One of the many issues that is still very relevant to the South Bronx is access to good, local and affordable food. My community has been branded a “food desert,” and the approach to dealing with the lack of fresh food has typically been charity and social service intervention. There are myriad studies that list the dismal statistics of public health issues in the Bronx and many of the solutions to them are black and white, cut and dry.  More Food Stamps. More Pantries. Eat More Leafy Greens. Buy Organic. It is rarely that simple for folks in my community. It is one of the reasons I dislike the term food desert so much, because it often proposes large corporate grocery stores as a solution and often doesn’t encapsulate the reasons why these black and white solutions are so difficult for folks in working class/low-income communities.

As a single mother of four who has experienced marginalization, poverty and sometimes hunger, I know it isn’t that simple. It is one of the reasons why I started the BLK ProjeK. The absurdity of living in the poorest congressional district in the nation next to the Hunts Point Food Distribution Center, the largest in the world, and not being able to reap its financial benefits or access the quality products that travel in and out of it was mind boggling. I couldn’t fathom how it was okay that my child suffering from asthma, caused in large part by the 16,000 truck trips through our area every day, was acceptable. I knew there was something wrong and I was suffering from it. I also knew that if I wanted better food for myself, for my children and for my neighbors it had to be through an inclusive economic development strategy.

Last year, I committed to creating a mobile market for the South Bronx. It seemed like an obvious solution when thinking about food access issues that relate to transportation, affordability and quality. It is a model that has been done with great success in communities that faced similar difficulties.  After our amazing event Not Just Talk: Food in The South Bronx in mid-February, which was a result of my “dis-invite” from TEDxManhattan, the BLK ProjeK received tremendous responses from across the country that begged for more inclusive models of food justice work and decided to move ahead with the project.

We already have access to a school bus that runs on used veggie oil and we have relationships with urban and rural growers.  With a launch date of mid-June, we are currently running an Indie GoGo campaign that will allow us to rehab the bus. Raising $15,000 would help us install solar panels for power, shelving and storage for food, Vitamixes for smoothies and a new transmission so that she will run efficiently and consistently. I am geeked because this project would not only bring food, most of which will be pesticide-free, literally to the doorsteps of residents who need it most, but it would also hire the most marginalized folks like youth and single moms to democratically run the bus while supporting local growers.

This is how you build investment. This is how people start to understand that food is life and the work you are doing doesn’t just come from a sense of altruism and charity but instead from a place of liberation and empowerment. We recently received a significant grant that puts us closer to our total fundraising goal of $60,000 and we couldn’t be happier, but we need the support of others for us to help folks in our community as much as possible.

When I think of this project I am reminded of one of my favorite quotes credited to Lilla Watson:

“If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us walk together.”

To me that is the place from where we should do our work because a strong line of humanity and consciousness connects us all and no matter your color, creed, ethnicity or religion we all gotta eat and we all deserve to eat food that won’t kill us. Don’t we?

Photo credit to Akintola Hanif used with the permission of The BLK Projek.

To gather ideas for aspiring city gardener leaders, I turned to two people with deep knowledge of the topic. Josh Singer is the co-founder of Wangari Gardens, a rapidly expanding project in Washington, D.C. Natasha Bowens is the photographer and writer behind the upcoming book The Color of Food and has traveled the U.S. collecting stories of food sovereignty. Here are the top five tips I gleaned from these young experts:

1. Communicate with the Community.

First, “there has to be cultural understanding and trust,” Bowens says. “So many people assume that because some communities are lacking food access and have high health problems that gardens are the solution,” she wrote in an e-mail. But this is not always the case, she felt, and for transplants to a city, checking in becomes even more important. “You have to understand you’re a guest,” says Singer. This can apply to members of a service corps, too.

From respectful conversations, Singer learned that his Northwest D.C. community did want a garden, and in fact had started efforts in the past. He also learned that while social media spurred the recent Arab Spring, a successful first spring at Wangari meant hitting the pavement and printing fliers.

Volunteers canvassed the neighborhood, attended advisory neighborhood commission meetings, and handed out hard copy communications in English and Spanish. They went to front doors and church sanctuaries. Community meetings then brought everyone together and shaped a vision of a mixed-use park.

2. Get Logistics in Place.

Another important step is finding a spot and figuring out who oversees it. If you think this sounds simple, think again. Some city governments put out the red carpet for community gardens or offer a convenient Google Earth guide to lots and parcels, but in other municipalities, “be prepared to do a lot of footwork,” says Singer.

He hoofed between city agencies, each of which denied having jurisdiction over the bowl-shaped piece of land he had his heart set on. After months of this, Singer went to the office of the surveyor to research for himself.  Others have spent years slogging through red tape.

Next to securing land, finding a water source is the second most important and difficult element to obtain. Bowen and Singer have seen everything from government-granted access to water lines to high-tech rain-catching systems to plot holders painstakingly carting water from a nearby house.

New organizations should look into the local municipality’s rules, get a free utility check, obtain a permit if necessary, and think outside the box. Wangari came up against some challenges with water delivery, but eventually pioneered a system that starts at a fire hydrant across the street, sends water through a rope of multiple hoses wrapped with tape to withstand the traffic, and delivers it to a 28,000-gallon cistern.

Also scope out ways to obtain inexpensive building materials, garden tools, seedlings, and supplies like mulch and soil. Singer swears by Craigslist’s free section for many garden needs. Local businesses have also come through with donations, sometimes relieved at the chance to unload surplus materials.

3. Make it Sustainable.

Once the project gets off the ground, organizers must set up a sustaining infrastructure. This means more than volunteers. A dedicated head of the garden, preferably full time, is a necessity, says Bowens. This person can oversee operations, make sure details like soil testing are taken care of, and know which community partners to call for an emergency fence repair or load of soil.

Interns who work 10 to 20 hours a week can provide important continuity and focus. Wangari Gardens brought in an additional work force by offering some free plots to low-income community members in exchange for general garden maintenance.

On the legal side, new gardens should link up with an established 501 (c) 3 organization that can act as a fiscal agent. This opens access to a host of resources. This relationship can come with the mentorship of experienced nonprofit administrators, a must for gardens to eventually launch as an independent entity.

Continued outreach is also key. Block parties and gardening or cooking demonstrations in nearby schools open the garden up to a larger audience and reach more potential plot holders.

4. Don’t be Afraid to Step on Toes and Tap Friends.

When Singer set out to start Wangari Gardens, he learned that he wasn’t the first to try. He just happened to be the first with the time, tenacity, and thick skin to refuse to take “no” for an answer. Singer felt the power of allies early on when a staff member in the office of the surveyor took on the garden research himself. Garden founders went on to partner with a parent-run program for neighborhood kids, city organizations with similar missions, and a number of dedicated volunteers and plot holders.

Allies come from all backgrounds. In many cases, gardens link up with youth organizations or summer work programs for adolescents to find willing hands. In one case, an Atlanta garden partnered with a facility for men who are homeless and recovering from addiction. Clients serve as stewards and garden workers, then enjoy the food in their meals.

Web-savvy constituents can help out virtually, providing tweets, Facebook asks, blog posts, and e-mails. Wangari Gardens handily funded a Kickstarter campaign on a wave of social media.

5. Look Within.

In many cases, gardens hold a bounty of resources within their own sub-community. “I’ve seen examples of reaching out to community elders–who can teach us all a thing or two about growing–and offering them a free plot in exchange for helping maintain,” Bowens says.

At Wangari Gardens, an in-reach committee plans cook-outs, family festivals, and other bonding activities. Many gardens have seen their own plot holders give workshops on preserving food, extending the growing season, using medicinal herbs, and other specialized knowledge. These initiatives go a long way in keeping energy up and costs down.

In the end, the goal of urban community gardens and the key to their success is the same, says Singer: “It’s about growing community.”

Image 1: A staff member (left) and youth intern (right) walk through East New York Farms in Brooklyn, NY. Photo by Natasha Bowens

Image 2: A hand-painted sign depicts the logo of East New York Farms, a community garden in Brooklyn, NY that follows the tip to include local youth. Photo by Natasha Bowens.

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Resources for community gardens, from the American Community Gardening Association:

10 Steps to Starting a Community Garden

The Rebel Tomato interactive tool for designing and planning community gardens

All across the country—in Baltimore, Cleveland, Detroit, Oakland, Milwaukee, and New York, just to name a few—residents of low-income neighborhoods have rallied to get healthy food into their communities. There are hundreds of nonprofits dedicated to building organic gardens in peoples’ backyards, teaching inner-city kids how to cook nutritious meals, or boosting fresh produce in corner stores.

In Oregon, Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon (EMO), has been a pioneer of food justice. For over 15 years, the association’s Interfaith Food & Farms Partnership (IFFP) has helped churches, synagogues, Muslim community centers, and Hindu temples source healthy, organic food from local farms. IFFP assists congregations in launching farm stands, food buying clubs, cooking classes, and even community gardens—all of which are open to members of the community, too. (And there’s no proselytizing. You can have access to healthy food whether or not you attend a service.) Right now, five congregations in the Portland area have farmer tables where parishioners and community members can use SNAP benefits (food stamps) and WIC vouchers to buy local food. There’s even a food buying club, held at Holy Redeemer Catholic Church, which also allows members to purchase local produce, eggs, and bulk goods at wholesale prices with SNAP and direct nutrition assistance vouchers

One of the most exciting projects underway at IFFP is a grassroots “community food assessment” of one of Multnomah County’s poorest neighborhoods, Rockwood. Like many poor communities, Rockwood has an abundance of fast food outlets and few grocery stores (and unlike inner Portland, not a single farmers’ market). Instead of swooping in with solutions to the food swamp dilemma, IFFP, with funding from the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, the Presbyterian Hunger Fund, and the USDA Community Food Projects grant, hired eight Rockwood residents to go door-to-door in their own neighborhood and ask people what types of food outlets they’d like to see more of.

“The focus is on getting people in the community to come up with solutions for the community,” says Jenny Holmes, director of environmental ministries at EMO.

Eager to see a community food assessment in action, I tagged along with Marisela Hernandez and her colleague Jose Luis Hernandez Avalos a few months ago. Language barriers posed a challenge—most of the residents spoke Arabic (or broken English)—but eventually they found some English and Spanish-speaking residents who agreed to take the  survey. Marisela, 17, greeted each neighbor with a brief overview of the community food assessment. “We’re trying to bring more resources to the community so we can bring healthier food to the neighborhood,” she’d say. Even though we were often interrupting residents’ dinners, once they heard what we were up to, they were eager to share their thoughts.

Several residents said they have to leave Rockwood for groceries, trekking by bus to a WinCo nine miles away or a Food4Less five miles west on Powell and 82^nd, making their total travel time anywhere from forty to sixty minutes. Many also said that they run out of SNAP benefits before the end of the month and have to rely on the Oregon Food Bank for emergency food. One of the questions on the survey—“Do you want more places with healthy food in your neighborhood?”—elicited adamant yeses from a young mother of five and a 65-year-old woman from Micronesia, whose grand-daughter translated for her. Several said they’d like to see more affordable food in their own neighborhood in the form of farm stands, community gardens, and farmers’ markets.

Once Marisela and Jose Luis and their team finish canvassing the neighborhood, IFFP will summarize the data in a report that will be shared with the community and elected officials this spring.  With any luck, Rockwood will soon have more affordable outlets for healthy food.

Maybe Roger Cohen is right—to a point. You don’t see working-class folks and struggling immigrants shopping at Whole Foods, per se. But to assume that means these people don’t want to eat healthy, local, and yes, even organic, food is misguided. Whenever communities figure out how to prioritize healthy food (making it more ubiquitous and less expensive), you see people of all income levels stocking up.

Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon makes it easy for congregations from around the country to steal their brilliant ideas.  Free resources, including “Food Sovereignty for All: Overhauling the Food System with Faith-based Initiatives,” a guide to starting community gardens, cooking classes, and farm stands, are available on the EMO web site.

The food truck fleet began with a group of Christians at a Turlock church back in 1992 before food trucks were cool. They purchased a taco truck and made 50 sandwiches for their very first route. Fifty sandwiches turned out to be an underestimate, and they went to the grocery store mid-route for more supplies. By route’s end they had served over 250 sandwiches. Obviously the need was greater than citizens imagined.

Misty and Mary drive the Turlock route food truck five days a week. Mary parks, honks the horn (which sounds oddly similar to the Dukes of Hazzard horn) to announce the arrival of lunch, and begins to serve meals and groceries. Her route’s 11 daily stops include a men’s shelter, various parks, outside of a senior citizens facility, some neighborhoods, and the side of the road by some railroad tracks. Anyone can eat. No questions asked. If your birthday’s approaching, just let the truck know a few days in advance. They’ll try their best to find a donated cake to stick on the truck for you. There’s also a cabinet near the truck’s service window that opens from the outside stocked with bread so individuals and families can grab loaves to take home as needed.

En route at a stop light, a couple runs up to the truck and hands Miriam a warm box of pizza through the window. The couple eats from the food truck some weeks, but the times when they don’t need to and have extra funds, they surprise Misty and Miriam with a hot meal along the route to say “thank you!” Lines at the truck grow longer towards every month’s end and Misty and Miriam say that getting to know the clients is their favorite part of working the food truck. It makes their hearts happy to help when people say “If it weren’t for you I would have nothing to eat today.”

United Samaritan’s obtains meal ingredients and grocery bag contents from the food bank, grocery store donations, and local farm donations. One such farm is McKinley Family Farms nearby which runs a CSA, sells produce to local restaurants, and donates all of their overages to the food truck fleet. (If any of you greenhorns out there want to get some farm experience—wwoofing or interning at McKinley Family Farms wouldn’t be a bad idea). Three weeks ago the farm had an influx of eggplant and gave boxes and boxes full to United Samaritan’s.

There’s something very “come as you are” about a food truck, whether it’s soup kitchen style or the entrepreneurial restaurant kind. Food trucks meet people where they do life. A food truck soup kitchen just makes sense, and it’s certainly working for United Samaritan’s Foundation. There’s no dress code or standards of etiquette expected at a food truck. It’s just food. No questions asked (especially when it’s free!).

Meager conditions on the sale require that John Hantz, a financial services entrepreneur and the private developer behind Hantz Farms, improve the underutilized land by demolishing 50 derelict buildings (some of which are inhabited), clean up and mow overgrown lots, and plant 15,000 hardwood trees. Other cities may not have gone down this route, but in a place like Detroit, where finances are beyond tight, “money talks,” says Rob Anderson, Director of Detroit’s Planning and Development. As a result, many have dubbed the deal between Hantz and the city a “land grab.”

Like other Detroit land speculators have done and may indeed continue to do, Hantz saw an opportunity and discreetly purchased city lots one-by-one before he petitioned to the city four years ago for the “world’s largest urban farm.” Hanzt plans to buy up more and possibly resell it once the land value increases. Hanzt Group, the LLC funding Hantz Farms, works under the auspices that repurposing the land will remediate derelict lots and beautify the neglected urban landscape. Since the City Council has yet to finalize proposed zoning changes that will allow for urban agriculture as the main use of a property, the tree farm was the easier option for Hantz.

Despite zoning restrictions, urban agriculture continues to thrive as a grassroots effort throughout Detroit. Hailed as the leader in the urban agriculture movement, there are now more than 1,200 community farms and gardens in roughly 138 square miles. In a city left with few grocery stores and dwindling public services, urban farming projects, like D-Town Farm and the Greening of Detroit are lifelines, connecting Detroit’s inner-city residents with each other, the land, and healthy food. Organizations, like the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network (DBCFSN) lead the charge and have pioneered D-Town Farm. DBCFSN encourages mobilization for social change through urban agriculture and works collaboratively to build food security and food sovereignty.

Several community-based organizations, along with the City Planning Commission, Detroit Food Policy Council (DFPC), many community farms and people from the urban agriculture community spoke out publicly and adamantly against the Hantz Farms deal during the last public hearing on December 10, 2012. Their argument is on the grounds that there exist no clear processes for buying land and that this transaction only exacerbates the land inequality status quo amongst the haves and have-nots. Gary Dennis, a Detroit resident says he’s taken care of vacant lots near his house for years, one of which he bought for $1,000, $700 more than what Hantz paid per lot. “Now you want to sell the land that we’re keeping up,” Dennis asked Council members.

Others spoke about how the city turned down their offer to buy lots for $200-$300 for commercial agriculture. Urban farmers, like Ryan Anderson who moved to Detroit to start a for-profit farm in North Corktown, have struggled with the city to purchase land and are forced to rent or commandeer lots. These farmers want to grow their business and they want to buy land too. The issue of zoning for agriculture in the city will soon be resolved by the City Council’s vote; however, the lack of consistency and process for buying land remains a barrier for those without as much capital and political push as Hantz, though with similar agricultural intentions.

The DFPC published a report this December in response to and in summation of the public hearing on the Hantz proposal. The report outlines the sale of public land to Hantz Farms as a purchase agreement, which has fewer restrictions for the buyer, and provides recommendations for improving the process in the future; recommendations that include the community. It also describes Detroit’s history of discrimination in land sales, and states the city’s desperate financial needs.

The City Council’s affirmative vote to sell public land to Hantz was one in support of revitalization, but it negated the community’s opposition in order to do so. Mayor Bing released a statement in response to the Hantz deal to The Huffington Post that claims that the proposed Woodlands is an answer to the city’s rampant blight. Proponents of the deal agree with Hantz’s statement: “Placing city owned properties back in the marketplace will provide the city with revenue from the sale of surplus property, improve quality of life in surrounding neighborhoods, and reduce city operating costs by transferring maintenance costs to a private sector company.”

When asked about the primary concerns expressed at the public hearing, namely Hantz Farms’ plans and community agreements, many of which are vague, Mike Score, President of Hanzt Group, said that they would work with K-12 programs to offer the Woodlands as a learning lab for students. He also said that they planned a partnership with Michigan State University to allow for research on the environmental and social impacts of the Woodlands. Though they have not engaged the community-at-large in a public hearing, Score described their outreach strategies as more intimate.

Rather, he said that Hanzt Group engages in one-on-one meetings with those interested in learning more about the project and with groups of no more than 10-30 people at a time. These outreach methods leave room for misunderstandings and breed disconnection between neighbors. One community group that publicly endorsed the deal is the Lower Eastside Action Plan(LEAP). As stated, they “have generated a “Community Agreement” with Hantz Farms to assure that they live up to their (Hantz Group) promises and LEAP will monitor the project.”

“There are a lot of different organizations in the community, all of which can argue that they are the true representatives of the community,” said Score. “We chose the connection that felt most local and most appropriate. We won’t partner with everyone, because everyone isn’t affected and it’d be impossible to reach concessions with everyone, even those in the urban agriculture movement.”

Charity Hicks, a member of the Detroit Food Justice Task Force, described the deal as one that “favors capital at the expense of the community,” and said: “Hundreds of people spoke out over the past two weeks against this project to the local legislative body, but it got ignored. We [the Detroit food security and sovereignty community] are shifting gears from mobilization to grassroots.”

Today, there are 15 groups, and growing, that are collaboratively working on a community land trust proposal, which Hicks describes. “Land is equally distributed amongst the community, where the community and government can actively pursue policies, projects, and programs that support community based initiatives that foster self-sufficiency, community ties, and sustainable ways of living.” These groups have worked in Detroit’s eastside for years and offer an alternative resolution to the Hantz deal. “We may have problems, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have solutions,” says Hicks.

That’s where local governments can come in. Small business owners, farmers, distributors, restaurateurs, and eaters develop innovative strategies to strengthen their respective segments of the local food chain, and municipalities can support this process by creating links down the line and increasing opportunities for food system purveyors to work together.

The Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP) has developed a comprehensive regional plan that includes resources and tools for local governments to support local food. Hot on the heels of the plan’s adoption, CMAP is eager to make the case that a strong local food system benefits all residents in the seven-county area, particularly from an economic perspective. They are currently in the process of helping governments develop food system-friendly codes and ordinances in order to enable more momentum in the public sector.

CMAP’s work with local governments extends well beyond changes to county code. In 2010, the agency received a $4.25 million grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which allowed CMAP to launch its Local Technical Assistance program. The program pairs government agencies with professional planners who help guide the implementation of the regional plan, free of charge.

Jason Navota, one of CMAP’s principal planners, explains how the LTA program asks municipalities to consider, “What might stand in the way of a robust local food system?” From there, LTA program staff can help identify, then overcome, the unique roadblocks different areas face. For example, in Lake County, planners first attempted to find regulatory barriers that might prevent food system innovation like urban agriculture or community gardening from taking root. Surprisingly, Navota notes, “regulations aren’t much of a barrier,” underscoring that significant difficulties arise elsewhere.

“The largest barrier is access to land—not just land in general, but land that has the right characteristics and infrastructure for local food operation,” Navota emphasizes. Without running water, on-site electricity, and in some cases on-site housing, growers often run a slim chance of harvesting a reliable crop on private lands. In well-developed Lake County, Navota adds, “land prices are prohibitively high,” a further roadblock to supporting urban food production. Confronted with this reality, CMAP’s planners worked with Lake County to identify public lands with the potential for food production, a solution that could provide tenant farmers with the opportunity to grow produce without breaking the bank.

Partnerships like the one in Lake County aim to target the root issue underlying myriad problems in the food system, from access to markets to institutional purchasing practices. “The infrastructure system for getting [local food products] to those who want them is not strong enough,” Navota stresses. Even with growing support for and interest in local foods, ideological commitment alone cannot pave the road from farm to plate. Because local governments have the capacity to support the development of food system infrastructure, such as food hubs, storage facilities, farm incubators, or farmers markets, through long-term planning and policy efforts, it’s crucial that they get on board.

Perhaps one silver lining of the recession is that it might make some local governments more amenable to smart, innovative food system planning by forcing them to take a step back and evaluate their previous efforts. Local development means increased revenues, something that municipalities across the country are always vying for, particularly in tough economic times, and champions of local food have often underscored its potential to funnel resources back into local communities. “When you go to a county board and you talk to them about the billion dollars of potential that exist in our region if we just decided to grow our own food and use our own businesses to process, distribute, and sell that food,” Navota explains, ”you see their eyes light up.”

He underscores that while counties and other local governments are starting to see the potential of investing in local food, the planning process demands and depends on long-range thinking that can be difficult to pitch. “I don’t want to oversell the potential [of local food] to recover local government budgets, because the potential is fairly modest but it is very real.” Given that land already exists in places like Lake County, and farmland in particular, “it’s to [counties’] advantage to use it to generate additional economic activity.”

As it continues to develop, the food movement is unlikely to suffer from a lack of a good ideas or persistent effort on the part of its supporters to develop grassroots solutions to community problems. What the movement needs now is connections, both between the many issues it seeks to encompass and between individuals and organizations placed at different points on the food chain. Developing a comprehensive, consistent infrastructure requires long-term, innovative planning from those who have the power and skills to implement it. As CMAP shows, that means lining up the authority and resources of local governments with the skills and expertise of planning experts so that the movement can come of age.

Much like the rest of the country, community gardens in Athens, Georgia sprouted up everywhere in the last decade, some with iffy hopes of survival.

Successes here include: a beautiful edible landscape around a resource center for the elderly; an abandoned lot in an African American neighborhood where a grey-haired gardener scares off drug dealers with collard plants; and a resident-run garden in a hip neighborhood where homemade tomato cages poke up on public land.

In one low-income Hispanic neighborhood in a culturally segregated trailer park outside of town, a garden put in place by horticulture student volunteers from the University of Georgia didn’t fare as well, at least in its first seasons. As a newspaper reporter and farming enthusiast, I watched this garden’s early growth with both hope and worry. Many of my friends who lived in this mobile home park had worked hard to drum up awareness of it in the neighborhood, and initial interest looked promising.

Thing is, community gardens in low-income, working poor neighborhoods face a major battle: The community works all the time. As one community garden advocate put it to me recently, it’s hard for working people to justify extra labor for what might be very little return.

But a new urban farm in a vacant schoolyard in a predominantly black neighborhood called the West Broad Market Garden has me, and many in the city, quite hopeful about the future of urban agriculture in Athens.

West Broad Elementary taught a few generations of African Americans in Athens, and many of its graduates still live in the homes that surround it. Years ago it became an academy for children with behavioral problems that eventually abandoned the building for cleaner, healthier environs. For three years the school sat empty until a backhoe showed up this past March to dig up an old baseball field and basketball court. (Full disclosure: I’ve lived in this neighborhood for five years.)

Now rows of pepper plants, tomatoes and towering sunflowers create a bounty that the folks working the land sell at bi-weekly farmers markets, restaurants and organic grocers around town.

The market garden is the newest member of a community garden network, which includes some of the gardens mentioned earlier, started in 2010 with a USDA grant. With the federal money, the nonprofit that administers the grant, the Athens Land Trust, hired two employees to oversee all of its urban agriculture efforts in Athens.

The new urban farm is more than visually impressive; there’s something more promising here. I asked Fenwick Broyard, the community garden network coordinator, why the market garden has earned such interest and shows such potential.

Easy, he said: Money.

“The fact that there is an economic benefit to the project” makes it more enticing to the neighborhood it serves, he said. Anyone who commits five to 15 hours a week on the farm earns a share of the profits. Initially, Broyard said they planned a scaled payment system based on hours worked, but they’ve just been splitting the money. In less than two months of markets, the farm earned more than $2,000 that’s gone directly to the neighbors who’ve done the work, not Broyard or the project manager, Dana Blanton.

Profits are set to increase, Broyard said. A CSA is planned for this fall, which he expects to earn another $7,000. Broyard is quickly diversifying not only the income streams for the market, but the stakeholders in it as well. By the time that initial grant money runs out, Broyard hopes that the market garden is financially sustainable, perhaps looking to private donors instead of a federal grant.

“We’ve discovered that there is no way to make this project sustainable by marketing just to this neighborhood,” Broyard said. In the early weeks of market season at West Broad, crowds represent two distinct sides of Athens: white university affiliates and low-income African Americans. Academics stopping by on their way home to cook an organic dinner rub elbows with the market’s nearest neighbors. Athens’ racial division confounds Broyard’s multicultural New Orleans upbringing. As he set out to pitch the idea to the community, he couldn’t help but notice racial divisions among the church congregations he visited. But he doesn’t feel daunted.

Broyard said the market provides an opportunity to bridge those two worlds. He believes in its ability to mix all ages and races if given the chance. He’s seen it already.

Others have seen it as well. Michael Thurmond, Georgia’s former Labor Commissioner and an author of local slave history, lived through the desegregation of Athens’ schools years after the federal mandate to do so. When he visited the market garden, Thurmond, the son of a farmer who I’ve heard tell tales of biking produce into town, remarked at the broad mix of Athenians who had come out to support the project.

“What’s so impressive about this afternoon is not the garden, not the food, but that it’s brought Athens together,” my colleague quoted Thurmond saying during his garden visit. “All races, colors, creeds and genders have come here today, and it shows you that when we work together, we can transform barren land into prosperous land.”

Still, as fall begins, the core farm team hasn’t grown past the current five members: Broyard, Blanton, and three nearby residents including Ethel Collins, a 77-year-old retired university food service worker who prepares all the meals at her small church just two blocks away.

When I asked Collins why she threw her energies into the project, she responded, “It enlightens the neighborhood…gives us some good ideas of what life is about.”

Residents of South Carolina’s Lowcountry know that the area’s vibrant culture and scenic beauty constitute something special, something that represents more than the group of counties contained within its geographic perimeter.

Jamee Haley, executive director of Lowcountry Local First (LLF), recognizes that the unique character of the state’s southernmost region depends as much on the health of the economy as it does on the creative pursuits and hard work of the people who live there. Whether in the world of agriculture or business, she works to inspire those who share her appreciation for and dedication to their local communities to make a simple decision: “Choose the Lowcountry.”

From this request stem the organizations two primary initiatives, Eat Local and Buy Local. In Haley’s words, both sides of LLF “are about local economic development and the preservation of people and place.” This approach acknowledges the common links between small-scale business and agriculture, and works to support these two aspects of the Lowcountry’s economy as they exist in concert with one another. Haley noted that it’s often easier to encourage Lowcountry residents to eat locally because of the “immediate satisfaction” of diving into a plate full of fresh, high-quality local produce, meats, and seafood, but that buying from local businesses shares the same underlying principles as supporting local agriculture.

“There’s less environmental impact, it brings more money back into the local community, it gives you a better experience. [These businesses] are employing local people [and] giving back to non-profits,” Haley underscored.

LLF sees its primary role as an advocate for Lowcountry businesses and farmers, and this aim informs the organization’s myriad programs to promote development and collaboration. In the five years since the organization’s founding, LLF has provided a range of resources to businesses, farmers, and community members that includes workshops with local business experts, farm tours, weekly networking opportunities, and lists of area CSAs, farmers markets, and meat or seafood shares.

The organization’s emphasis on collaboration stems from the belief that creating and sustaining a dynamic local economy requires that businesses and farmers themselves invest in other local operations. By encouraging reciprocity and engagement, Haley noted that the LLF gives the Lowcountry’s business and agriculture communities “opportunities to connect with each other [in order] to build those relationships that…will help make them succeed.”

Though a relative newcomer to the world of local, sustainable agriculture and economic development, LLF has already established itself as an organization that is both eager to learn and willing to innovate. Still, one of the primary challenges for the young organization has been catering to the needs of its broad membership, which draws in anyone from accountants to coffee roasters to farmers. Navigating the demands from 500 diverse members can be difficult, and Haley strives to address common issues without diluting the organization’s efficacy.

“It’s easy for me to identify need, but sometimes I have to hold myself back and say, ‘This needs to be done, but maybe not by us or maybe not right now,’” Haley noted. With its focus on strong partnerships with others in the business and agriculture communities, LLF aims to maintain its role as a community advocate while simultaneously gaining opportunities to learn, grow, and share information. Haley added, “I see our role being a catalyst for making [local economic development] happen [by acting] as a consultant for other communities who want to have an Eat Local First or Buy Local First program.”

For example, LLF’s collaboration with the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association has provided Haley and her colleagues with “an opportunity to tap into their expertise” as well as to spread key insights from one of LLF’s biggest triumphs, its farmer mentoring program. The mentoring initiative arose as a crucial first step to address the challenges associated with South Carolina’s aging farmer population, and has connected 70 apprentices with mentor-farmers to hone their skills in business management and sustainable agriculture.

The next phase in LLF’s broader aim to support new and emerging farmers is the development of South Carolina’s first farm incubator program, an initiative that will take root this fall. After a year of searching the Lowcountry for a suitable location to host the program, LLF turned to long-time supporter Andrea Limehouse, who agreed to lease 10 of her 60 acres of farmland to the organization for one dollar per year (yes, one dollar).

Thanks to her generosity, six new farmers will be able to manage and cultivate 1-2 acres of that land for up to three years, using shared equipment and a tractor donated by Steen Enterprises. A local architect has offered to design a communal packing shed to comply with GAP standards, and LLF is currently in the process of securing funding to bring those plans to light.

Additionally, one of LLF’s mentor-farmers will be available to guide these growers as they confront the challenges associated with their new profession. In the long-term, the organization aims to match these farmers with land opportunities as they transition away from LLF’s shared growing site. Haley hopes that by giving new farmers a solid foundation during the crucial first years of their operations, LLF will be able to “help them find those opportunities with the advantage of having built up their market for the past three years.”

While LLF’s success over the past five years has been encouraging, Haley still noted that the relative inertia of government authorities to embrace policies that support local agriculture and businesses is a considerable roadblock to progress. “There’s always the fear that the whole local food thing is a trend, and we want to make sure that people understand that we can’t afford for that to be a trend, that it’s got to be a way of life,” Haley stressed. In a political climate where the government’s idea of agriculture “is not always the same” as LLF’s, Haley argued that much of the organization’s work necessarily involves demonstrating the economic benefits of local agriculture.

As Haley championed the role of local agriculture and entrepreneurship in fostering strong, sustainable economies, she also underscored the cultural significance of these activities. Simply, she pointed out that “these businesses and farmers are a critical component…of what makes this place special.”

Just a few years ago there were but a smattering of “networks that allow regional growers to collaborate on marketing and distribution,” as Grist writer Claire Thompson observed, “networks that include a broad range of operations, from multi-farm CSAs to Craigslist-like virtual markets where buyers and producers can connect.”

Today, news stories about such food hubs are as frequent as a retweeted Mark Bittman article. With a big-tent definition, the USDA lists over 160 in operation from non-profits to private for-profit models. The East Coast is in the vanguard; New York, Virginia, North Carolina, and Vermont host the most. More remarkable than their media-worthy increase in numbers, is that food hubs are a wonderful example of the best face of the food movement’s transition beyond an earlier focus on labeling, markets, and matters of quantity, toward broader cultural issues of justice, sovereignty, and community.

With the USDA trumpeting and a growing number of community and food policy planners discussing them, hubs are deserving of praise for two substantial reasons: One has been duly noted, the new models’ focus on economics and supply that fill a “missing link” or a “missing middle” in local food infrastructure.

But in their best form hubs are more than economic catalysts and efficient truck routes. They are community organizers. And this second innovation is where the praise should be louder. As much as they pioneer the replacement of lost distribution infrastructure, food hubs are civic leaders, entities that operate educational farms, address food deserts, attend to the socio-economic barriers to going organic, promote philanthropic aims, and provide job training. It’s this civic community-building character of food hubs that truly shows their forward thinking.

Closest to my home in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, Common Market’s mission-driven model is making good inroads around Philadelphia. Founded by Tatiana Garcia-Granados, Haile Johnston, and Bob Pierson in 2008, the hub works to build capacity “with farmers and institutional food service at either end of the food supply chain,” as Johnston told me. One that stands out nationally for integrating community and environmental goals is another non-profit, Local Food Hub, in Charlottesville, VA.

Started in 2009 by Marissa Vrooman and Kate Collier, Local Food Hub has come to redefine the very meaning of distribution in more justice-promoting ways as they devised a new way to aggregate and distribute food. It’s for good reason that they’ve become oft-referenced darlings of Kathleen Merrigan’s USDA push to rebuild local infrastructure.

It’s not just that Local Food Hub brings in food from over 70 area farms and distributes it out to more than 150 locations—hospitals, schools, restaurants, etc.—increasing sales, boosting farmer security, and adding local food bounty to the area. It’s that with the help of their educational farm at Maple Hill (leased to them by Dave Matthews, as it were) they’ve become a community leader.

Just this year, they’ve helped the Boys and Girls club operate its own farmers’ market, run by the kids and for their families. Its staff works on farm-to-school initiatives with area schools. At Maple Hill they host workshops on topics ranging from season extension to beekeeping to soil management. They recently partnered with another non-profit, the International Rescue Committee, to provide “refugees paid work opportunities coupled with intensive hands-on farm training and education.”

They host crop mobs, install raised bed gardens in low-income neighborhoods, help new canning initiatives, donate 25 percent of their food to food banks. No small wonder their Director of Outreach and Development, Emily Manley, is over-taxed, laboring under a deceptively straightforward title. Her job is more like that of an environmentally astute community organizer.

Recent arguments by leading food reform advocates offer complementary evidence of just this kind of on-the-ground growth toward food justice, sovereignty, security, and workers’ rights. We hear it from policymakers at various levels, from journalists like Barry Estabrook and Tracie McMillan, and from grounded research compiled in books like Food Justice and Cultivating Food Justice. They’re all arguing that food reform can be a means for social betterment, not just an end unto itself. If the accomplishment of the local food movement’s prior decade has been labels, stores, markets, economic models, and increasing quantity, the turn towards food justice helps put the focus on how we live, not just what we eat.

All of this lends credence to a call for highlighting the community-building ends food can serve. It’s the task before us in the Lehigh Valley as we think about the availability of fresh food for the next generation. As our local Buy Fresh, Buy Local chapter creates a Fresh Food Access Plan intended to lead the way towards 2030, we may or may not find that a food hub fits the regional context, but if we do it will owe much to the better part of local food popularity that has turned its attention to pursuing local food as a means to broader civic ends.

It’s a hopeful sign to see food hubs getting their due praise, but we should laud them for their civic leadership alongside their prowess as packing house depots. They too, like community gardens and urban farms, may help us rebuild lost communities, not just lost infrastructure.

Abeni Ramsey started growing food in her West Oakland backyard when she was a college-aged single mom who wanted her kids to eat better food than what they could afford. Some seven years later, she’s well known among the Bay Area food community, selling produce from her business, City Girl Farms, to local restaurants and through a community-supported agriculture (CSA) program. Now she plans to open an urban farm store and restaurant in Oakland, and is working with a partner to start farming on 220 acres about an hour outside the Bay Area. I caught up with Ramsey recently to learn more about her involvement in the local food movement and her plans for the future.

How did you get started growing food?

My grandfather grew up on a farm and moved from rural Virginia to New York City. He always had plants growing—potatoes, sweet potatoes, okra, corn. I used to spend every summer with him in Jamaica, Queens, and I remember the smell of tomatoes when I opened the gates of his front yard.

I ended up having my first child while I was in college. So I dropped out and was trying to figure out what I was going to do with myself. I traveled around West Africa and Southeast Asia and saw people trying to eke out subsistence from the land, and I decided that I wanted to help people in the developing world grow more and higher quality food. So I went to UC Davis [to study agriculture]. I now had two kids, and times were really tough. We would eat a lot of Top Ramen, really garbage food, and I knew it was wrong, but I didn’t have a whole lot of options. I applied for food stamps. I found out City Slicker Farms had a program where they would install a garden in your backyard, so they came and installed a garden. I tried different things I had learned up at UC Davis on my plot. I got really productive; I added chickens and goats to my yard, and we were eating eggs and making cheese and yogurt. We were really able to get a full complement of nutrients out of that backyard, which was an eighth of an acre, if that.

How did you move from just growing food for your family to becoming involved in activism around food justice?

I graduated from UC Davis with a bachelor of science in agricultural development. City Slicker had a job opening for a farm manager, so I was hired. I managed seven total plots throughout West Oakland. That was my introduction to the food-justice side of the urban ag movement.

I knew what it felt like to live in a food desert, but I’d never heard it characterized that way. I’d seen it firsthand in other countries, but I never knew that it was this widespread problem across this country. I was traveling to another [town] to go to a budget grocery store, but when you’re doing it, you don’t think it’s weird, because that’s what everybody does. So it was through this organization that I began to see my environment through an outsider’s lens.

[City Slicker] was giving away food, which was great, but it doesn’t fix the problem. It doesn’t empower people; it doesn’t give you a job; it doesn’t give you choice. So I left that organization and worked with youth who were getting employment through an urban-ag organization, Dig Deep Farms. But it was difficult continuing to work in the nonprofit sector because I had kids to feed. So I made the decision to acquire some land for myself and start my own farm business. So that’s how City Girl Farms was born.

I hear you’re planning on opening an urban farm store and also have a restaurant in the works. Can you tell me about those projects?

One of the biggest problems for people who want to do chickens and goats and bees is that you spend so much time running around trying to find supplies. And I want to have a place where people with common interests come together. I really enjoy sharing vegetables over the fence with my neighbors, so the store will be a repository for all of that. It’s a resource for folks to come and teach workshops, to do crop swaps, to maybe set up a small farmers market in front of the store. I want to offer discounts to people who are in the backyard gardens program with City Slicker Farms, which is what birthed my first garden.

The restaurant was the brainchild of myself and my good friend Ibrahim Baaqee. I’ve been selling [produce] to restaurants, so I figured I might as well just ship it to my own restaurant. The name of the restaurant is Township. We’re trying to keep it uber local. We’re looking at April as our opening date.

Some would call the Bay Area the epicenter of the food movement, and Oakland in particular is becoming known for urban farming. How have you seen the movement evolve, and why do you think it’s flourishing in this area?

The birth of California cuisine—seasonal, artisanal—really has come out of Alice Waters’ trailblazing in the Bay Area. And there’s a culture of activism in Berkeley and Oakland. It’s not just about feel-good gardening, it’s about a revolutionary act of taking control of your food source. And then the climate. In Detroit, I know they’ve got urban farming but they also have a hellish winter. And there is not an influx of people who have power and privilege [in Detroit]—but there is in West Oakland.

I don’t mean that in any negative way. Willow Rosenthal, who’s the founder of City Slicker Farms, has power and influence, so people listen to what’s going on with City Slicker. There are a lot of people who have been struggling and starving in that community for a long time and calling for grocery stores and crime prevention and jobs, but they weren’t heard until they hooked up with urban farming organizations that are coming from the outside.

Do issues of power and privilege ever come between people trying to do similar work?

Being a black woman farming in an urban area, I’ve had some really crappy stuff happen. People make the assumption that farming is new to me, which is hilarious. My people are the oldest farmers in America, damn near. Older people who live in West Oakland, they hold that knowledge — but instead of it really being tapped into, people are acting like they’re changing the landscapes of inner cities. The knowledge is already there; you’re just bringing the money.

Where would you like to see the food movement go from here?

I would love to see NGOs, churches, and community organizations morph this urban farming movement into a nutritional program, so it’s not just about urban food ghettos. The level playing field is nutritional food for everyone.

I’d love to see the food movement find a way to address persistent problems. It can’t just be about putting in gardens; that’s going to wear thin at some point. It’s got to fix something in society.

For a lot of people, starting a garden sounds overwhelming on top of work, kids, and everything else. But you farmed while you were a single mother, in school, working for nonprofits—what’s your advice for anyone who feels too intimidated to grow their own food?

It’s important to be realistic about what you want to do. Do you want to expand the number of vegetables you eat? Do you just want to get your hands dirty from time to time? It’s all up to you—you can do a container garden; you can do herbs in your window—you don’t have to go whole hog. It doesn’t have to look like the Central Valley of California for it to be real. It can be some lettuce that you grow in a container on your porch and pick for dinner every day. That’s cool.

Ramsey’s farm store is set to open this September.

Originally published on Grist