Fallout from the Trump administration’s funding cutbacks has been quick and widespread. Urban farms in many cities are at risk of shutting down, including those that have been established for years. Their current struggle is not because they can’t be viable. It’s because their non-profit origins set themselves up for this. Touted as sources of resilience and empowerment, current events show just how precarious they are.
Urban farming grew out of the deep-rooted tradition of community gardening. In recent times, community gardening was seen as an anecdote to blight. Non-profits raised the funds, recruited volunteers and did the work needed to sustain them. Whatever government support was provided was done in the interest of improving quality of life and preserving green space.
Over the last 25 years, the ranks of community gardeners were joined by advocates who took pleasure in food growing as a lifestyle, and activists who held strong opinions about the negative effects of the industrial food system. Most recently their numbers have been swelled further by movements to address various environmental threats and right social wrongs. Food became an integral mission of more non-profits as all levels of government expanded their grant support beyond greening to social issues.
A typical urban farm starts with a few neighbors reclaiming a vacant lot. clearing weeds, creating some garden plots and planting flowers and vegetables. They become a gathering place. Events and activities occur on an ad hoc basis. Effort is put into recruiting volunteers and becoming more organized. Programs are created based on the needs and interests of community members. A non-profit is formed. Modest grants are received. Programs expand. Staff is hired for fundraising, administration, education outreach and advocacy. Partnerships with aligned groups are formed and coalitions and alliances are built. Funding winds its way through a myriad of multiple government agencies and non-profits.
Now, as cutbacks ripple through the established food aid supply chain urban farms are being forced to find new ways to stay afloat. Any new kind of donor support system will keep in place the convoluted and increasingly competitive flow of money. A bolder response is to evolve beyond the non-profit community gardening model and start selling crops. While some urban farms already sell to their communities, they define themselves by how much food they give away for free. But food is not free. On non-profit farms it is either subsidized or someone is not being paid for their labor.
The most transparent way for a farm to work is when the costs to grow food are paid directly by the farmer who grows it and the consumers who eat it. Money goes directly into the pocket of the farmer. The more food they learn to produce, the more money they make. This is community funded farming at its most basic. A farm’s revenue generating capacity reduces reliance on the patchwork of organizations that don’t increase the supply of food and decreases the dependency on grants. It also has a transformative effect.
By placing a dollar value on the food grown, urban farms expand their non-profit mindset. What this means in practice is that they move beyond subsistence-level growing and start serving the wants and tastes of the neighborhoods in which they are based. Less effort is spent to fund raise and write grants and more is spent on growing and selling food. Growers become role models for others to see how the time and skill to produce crops can be turned into value in the marketplace. Some decide to become occupational farmers. As their for-profit offshoot farms take root and expand, they become the cornerstones of a local food supply chain making healthier food more accessible to more people.
They also become a tool for economic development that some cities have long acknowledged but haven’t fully utilized. Instead of large-scale building projects completed in concentrated amounts of time that have 9 and 10 figure impacts generating hundreds of jobs, urban farms are more fluid. They are scattered throughout the city, taking opportunistic advantage of resources and entrepreneurial spirit wherever they happen to be at a particular time. The amount of financial subsidy needed is very low compared to large scale headline-grabbing initiatives. It is entirely feasible for some entrepreneurial farmers to self-fund, using crowdfunding platforms, Community Development Financial Institutions and other non-government funding sources.
The ROI is relatively quick to happen and easy to prove: more cash flowing within neighborhoods sustaining more people. At a macro level, cities can make this calculation:
> Total grocery expenditures on vegetables and fruits by residents per year
> Per cent currently spent locally
> If this were increased by a modest percent, what would that mean to economic growth
To begin to build a farm economy cities will have to build some new relationships. Some are already being established by traditional agricultural groups eager to find new constituencies for their services. Extension offices, the Natural Resources Conservation Service and various USDA agencies and contractors offer free guidance on soil testing and maintenance, food safety protocols and technical assistance to growers.
What should non-profit urban farms do to make this happen? First, they commit to reducing their dependence on government funding. They set a goal of producing a specific amount of total funding from earned income. They figure out how to earn that income by selling crops to different markets. They can sell low to underserved markets and high to premium ones using the wide variety of marketing and distribution channels already in place. Food quantities and offerings may differ but commercial-grade quality is the same.
Three developments are already underway that can be used to achieve this:
> Significant and growing demand for local food, which according to the USDA and commercial research firms is now sized in billions
> New supply chains that connect small-scale farmers to institutional buyers like schools, prisons, hospitals and universities; restaurants, food processors and retailers; service agencies, food hubs and food banks
> Re-direction of some municipal food procurement to local producers
To continue to make progress, here are 10 ideas urban farms, cities and the farming industry can collaborate on:
> Separate advocacy from food production
> Simplify farm setup to decrease costs
> Develop the moneymaking opportunities presented by the demand for local food
> Measure yields in square feet, not acres
> Quantify urban food production in dollars, not pounds
> Apply benchmarks of $1 – $3 per sq. ft. and $1k – $3k per 1,000 sq. ft. segments
> Teach the practices of urban farmers who have achieved these benchmarks
> For new farmers prioritize market access above land ownership
> Make farming more do-able and relatable to those don’t come from a rural background and don’t want to relocate or change their lifestyle
> Sell an expanded model of farming, defined as occurring in and near metropolitan areas where high-value production on small tracts of non-productive land is readily accessible to population centers
For urban farming it is the best of times, and the worst of times. Interest in food growing is at a peak and non-profits can’t cover their costs to develop it. Trying to create transformative change in a way that never has keeps farms stuck in a perpetual battle to justify their existence. What they can change is their own tactics. That means using their food production capacity as an income generator and asset to bargain with. The power dynamic changes when they come to the table, not with “the ask” but with a bankable skill. They are players in neighborhood-based food supply chains. They can carve out an indispensable role in the country’s agriculture industry. It’s what farmers figure out how to do every day.
START CREATING A MONEYMAKING URBAN FARM HERE.