. But this could be compensated for by purchasing intermediate and finished goods so that it would always be possible to offer the customer freshly produced goods on site. “Outside production, in periurban areas will still be decisive in order to supply additional deliveries here”, confirmed Ulbrich.
Floating greenhouses and green fingers
In concrete terms Ulbrich presented a new research project: Together with the city of Hamburg and other players the scientists in Osnabrück are working on floating indoor farms, a kind of pontoon, for salad production. The project with the cumbersome name ‘Regional food production in metropolitan regions with adjoining bodies of water’ is to become part of the ‘Vision for agricultural systems of the future’ project of the Federal Research Ministry and is currently awaiting authorisation for its research application. Another research project for the city of Osnabrück has already been authorised: this is an idea to ensure the ‘green fingers’ of the city are sustained, given the enormous increase in the need for residential space. This needs to be done in such a way that more people can live in the city while still ensuring vegetable production in the city and sufficient green spaces for comfort. The term ‘climate resilience’ plays a central role here as it necessitates, for example, measures to reduce greenhouse gases and regulate temperature.
Improved herb quality using LED flashes
The importance attributed to the project can also be seen in the fact that the University of Applied Sciences Osnabrück is currently creating a new research centre ‘Agricultural systems of the future’. Scientists in Osnabrück are doing very practice-based work. For example they are currently testing, in conjunction with vegetable farming operations in Papenburg, how the quality of herbs from winter production can be improved. There are already promising initial results that show how LED light flashes, i.e. pulses of light, can substantially increase the quality of basil and parsley. The participants in the experiment are working together on an efficient, practical system.
Another project called ‘Petra’ is looking at the development of quality tomatoes for sustainable, regional production. The priority here, also working with the vegetable farming operations in Papenburg, is on giving priority to characteristics such as taste and bite as the top quality objectives with less emphasis on suitability for storage as this plays a lesser role for regional production.
Conclusion: Do not leave the topic of regional vegetable production to others
Andreas Ulbrich does state that is it not possible to estimate the quantities of urban vegetable production that will be necessary in the future. However, that is not the decisive point for him: “It is much more important that we do not leave these topics to others.”
He says that up to now this kind of project often failed because the researchers did not have the right horticultural knowledge. For example a well known pharmaceuticals company contacted the University of Applied Sciences Osnabrück when medicinal plants that were grown indoors had insufficient drug levels. “Horticultural know-how is necessary for this kind of project”, said Ulbrich encouragingly in Ahlem.
About the author: Katrin Klawitter is a freelance journalist for the green sector. She is part of the editorial team for TASPO and other media.
Prof. Dr. Andreas Ulbrich from the University of Applied Sciences Osnabrück
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He Harvests Cash From Urban Farming
He Harvests Cash From Urban Farming
Dr Allan Ahimbisibwe displays sukumawiki on his backyard farm. Ahimbisibwe grows several vegetables including cabbage, and tomatoes. Photo by Denis Bbosa
In Summary
- Since many Ugandans are small-scale farmers ventures, Dr. Ahimbisibwe advises those with land and capital not to forsake planting of bananas, cassava, and coffee
- He advises farmers to do research on how to farm short life cycle crops such as onions and watermelons because one acre can yield a farmer about Shs20m if they follow the right practices
By Denis Bbosa
Having less or no land to farm in urban areas should not be an excuse ever again according to Dr Allan Ahimbisibwe. He tells Seeds of Gold’s Denis Bbosa how he is helping many urban dwellers in setting up manageable backyard gardens downplaying the notion that having a garden is prerogative for the well-off.
Dr. Allan Ahimbisibwe, a youthful statistics graduate, is practicing his passion for smart farming to curb the challenges that many give as a reason to run away from agribusiness.
Through his Spark Agro Initiatives company based in Nansana, Ahimbisibwe is teaching various farmers how to use their compounds, regardless of the size, to grow spices and vegetables that are marketable and can be used for home consumption.
His meager demonstration farm has 50 bags and about 10 pots of sukumawiki, cabbages, strawberry and tomatoes that are still at an infant stage.
“Urban farming is very easy even for lazy farmers. We went for vegetables, spices, and herbs because they are not heavy feeder plants like pumpkins or bananas. We plant them in these bags and within months we are yielding,” Ahimbisibwe proudly shows off his well looked after project.
He urges Ugandans to open their eyes and start farming plants with short root systems such as sukumawiki, eggplants, tomatoes, strawberry, cabbages that are eaten every day and grown within three months.
“Most of the vegetables grow in two months, those with leaves grow in one month. We are preaching an idea of getting value from a small place. At harvesting stage, which is soon by the way, I will be getting more than 50 plants a week,” he says.
After his studies at Makerere University, Ahimbisibwe tried to get a bank job but still, his passion for agriculture drove him out to start this venture that has seen him start up over 60 backyard gardens for corporate and high-end customers like affluent politicians. His catchment areas have spread from Kampala to Mbarara and Jinja of late.
No regrets
He says the benefits of home gardening are innumerable; first for health reasons and then fulfilling the World Health Organisation (WHO) directive that one must eat a fruit or vegetable 30 minutes from the garden.
“Money saved is money earned, if each week you save about Shs50,000 that you would have used to buy these vegetables, you would be better off,” he advises.
The need to educate and attract the young people that often want to stay home into farming drives Ahimbisibwe when setting up these compound gardens.
Needless to say, even after substituting flowers, the vegetables, spices and herbs still offer beauty to homesteads.
Economical start
Ahimbisibwe invested just Shs40,000 to start up the demonstration garden but he hopes to reap more than Shs5m after two months. He has been doing this for the last one year spending most on bags (Shs7,000 each), manure and pots.
“The strawberries are expensive and have high market demand which means I have to yield good money once they are harvested,” he says.
His challenge now is getting a standard nursery bed to feed the demonstration farm because the client base is swelling every passing day.
On an average day, over 10 people pass by to get farming knowledge from him and his five employees.
They also offer advisory services for optimum utilization of land, draw business plans for production, management, and marketing, applying best agronomic practices, feeding soils with fertilizers and adopting mixed farming.
After setting up a backyard garden in homes – Dr. Ahimbisibwe and colleagues provide raw materials and keep on monitoring the project until the owners learn how to handle it.
He advises farmers to do research on how to farm short life cycle crops such as onions and watermelons because one acre can yield a farmer about Shs20m if they follow the right practices.
Must grow crops
He says if farmers can, they should rush to grow tomatoes, onions, cabbages in this rainy season because of their marketability, short production span. “Melons started with a capital base of Shs2m on one acre can reap about 7000 pieces which translate in over Shs10m,” he says.
Since many Ugandans are small-scale farmers ventures, Dr. Ahimbisibwe advises those with land and capital not to forsake planting of bananas, cassava, and coffee. His rapid success is attributed to the proper usage of social media platforms such as Facebook and WhatsApp to touch the lives of thousands of craving prospective farmers.
He advises farmers to seek information before investing. He says, “Before you invest Shs1m, why not put Shs40,000 into consultancy and know the best farming practices and trends that will help you get high yields?”
Behind The Rise And Fall of Growing Power
Behind The Rise And Fall of Growing Power
The urban farming powerhouse had a global reputation. Then, it collapsed last year under mounting debt, prompting big questions about what happened and what comes next.
Will Allen in a Growing Power greenhouse. (Photo credit: Growing Power)
03.13.18
Will Allen is a beloved figure. The former professional basketball player and founder of the Milwaukee-based nonprofit Growing Power has had an influence on urban agriculture that is as conspicuous as his 6’7 inch frame and the characteristic sleeveless hooded sweatshirts that reveal his lumberjack biceps.
In 1993, Allen bought the city’s last remaining farm at 5500 Silver Springs on Milwaukee’s north side, four miles from the nearest grocery store and five blocks from the nearest public housing projects. What grew from that 19th-century greenhouse could not be measured in pounds, bushels, or even dollars. What arose was a nonprofit organization that expanded people’s ideas about what was possible in local food production and youth education.
Then, last November, facing insurmountable debt and legal pressure (the nonprofit has eight pending judgments totaling nearly half a million dollars) the board of directors decided to dissolve Growing Power. Many questions remain about what caused the organization’s downfall, but as Allen told Civil Eats recently, he has no intention of retiring.
“The shutdown was unfortunate and something I had no control over,” said Allen, who is still working on the farm. “We’re trying to get this place back to its original glory days. What’s been reported is absolutely not true. I can’t tell the story because it’s too involved, but I can tell you that we’re on our way back.”
As the story unfolds—and accounts differ—the downfall of Growing Power raises larger questions about the risks of scaling up urban agriculture in today’s complex philanthropic world.
The Early Days
From the beginning, Allen, a son of sharecroppers who grew up on a farm in Maryland, had two distinct priorities for his farm: composting and youth mentorship—the latter informed by the former. In drafty old greenhouses, Allen taught low-income children how to grow compost in rows of wooden boxes. Worms fed on decomposing vegetables, circuitously depositing dense nutrients into the soil and creating healthy compost, which was then sold by the organization. The compost was an essential part of the work.
Where most people see vacant lots, Allen saw vegetables. Growing Power built over 100 hoop houses, each one spread with more than 100 yards of compost over asphalt and concrete. “You have to assume every vacant lot has contaminants in the soil,” he said. “So that why I started this practice of composting at scale.”
Growing Power soon incorporated aquaponics, another closed-loop system that produced farmed fish and simultaneously fertilized the plants with their waste. In just six months, 50 tilapia emerged from this rudimentary but brilliant system.
Growing Power’s Milwaukee farm. (Photo credit: Will Allen)
A defining characteristic of Allen’s work was the way in which his social programs emulated the holistic feedback loops of his farm. Decorative plants were used for landscaping, then sold to schools and community centers, funding the continuation of the program. Students learned how to read, write, and can vegetables. Growing Power worked with the local juvenile justice system, training and rehabilitating children by planting flowers in vacant lots whereby Allen’s own estimation—they might’ve otherwise been used for selling drugs.
The 1990s in urban Milwaukee was unkind to its young Black men. In this period there were four times as many African Americans incarcerated annually for drug-related offenses as white men. (This persisted over the subsequent decade, with disparities rising to 11- to 12-fold between 2002 and 2005.) On a vacant lot at 24th and Brown, a planting flurry would yield what Will calls “a flower explosion.” It was a way of running drug dealers off the corner, as it invited attention and activity. And in just two years, Growing Power itself was beginning to attract attention, on the front page of the Milwaukee paper, and from other civic leaders in high-crime neighborhoods around the country.
By the early 2000s, the local food movement was no longer localized. Farmers’ markets were popping up nationwide, and along with them a legion of so-called “good food” advocates. Growing Power was still centralized in Milwaukee, but its impact had grown nationwide. The two-acre flagship greenhouse was now a training facility with visitors coming from around the world to learn from the organization. It was a good food hub, creating access to healthy food in an area that desperately needed it.
By 2009, Growing Power was selling food online, at farmers’ markets, schools, restaurants, and via below-market-cost CSA boxes, reaching more than 10,000 people. In addition to growing and distributing food, Growing Power-led trainings grew exponentially. Visitors from the city of Milwaukee, the Midwest, and countless cities worldwide adapted Allen’s knowledge of growing, composting, and aquaponics for their communities.
Notoriety and Success
Growing Power’s expansion can be attributed, in part, to the MacArthur Genius Award Allen received in 2008, and the half-million-dollar prize that came with it. It also garnered high-level attention from the media, the food world, and former President Clinton.
Will Allen demonstrates his aquaculture system for Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack (left) in 2015. (Photo credit: USDA)
Allen became a star, and his organization grew radically, from a staff of a dozen or so to 200 people. A widespread recruitment and mobilization of urban agriculture and environmental justice workers ensued. A decade later, many of those workers now lead their own urban farming enterprises.
People like Nick DeMarsh—a Growing Power employee from 2008-2010 and currently a program manager at Groundwork Milwaukee—attributes the health of Milwaukee’s urban farming community to Allen’s inspiration, saying, “We’ve seen Will as a model, and people have said, ‘How can I do that in my own neighborhood?’”
Educational programs spread throughout the region. There were leadership programs, job trainings for underserved youth, internships, and hands-on workshops. The funds also supported a Chicago chapter of Growing Power, led by Erika Allen, Will’s daughter.
There were more greenhouses and hoop houses, more kitchens and training gardens, fish, chickens, turkeys, goats, and bees. Most of what was raised on the farm was also packed, distributed, and promoted by the organization. By all accounts, Growing Power was doing exactly what they had set out to do. They were feeding, training, and exposing thousands of people to a more autonomous relationship with their food. The mission was being fulfilled, but with significant costs.
Perhaps the income and activity obscured the high operating costs, but there was income. In 2012, Growing Power was again awarded a substantial grant, this time from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, one of the largest philanthropic foundations in the United States. Kellogg had an explicit aim to support racial equity and community engagement, and Growing Power checked a lot of boxes for them.
As the funding amplified, so did scrutiny about its origins. In fact, one of the very people that helped facilitate the crucial MacArthur grant would later become openly critical of Growing Power’s choice of funders.
Andy Fisher, the co-founder of the Community Food Security Coalition (CFSC)—a food justice organization on whose board of directors Allen served for six years—had seen Allen as “an inspiring and charismatic leader.” But when Growing Power accepted a $1 million grant from the Walmart Foundation in 2011, Fisher was outspoken about his displeasure with this corporate philanthropy. Some, like Fisher, saw no distinction between the Foundation and the company, and worried that Walmart was brazenly trying to buy its way into the good food movement.
As Fisher saw it at the time, the Walmart Foundation’s giving was 100 percent linked to the strategic interests of Walmart the company. He saw the funds as an endorsement (or absolution) of the corporation’s practice of exploiting and underpaying food-chain workers, farmers, and suppliers. “I thought it was naive and problematic that he was taking the money and giving them a pass on their payment practices,” Fisher told Civil Eats recently.
Some of Growing Power’s hoop houses in Milwaukee. (Photo credit: Will Allen)
For his part, Allen contended that significant progress without the buy-in of large corporations was untenable. “We can no longer be so idealistic that we hurt the very people we’re trying to help. Keeping groups that have the money and the power to be a significant part of the solution away from the Good Food Revolution will not serve us,” he said at the time, in a statement on the Growing Power blog.
Regardless of the source, from 2012 through 2015, more money was exiting than entering Growing Power’s doors. Internal Revenue Service documents from 2014 show that the nonprofit was running substantial deficits, in excess of $2 million that year. In 2015, an investor in a for-profit spinoff, Will Allen Farms LLC, filed a lawsuit against Allen and his accountant Thomas Schmitt. The investor alleged that she had been misled about the development of an industrial laundry site to be turned into an aquaponic facility.
The Fallout
People close to the organization were saddened by the news of its dissolution, but many were not surprised. As far back as 2014, the Chicago chapter of Growing Power had begun to move toward independent accounting and funding strategies. Warning signs about Growing Power’s financial health were embedded in its mandatory annual filings and felt by its vendors.
And despite Allen’s passion and dedication, he may have suffered from a bit of founder’s syndrome. Fisher theorizes that Allen’s inability to empower and retain an operational management team was the main cause of the organization’s collapse.
“Will centralized all the power in himself, but he was never around. It became dysfunctional,” Fisher said. “They tried to at times bring in others to run day-to-day operations so Will could have a more outward-facing role, but that person would resign and inevitably they’d go back to the old system.”
Will Allen (back row, right) at a 2016 White House garden event, alongside Barack and Michelle Obama, Alonzo Mourning, Sesame Street characters, and many others. (Official White House photo by Chuck Kennedy)
Erika Allen, who has reorganized the Chicago chapter of Growing Power as Urban Growers Collective (UGC), also noted an inadequate composition of board members as a vulnerability of the organization. “There were weaknesses on the board. A little analysis would’ve exhibited the losses, and that the nonprofit needed to run more like a business,” she said.
Conflicting Accounts
After Growing Power announced its discontinuance, it was reported that Brian Sales, founder of Green Veterans, would assume the transition. Sales, a Florida veteran who’d only met Allen one year prior, said he created Green Vets as a means of trauma resolution and green jobs skills training for military veterans. He reached out to Allen and soon after had joined him in Milwaukee for a 30-day aquaponics training. He was persistent about working with Allen, who soon gave him a job as an assistant facilities manager at the headquarters in Milwaukee, where he worked until the nonprofit’s closure in November 2017.
Prior to Growing Power’s shutdown, Sales began working with Groundwork Milwaukee, a nonprofit chapter of an environmental land trust that also supports more than 100 urban farms in the city. The hope was that Sales would help manage the transition.
Deneine Powell, Groundwork Milwaukee’s executive director, told Civil Eats she was in regular communication with Allen and that she was under the impression that he planned to retire. Sales also seemed certain about Allen’s retirement and reported that he was “always hinting at retirement” and grooming Sales as a successor.
Allen denied making any arrangements with Sales. And while he wouldn’t share any details about his plans with Civil Eats, he said he hopes to reveal more soon. “My focus has to be on getting this place back and getting possession of it,” Allen said of the lot on Silver Springs Street.
It’s clear that, in the meantime, Allen, Sales, and Groundwork all appear to be actively working to shape Allen’s legacy. But just how coordinated those efforts will be is another question.
Lessons Learned
What can the demise of Growing Power teach the food movement? For some, collaboration (or lack thereof) was a prominent theme. Sales speculates that an inadvertent siloing of Growing Power left it too exposed. “One organization cannot take on that big of a task; you need multiple organizations that will work as part of the spokes on a wheel,” he said. Meanwhile, Allen echoed his daughter’s sentiments that a lack of oversight by board members compromised the organization’s financial health.
What is certain, however, is the undeniable impact the organization has had over the last two and a half decades. “The training, learning, and benefits of Growing Power will be felt for years to come,” said Ricardo Salvador, director of the food and environment program at the Union of Concerned Scientists and a former program officer for the Kellogg Foundation. Everyone Civil Eats spoke to for this article unanimously agreed on that point.
Erika Allen said UGC is now centered on empowering young people of color through education. “Growing Power was about feeding people, but for us, the education component is higher-stakes,” she said. She noted that training programs are expensive to operate—even those that generate their own revenue tend to rely on outside funding. More fastidious financial oversight would’ve likely helped Growing Power arrive at the same conclusions, but for now, she hopes “to take the lessons of what worked” and move forward.
Will Allen photo by Carlos Ortiz (Photo courtesy of Will Allen.
It’s clear that Will Allen’s legacy will live on in the many organizations that grew from his work. In addition to empowering a generation of community leaders all across the country, who have gone on to radically transform their lives and neighborhoods, he also succeeded at teaching and protecting vulnerable Black children in an era when very few other entities were up to the task.
A common adage for Allen was, “We’re not just growing food, we’re growing community.” By that measure, his success is timeless. Allen is optimistic about the next generation of farmers, but he knows it will be a hard road and frames this challenge as only he can. “To be a sustainable farmer and grow without chemicals is harder than being a professional athlete,” he said, adding that he knows this first-hand, “because I‘ve been both.”
Plant-Loving Millennials At Home And At Work
The Etsy headquarters in Dumbo, Brooklyn, for example, could easily be mistaken for an indoor botanical garden. Spanning nine floors and over 200,000 square feet, the office is home to more than 11,000 plants, including dozens of large-scale plant displays and living walls installed and maintained by Ms. Bullene and Greenery NYC.
Plant-Loving Millennials At Home And At Work
By CAROLINE BIGGS | MARCH 9, 2018
Credit Brad Dickson for The New York Times
When Summer Rayne Oakes’s roommate moved out of their apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, she was left with more than just a vacant bedroom.
“All of a sudden the apartment felt so cold and empty,” said Ms. Oakes, 33. “I needed to find a way to make the space feel warm and full of life again.”
Her solution? A fiddle leaf fig tree; the first of nearly 700 houseplants — spanning 400 species — that Ms. Oakes, founder of Homestead Brooklyn, would eventually buy for her 1,200-square-foot apartment.
Her indoor forest features everything from a subirrigated living wall in her bedroom, which is a wall of greenery that is essentially a self-watering planter with a built-in reservoir; a vertical garden made out of Mason jars mounted to the living-room wall with wooden boards and hose clamps; and a closet-turned-kitchen grow garden with edible plants (ranging from herbs and greens to pineapple plants and curry leaves).
“I didn’t set out to build a jungle,” Ms. Oakes said. “I just saw how much energy and life the plants brought to the space and kept going.”
It’s a sentiment that more and more young people seem to be echoing in their own apartments. Wellness-mindedmillennials, especially ones in large urban environments that lack natural greenery, are opting to fill their voids — both decorative and emotional — with houseplants.
“Millennials were responsible for 31 percent of houseplant sales in 2016,” according to Ian Baldwin, a business adviser for the gardening industry. The 2016 National Gardening survey found that of the six million Americans who took up gardening that year, five million were ages 18 to 34. “This group has more college debt and as a result, are renting homes instead of buying,” Mr. Baldwin said. “Houseplants are a low-cost way to have a green space at home.”
Summer Rayne Oakes has created a vertical garden in her dining room that is made out of Mason jars mounted to the wall with wooden boards and hose clamps.CreditBrad Dickson for The New York Times
Meanwhile, Greenery NYC, a botanic design company, has increased its clientele by 6,500 percent since it was founded in 2010; developers are finding ways to include gardens as an amenity for residents, and more people — like Ms. Oakes — are turning what little spare space they have in their apartments into indoor gardens.
“Our sales have doubled each year,” said Rebecca Bullene, the founder of Greenery NYC. “And I attribute that mostly to businesses that want to attract millennial talent and millennials themselves who want more nature in their lives.”
Inside her 1,800-square-foot apartment in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, Ms. Bullene, 37, cares for over a hundred plants. She has installed a green divider wall — a six-foot-by-six-foot steel shelving unit filled with a dozen wooden planter boxes and over 50 plants — that separates her living room from her in-home office, as well as a terrarium and several other large-scale plants, including an 11-foot-tall Ficus Audrey tree, to help break up the open layout of the space.
But for Ms. Bullene, the plants do more than help define the apartment; they make her home healthier, too. “Plants boost serotonin levels and dissolve volatile airborne chemicals,” she said. “They actually make healthier spaces for humans to inhabit.” She cited a 2010 study from Washington State University that breaks down the benefits of indoor plants, including cleaner air and lowered stress levels.
Along with her floor-to-ceiling plant divider wall in the living room, she also employed a combination of plants that release oxygen at night in her bedroom — including aloe vera and sansevieria — so that she and her husband can breathe cleaner air while they sleep.
Millennial-minded companies are also going to great lengths to integrate greenery into their offices.
The Etsy headquarters in Dumbo, Brooklyn, for example, could easily be mistaken for an indoor botanical garden. Spanning nine floors and over 200,000 square feet, the office is home to more than 11,000 plants, including dozens of large-scale plant displays and living walls installed and maintained by Ms. Bullene and Greenery NYC.
“Every employee has a sight line to greenery,” said Hilary Young, Etsy’s sustainability manager, who helps the company seek ways to conserve the environment. “It’s a beautiful space that inspires and boosts productivity.” Greenery NYC and the architects at Gensler worked closely to create a state-of-the-art rainwater-harvesting and irrigation system at Etsy’s headquarters, which is considered the largest commercial “living building” in the world. It allows all the office plants to be watered with recycled stormwater.
A line of cascading vines frames a conference room at the TED Talks headquarters in TriBeCa. CreditBrad Dickson for The New York Times
The roofs of the headquarters and a few of the neighboring buildings are outfitted with large gutters that collect and distribute rainwater to a 7,300-gallon cistern on the eighth floor of the Etsy building. From there, the water is dispersed through tubes to each floor of the building to water the plants.
“We wanted a space that bettered the lives of our employees,” Ms. Young said, “and that made a social and environmental impact outside of the office.”
And at the TED Talks headquarters in TriBeCa, Greenery NYC installed a series of unique plant displays throughout the two-floor office. Along with over 25 linear feet of boxed planters in the entrance lobby, the 50,000-square-foot office is filled with cascading vines, wall-mounted shelf planters, green dividers, and even desks outfitted with built-in planters, ensuring employees unlimited opportunities to take in a bit of nature throughout the workday.
“I love that when I look up from my work, all I see is green,” said Katie Hawley, 28, a senior editor at Etsy, who also keeps houseplants at home. “I feel happier just looking at them.”
With the increasing number of young people searching for access to greenery in their residences, real estate developers have also jumped on the trend.
At the ARC in Long Island City — a new 428-unit “industrial-inspired” luxury rental building developed by the Lightstone Group — residents have access to a 1,100-square-foot glass greenhouse, where they are free to plant and grow their own vegetables and herbs. “It’s been a tremendous selling point to prospective tenants,” said Scott Avram, senior vice president of development at Lightstone.
“One factor of my decision to rent in the ARC was the beautiful courtyard and greenhouse,” said Greg Garunov, 33. “There is something to having a green oasis at your fingertips in the steel city of New York.”
And over at the Margo, in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, residents enjoy a living wall in the lobby as well as a rooftop garden with plots that tenants can adopt for their own gardens.
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“Wellness is a priority for our millennial-aged residents,” said Dave Maundrell, executive vice president of new developments for Brooklyn and Queens at Citi Habitats. “They’re willing to pay more for access to a green space.”
But for those young urbanites who don’t have the luxury of a communal garden or greenhouse, houseplants remain an affordable, and renter-friendly option.
For instance, Ms. Oakes has managed to make the bulk of her indoor garden self-regulating and, perhaps more impressively, removable.
Thanks to several DIY irrigation systems she hacked throughout her home, including two irrigation units she created using a 150-foot hose that connects to pipes under her kitchen sink, Ms. Oakes said she has to spend only about a half-hour a day tending to her plants.
And to avoid leaks to the apartment below, Ms. Oakes reinforced her bedroom wall with plywood and then added metal gutters to collect any excess water before hanging up her vertical garden.
Ms. Bullene, a renter, also took care to ensure that all of her subirrigated plant systems — even the self-regulating terrarium and self-watering plant wall — are removable.
“All of the plant systems can come with us if we ever move,” Ms. Bullene said. “It’s as easy as unplugging them and removing a couple of screws.”
Ms. Oakes said that even though plant care might seem like a whole lot of work, the effort is worth it.
“New York City is tough,” she said. “My plants gave me a sanctuary to come home to.”
Local Garden Becomes Family Business Venture
Local Garden Becomes Family Business Venture
March 8, 2018, by Zarah Parker, Leave a Comment
Amy Williams (bottom left) with husband and children standing by their backyard garden. Photo supplied
From backyard garden in our local community to a small business, Amy Williams is keeping the gardening tradition alive in the family with Underhill Urban Farm Co, a non-GMO, organically grown farm and garden that uses heirloom seeds, that are all locally grown.
Her father, an organic farmer, taught her the ins and outs of farming, while her mother taught her how to can different items, like pickles, jams, and jellies. Growing up with fruits and veggies in the backyard and on the table was something Williams was used to. So, it was natural that she’d have a garden of her own and use it to teach her children as well.
“We kind of grew up like that. It was a natural thing for me to do it, and for the kids to be a part of it,” said Williams.
Around a year and a half ago the thought of using the garden as a business sprung up, then everything fell into place and the business was born. Underhill Urban Farm Co is first and foremost a family thing. Williams grows in her local garden but uses her father’s garden as well. Williams is also always accompanied in the kitchen by a family who helps develop new recipes, as with the grapefruit Jalapenos jelly that sold out first during their last farmers market appearance.
In all it’s her parents, her husband, and her five children that take on the responsibility that comes with the garden and business.
“I like it being small, I like it being just a family thing. There’s something about that that makes it really special to us, and I don’t want it to get to a point that it loses what it is, because this is our passion and being able to do that with my kids, that’s really special to me,” said Williams.
With a garden to upkeep, and business to run, Williams also homeschools. She says it’s never easy to find the perfect balance, especially with five kids, but gardening and the creation of Underhill has provided amazing learning opportunities for the kids.
“There’s so many different aspects of [gardening], but also with the business side. They’re kind of seeing how to run a business; what you need to do to run a business. It’s been a really good learning experience for them,” said Williams.
A challenge Underhill had to face recently was the weather this winter. With fall being almost nonexistent, to an unexpected winter, it was tough to keep the garden in good shape. Luckily, with the help of the whole family, they made it through the freezes, whereas other farms weren’t so fortunate.
During the spring and summer months, the only worry is garden pests.
“But we’ve gotten to where we are able to do companion planting. So, there are certain herbs that will repel certain pests, which makes it easier because we don’t use pesticides,” said Williams.
Except for a few months ago when Williams couldn’t figure out what was getting in her garden. She’d even put a new fence up. Turns out, they were having a Peter Rabbit situation of their own. Williams soon noticed the fault lay with her.
“Then I realized I had bought rabbit fencing and I had put it upside down. The big holes were supposed to be at the top and I had put them on the bottom,” said Williams. The rabbit was able to hop right through the fence with no problem.
Beginning this month, they will be close to home at Little White Oak Night Market. For Williams, the best part of joining a Farmers Market is the encouragement given by other vendors. There’s no competition—everyone’s there for one another hoping they succeed as well.
Look out for Underhill at the market with their variety of squash, zucchini, melons, luffa gourd, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, peas, asparagus, citrus, and blackberries!
You can be kept up to date on which markets they will be at on their Facebook page at Underhill Urban Farm Co and on Instagram @underhillurbanfarmco.
Urban Farm Creates Much-Needed Retail ‘Customer Experience’
04 MAR 18
Urban Farm Creates Much-Needed Retail ‘Customer Experience’
Frasers Property Australia has teamed up with the “poster boy for zero-waste living”, Joost Bakker, to build the world’s most sustainable shopping centre – equipped with a 2000sq m rooftop urban farm.
As bricks and mortar retail struggles against the spectre of online shopping, retailers will need to adapt to constantly-evolving consumer needs to stay relevant.
And Frasers is doing just, announcing plans to regenerate the Burwood Brickworks in Melbourne’s east into a shopping mall that focuses on customer experience rather than the simple “need to shop”.
Frasers development manager Jack Davis says that creating a new level of experience will be crucial in addressing the needs and desires of customers.
“The real commodity becomes the visceral experience when a shopper walks through the front door, because the better that feeling is, the more often people will seek it out,” Davis said.
Related reading: Building an Edible Future: Joost Bakker
To achieve this, Frasers are using “The Living Building Challenge” in order to create the world's most sustainable shopping centre.
The Living Future Institute created the challenge, which is described as the “world’s most rigorous performance standard for buildings” – only 15 buildings internationally have achieved full certification and Burwood Brickworks aims to be the first retail development to do so.
The LBC requires that projects must deliver 20 per cent of site area as urban agriculture.
Related reading: Frasers Acquires Infill Land Site for Masterplan
Davis reached out to Bakker in early 2016 because of his reputation as a global pioneer when it comes to combining zero waste with organic food growing.
“After a glass of unpasteurised milk and a home-grown vegetable soup to workshop ideas at his amazing house in Monbulk, I was sold.
“Joost, who has worked as a creative consultant on the project, has brought an incredible wealth of knowledge and experience through his own personal ventures and brings a creative yet remarkably simplistic response to the challenges of the accreditation we are chasing.”
While the design encompasses a strong sustainability focus Davis says the biophilic nature of the design – which aims to connect people to the environment – also has its financial benefits for retailers.
“In a shopping centre, we believe this helps de-stress and leads to shopping at a slower pace. For our retailers, this translates to an increase in dwell time and resultant spend.”
Related reading: Frasers Buys Land in Braeside to Develop Industrial Estate
The Urban Developer spoke with a very excited Bakker, who, after more than 15 years of “talking ideas” with developers is eager to see the project come to life.
“Developers are brilliant at ‘talking’ about ideas like this (trust me I’ve spoken to many!) and rarely does an idea get executed. It’s so frustrating and a massive time waster!” Bakker said.
Despite his frustration, Bakker sees Frasers stepping up to the challenge as a monumental move towards re-thinking how shopping centres “behave” and operate.
He identifies one of the biggest problems we face as a society is the lack of nutrition in food which the Burwood Brickworks project stands to address.
“Today our food no longer nourishes us and it’s simply because we have exhausted our soils or another way to think about it is that we’ve mined the world’s top soils.
“We have been able to hide this because of the invention of synthetic fertiliser. This has given us higher yields in terms of kilos but at a massive compromise in nutrition.
“I believe the only solution to this problem is to reintegrate the ‘waste’ we generate and use it to grow food.
“I also think the most efficient and economical way to do this is to do it where we generate the waste and that’s where we live.” Bakker said.
Related reading: Frasers Property Achieves Carbon Neutral Status
Frasers acquired the Burwood East site in 2014 and the shopping centre will form part of a much larger mixed-use development – which will include residential buildings – on the 20.5 hectare former Burwood Brickworks site in Melbourne’s east.
Frasers are currently running an expressions of interest campaign to secure a tenant that will be responsible for delivering the design, construction and operation of the urban farm.
The EOI period ends 28 March 2018 with construction expected to commence mid-year.
At The Harvard Law Forum: Karen Washington on Urban Farming and Food Justice
At The Harvard Law Forum: Karen Washington on Urban Farming and Food Justice
Posted by Pete Davis on March 3, 2018 in Forum
Karen Washington is a New York City community activist, community gardener and board member of the New York Botanical Gardens.
She has worked with Bronx neighborhoods to turn empty lots into community gardens, helped launched a City Farms Market, is a member of the La Familia Verde Garden Coalition, is a Just Food board member, is a board member and former president of the New York City Community Garden Coalition and is the co-founded Black Urban Growers (BUGS). She is also the co-creator of Rise & Root Farm, a cooperatively run farm in the black dirt region of Orange County, New York.
On February 22, 2018, she came to Harvard Law School to share her insights and experience on what lawyers can do to promote urban farming and food justice.
A Des Moines Couple's Urban Farm Runs Into An Expensive Roadblock of Polk County Regulations
A Des Moines Couple's Urban Farm Runs Into An Expensive Roadblock of Polk County Regulations
Lee Rood, lrood@dmreg.com
March 13, 2018
Eric and Jenny Quiner, owners of Dogpatch Urban Gardens have been told by the county that their farm stand must meet commercial building requirements which means $75,000 worth of changes to their 2-year-old business. Kelsey Kremer/The Register
(Photo: Kelsey Kremer/The Register )
Spring planting is underway inside the greenhouse at Dogpatch Urban Gardens, marking what should be the most hopeful time of year for owners of Des Moines' only urban farm.
But when Eric and Jenny Quiner talks about all the changes they have to make this year on their acre lot on Meredith Drive to stay in business, the strain is palpable.
"The stress has almost been the biggest hardship in all of this,” Eric Quiner said, his voice quivering.
A March 19 meeting may tip the scale on whether the couple’s two-year-old business ultimately succeeds or fails. That's when Polk County’s Board of Adjustments will weigh in after planning and development staffers determined the Quiners’ new building amounts to a commercial storefront, not just a farm stand.
With that change comes a mix of building, landscaping, health and safety requirements for the Quiners that they say have necessitated spending about $75,000 more than expected.
2018 PEOPLE TO WATCH: Urban farmers hope to change Des Moines foodscape
The Quiners’ larger-than-a-pumpkin patch business is unique to Des Moines, but their struggle is not.
As bootstrap urban farm businesses and nonprofits have sprouted up around the country in urban centers, some have run afoul of local requirements guiding everything from food sales to water runoff to building codes.
Some cities and counties in recent years have enacted urban farming ordinances or zoning codes because the operations don’t neatly fit into regulations for residential, commercial or agricultural land.
Boise, Idaho, Denver and Kansas City, Mo., have made urban farming a permitted land use. As yet, Des Moines and Polk County have not.
Photos: Urban Garden showing local food impact in the Dogpatch
New territory, lots of questions
The Quiners feel they were open and thorough, asking questions about what they could do with the land when they first explored buying a house (now rented as an Airbnb) and property in an unincorporated part of Polk County in 2015.
That fall, Jenny sent an email to Bret VandeLune, planning and development services manager for Polk County public works, saying she and her husband wanted to grow food, sell on site, distribute to local restaurants, participate in farmers markets and start a CSA down the road.
In the spring of 2016, county building inspectors approved the couple’s plans to build a pole barn on the site to wash, sell and display Dogpatch produce.
In August, the couple asked if they would need a public restroom if they also decided to sell prepackaged meat out of that building.
VandeLune said they did not, as long as they still met requirements for a farm stand, which primarily meant that at least 50 percent of the products sold had to be grown on site and that the business did not stay open more than half the year.
“For a farm stand, selling produce and other products we will not require a public restroom,” VandeLune wrote. “Adding the sales of prepacked pork would not change that requirement, as long as the farm stand requirements are being met.”
VandeLune's email did not address the on-site pole barn, where neighbors came to buy produce.
The county's demands grew, however, after the couple applied for a conditional-use permit that would allow them to have a sign and hold special events (such as weddings) at the farm.
(A 2010 agricultural tourism ordinance allows people living in residential districts to sell vegetables and hold special events.)
Eric Quiner said they were required to hire an engineer to do a professional site plan, at a cost of about $13,000.
After that plan was completed, planning and development staffers realized the business was more than a typical Iowa farm stand.
After that, they say, the Quiners were told they would have to add restrooms and paving and parking to comply with the Americans With Disabilities Act.
They also were told they’d have to add a septic system and fencing and plant dozens of trees when their produce needs as much sun as possible.
The Quiners also had to agree to construct a berm in accordance with a flood plan for the area, although they’d already spent $7,500 adding drainage tile to mitigate the threat of their crops flooding. The couple plans to add a holding tank to capture rainwater for food production.
Jenny Quiner, of Des Moines and owner of Dogpatch Urban Gardens, prepares lettuce plants to be planted in her high tunnel greenhouse on Thursday, March 8, 2018, in Des Moines. (Photo: Kelsey Kremer/The Register )
A plea for help
The unplanned costs and changes forced the Quiners to take out a second mortgage and appeal for help from supporters with a Kickstarter campaign.
Thus far, supporters have invested more than $21,000 to help them succeed.
Still, Eric and Jenny say the stress of having their infrastructure costs double has weighed heavily on them. It's even strained their marriage.
“If we’d have known, we maybe wouldn’t have done this,” said Eric, a Realtor who works in the Beaverdale branch of Iowa Realty. “We don’t have the money.”
VandeLune said the county’s position changed because the couple built a commercial storefront on the property, which comes with specific requirements on how it is finished.
“If all they were doing is growing and selling vegetables, this wouldn’t be a problem,” he said. “They were clear they were building a building. But they weren’t clear they were building a commercial storefront.”
When the couple’s conditional-use permit was approved in March 2017, the Quiners agreed to make the changes necessary, VanderLune said.
“We’ve been working with them,” he said. “We haven’t done any enforcement."
More potentially costly decisions
On March 19, the county’s Board of Adjustments will decide whether to grant the Quiners a series of variances to keep a conditional-use permit.
The variances would allow them to forego some tree planting on the property, skip paving their driveway, increase their height of a fence to keep out deer and bypass setback requirements for the new farm-stand building.
Small-scale growing operations are not new to Polk County. But the Quiners are planning much more on their site. And they are cleared to have as many as 120 people at their special events.
“There’s got to be accommodations for parking so they are safe for the public,” VandeLune said.
In the two years, the Quiners have been in operation, they've gained considerable support from neighbors and restaurants, as well as positive press for their efforts to build community and educate the public.
The couple said revenues grew and are trending the right direction.
The Quiners are hoping all that support will move the Board of Adjustments to work with them as they strive to make their operation economically viable.
Urban farms are not easy to maintain as for-profit businesses. One recent study by a New York University professor found two-thirds of 370 self-identified urban farmers were failing to make a living from farming.
Supervisor Angela Connolly, who lives near the farm at 5085 Meredith, said she believes the Board of Adjustment is poised to approve most of the couple's requests.
"I buy my veggies there, and I think the concept's great," Connolly said. "But what they are doing is not typical. Their business model just kind of grew. And the county still has to assure it's accessible and safe. It's a unique situation."
Lee Rood's Reader's Watchdog column helps Iowans get answers and accountability from public officials, the justice system, businesses and nonprofits. Contact her at lrood@dmreg.com, 515-284-8549, on Twitter @leerood, or at facebook.com/readerswatchdog.
Unilever Grows U.S. Urban Farming Commitment With New Mission-Based Brand
Unilever Grows U.S. Urban Farming Commitment With New Mission-Based Brand
Growing Roots, an organic, plant-based food brand, will donate half of all profits to support Unilever's urban farming partnerships
NEWS PROVIDED BY Unilever United States, Inc.
Mar 06, 2018
ENGLEWOOD CLIFFS, N.J., March 6, 2018, /PRNewswire/ -- Unilever announced today the expansion of its U.S. urban farming efforts with the launch of Growing Roots, a new organic, plant-based food brand that will support urban farming with every purchase. The brand builds on Unilever's multiyear commitment to urban farming initiatives, which establishes and funds partnerships to unlock access to fresh foods and nutrition education in communities across the country.
Green City Force Corps Member at Wagner Farm (Photo Credit: Unilever)
"What's so special about Growing Roots is that it started as a social mission that our employees were passionate about, borne from the belief that everyone should have access to affordable, nutritious food," said Matthew McCarthy, Vice President of Foods, Unilever North America. "Seeing the transformational impact urban farms have in communities, we created a brand from the ground up to help fulfill and extend that mission."
Partnership at Howard Farm (Photo Credit: Unilever)
In 2015, Unilever joined an innovative, public-private partnership with the city of New York's Building Healthy Communities initiative and Green City Force to create six urban farms in New York, which together have already generated approximately 32,000 pounds of organic produce. In addition to the company providing funds, Unilever employees volunteer thousands of hours each year to these efforts. Based on the program's successful community impact in New York, Unilever has extended outreach to Los Angeles, Houston, Miami and Chicago as well. By directing 50 percent of its profits to urban farming initiatives, the Growing Roots brand allows Unilever to build a sustainable model for long-term community impact.
Growing Roots Snack Bites and Clusters (Photo Credit: Unilever)
"Green City Force is pleased to be part of a New York City initiative that places young people from public housing communities at the forefront of community engagement and access to fresh produce and vibrant open spaces," said Lisbeth Shepherd, Founder and Executive Director of Green City Force. "We value Unilever's partnership in this work in New York and are grateful for their continued support of urban farming."
Marking Unilever's entry to the U.S. organic snack category, the Growing Roots product line includes snack bites and clusters made from organic ingredients like coconut, corn, and seeds. Growing Roots snacks feature simple, plant-based ingredients with delicious, bold flavors in uniquely sweet and savory combinations:
- Cocoa Chipotle: The richness of cocoa gets a kick from chipotle peppers for a deeply flavorful snack experience.
- Pineapple Coconut Rum: Real pineapple, a splash of rum and a dash of cinnamon come together to bring you a sweet and tangy tropical taste.
- Maple Bourbon: Blended with a touch of real maple syrup and a dash of nutmeg for a lightly sweet and warming crunchy snack.
- Coconut Curry: A balance of coconut with turmeric and lemongrass to create a savory, spicy flavor.
Growing Roots snack bites and clusters are available in ShopRite stores in the Northeast beginning March 2018, retailing for $3.99 per 4-oz. pack. Unilever will be expanding to nationwide distribution with more retailers throughout 2018, including Amazon Fresh and Amazon.com.
The new line is USDA-certified organic, certified gluten-free, certified vegan and an excellent source of ALA Omega-3 (contains 480-640mg of ALA per 28g serving which is 30-40 percent of the 1.6g Daily Value for ALA).
Growing Roots will make its trade show debut this month at Natural Products Expo West, Booth N134, March 7-11. For more information, visit www.growingrootsfoods.com. Growing Roots is on Instagram and Facebook @growingrootsfoods.
About Unilever United States, Inc.
Unilever is one of the world's leading suppliers of Personal Care, Food & Refreshment and Home Care products with sales in over 190 countries and reaching 2.5 billion consumers a day. In the United States, the portfolio includes brand icons such as Axe, Ben & Jerry's, Breyers, Caress, Country Crock, Degree, Dollar Shave Club, Dove, Good Humor, Hellmann's, I Can't Believe It's Not Butter!, Klondike, Knorr, Lever 2000, Lipton, Love Beauty and Planet, Magnum, Nexxus, Noxzema, Pond's, Popsicle, Promise, Pure Leaf, Q-tips, Schmidt's Naturals, Seventh Generation, Simple, Sir Kensington's, St. Ives, Suave, Sundial Brands, Talenti Gelato & Sorbetto, TAZO, TIGI, TONI&GUY, TRESemmé and Vaseline. All of the preceding brand names are trademarks or registered trademarks of the Unilever Group of Companies.
Unilever employs approximately 8,000 people in the United States – generating more than $9 billion in sales in 2017.
Unilever's Sustainable Living Plan underpins the company's strategy and commits to:
- Helping more than a billion people take action to improve their health and well-being by 2020.
- Halving the environmental impact of our products by 2030.
- Enhancing the livelihoods of millions of people by 2020.
The USLP creates value by driving growth and trust, eliminating costs and reducing risks. Globally, the company's sustainable living brands are growing 50% faster than the rest of the business and delivered more than 60% of the company's growth in 2016.
For more information on Unilever U.S., its brand's visit and the USLP visit: www.unileverusa.com
Contact:
Mallory Zuckerman, Edible
Mallory.Zuckerman@edible-inc.com
202-300-2908
SOURCE Unilever United States, Inc.
Related Links
Missouri: Urban Agriculture — Best Practices and Possibilities
Missouri: Urban Agriculture - Best Practices And Possibilities
Linked by Michael Levenston
Report developed for the Urban Sustainability Directors in the cities of Columbia, Kansas City and St. Louis, Missouri, through the financial assistance of the Urban Sustainability Directors Network
By Mary K. Hendrickson and Mark Porth
Division of Applied Social Sciences
Univ of Missouri Extension
June 2012
At the request of the cities of Kansas City, Columbia and St. Louis, we seek to provide research-based guidance that can help these cities to realize the potential of regional food systems as an entrepreneurial strategy for urban economic development, paying special attention to urban agriculture. In particular, these cities were interested in seeing how regional food systems can be developed to bring together the interests of municipalities, advocates, and practitioners.
Our specific objective was to assess and compile best practices and policies to promote urban agriculture, working with members of the Urban Sustainability Directors Network (USDN) and urban agriculture advocates and practitioners in the cities of Kansas City, Columbia and St. Louis.
This report joins several other major guides and assessments that have been published recently in the constantly changing world of urban agriculture. The results of this project are presented in several different formats. First, this written report helps to define and describe urban agriculture and local food system efforts within Missouri’s metropolitan areas and other cities across the nation. A report is a static document that is good only at the time of writing.
Thus, a second output of this project is a dedicated web page created within University of Missouri Extension’s website to provide information and resources on urban agriculture as part of larger food system efforts. The third output, a searchable database housed on the website, contains links to existing resources that cities can use to support and encourage urban agriculture and local food system strategies.
This database also affords access to existing ordinances concerning urban agriculture as well as educational and promotional efforts made by cities to help advocates and practitioners of urban agriculture.
This database is meant to be a dynamic tool that can help cities share information and resources with each other and the general public in the rapidly emerging eld of urban agriculture.
Read The Report Here
This Indoor Farm Is Trying To Revolutionize The Growing Process In Sweden
This Indoor Farm Is Trying To Revolutionize The Growing Process In Sweden
BY AIMEE LUTKIN
March 5, 2018
Owe Pettersson worked in insurance and finances for decades before becoming the chief executive at Plantagon, an indoor farm that recently opened in Sweden. Pettersson told The Huffington Post that indoor farming is the next big thing, and Plantagon is at the forefront, saying, "This will be one of the most advanced food factories located in a city that we have today."
Indoor farming has become far more popular in recent years, as technology has become even more precise, allowing large amounts of greens and fresh produce to be produced in urban environments with both minimal space and far smaller amounts of water than on a traditional farm. For example, it can take as many as 34 gallons to produce a head of lettuce, but Plantagon claims they can produce their crops at about .25 gallon for the equivalent weight in crops.
Plantagon is building on the newish concept of "agritechture," meaning combining agriculture, technology, and architecture so that the process of growing food is more seamlessly integrated into people's lives. It's also seen as a way to limit travel time for food and the carbon footprint of preserving and transporting organic materials.
An issue their model has attacked is the waste of heat energy produced by the LED lights the plants are exposed to for photosynthesis. The plants only use about one percent of the light produced by the bulbs, and the rest of the energy generally escapes as heat. Plantagon is capturing 70 percent of this heat and using it to warm the building above the 65,000 square foot farm basement. Oxygen produced by the crops is also pumped into the building's air conditioning system.
Pettersson explained that these sorts of circulating systems help make having a Plantagon system in the basement an exciting prospect to landlords. “This is the basic way we get interest from real estate developers to rent out their basements or other spaces to us,” he said.
And that's pretty important, because the most prohibitive thing for indoor farming is the expense of installation. “Most projects are difficult to make economically viable because they tend to focus only on the technology and the growing. You also need to find a business model that works," he added.
Indoor farming is an exciting concept, but a controversial one. Some critics suggest that powering a hydroponic system is far more wasteful than using the sun's energy to grow plants outdoors—though Plantagon is solar powered. Other data suggests it would be difficult to really feed a city from an indoor system, which has limitations on the size and variety of crops in limited space. But it is an intriguing experiment that has had some success in arenas that have a high demand for freshness and variety, especially in restaurants.
This Hydroponic Farm Is Speeding Up NYC's Farm-To-Table Process
Hydroponic farming is becoming an increasingly popular option in cities with a high demand for fresh produce. Farm One is one such system that is providing their restaurant clientele with microgreens, herbs, and edible flowers grown right in Manhattan, Inhabitat reports.
This Hydroponic Farm Is Speeding Up NYC's Farm-To-Table Process
BY AIMEE LUTKIN
March 1, 2018
Hydroponic farming is becoming an increasingly popular option in cities with a high demand for fresh produce. Farm One is one such system that is providing their restaurant clientele with microgreens, herbs, and edible flowers grown right in Manhattan, Inhabitat reports. They claim they can reach 90 percent of their buyers by bike within 30 minutes. That's fresh.
Farm One is part of the Institute of Culinary Education, so it's a place for learning chefs as well—which is also a great way to build up a network of people who know about and support it. The hydroponic farm was built in April of 2016, with 150 different varieties of crops on rotation.
The space was developed by urban agriculture firm Agritecture, whose managing director Henry Gordon-Smith told Green Matters in an email that it's a really special place that is building a roadmap for future hydroponic growing technology.
"Farm One isn't like other vertical farms: for one, they grow the most unique and rare crops on demand for the most curious and sophisticated chefs. Additionally, each farm is optimized to match the urban site they set up an operation in, embracing the positive attributes of the space to the demands of their customers. Farm One is leading the way in the production of crops that have often never been grown in vertical farms to inspire chefs, cities, and customers to ignite their senses with the future of local agriculture," wrote Gordon-Smith.
The indoor farm is lit by LEDs, and the interior is monitored for conditions that are primed to grow greens. They use zero pesticides or herbicides, and the hydroponic system requires 95 percent less water than in a traditional garden. The main waste product from the enterprise is plant matter, which is composted.
Farm One is also committed to variety. They say on their website that they "scour the world" for "rare seeds" in an effort to promote biodiversity. It also doesn't hurt that the growers are themselves chefs, which means an interest in variety and flavor for its own sake. The farm is growing, but remains committed to staying local and minimizing travel time for their produce. If you can grow lettuce in the basement, you never need to eat a wilted leaf again.
Unilever Launches Brand To Support Urban Farming
03/07/2018
Unilever Launches Brand To Support Urban Farming
Source: Specialty Food News
Unilever has launched Growing Roots, an organic, plant-based food brand that will support urban farming. The brand will direct 50 percent of its profits to urban farming initiatives. The product line includes snack bites and clusters made from organic ingredients like coconut, corn, and seeds. Flavors include Cocoa Chipotle, Pineapple Coconut Rum, Maple Bourbon, and Coconut Curry.
The new brand builds on Unilever's multi-year commitment to urban farming initiatives. In 2015, Unilever joined a public-private partnership with New York's Building Healthy Communities initiative and Green City Force to create six urban farms in New York. Based on the program's success in the city, Unilever extended outreach to Los Angeles, Houston, Miami, and Chicago.
"Growing Roots is USLP in action: coupling the USLP with the DRT to improve lives in low-income neighborhoods."
Alfie Vivian - Marketing VP
Growing Roots – Improving Lives and Driving Sales in urban Low-Income Neighborhoods Across The U.S.
In a nutshell
Growing Roots, in partnerships with the local government and non-profit organizations that focus on common goals, is making a positive impact in urban low-income neighborhoods across the U.S. by improving access to fresh food and providing education on how to cook with it.
What’s the issue?
Low income communities in American cities are often “food swamps”, which means that while there are some grocery stores that carry fresh produce, there are far more fast food restaurants and bodegas that don’t offer fresh and nutritious options. This poor access to fresh food and lack of education on how to cook with it can contribute to worsening health conditions. For example, compared with the Upper East Side, East Harlem, a low-income neighborhood a short drive away, has 3 times more cases of diabetes and obesity.
What’s the story?
In New York, Unilever is directly funding one of the 6 urban farms built in public housing developments across the city (Wagner Houses Farm). Each farm will produce an annual average of 1 ton of produce that will be provided free of cost to the public housing residents to inspire cooking at home. Throughout the year, we are teaching the local residents how to cook with these fresh ingredients by leading cooking classes that feature Unilever products and demonstrating our recipes at food festivals and other nutritional events.
Since piloting the project in New York City last year, we have expanded our work to make an impact in three other cities – Miami, LA, and Houston. In each of these cities, we have partnered with Whole Kids Foundation to build 5 school gardens in low-income neighborhoods to bring under-served kids an edible garden space to learn about how fresh food grows and tastes. We have also partnered with the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture to train high school teachers on a curriculum to inspire their students to become “food citizens”, individuals who understand that their food choices have a meaningful impact on themselves, the environment, and their community. Watch the video.
What are the outcomes and impact?
Growing Roots made a positive impact by raising awareness of and access to sustainable nutrition. In face-to-face interviews with over 100 residents at the Wagner Houses, they reported to cook more frequently at home and are more aware of the importance of eating fruits and vegetables every day.
Growing Roots also had an overwhelmingly positive impact on Unilever and the brands involved in the program.
• There was a significant improvement in brand awareness and usage for Hellmann’s, Knorr Sides, and Knorr Bouillon.
• Frequency of consuming spreads, mayonnaise, and bouillon all grew significantly.
• Almost 60% of the residents have seen our in-store displays.
What are the future plans?
Throughout the year, we will reach millions of consumers through event marketing and a radio campaign in all four cities to spread the word about sustainable nutrition. With the Perfect City program, we are leveraging the Growing Roots proposition as a sell-in tool for the Dedicated Retail Team to increase our footprint in independent supermarkets. We have designed and will execute a whole series of In-Store Visibility to communicate our key message to the low-income shoppers at the independent retailers. We have also unlocked unique partnerships with key regional retailers that will allow us to execute custom shopper marketing programs to engage shoppers throughout their consumer journey.
In the New York metro area, we’ve built a program at ShopRite that include a 6-month long custom pallet placement, a digital quiz that let’s shoppers enter a sweepstake to win free produce, monthly ads on grocery and produce pages, and cooking demonstrations with retail dietitians. In addition to reaching shoppers at pre-shop and in store, Wakefern has committed a $100K donation to support the Bay View Houses urban farm in Brooklyn. Our partnership with Wakefern is a perfect example of the work we’re doing to improving the access of fresh food for low-income communities and how we are extending our Growing Roots proposition to higher income shoppers in the traditional retail channel.
In Summary
“It’s probably one of the most exciting programs that we have in our hands now because it’s literally the USLP in action. We are coupling what we’re doing with the USLP with the Direct Retail Team to execute this on a store-by-store level, creating value for the communities where we will be activating the program and creating value for the brands in the Unilever business.” – Alfie Vivian
To learn more, please contact: Tracy Shepard-Rashkin, Tracy.Shepard-Rashkin@unilever.com
Categories: Industry Operations; Suppliers
Tags: organic
Urban Agriculture Could Provide Billions in Ecosystem Services
More than half of the world’s population lives in cities, a figure that the United Nations expects to increase to 67% by 2050
Urban Agriculture Could Provide Billions in Ecosystem Services
Expanding agriculture efforts in cities could improve food security, ecosystem health, and more.
SOURCE: Earth's Future
Urban agriculture in Cleveland, Ohio. Credit: USDA
By Sarah Witman March 2, 2018
Rooftop gardens. Seedlings sprouting on windowsills. The clucking of chickens in a metropolitan backyard. These and more are small harbingers of the expansion of urban agriculture around the world.
More than half of the world’s population lives in cities, a figure that the United Nations expects to increase to 67% by 2050—yet urbanized land makes up just 1% of the Earth’s surface. Because of this, urban planners are working to make cities more resilient, habitable, and adaptable to change.
In a new paper, Clinton et al. have developed a framework to estimate the environmental benefits of urban agriculture on a global scale—current and future. The team envisions a scenario in which over the next few decades, cities around the world adopt intensive efforts to expand urban agriculture.
Using Google Earth Engine, a free platform for processing global satellite data, the researchers analyzed data sets on population, urban landscapes, meteorology, terrain, and food and agriculture. They developed national estimates for the entire globe of ecosystem services provided by urban agriculture, finding that existing vegetation in urban areas provides the equivalent of about $33 billion each year.
In more specific terms, the team estimates that urban agriculture, if deployed across all available vacant land, rooftops, and building façades, could produce 100–180 million tons of food, save about 14–15 billion kilowatt hours of energy, sequester 100,000–170,000 tons of nitrogen, and offset roughly 2 trillion cubic feet of storm runoff each year.
Projected out, the researchers estimate that dramatically increasing urban agriculture efforts around the globe has the potential to positively influence food production, nitrogen fixation, energy savings, pollination, climate regulation, soil formation, and the biological control of pests, services that are worth, as a whole, as much as $160 billion.
The team’s findings show that urban agriculture has the ability to improve food security and ecosystem health on a global scale. Although its impacts vary from country to country, the results are promising. This study is a thorough look at the importance of urban agriculture, especially in the face of global climate change and unsustainable urban development practices around the world. (Earth’s Future, https://doi.org/10.1002/2017EF000536, 2018)
—Sarah Witman, Freelance Writer
Citation: Witman, S. (2018), Urban agriculture could provide billions in ecosystem services, Eos, 99, https://doi.org/10.1029/2018EO093671. Published on 02 March 2018.
© 2018. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0