Urban Agriculture

MODELS & BEST PRACTICES

Added Value (Brooklyn, NY)
www.added-value.org
Added Value is a non-profit focused on creating a local, affordable food system in the neighborhood of Red Hook by turning vacant land into urban farms and by providing job training to local community youth (to date, more than 150 teenagers).  Working with the Governors Island Preservation and Education Corporation, Added Value helped create a three-acre urban farm on Governors Island in 2009. The farm is expected to generate $25,000 in produce its first year and more in subsequent years, with proceeds expected to fund stipends - up to 25 of them at $1400 each - for teenagers who work at Added Value's original farm in Red Hook - a community in which the average household income is only $14,000.

City Fresh (Cleveland, OH)
www.cityfresh.org/home
Initiated in the winter of 2006, the City Fresh market garden training program aims to develop a learning network focused on the promotion of urban agriculture in Cleveland and other traditional urban centers in Northeast Ohio. The market garden training program has five primary features: 1) Education and training on basic business planning and growing techniques suited to urban areas; 2) Hands-on learning through workshops at the George Jones Farm and Nature Preserve in Oberlin, Ohio; 3) Organization of youth entrepreneurship through summer employment opportunities; 4) Cultivation of a network of urban market gardeners to promote sharing of tools, equipment, knowledge, and marketing; and 5) Provision of start-up funding for urban agricultural enterprises

City Slicker Farms (Oakland, CA)
www.cityslickerfarms.org
Founded by a community activist in 2001, West Oakland's City Slicker Farm started as a half-acre vacant lot growing food at a discount for local residents. As of August 2008, the non-profit had a budget of $150,000 and consisted of five community farms - 1.28 acres - producing 6,000 pounds of food each year.  With 5 full time employees and more than 200 volunteers, the farm sells its produce at several community markets each week based on a three-tier scale according to income, with lower income residents paying what they can afford. The long-term goal of the organization is to farm nearly 77 acres in Oakland.

Cleveland Botanical Garden Green Corps (Cleveland, OH)
www.cbgarden.org/green_corps.html
Green Corps is a work/study program founded by Cleveland Botanical Garden in 1996. High school students earn as they learn, transforming vacant lots into flourishing urban farms. Green Corps students grow fruits, vegetables, and flowers -- as well as job skills, leadership, and a healthier, greener community for themselves and their neighbors. Ultimately, these young people learn to appreciate the earth's capacity for abundance and, in the process, begin to realize their own abundant potential.  

Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Food Policy Coalition (Cleveland, OH)
www.cccfoodpolicy.org
Formed in 2007, the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Food Policy Coalition strives to bring about public and private policy-based changes that foster a healthier food system. The Coalition has an unincorporated organization - an unconventional structure that allows staff and members of it five issue-based working groups to contribute their time through their capacity in one of several dozen organizations, including government agencies, nonprofits, community development corporations, businesses, neighborhood groups, and others.

The Food Project (Boston, MA)
www.thefoodproject.org
Striving to increase food security through creating sustainable, local food systems, The Food Project grows nearly a quarter-million pounds of organic food each year (a portion of which is grown on several acres throughout the Boston area), selling that food through Community Supported Agriculture crop "shares" and farmer markets, and partners with urban gardeners to help them remediate their soil. In addition, the group has two educational programs - a Summer and Year Youth Program for 90 diverse Greater Boston youth ages 14-17, which teaches life and job skills, and the BLAST (Building Local Agricultural Systems Today) program, which trains young adults ages 14 to 24 from across the country and the world to develop their skills as food systems practitioners and leaders.  The Food Project employs 25 full time staff and attracts more than 2,000 volunteers each year.

Growing Power (Milwaukee, WI)
www.growingpower.org
Founded in 1993 on the site of what was the last remaining farm within the city limits, Growing Power, Inc is a non-profit 2-acre urban farm that is located in a food desert - more than 4 miles from the nearest retail food market.  Growing Power is able to grow $5 worth of produce per square foot or more than $200,000 per acre. The organization has 40 full time staff, 40 part time staff and more than 3,000 volunteers and distributes its products to more than 50 restaurants, public school systems, corporate cafeterias, and other organizations.

Greensgrow Farm (Philadelphia, PA)
www.greensgrow.org/farm
With first year sales of only $5,000, Greensgrow Farm was founded on the site of a former galvanized steel plant in 1997. Now it is a self-sustaining, non-profit, one-acre urban farm located in the Kensington neighborhood of North Philadelphia. Growing more than 2000 pounds of fresh produce and 80 pounds of honey each year, Greensgrow has 19 farmhands and support staff and, in 2009, had projected sales of $700,000 to six restaurants, a 300-person Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), and thousands of other customers.  The farm also operates 3 off site locations, partners with 75 farms in the greater Philadelphia area, and grows more than 100 different varieties of potted nursery plants and flowers.

Hollygrove Market & Farm (New Orleans, LA)
www.hollygrovemarket.com
Started in 2008, Hollygrove Market & Farm (HM&F) is a non-profit urban agriculture-training farm and produce market located in the heart of New Orleans.  Currently, HM&F runs the city's only Community Support Agriculture program, coordinating and providing a stable market for more than 50 local - rural and urban - farms.  As of 2009, HM&F had redeveloped an acre of blighted property into community garden plots, composted several thousands pounds of unmarketable material, given more than $5,000 in edible donations, and purchased more than $168,000 in local produce.

Kansas City Center for Urban Agriculture (Kansas City, KS)
www.kccua.org
Founded in 2004, the Kansas City Center for Urban Agriculture is a non-profit organization dedicated to improving the local food system by providing technical assistance and training to urban farmers, conducting research and policy development, and by managing the Kansas City Community Farm.  Located in the Argentine neighborhood, the 2.25-acre, self-sustaining, educational urban farm produces more than 30,000 pounds of food each year with sales of more than $100,000.

Latino Farmers Cooperative of Louisiana (New Orleans, LA)
www.latinofarmerscoop.org
The Latino Farmers Cooperative of Louisiana (LFCL) is a non-profit network of farmers, gardeners, and consumers working to increase healthy food access, decrease urban blight, and address the socioeconomic issues of the Latino community in New Orleans through the development of urban farms. The LFCL runs a Farm Incubator Project, which helps start micro sustainable urban farms by providing participants in the program with a plot of land in their community garden and access to produce from farming partners in the greater New Orleans area. Currently, the LFCL works with more than fifteen Latino farmers.

Lynchburg Grows (Lynchburg, VA)
www.lynchburggrows.org
Located in the city's first industrial park, which was built in 1919, Lynchburg Grows! H.R. Schenkel Urban Farm & Environmental Education Center consists of 9 (five original) greenhouses, exceeding 70,000 sq ft, and encompasses an area of 6.5 acres, zoned heavy industrial.  With the help of 2800 volunteers, donating more than 40,000 man hours, from 2005 to 2010, Lynchburg Grows has remediated the land and has successfully completed a $150,000 capital campaign, partnering with Lynchburg College to turn one of the green houses into a aquaculture and educational center. The farm's CSA program has 150 members and, to date, has donated more than 17,000 pounds of food to a local shelter.

Mort Brooks Memorial Farm (Weaver's Way Farm) (Philadelphia, PA)
www.weaversway.coop/index.php?page=184
Established in 2000 as a memorial to a former member of the Weaver's Way Cooperative, the Mort Brooks Memorial Farm (aka Weaver's Way Farm) is a 1.25 acre urban farm administered by Weavers Way Community Programs, an arm of Weavers Way Co-op created in 2007 to run the co-op's non-profit programs, and managed by two full time staff and two full season apprentices. In 2007, with the hire of the two full time staff, the farm was on pace to earn more than $50,000 by mid-July, and was also able to expand its educational mission, bringing students from local schools to the farm.

Ohio City Farm (Cleveland, OH)
www.ohiocityfarm.com
Ohio City Farm is a six-acre urban farm co-developed by the Ohio City Near West Development Corporation, the Refugee Response, and Great Lakes Brewing Company. The goal of the Ohio City Farm is to provide healthy local food access to underserved Cleveland communities by developing a cluster of urban food and farm business incubators that will both utilize the distribution and retail opportunities of Cleveland's historic West Side Market as well as catalyze the Ohio City Market District.

Resource Center (Chicago, IL)
www.resourcecenterchicago.org
Starting in the late 1960's, Resource Center is a non-profit dedicated to revitalizing Chicago's neighborhoods through composting, urban agriculture, recycling, and other practices that are sustainable and that reuse resources. Today, Resource Center has approximately a $1.5 million annual budget, employs 25 people, and generates 95 percent of its revenue from earned income. Beginning its urban farming program in 1985, the organization entered into an agreement with the city that allows it free use of vacant land for growing food until the city seeks to develop that lot.  Since 2000, Resource Center's City Farm has been located at Division and Clybourn, with plans to create a permanent educational urban farm. The organization estimates that a one-acre farm could employ three people from the neighborhood at a salary of $20,000 - $23,000 a year.

Somerton Tanks Farm (Philadelphia, PA)
www.somertontanksfarm.org
A product of a partnership between Philadelphia's Water Department and the Institute for Innovations in Local Farming, Somerton Tanks Farm is non-profit situated in northeast Philadelphia that uses a technique called S.P.I.N. (Small Plot INtensive) farming to turn its half-acre demonstration urban farm into a profitable, self-sufficient social enterprise. Founded in 2003, by 2006, the project had grown to have gross revenues of $68,000, with expenses coming in at $20,000. Two full time farmers, an assistant in training, and several volunteers operate the farm. The farm also runs a CSA program, maintains stands at three farmers' markets and supplies produce to a restaurant and catering hall.

Southside Community Land Trust (Providence, RI)
www.southsideclt.org
Founded in 1981, Southside Community Land Trust provides resources, education, and land to community members of Greater Providence in order to help create a local regional food network that is sustainable and affordable.  Southside serves more than 8,500 people a year, has helped create nearly 30 community gardens (of which 13 are owned by the land trust) and maintains City Farm, a ¾ acre, educational urban farm in the heart of South Providence, which grew more than 1,500 lbs of food in 2009. In 2005, City Farm earned $14,000 on 1/8 acre, generating 2/3 of its operating revenue. In 2009, Southside received $600,000 in grant money ($300,000 from the USDA's 'Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food' program) to help double the capacity of their community gardens and to expand access to affordable, healthy food in Greater Providence.

Urban Roots Garden Cooperative (Buffalo, NY)
www.urbanroots.org
Founded in 2005, Urban Roots is a consumer cooperative garden center on Buffalo's West Side; its goal is to revitalize Buffalo through beautification efforts and urban renewal. Owned by more than 650 individuals, Urban Roots sells flowers, shrubs, trees and vegetables and originally grew out of planning and revitalization efforts of the West Side Community Collaborative.

Victory Programs Revision Urban Farm (Boston, MA)
www.vpi.org/Farm
Victory Programs Revision Urban Farm is a one-acre social enterprise whose primary focus is educational. With an operating budget of $135,000, the farm generates half of its operating costs in sales, employing 3 permanent staff and 5 full time interns in the summer.  Additionally, the farm trains more than 600 volunteers, and also maintains a youth job-training program and seedling co-op. It grows over 7,000 lbs of produce, distributes more than 25,000 lbs, and runs a CSA with 75 shares (12 at a reduced rate).