Business

Farm Owner Seeks to Change Food Discourse in the District

James Wright WI Staff Writer

Most District residents go to grocery stores or corner retail outlets to buy their food but Gail Taylor, the owner of Three Part Harmony Farm in Ward 5, wants people to consider her business which provides fresh, natural and organic foods for nourishment.

Three Part Harmony Farm [TPHF] stands as a two-acre parcel, small scale agroecological farm close to Trinity Washington University in Northeast. The farm specializes in growing mainly vegetables in addition to herbs and cut-flowers using sustainability methods and without chemical pesticides or herbicides.

“We are the biggest production farm in the city,” Taylor said. “I own the business. We started in 2012 to have locally-grown vegetables for people in the city instead of going to the grocery store all the time.”

Taylor’s farm grows vegetables for its community supported agriculture program based on a District-focused economic model of farming and food distribution. She does not sell to consumers but to distributors. Member retailers pay in advance to pick a share of the harvest throughout the growing season.

Taylor said presently there are 100 customers with many buying into the 26-week subscription of food from her farm. She said selling the produce before the season lets her and the farm volunteers focus on working the land. A District group of priests owns the land and Taylor operates as a tenant.

“The priests are very good to us,” she said. “We always make it a point to bring them our extra vegetables. But there are rules. We cannot have a farm stand on the land. We cannot operate on Sundays – that’s the Lord’s Day. There can be no distribution on the site.”

Taylor and her volunteers deliv-

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5 Three Part Harmony Farm owner Gail Taylor stands in her Ward 5 farm. (Photo courtesy Three Part Harmony Farm website) er the vegetables to selected retailers and sites throughout the city including Annie’s Ace Hardware Store in Brookland. Much of their business occurs May through November during which they harvest their crops and share their vegetables with customers twice a week. Taylor said her top three crops, not necessarily in that order, are greens, garlic and turnips. The crops she grows depends on how bountiful they can be given the soil. She started her farming career in 2005 volunteering for a farm in Maryland. Taylor said she really enjoyed the experience and approached the farm owner who hired her for a paying position. In 2012, she struck out on her own with a desire to increase the number of Black farmers in the District and to let African Americans know that farming remains open to them.

“Black people should know where their food comes from,” she said. “Eating freshly grown food truly nourishes our body. People should know that the vitamins that they take in come from food grown out of the ground.”

On March 9, the Bowser administration, in concert with the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning & Economic Development and Capital Impact Partners, announced the awarding of $400,000 in Nourish DC grants to nine District businesses of color located in Wards 5, 7 and 8. The grants are designed to spur the development of the city’s food ecosystem in an attempt to make it more equitable.

TPHF received a grant for $50,000m much to Taylor’s elation.

“I will use the money for farming support,” she said. “I am happy there is a program in D.C. that supports businesses that advocate for healthy food options in the city.” WI @JamesWrightJr10

Americans in Rural Areas More Likely to Have Lower Incomes, Assets Than Urban Residents

Stacy M. Brown WI Senior Writer

A new Issue Brief released by the Employee Benefit Research Institute [EBRI] titled “Understanding the Financial Differences Between Rural and Urban Americans,” found that individuals living in rural areas were more likely to have lower incomes and assets than those living in urban areas.

However, when comparing Americans at the same income levels, the net worth of rural individuals was higher than that of urban individuals except for those in the highest income group.

“Rural Americans attitudes toward their finances and access to financial institutions and instruments can differ from those living in urban areas due to lower population density, infrastructure differences such as less availability of broadband Internet services and their experiences with or exposure to various asset types,” Craig Copeland, director of Wealth Benefits Research at EBRI, wrote in a release.

“Consequently, the types and levels of assets that rural Americans have are different with homeownership and business assets being higher compared with the higher retirement account and stock and mutual fund ownership among urban residents,” Copeland wrote.

According to the release, the EBRI Issue Brief examined the financial situations of Americans who live in urban and rural areas by using the 2020 Survey of Income and Program Participation from the United States Census Bureau.

“Differences in the ownership of retirement accounts, stocks and mutual funds persisted among workers at larger employers and for unincorporated, self-employed businesses,” Copeland said. “The net result is that rural individuals appear to be missing out on certain financial assets, which over the long term have provided much higher rates of return than many other investments. Other means to access the financial markets may be necessary.”

Additionally, Copeland concluded that rural business owners appear to have their assets highly concentrated in their businesses, which could be out of necessity to run their businesses.

“However, a better diversification of assets could help protect these individuals’ retirement pros-

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pects if something caused the business to close,” he said.

Generational Wealth Planning Attorneys Portia Woods and her mother, Robin Woods, asserted that Black and Brown communities are in a financial state of emergency and likely don’t even know it. However, the lawyers said in an email that their aim remains to help families effectively protect and pass down more of their hardearned wealth. “America’s racial wealth gap is enormous and getting worse,” the duo pointed out in the email.

They noted one study warned that left unaddressed, the median net worth of Black Americans will fall to zero by 2053.

“We focus on multi-generational planning with an emphasis on closing the racial wealth gap in our communities,” Portia Wood said.

She said Wood Legal Group, LLP has always passionately focused on teaching Black, Latinx and LGBTQ communities to Tools and Techniques of Investment Planning, Strategic Value Investing and Investment Banking for Dummies,” offered that urban Americans have a higher concentration of financial assets.

By contrast, Johnson said rural Americans possess a higher concentration of tangible assets.

“The net worth difference between rural and urban Americans at the same income level can be explained by the fact that the cost of living is much higher in urban areas – particularly housing,” Johnson said. “That is, a larger income is necessary in urban areas to fund a given standard of living.”

“Urban Americans are more likely to be investors rather than savers, while the converse is true with rural Americans. In addition, much of the wealth in urban America is inherited wealth – specifically, land – which can result in higher net worth’s but lower incomes, all else equal.”

“Also, the distribution of wealth between urban and rural Americans is dramatically different. That is, the mean wealth of urban and rural Americans may be different, but I would have to believe that the medians aren’t much different.”

“That is because the wealth means of urban Americans are highly skewed by the fabulously wealthy. Simply put, there are more urban high net worth individuals and some with an extremely high net worth than rural high net worth individuals,” Johnson said. WI

“protect, leverage and pass on their assets using the law of estates and trusts.”

Max Benz, founder, and CEO of BankingGeek, added some key financial differences between rural and urban Americans.

“For one thing, rural Americans are more likely to live in poverty than urban Americans,” Benz said.

He cited the most recent data from the US Census Bureau which stated that 17.3 percent of rural residents live in poverty, compared to 14.2 percent of urban residents.

“Rural Americans also tend to have less access to financial resources and opportunities,” Benz said. “For example, they’re less likely to have a bank account or credit score and they’re more likely to rely on alternative financial services like payday loans. This lack of access can make it difficult for rural Americans to build wealth or climb out of poverty.”

Dr. Robert R. Johnson, a professor of Finance at the Heider College of Business at Creighton University, and co-author of “The

5 When comparing Americans at the same income levels, the net worth of rural individuals was higher than that of urban individuals except for those in the highest income group. (Photo courtesy GoBankingRates)