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What’s next Miss? Urban farming – transforming lives through growing food
What’s next Miss? Urban farming – transforming lives through growing food
Fiona Buining, Churchill Fellow, Ainslie Urban Farm
Last year I undertook travel to the USA, Canada, the UK and the Netherlands for my Churchill Fellowship to investigate urban farm ventures that provide vocational pathways for aspiring food growers. You may wonder how I arrived at this topic.
For eight years I taught teenagers how to grow vegetables in the award-winning Merici College Kitchen Garden, Canberra, as part of the Sustainability Elective. At the end of each year students would ask me ‘What’s next Miss?’ I consistently observed this gap in the pathway for students who were inspired to pursue a future in urban food growing.
Now, as a business operator in the food industry, I have become increasingly aware of the unmet demand for locally grown fresh food. These two factors led me to apply for a Churchill Fellowship in 2020 with the vision to establish urban farm training programs in Australia.
I deliberately chose to have a one-week immersive experience at a successful, well-established urban farm training enterprise in each country. Visits and tours of small farms, a few large farms, other training enterprises, markets and relevant industries were arranged around the immersive experiences. I worked alongside trainees and farm staff, wrote comprehensive notes, took photographs and conducted interviews.
As a result of my investigation, I have identified three vocational pathways to becoming an urban farmer:
• Heart programs – paid farm training programs for people with multiple barriers to employment, which transform lives through teaching how to grow food. The employment rate of graduates is over 80% and there is a high return on investment (ROI). The farms provide an oasis and a new beginning, growing people and food.
• Farm incubators – upon completion of initial farm training, aspiring farmers with a successful business plan join the incubator program where they have affordable access to land and other support to start their own farm enterprise. Incubators hatch successful farm businesses.
• Land-based practicums at universities – land-based courses, from six months duration, on existing university farms offering practical experience and training, including working with partner farms, within a theoretical framework.
Let’s look at these programs in more detail.
Heart programs
Growing Home in Englewood, Chicago, stole my heart. It’s an organic farm on three acres in one of the poorest neighbourhoods in Chicago. It provides a paid 12-week training program with true wrap-around support for people with multiple barriers to employment. Eighty-five per cent of the participants have experienced incarceration. Here I saw people learn how to grow food, study environmental literacy and complete an intense self-development program. The employment rate of over 80% is evidence of the effectiveness of this life-changing program, which uses food growing as the vehicle for personal transformation. The Director of Workforce Development at Growing Home said, ‘There’s something about growing a plant from seed to harvest, all the way, following something from its origin to market, that’s more powerful than any other program I’ve worked in.’
I call the first category of farm training the heart programs because they genuinely transform lives through teaching people how to grow food. At Growing Home they explained, ‘We grow food but our intention is to grow opportunities for people to transform their lives.’ It was moving to see the power of teaching people to grow food radically alter the course of their lives. These programs cater for people with multiple barriers to employment who have fallen through the cracks into homelessness, imprisonment, drug addiction and poverty. The farm provides an oasis and a new beginning. It was notable that in my week at Growing Home there was no mention of a person’s past – evidence of a genuine new beginning.
Incubators
A fantastic example of the combination of a heart program and incubator is operated by Windy City Harvest (WCH) under the auspices of the Chicago Botanic Gardens. I’ll share more about this amazing program later. For the moment though, meet two farmers from the Legends Incubator Farm. I arrived at the 2-acre farm on a Saturday morning. As is usual on Chicago urban farms, the plants were growing in 2 feet of compost and soil formed into beds over concrete. There were nine farmers incubating at this farm on plots ranging in size from an eighth to a quarter of an acre.
I met Deshawn, who said, ‘I have found my calling.’ He explained, ‘The greatest privilege is that I am able to employ two people who are passionate about changing the food system.’ Deshawn explained that he had converted his apartment to a propagation space. A clear sign of success is that he was about to take out a lease on a 20-acre block in Chicago Heights to start his own farm with another Legends farmer. Casey, a fellow incubator farmer, was equally inspired, saying to me, ‘You learn more than just farming, you learn life skills, you get confidence. There’s a future in urban farming, there’s got to be.’
Just think about the word incubator for a moment. What comes to mind is a warm, cosy, protected environment that allows eggs to hatch. A farm incubator is a supportive environment that provides the conditions for a new farmer to start their own farm business safely and successfully. It’s a business hatching service.
Upon completion of initial farm training, trainees who want to continue farming are supported to write a business plan, which forms part of their application to join a farm incubator program. The incubator program provides affordable access to land on which the aspiring farmer can start their own farming business.
I visited five farm incubators where aspiring farmers are supported to start the journey of becoming a farmer. Viva Farms describes the support as five pillars: training, access to land, shared equipment and infrastructure, marketing and capital.
‘Farming is a culture of its own,’ explained Diane on Viva Farms Skagit Valley. The sense of community that is created between farmers on incubators is important, ameliorating the sense of isolation that can happen in farming where many of the activities are solitary. The farmers
grow together as a cohort and, as Micah at Viva King County explained, the evidence is that folks who are successful at farming have a supportive community around them.
The details vary between programs, however, the fundamental element of an incubator is the provision of land and mentoring on the incubator site. Therefore, the farm incubator overcomes two obstacles to becoming a farmer: skills and access to land.
Practicums
Land-based farm training courses at existing educational institutions have many advantages including existing facilities, established marketing and advertising to attract students, research opportunities, secure funding, relationships with partner farms and nurturing communities of learners.
In this category I visited the University of Vermont (UVM) Catamount organic farm in South Burlington, USA; The University of British Columbia (UBC) organic farm in Vancouver, Canada; and The Warmonderhof Biodynamic farm training school in Dronten, the Netherlands. What they all had in common was a mostly young, diverse and vibrant student community learning how to be farmers, together.
Let’s take a close look at one of these programs.
The UVM offers a 6-month land-based farmer training program. The course involves two mornings of theory classes, held in a marquee in the field, three days at the certified organic UVM farm and one day working on partner training farms. No farming experience is required and the diverse backgrounds of the students lead to rich questions.
After one month of orientation and community building the students are divided into small groups to complete a series of one-month rotations − tractor, harvesting, irrigation and perennials. In the last week of the third and fourth rotation the students make the decisions, direct themselves and run the farm.
Each week starts with a farm walk during which students and staff identify and discuss what needs to be done. Observations on the farm walk provide the basis for the work plan for the week.
As I’ve seen at all training farms, it’s a balancing act between education and production. Having trainees work in a production system inevitably results in mistakes, such as immature produce being harvested and unfinished tasks. This is a challenge. Staff call students out on mistakes but not in a shameful way. Mistakes yield teachable moments. With this in mind, at UVM all decisions are made through an education lens but in the context of production because the work needs to be meaningful. The produce is sold through a Community Supported Agriculture box scheme.
On our farm walk I met Ava, a graduate of the program and now on staff. Of her training, Ava said, ‘I loved all of it. It was a transformational experience coming here for six months. It was the first time I felt deeply in relationship with place.’
At UVM all decisions are made through an education lens but in the context of production because the work needs to be meaningful.
Ava shared the importance of being validated by finding others who wanted to do the same thing as herself, which is why ‘the group piece of the puzzle’ at UVM ‘was so important.’ It was the first time she’d been in a community with folks who wanted to do the same thing.
A combined approach
Return now to the Chicago Botanic Gardens, located in a leafy, green affluent suburb in the north of Chicago. It runs a gold-standard urban farm training program called Windy City Harvest operating across 15 urban farms in areas of need in the city of Chicago.
The headquarters is Farm on Ogden, a 1-acre block in a neighbourhood with 50% unemployment and very little available fresh food. The recently completed USD3 million bespoke facility is a food hub. It houses a 60,000-gallon aquaponics system growing lettuces (with koi and tilapia fish to eat and to produce natural fertiliser), a greenhouse producing 160,000 seedlings per year, indoor teaching space, state-of-the-art wash and pack room, three cool rooms, commercial kitchen, loading dock, grocery shop and outdoor teaching and production garden.
Windy City Harvest offers a continuum of paid training programs. The Youth program pays people aged between 15 and 18 to work on the Youth Farm on Saturdays and during school holidays, learning how to grow vegetables as well as environmental, emotional and social literacy.
Corp is a paid 13-week training program for people who have been involved in the criminal justice system or war veterans. Rodeo Farm, across the road from a large prison, is the serious production farm where Corp participants work. Graduates from Youth and Corp are eligible for the paid apprenticeship program. The employment rate for participants completing Corp is 70% and for the apprenticeship program it’s 90%. After this, participants can apply to join the incubator program where new farmers are supported to operate their own farm business on an eighth or a quarter of an acre at the Legends Incubator Farm. Windy City Harvest trains over 140 people per year through these programs. To date they have incubated 28 businesses.
There are multiple avenues for the 65,000 kg of food produced per year from their 15 farms including markets, wholesalers, the Farm on Ogden shop and Veggie Rx. Veggie Rx is a vegetable prescription program designed to address food insecurity and diet-related illnesses through increasing the intake of fresh produce. Health care providers prescribe fresh food vouchers, which can be redeemed at enterprises such as Windy City Harvest and Growing Home. Windy City distributes over 16,000 Veggie Rx boxes to over 2,000 clients each year.
Windy City Harvest also run allotment gardens for 120 Chicago Housing Authority and neighbourhood residents at five sites in Chicago. The residents, mentored by Windy City Harvest staff, garden in raised beds, with safe soil, water, seeds, and transplants to grow fresh produce and flowers. The program is coordinated through monthly Garden Clubs, bringing residents together to practice and swap techniques, share recipes, and grow food for their families and neighbours.
Astonishingly, Windy City Harvest encompasses:
• 15 urban farms• 65,000 kg fresh produce per year
• 16,000 Veggie Rx boxes to over 2,000 clients
• paid training of 140 youth and adults
• incubation of 28 businesses
• 70% employment rate from Youth and Corp
• 90% employment rate from apprenticeships.
So how is all this incredible work funded?
The annual operating budget for Windy City Harvest is USD4.4 million. Of this 63% is for personnel, including 70 paid internship and trainee positions. There are 30 staff of whom 70% are graduates of Windy City Harvest programs.
A combination of government grants, foundations, donors, and revenue from sales provides the funds for Windy City Harvest to operate. Every organisation I visited had a position devoted to obtaining grants and working with foundations and donors to secure funds. Any position that required working with volunteers had a paid time allowance for this activity.
Successful enterprises such as Windy City are engaged in multiple partnerships, which increase access to funding and allow the scope and reach of their programs to increase over time. The land is often not owned but leased in generous arrangements with landholders.
What is the value of these programs?
Queens University, Ontario, has been independently measuring the ROI at Sole Foods (SF) Street Farms in Vancouver since 2013. This 3-acre urban farm in the middle of Vancouver produces up to 30 tonnes of fresh food per year, which provides 30-50% of the operating budget. I worked here for one week alongside the staff who have lived experience of homelessness, addiction and mental illness − another oasis of calm and love transforming lives through growing good food.
The Queens University report explains: ‘The SROI (social return on investment) ratio is an internationally recognised method for calculating social impact and states that for every CAD1 of resources used in SF’s operations, our work creates CAD1.91 worth of social and environmental impact in the city of Vancouver.’ Furthermore, every dollar spent on wages generates CAD5.77 worth of cumulative social benefits. The impact created for every CAD1 of produce sold was CAD3.45. The impact created for every CAD1 received from funders was CAD2.88. The impact created for every one acre of land leased was CAD305,152. Specific benefits were measured including the amount of CO2 sequestered in the orchard and the amount of CO2 emissions avoided due to decreased transportation of food.
The Queens University study revealed that 100% of SF farmhands reported:
• an increase in general job skills
• an increase in agricultural job skills
• accessing the employment resources that SF provides
• an increase in life skills
• benefiting from SF’s positive and supportive community and from SF’s peaceful work environment.
Managers reported benefits including:
• an increase in management and interpersonal skills
• an increase in their sense of life purpose
• increased sensitivity to social justice issues
• increased confidence in their professional, emotional and relational capacity.
Volunteers reported benefits including:
• an increase in general job skills
• an increase in agricultural job skills
• an increase in culinary skills
• benefiting from SF’s positive and supportive community
• benefiting mentally from SF’s peaceful work environment
• an increased awareness of the struggles/life circumstances of vulnerable groups.
A key point is to run paid programs. There is no reason not to pay people who grow our food. Paying people recognises the processes involved in growing food, placing value on the labour and skillset of a grower, as well as attributing value to the produce itself. The ROI, social and environmental benefits documented in the SF study are further evidence that investment in these programs and furthermore, in people, is financially worthwhile.
Perhaps the more pertinent question is can we afford NOT to run these programs?
Conclusion
My key finding was that farm training ventures work!
All three categories of enterprise I investigated provided strong, well-defined vocational pathways with a demonstrable ROI and high employment rates. In addition, these programs delivered on food justice, were inclusive, connected growers with the community, created a strong local food system and educated the community about the nutritional value of fresh food. There are numerous opportunities for heart programs, incubators and practicums to be established in Australia. Australia really needs these programs to build skills and capacity in individuals and communities.
Now I know the answer to that nagging question, ‘What’s next Miss?’
I’ve been so moved by the beauty and generosity of humanity − seeing lives transformed through growing food. This transformation, as they nurture life from seed to harvest, is powerful. Maybe it’s the magic of a seed coming to life. Maybe it’s the primal connection to the earth. Maybe it’s growing what nourishes us. Whatever it is, I’ve seen it change people with multiple barriers to employment, such as incarcerated people, those struggling with addiction, the homeless; privileged white people searching for meaning; schoolchildren, and people living in food deserts in our cities. Nova shared, ‘When I found life, that’s when I started to love plants.’ Most of us eat three to five meals a day. We need to restore the status of food growing and enable and empower people to do it.
Maybe it’s the magic of a seed coming to life. Maybe it’s the primal connection to the earth. Maybe it’s growing what nourishes us.
About Fiona Buining
As the result of her Churchill Fellowship findings Fiona has a vision to establish an Urban Farm Incubator with a productive farm at the hub, offering a continuum of training in urban farming including apprenticeships. Training programs will target people with multiple barriers to employment, school students and aspiring farmers. Graduates from the programs will be eligible to apply to join the incubator program where they will be supported to start their own urban farm enterprise. The Urban Farm Incubator will provide skills, labour, fresh produce, meaningful work, and connect growers to consumers. Evidence from her Fellowship is that these programs have employment rates for graduates of over 80% and offer a high ROI. The hub will be a vibrant incubator, spawning small scale urban farm businesses, and value-added enterprises contributing to food security and generating a wellbeing economy.
You can read Fiona’s Churchill Fellowship report here, https://www.churchilltrust.com.au/fellow/fiona-buining-act-2020/.
Fiona can be contacted at info@ainslieurbanfarm.com.au
