By LYNN HORSLEY
The Kansas City Star
As Ben Sharda,
director of Kansas City Community Gardens, surveys this month’s bountiful
harvest at the Swope Park headquarters garden, he can’t help but celebrate a
different bumper crop.
He is witnessing the
blossoming of community gardens themselves throughout the metro area. From
schools to churches to neighborhood groups to high-powered corporations,
everyone is getting into the act.
The organization’s
community garden partnerships have jumped from 125 three years ago to 230 this
year, and the schoolyard gardens from 88 to 140 over that same period. Most are
in Kansas City, but dozens are in Wyandotte and Johnson counties and other
suburbs.
“There’s been an
explosion of interest,” he said.
The same is true for
area urban farms, defined as growers who sell their produce or use farm
production methods. Katherine Kelly, executive director of Cultivate Kansas
City, which assists urban farms throughout the area, has seen those numbers
jump from about 74 farms in 2008 to 125 this year, about evenly split between
Wyandotte and Jackson counties.
“It’s exciting,” she
said. “There’s demand from consumers. There is land available. There are people
aware that farming is an entrepreneurial activity or just is something that’s
good for your family.”
It’s all being driven
by several factors. An appetite for more local, fresh, healthy food. The push
to fill weedy vacant lots and turn cheap land into productive use. And don’t
discount Michelle Obama and the example of the White House kitchen garden.
“I’ve been asked once
or twice if I knew Michelle Obama,” said MaryAnna Henggeler, who has been
inundated with requests as manager of Kansas City Community Gardens’ schoolyard
program. “It’s getting fit and going local.”
Cultivating community
Many of the newest
gardens fill a void and a craving:
• Fresh
veggies. Dionne Powell-Green helps cook dinner every Monday for the youth group
at Oak Grove Missionary Baptist Church, 4545 Benton Blvd. She wanted to supplement
the small food budget, so she got help from KCCG to create a church garden. She
and five kids were the gardeners, and now the congregation is savoring
tomatoes, peppers and potatoes. Next year she plans more vegetables and some
fruit.
“We were blessed with
a great harvest,” she said. “It’s turned out to be a lot of fun.”
• Neighborhood
oasis. Joy Snyder, longtime volunteer with Hope Faith Ministries, which assists
homeless people, wanted to transform a crime-plagued vacant lot next to three
transitional houses just east of Eighth Street and Troost Avenue. This spring,
students from William Jewell College and other volunteers turned it into a
beautiful garden, complete with a fountain donated by the Water Garden Society
of Greater Kansas City.
The 24 raised beds
have produced an abundant harvest of tomatoes, corn, peppers, all kinds of
greens, strawberries, broccoli, radishes and other goodies. Neighborhood
children and other residents have learned how to prepare the produce in on-site
cooking classes.
It’s become a
community gathering spot.
“I would call it an
outreach of ministry,” Snyder said.
• Educational
accomplishment. Mia Monarca, who works with about 100 Garcia Elementary School
students in the before- and after-school program, started four raised beds with
the students this spring, and they added more plantings a few weeks ago. She
said the kids love the fresh salads they grow and the sky-high sunflowers. And
they get something more.
“I think it’s nice
for kids to be able to see hard work pay off,” she said.
Kansas City municipal
officials and philanthropic organizations have taken note and are working
closely with Sharda and Kelly on their endeavors. Kansas City’s funding for
community gardens has more than doubled this year from $35,000 to $78,000 and
the city is making urban agriculture a priority, said assistant city manager
Kimiko Gilmore.
National movement
It’s a national
trend, but one in which Kansas City is catching up to other cities. When Sharda
attended a national 2012 community gardening conference in San Francisco, he
felt Kansas City could hold its own against many West Coast cities.
“I’d say we are
competitive right now with other top cities as far as the number of community
gardens and the (large) size of community gardens we have,” he said.
One feature that
distinguishes Kansas City’s program nationally, Sharda said, is that in
addition to community gardens, it works with more than 1,000 low-income
families on backyard or vacant lot gardens, teaching them how to supplement
their budgets and pantries with homegrown food.
In addition to
advising aspiring urban farmers and working on local government policies, the
Cultivate Kansas City program has several working farms in Wyandotte County
that train refugee families and others to operate their own farm businesses,
Kelly said.
University of
Wisconsin associate professor Alfonso Morales, who tracks urban agriculture
nationally, said Kansas City is ahead of the game “in the sense that the
community-based organizations are terrific and creating many opportunities
across the spectrum of urban agricultural activities.”
But he said Kansas
City could do more in terms of governments crafting regulations and incentive
programs to promote urban agriculture.
Gilmore said that’s
starting to happen and Kansas City’s next challenge is to move beyond a lot of
“hobby gardens” to create more agricultural businesses with a bigger economic
effect.
Advocates see more
promising developments in the near future.
Sharda says six more
gardens should soon be in place in Kansas City. A large community garden will
be installed this fall in Northrup Park — marking the first time Wyandotte
County has offered parkland for a community garden.
Another new KCCG
initiative involves planting hundreds of fruit trees throughout the metro area.
Kelly and Gilmore are
most excited about the commercial ventures coming on board to provide local
produce year-round and reduce the reliance on food from California and Mexico.
“What’s happening
now, I think, is we’re starting to see more ambitious growers,” Kelly said.
She cites the example
of BrightFarms, a New York company that plans a $4 million hydroponic farm on 5
acres next to Berkley Riverfront Park, intended to grow 1 million pounds of
fresh vegetables annually. BrightFarms had hoped to break ground this year, but
that has been delayed.
Marketing manager
Kate Siskel said the company still is negotiating to get its produce into local
grocery stores and hopes to complete construction next year.
“The momentum, that’s
what attracted us to Kansas City,” she said.
Other greenhouse and
educational farming initiatives are in the works for Kansas City’s municipal
farm property, a 400-acre site east and west of Interstate 435, southwest of
the Truman Sports Complex.
And developer Adam
Jones is close to opening a large West Bottoms greenhouse operation to supply
restaurants, in collaboration with Goode Acres farm.
“It would be
year-round produce,” he said. “We have more demand than supply.”
For gardeners who
gathered recently at the Swope Park community garden, there’s no downside to
this movement toward more homegrown food.
As 92-year-old George
Batts said while he filled big bags to overflowing, nothing can compare with a
tomato fresh off the vine. Community gardening creates lasting friendships and
keeps him active and feeling young.
“This is the best thing in
the world to be in,” he said.
A
new report, “An Equity Profile of the Kansas City Region,” explains that racial
inequities combined with an increasing minority population in the nine-county
area place this community economic future at risk. The study explains what
people have known for years.
