Farm Business Incubator Makes Impact In Rhode Island

In Business, January-February, 2005, Vol. 27, No. 1, p. 21

Community land trust in Providence uses garden program on vacant lots to launch large-scale training for part-time farmers.

Joan Retsinas

SIXTY-YEAR-OLD Lon Tang wanted to farm. In Cambodia, farming was his life but when he was forced to flee, he settled into a tenant apartment and factory job in Providence, Rhode Island. There was no space for a garden, let alone a farm.
But like 200 other immigrant families in Providence, Lon discovered a way to garden - with the help from the Southside Community Land Trust (SCLT). Since 1980, the SCLT has overseen five acres of community gardens. The Trust leases land from a nonprofit organization that contracts with the city to clean up vacant lots. Or property owners donate unused land. Or the SCLT, with help from the city and the Nature Conservancy, buys land. Gardeners get a 10 by 10 plot have access to water on-site, or from accommodating neighbors. One city block can sustain up to 70 small plots.
The SCLT is driven by an enthusiasm for the ethos of gardening: the camaraderie, the benefits of organic food, the urbanites' satisfaction from harvesting vegetables for their tables - and their relatives' tables. For many SCLT organizers, urban agriculture is a social movement. Devan Ferreira, SCLT Farm Business Incubator coordinator, is the child of a farm family, Her family's farm is the last active farm left in a Boston suburb. She recognizes the economic impetus to develop land - and wants to forestall that impetus.
For these immigrants, however, gardening is not a movement, but a way of life - a way they left when they left Cambodia, or the Dominican Republic, or Nigeria. They are not particularly committed to organic methods. Nor do they see themselves as urban pioneers. They are doing what they have always done: growing their food. After a few years as a community gardener, Lon approached the SCLT: he wanted to farm, He had been selling some of his produce to local markets and restaurants, and he knew that the demand for fresh produce, particularly ethnic favorites, was strong. He had already cobbled together a few garden plots, but, to turn this pastime into a genuine business, he needed more land, tools, and technical assistance. And, driven by health as well as consumers' desire for organic produce, he wanted to learn organic farming. “Could the Trust help him?” he asked.
Devan Ferreira remembers his persistence: “He was really pushing us for land.”
His persistence worked. The SCLT decided to plunge into the world of market gardens. The first step was to find a large plot of farmable land. The City of Providence and the South Providence Development Corporation identified a 5,000 square foot vacant lot - a beginning for Lon, who used organic methods to grow hot peppers, Thai basil, water squash and mustard greens, which he sold to 10 stores and restaurants. SCLT staff taught him to use a rotary tiller, arranged for compost deliveries, and helped with basic accounting. For the next two years, Lon's business grew. He returned to ask SCLT for more land, at least one acre.

THE SEARCH FOR A FARM
Staff sent a flurry of letters to their mailing lists - farmers, land-owners, the State, land trusts, and contributors. Could anybody direct them to a large farmable plot?
Months later, the state responded. A farm, fallen into neglect, had gone on the market, and developers were interested. The state combined funds from a bond issue, the philanthropic Champlin Trust, and the city of Cranston to bid $508,000. The farm, large enough for 31 house lots, could have brought more than a million dollars; but Kenneth Ayars, chief of the Agriculture Division of the state's Department of Environmental Management, explains that the owner had willed the property to a nonprofit association for the blind; and the association, recognizing the value of farm preservation, accepted the bid.
Months later, the SCLT signed the paperwork, leasing the farm for $1 a year. (After five years, the Trust can buy the property for $1). In the fall of 2002, the Trust welcomed the first class in a four-year Farm Business Incubator program. Lon had enrolled - one of four students. Two of the others also came from Southeast Asia; one, from Nigeria. For $300 a year, each got an acre of land, access to a tool bank, and a wealth of expertise, covering such basics as: setting up a farmers' market display, ordering seeds, and selling to restaurants. In 2003, two of the first four returned, joined by four more (two from Mexico, one from the Dominican Republic, one from Vietnam).
Although the SCLT runs a few “value-added” programs (marketing infused vinegars, herbal teas, and lip balms) it has not linked the farmers to any production processes.
The first-year foursome netted $18,000, ranging from $4,000 to $9,000 per farmer (not including the farmers' labor.) Farmers sold their produce at ethnic markets, farmers' markets (one is organized by the SCLT), and restaurants. Indeed, diners at an inexpensive Southeast Asian restaurant eat peppers from the same crop as diners at an expensive fusion restaurant.
Some of the incubator-farmers dropped out, yet February 2005, the Incubator Program expects more applicants. In a past life, the enrollees were farmers; this program lets them remain farmers, at least part-time, earning money to supplement their factory or service jobs.

THE FAMILY FARM IN THE INDUSTRIAL NORTHEAST
Do you watch developers buying up apple orchards and cranberry bogs - naming the new mall or housing subdivision, “Cranberry Vista” or “Apple Valley”? Do you think all the nation's strawberries come from Latin America?
Come to Rhode Island. The state has 860 farms, contributing $100 million a year to the economy. In the 2002 United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) census, the state ranked second in direct farm sales of vegetables and fruit (farmers markets and roadside stands) per farm, fourth in crop value per acre, and eighth in net farm income per acre.
Kenneth Ayars, Chief, Division of Agriculture in the state's Department of Environmental Management, explains three factors that drive this sector. First, Rhode Islanders value fresh produce; indeed, the proximity of farms to cities has fueled an appetite for freshness. In 30 minutes, a person can drive from Providence to buy corn or apples, on-site, where it was grown. Ayars points out: “Farmers have learned to capitalize on that.”
Farms typically feature road-side stands, and many farmers make the weekly trek to farmers' markets (the state has several), to sell familiar as well as harder-to-find produce (like arugula or heirloom tomatoes). Over time, these markets have evolved into shopping adventures (some feature entertainment, samples, cooking demonstrations), in an ambiance that evokes European cities.
Second, Rhode Islanders - like Americans everywhere - have passed “open space preservation” bond issues. Whether voters want to keep farms operational, or keep out developers, is not clear; but the result has been to give states money to buy development rights to land, and/or give tax breaks for
farmland. This past year Rhode Island voters passed a bond issue that will target another $15 million for open space and farmland preservation.
Third, farms have morphed into tourism destinations. Rhode Island recently got a $85,000 USDA grant to promote “agricultural tourism.” In this state where tourism ranks as a key industry, the farms combine with historic sites and ocean beaches to lure visitors.

BUILDING COMMUNITY GARDENS IN DEPRESSED NEIGHBORHOODS
Karl LIinn - - who died last month at 81 - - believed that architecture should reflect a deep commitment to social justice. As described in an obituary in The New York Times (2/13/05), he helped inner city residents transform vacant lots in cities like New York, Washington, Philadelphia and the Bay Area into “neighborhood commons". “He was in the business of creating rootedness; where a garden flourished, so, too, would a community."
Linn grew up on a 15-acre farm in East Germany filled with fruit trees; his mother had founded the place in 1910 to train mental health professionals in the art of “horticultural therapy.” The only Jews in their village, the Linns fled Germany for Palestine in 1934. They established a farm near Haifa, and after his parents became too ill to run it, Karl left school at 14 to work the land full time. He eventually settled in New York, taking up landscape architecture again in the early 1950s, seeking to integrate his belief in the restorative power of nature with his psychotherapeutic work. He came to reject what he called “landscapes of affluence,” and in 1961 founded the Neighborhood Renewal Corps, based in Philadelphia, which assisted members of disadvantaged communities in reclaiming, designing and rebuilding blighted urban spaces. Similar programs followed in other cities and in 1989, Linn cofounded the Urban Habitat Program, a project of the Earth Island Institute.
His accomplishments reflect the same spirit and entrepreneurship as the Southside Community Land Trust described in the accompanying article. - J.G.

Copyright 2007, The JG Press, Inc.