See the Seeds of Change Grown by One Bronx Woman

“The first plant that changed my life was a tomato,” says Karen Washington, a black urban farmer in the Bronx. “It was the one fruit that I used to hate.” But after watching one that she’d grown shift in hue from green to yellow to red and taking a bite of it, she was instantly hooked. “When I tasted that tomato, when it was red and it was ripe, and I picked it off the vine, [it]…changed my world because I never tasted anything so good, so sweet. I wanted to grow everything.”

For a quarter century, all manner of trees and flowers, fruits and vegetables, have thrived across abandoned lots in the Bronx because of Washington. Deemed “the queen of urban farming,” she’s an African-American woman who’s dedicated her life to greening New York City’s poorest borough. Since 1985, Washington has assisted dozens of neighborhoods build their own community gardens, taught workshops on farming and promoted racial diversity in agriculture.

Your food “is not from a grocery store, it’s not from a supermarket. It’s grown in the ground,” she says. “You have to understand where your food comes from. It gives you power.”

A lifelong New Yorker, Washington grew up in a public housing project on the Lower East Side. She moved up to the Bronx in 1985 and bought herself a newly built home, which she viewed as, “an opportunity, as a single parent with two children, to live the American dream.” While some gentrification occurred, other parts of the low-income neighborhood looked “like a warzone,” dotted with abandoned buildings. Some of Washington’s windows looked onto an empty lot filled with garbage and rusting cars.

One day, she noticed a man walking by with a shovel and a pick — an unusual sight in Gotham’s concrete jungle. “What are you doing here?” Washington asked. He told her he was thinking about creating a community garden. “I said, ‘Can I help?’”

“I had no idea about gardening. I didn’t have a green thumb,” she recalls. Despite that, a city program that leased undeveloped lots for $1 gave Washington and her neighbors lumber, dirt and seeds, “and we gave them power — muscle power — and hopes and dreams to turn something that was devastating and ugly into something that was beautiful.” Within days, the first seeds of the Garden of Happiness and Washington’s lifelong activism were beginning to sprout.

Ever since, Washington has helped others in the Bronx locate empty neighborhood spaces that are prime real estate for something to blossom and led volunteers through the process of opening a community garden — earning her respect throughout the Big Apple and beyond. She holds positions on almost every board imaginable, including the New York Community Gardening Coalition, Just Food and the New York Botanical Garden. “Can you imagine, a little girl from the projects on the board of the New York Botanical Garden?” she asks in disbelief, her smiling face framed by her dreadlocks.

And then there was the time she met First Lady Michelle Obama. Washington describes feeling, “the elation of the spirits of my ancestors. I just felt them clapping and cheering, because here I was, a black woman, standing in the presence of the First Lady.”
Blooming with daffodils, tulips and hyacinth, the original purpose of Washington’s first community garden — the Garden of Happiness — and others like it was “beautification,” Washington says, “about taking away the garbage” from a disadvantaged minority community. Only later did she start to think about greenery beyond being decoration or as a food source. “When I first started initially in the food movement, I was focused on growing food. It wasn’t until I was in that community garden that I started hearing social issues like low employment, poor health, people who couldn’t afford rents,” Washington says. She learned she had to “feed people’s body and mind.”
To promote equity and fairness, she’s recently been focusing on boosting the number of African Americans in agriculture through BUGs — or Black Urban Growers. The most recent agricultural census figures show 55,346 farmers in the Empire State are white and only 113 are black.
It’s always been a dream of Washington’s to purchase land upstate for a farm, but every time she counted all the zeros in the real estate listings, it seemed impossible. Drawing on her connections, Washington met a businessman interested in launching a farming co-operative in Chester, N.Y. They started growing veggies on three acres of black dirt in January. Located just an hour from the city, Washington hopes the rural-urban relationship will help African-Americans have a better understanding of how food systems work and have a chance to participate.
“Farming’s in our DNA, but [we] never have that conversation, always being pushed to the side as the consumer or the person with their hand out, never the type with their hand in the conversation,” Washington says. “There’s no agriculture without culture, so having people understand that slavery was part of our life, it doesn’t define who we are. … [We’re] trying to have people understand that. Don’t be afraid to put your hands in the soil, don’t be afraid to garden or farm because that’s who you are.”

What Are the Latest Farming Innovations in America? This Group Is Touring the Heartland to Find Out

“American farmers are a dying breed,” a Newsweek cover story tolled last spring. The splashy headline was eye-grabbing, but the narrative of aging farmers and agricultural decline is closer to myth than fact. More and more young people are joining the time-tested profession, bringing new technology, ideas and environmental consciousness to farming.
Just who are these millennials heading into the fields, and why are they doing it? It’s a question Young Invincibles, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit focused on youth engagement, along with Global Prairie, a digital media and marketing firm in Kansas City, will be asking on a nationwide listening tour, FarmNext: Giving Voice to the Next Generation of Food Producers. The group will host its first meeting at University of California, Davis today, followed by stops at Kansas State University, Virginia Tech and Iowa State University. It all culminates in a summit at the nation’s capital this fall.
NationSwell will be following the conference as it hops around the country, bringing you stories about young farmers’ perseverance and innovation in the face of challenges. We’ll focus on how we can incentivize young people to do the crucial work that stocks our markets with food; how drones, mapping and the latest inventions are changing the business of agriculture; and how America as a whole can bridge the divide between rural and urban communities.
“I think we’ve seen the millennial generation as a generation that has been let down by traditional institutions, whether that’s the real estate market, Wall Street, government,” Tom Allison, Young Invincible’s policy and research manager, tells NationSwell. For young people, “there’s a cultural search for something authentic, and you can’t get more authentic than reconnecting with the land, growing your own food and becoming part of the ecological system in a way that maybe has been lost in previous generations.”
These 80 million teens and twentysomethings — idealistic, socially, tech-savvy and penniless, if you believe what the media says — compose a growing share of the country’s workforce. Agriculture’s no different. While some indicators, like the average age of the “principal operator,” may appear to show farmers are getting older, those aren’t exactly accurate. “A lot of times a family might designate the oldest person in the family, out of respect and tradition, even if Grandpa isn’t necessarily doing as much work or making the business and ecological decisions of the farm,” notes Allison, whose family operates a small vineyard in Virginia.
Most other numbers reveal a millennial-driven business. The median age for non-management farmhands is 37.4 and for miscellaneous agricultural workers it’s 34.1 — both far younger than the median age for all occupations: 42.3. Another way of measuring the age of the workforce, the share of jobs held by millennials (16 to 34 years old), reveals that in fields like agriculture and food science, 41 percent of jobs are held by young adults.
Those figures are expected to grow. While the number of students majoring in agricultural studies remains low overall — 1.8 percent — its growth is skyrocketing, with a 39 percent increase over the past five years.
“There’s attributes that make us uniquely adapted to the agricultural industry,” Allison says. “We have collaborative approaches to work. Even though it is one person toiling in the soil, it really takes a whole network across the industry: the folks selling the equipment through the food chain pipeline to the buyer. Young people are also so adapted to technology. Agriculture relies more and more on predictive analytics to inform decisions on what to grow and when, GPS or drones to identify problems in the field that are too big or too small for one person or a crew to identify and big applications for food chemistry.”
Farming is not as easy or romantic as it sounds, as Allison can attest. It’s “not exactly Norman Rockwell,” he says. There’s days in late spring when you light a fire at the end of your row of vines to ward away a frost, tend it all night, then have one flock of birds eat your entire crop the next afternoon. There’s days in late summer when the salty sweat burns your eyes under 100-degree heat. But even for all the hardship, the rewards of harvesting something from the soil are attracting a new group.
“The numbers are there,” Allison adds. “Young people are getting into farming, both because they care about it and because there’s a lot of opportunities there.” Which is good news for the rest of us, since our dinner depends on it.

Which U.S. City Is Close to Eliminating Its Food Desert?

Food deserts — areas without access to nutritious food — dot urban areas. As we previously pointed out, attracting a big-box supermarket isn’t the only solution. San Francisco is proving this by adding fresh produce to bodegas that once relied solely on peddling booze and smokes to the community.
The City by the Bay’s comprehensive approach can be traced back to an initiative started nearly 25 years ago. The Food Trust of Philadelphia, one of the most ambitious programs of its kind in one of America’s poorest and most unhealthy big cities, began in a public housing development in South Philly, with volunteers piling mounds of fruits and veggies on one long table outside the project each week. Since 1992, they’ve taken their work beyond that first farmer’s market, improving access to healthy food and nutritional information for nearly 220,000 residents in poor neighborhoods — making Philadelphia one of the first cities to meet the First Lady’s “Let’s Move” challenge to eliminate food deserts entirely by 2017.
“We started to see that farmer’s markets provide seasonal access to fresh fruits and vegetables, not a long-term solution — or the only solution. They really only can open in summer on the East Coast. We realized it was really important to look at the longer term and more comprehensive approaches to food access,” says Candace Young, The Food Trust’s associate director of research and evaluation. Around 2004, “the first thing we did was we mapped out areas of the city that had low access to supermarkets and high-diet related deaths — the pockets of the city that needed better access. We sent that report to policy makers and practitioners, the health community and its advocates, the food retail community. What was built from there was this multi-million dollar public-private initiative to build new or even just renovate supermarkets around the whole state.”
Just how much of a difference can access to fruits and vegetables in a neighborhood actually make? Research shows that living in a food desert isn’t simply an inconvenience for locals or a matter of how long the bus ride will be; it’s linked to serious health problems like obesity, hypertension, heart disease and diabetes. But The Food Trust’s work appears to be making a dent. Between 2006 and 2010, obesity among kids in Philly decreased by five percent — the first downward trend since 1976.
A key aspect of The Food Trust’s work in Pennsylvania involved renovating bodegas — corner stores where the average elementary school student in Philadelphia buys 350 calories worth of food on each visit, according to a 2008 study. More than one quarter — 29 percent — stop in twice a day, five days a week. That means they’re consuming roughly an additional pound of food from this retailer every week.
In response, The Food Trust convinced corner store owners to sell more fruits, vegetables, low-fat dairy and whole grains and offered money for renovations. Since the Healthy Corner Store Initiative launched in 2004, it’s established a network of 650 stores. With $30 million in public financing and $90 million in private financing, it can pay for upgrades that are as easy as buying new refrigeration for $500 and as tough as building a whole new mega-mart for several million, Young says. In total, the organization funded 1.67 million square feet of retail development and created 5,000 jobs.
“Corner store owners are a very different business than large supermarkets. They’re a convenience model: you want to get in and out. Oftentimes, you go in to buy chips and a drink, a pack of cigarettes or a lottery ticket,” Young says. “Partly what we’re trying to do is shift to a culture of health around corner stores, where they’re seen again as small grocery venues. Instead of packaged foods, I may need to grab eggs, some milk, some bread and a couple of fruits for me and for my family.”
There’s still some debate about whether these interventions are the best way to deal with food deserts. Some critics point to a lack of causal evidence and say the theory’s “intuitive” underpinnings don’t check out. “If you live next to a Mercedes dealership, that doesn’t mean you’ll buy a Mercedes,” Adam Drewnowski, an epidemiology professor at the University of Washington, tells the Washington Post. “And it’s the same with living next to a grocery store: That doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll start eating salads.”
After the first pilot at a handful of stores, The Food Trust documented a 35 percent increase in the sale of healthy items and an even bigger boost — 60 percent — in produce sales. That means $100 in extra profits every week for sellers.
Anecdotally, too, customers seem to be buying. “Now, when I’m talking to people who come into the store, they are asking: What do you have fresh today? And I can say I have apples. I have oranges. I have all kinds of stuff,” says Catalina Morrell-Hunter, one storeowner in North Philadelphia who joined the network after 15 years in business. “We have a refrigerator in the store that we didn’t have before. It has yogurt and fresh fruit and fresh vegetables. And I try to get other products that are better for you, healthier and lower calorie. I’m more conscious of that now.”
The Food Trust’s supporters point to a drop in obesity as evidence something’s clearly working, but they’ll also readily admit fresh food at corner stores isn’t the only explanation. In the City of Brotherly Love, access to fresh and affordable food, amenities for exercise and information to make healthy decisions all go hand-in-hand. Philly’s also added nearly 30 miles of bike lanes, launched a media campaign about sugary drinks that was seen 40 million times and established parent-driven “wellness councils” in 170 public schools.
“We believe that supermarket access is one piece of a comprehensive approach,” says Yael Lehmann, The Food Trust’s executive director. “While bringing in healthy food stores into neighborhoods, we also want to be teaching kids how to eat healthy in schools, we want to be having cooking demonstrations at recreation centers, running farmers’ markets in neighborhoods. All of these things combined is what can improve the health of people and their neighborhoods.”

How Do You Get People to Eat Better? Bring Healthy Food to a Nearby Corner

The cash register has never been busier at Radman’s Produce Market in San Francisco. At 201 Turk St., it’s located smack in the middle of the Tenderloin district, a neighborhood associated with homelessness, substance abuse and extreme poverty and one that you don’t want to be wandering around late at night. Within a two-block radius of Radman’s corner store, police recorded 730 crimes within the past six months.
All of which makes the offerings on owner Fadhl Radman’s shelves even more surprising. He doesn’t peddle the junk food, liquor, cigarettes and pornographic magazines that are the primary items sold at many other bodegas in the area. According to a 2011 count, there are 270 outlets selling tobacco in the district — more than one quarter of all the outlets in the entire city, all condensed in a couple blocks.
“Poison, it’s just poison” is how resident Steve Tennis defines what’s in stock at many other corner stores. “Mothers with little kids in their arms [or] in their strollers. What is the first thing these children see that are two, three years old? Candy, alcohol, dirty books. Nothing healthy,” he tells New American Media. “If this is your experience, week in and week out, it doesn’t take long for you to get hard wired to that food source.”
Because of recent renovations to the store he’s operated since 1998, Radman now sells fresh fruits and vegetables, many farmed in the nearby Central Valley, and has a butcher cutting and grinding meats. He stocks 50 types of fresh produce — staples like apples, oranges, bananas, grapes and tomatoes and less familiar items like celery, broccoli, red lettuce, Italian parsley and kale. It’s made his 2,250-square-foot store a much-needed island of greenery in the impoverished district.
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“The whole idea is to try to modify people’s eating habits,” Radman tells the San Francisco Examiner. “Build up their interest in fruits and vegetables.” At the same time, he can improve his bottom dollar, gaining a bigger profit from produce with a higher sales margin.
Unable to persuade a full-service supermarket to open nearby, the Tenderloin has always struggled with nutritional offerings. The changes to Radman’s store were backed by a city program known as Healthy Retail SF, a $60,000 effort to fix up five stores in San Francisco neighborhoods defined as food deserts, a low-income area lacking healthy food providers. Healthy Retail SF simply looked at existing retailers in the community and invested in the best assets: the bodegas. The collaborative effort between the Mayor’s Office, the Office of Economic and Workforce Development (OEWD) and the Department of Public Health, gives funds and business advice about how to reconfigure shelving and store layout, upgrade refrigerator units and advertise successfully.
“Small investments can go a long way towards creating healthier and more sustainable communities,” Joaquin Torres, OEWD’s deputy director, writes in an email.
After the new upgrades are installed and stores reopen, the next challenge is ensuring the business’s long-term stability. The program’s backers liken their efforts to a three-sided stool: community engagement, physical redesign and business development. Without any of the three, the plan teeters over.
A 2012 survey found that 57 percent of Tenderloin citizens do most of their shopping in other parts of San Francisco. That purchasing power — two-thirds of residents spend more than $100 a month on groceries — means that about $11 million leaves the Tenderloin every year. Redirecting those dollars from Safeway and other supermarkets back into local businesses isn’t easy, but so far, the city’s efforts have gained traction. One store has increased overall sales by 23 percent since the remodel, and all the locations have documented increase in the number of sales of healthy fruit.
You can’t change neighborhoods overnight. But as Healthy Retail SF is finding, adding produce to bodega shelves is a good place to start.
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When Tradition Can Help Save the Environment

Despite generations of sustainable farming, Native American tribes have been losing touch with these practices because of health problems and a lack of knowledge concerning ancestral farming. However, some groups, including the ones below, are seeing this as an opportunity for renewal.
Traditional Native American Farmers’ Association
After noticing the move away from traditional farming in his community, Clayton Brascoupé started TNAFA back in 1992 in Santa Fe, N.M. Today, it includes more than one dozen tribes. Education is fundamental to the organization, which is why it offers workshops in seed-saving, home gardening, traditional food production, crop marketing, sustainable design and more.
White Earth Land Recovery Project
The group’s original mission was to resolve the land rights struggles of the Anishinaabes people of White Earth Indian Reservation in Minnesota. However, in the subsequent years, it has grown to encompass a wide range of issues, including agriculture, for the Anishinaabes as well as other tribes. White Earth produces its own food line under the Native Harvest label, as well as hosting conferences regarding indigenous farming. The group also has an impressive seed library, which not only includes collected ones, but it has also rediscovered forgotten strains. After finding squash seeds in an 800-year-old pot, the group was able to grow 50 seeds of Gete-okosomin (“really old cool squash”), according to Sustainable Cities Collective.
San Ildefonso Pueblo Community Farm Program
Anyone who is familiar with the Pueblo‘s current eight acres (comprised of numerous families’ fields) would probably be surprised to learn of its humble beginnings as a small plot in Tribal Councilman Tim Martinez’s backyard in 2010. With crops ranging from traditional varieties of corn, beans and squash to onions, lettuce, carrots, okra and more, the Pueblo is very diverse. Its emphasis, though, is truly on the community. A community-built hoop house keeps crops growing longer, and the produce is sold at local farmers’ markets to members of the neighboring communities. Integral to the Pueblo are the lessons — including watching moon cycles and migration patterns to gauge planting and harvesting times to preparing and tending crops — taught by elders to youths.
To learn about more Native American groups, click here.
MORE: Is It Possible to Grow Something on Every Rooftop?
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What’s on the Menu at These Correctional Facilities? Local Food and Job Skills

Comparing bad food to prison grub is becoming a thing of the past. That’s because several new farm-to-prison programs are incorporating locally-grown food onto jail menus at several facilities across the country.
As more and more of these initiatives sprout up, the hope is that not only will they improve the health of inmates, but reduce recidivism rates as well. Here’s a look at some leading the pack.
San Diego’s Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility
The Farm and Rehabilitation Meals (FARM) program, which began this year, designates three acres of prison land as a community garden for the inmates. Twenty prisoners work the land and are assisted by prison staff gardeners and volunteers, according to Sustainable Cities Collectible. The garden’s fresh fruits and vegetables are added to the inmates’ meals, and the surplus is donated to local food banks.
The program cost $4,000 to start and was funded solely by private donors. The prison hopes that working in the garden will give the prisoners agricultural skills to help them find jobs upon release.
Vermont Department of Corrections
In 2012, the Vermont Department of Corrections started a partnership with Salvation Farms. Through it, locally-grown potatoes and apples have been added to jailhouse menus, and inmates have participated in the food-processing experience. Since then, 141,000 pounds of food has been planted, grown, harvested and processed by the inmates. Of that, about 2,000 pounds has been consumed by prisoners, with the rest donated to food banks, schools and other local institutions.
Montana Women’s Prison
Using local beans, breads, cereal, eggs, meat and milk, this facility spends about $60,000 a year on local food — 30 percent of its food budget. Started back in 2007, the prison’s local food program has grown to include an on-premise greenhouse, which boosts production and trains inmates in gardening and food production.
With these programs, prisons are equipping inmates with more than just a high quality meal — they’re giving them a second chance.
To learn about more farm to prison programs, click here.
MORE: Why Prisons of the Future May Look Like College Campuses
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What’s the Secret to Making a Town More Prosperous?

As more areas become urbanized, Wheat Ridge, Colo., is going back to its roots. Literally.
At the end of the 1960s, Wheat Ridge turned its focus from its agricultural origins to residential and commercial growth. But 50 years later, it realized that farming was the backbone of the town for a reason. So, starting in July 2011, the town amended its comprehensive plan to make urban agriculture a central part, reports CityLab.
Some of the measures include allowing urban gardens (including for-profit farms), farmer’s markets and produce stands in every zoned area, as well as making the process of starting a farm as easy and efficient as possible. One way? Eliminating urban-garden permits.
“We wanted to move the city forward and encourage investment, but we didn’t want to lose its unique charm, which is largely based on our agricultural history,” Ken Johnstone, director of community development for Wheat Ridge, explains to City Lab. “We weren’t the only city getting grassroots interest in local farming and food production. We saw it as an opportunity to brand ourselves.”
And with these changes, the town’s actually seeing a boost in residents as people are coming back to the area to farm. In 2013, Dan Graeve and wife Christa moved to Wheat Ridge with their two friends Adam Slack and Shannon Dils to start True Roots farm. Although they didn’t have business or agriculture experience, it wasn’t a problem as city planners were there to help them every step of the way.
“We contacted the city as a place to start,” Graeve says. “At that point we didn’t even have a model per se. [The city planner] was willing to just sit down with us and talk about whether there was any city-owned property, or other space [for a farm].”
As Wheat Ridge continues to attract residents, its plan could be an inspiration for others.
“We’ve gotten a lot of attention for it, which is a good thing,” Johnstone says. “I don’t know if it’s a fad or not, but it [works for Wheat Ridge.]”
As the saying goes, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
MORE: This App Helps Urban Farmers Get Their Crops Growing

Why Are Goats Snacking on Discarded Christmas Decorations?

What happens to all those Christmas trees once the holiday is over?
When most of us take down our decorations, that once well-loved tree gets deposited at the end of the driveway awaiting pickup by the trash man. Until this year, that is.
That’s because a group in Truckee, Calif., found a way to recycle them: Goats.
Although it sounds a little strange, the Truckee Meadows Fire Prevention District has enlisted these animals to help dispose of the trees to make the district a little safer. Provided by Goat Grazers (a family-owned goat herding business), 40 goats will eat the needles off the trees, leaving only the valuable bark.
“All the trees will be taken to the Truckee Meadows fire station in Washoe Valley, which has a lot more room for all them,” Truckee Meadows Fire Prevention volunteer fireman Vince Thomas explains to the Reno-Gazette Journal. “Then, we’ll toss them over the fence and let the goats have at them.”
Christmas tree pine needs are highly flammable and, when left in landfills or used as mulch in parks or in the forests of California, there’s an increased risk of forest fires. But, with the assistance of the goats, the pine needles are disposed of and then the bark can be mulched and safely used in parks.
J.Merriam is the communications manager for Keep Truckee Meadows Beautiful. Her group also runs a tree-recycling program and notes how important it is to properly dispose of trees.
“A lot of people dump it out on the desert and that’s really a problem because people think it’s a natural thing and it will decompose,” Merriman says. “But because we’re out in the desert, they don’t decompose, it will just get drier and drier and it really becomes a serious fire hazard.”
This isn’t a one-way relationship, though, as the goats receive benefits as well. First, pine needles are a natural de-wormer, which will help with the goats’ digestion. Additionally, needles are packed with vitamin C.
The program began on December 26 and continues through January 11 with multiple drop-off sites in the area.
Maybe Santa should think of trading in his reindeer for some goats?
MORE: 5 Ways Californians Have Changed Their Behavior Because of Drought

Despite Pests and a Lack of Experienced Help, This Woman Found Success Raising Organic Produce

When it comes to food, Sasha Kanno is involved in pretty much every aspect of it. A resident of southern California, she’s been working for many years to bring the organic food movement to the region. Between her numerous gardens and her new nonprofit Long Beach Local, Kanno is a pioneer in the field of sustainable agriculture.
With no prior experience in farming, Kanno’s interest was originally piqued by watching YouTube videos, Sustainable Cities Collective reports. Farming became a job, though, after she attended the EcoFarm conference in Monterey, Calif.
From there, she served as the director of the Wrigley Garden – a community garden in Long Beach, Calif., — and went on to co-found Wrigley Co-op Food.
Then came Long Beach Local. The nonprofit biodynamic farm doubles as a training and education center. Its one-acre lot (Farm Lot 59) grows a variety of specialty crops and flowers without a boost from chemicals or pesticides. Farm Lot 59 also boasts egg-laying hens and beehives.
Her work isn’t just for residents, however; she also helps local businesspeople. Every Thursday, Kanno sits down with chefs from the area to plan their menus, and her gardens service six restaurants in Long Beach. Furthermore, she runs a rooftop garden for Michael’s Restaurant Groups, which uses the fresh produce in their restaurants.
When it comes to challenges, there are only two things standing in her way: quality assistance and the bagrada bug. Since Kanno’s work runs on volunteer service, she’s at the mercy of whoever is interested.
“Labor is my biggest challenge,” she tells Sustainable Cities Collective. “It’s hard to find people who are experienced.”
In regards to the bagrada, the insect entered the California scene in 2008 and is especially fond of organic produce, eating just about any crop, while also reproducing quickly and efficiently.
“There’s no organic eradication,” Kanno explains. “The first year it wiped me out. I literally cried.”
Fortunately for Long Beach, Kanno and her crops did survive and continue to thrive. Clearly, neither man nor bug can stop this woman.
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How Homegrown Roots Can Save Local Food Economies

When the local economy is threatened, what do you do?
While some may turn to outside forces for help, others turn to the people at the heart of the matter: the community. That’s exactly what residents of Asheville, N.C. did by bringing to fruition a homegrown solution through the Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project (ASAP).
With the changes in the tobacco industry and the trend towards larger agricultural farms, North Carolina communities realized that something needed to be done to preserve their farmers, which are constrained in size because of the mountainous landscape. That answer came in the form of a group of volunteers led by Charlie Jackson.
The group began by taking it to the streets, publicizing local farms and products through door-to-door campaigns, newspaper articles and radio announcements. It also printed a Local Food Guide as well as a weekly “Fresh at the Farmer’s Market” report, according to the Sustainable Cities Collective.
In 2002, the nonprofit ASAP was born.
Since then, it has expanded its efforts by starting the “Appalachian Grown” program, which offers certification to local farms, restaurants, distributers and grocers. Acceptance into this elite group entitles members to technical assistance, marketing support, training and a network of other local food providers.
Preserving an economy requires all generations, which is why ASAP is going into schools to educate youths through its “Growing Minds Farm to School” program. Working with schools, ASAP organizes school gardens, local food cooking classes, farm field trips and local food service in the cafeteria, as well as training teachers and dietitians.
The purpose of the program is to make local food a commodity which everyone can enjoy, which is why a large percentage of students receive free or reduced lunch.
For Jackson, though, the movement is about the community, so it leads the project, which has the added benefit minimizing infrastructure issues.
“It’s really important to ASAP that a just food system’s going to include everybody,” Jackson tells Sustainable Cities Collective. “Right now, we’re thinking about this as a movement. Focusing on local is an amazing way to create community dialogue and democracy that we don’t have in our food community right now.”
Through the work of ASAP, the western North Carolina agriculture economy is thriving, and Asheville has become a cultural hub. And for a region that was on the brink of disappearance 15 years ago, it just goes to show what a difference a little home fertilization can make.
MORE: This Startup Uses Urban Relics to Serve Up Local Food