City is collaborating to grow urban agriculture

TRUST AND BELIEVE: At Templot Community Garden in Olneyville, from left, are gardeners Jairo Rosales, Irma Noreiga and Southside Community Land Trust Development Director Susan Sakash. / COURTESY SOUTHSIDE COMMUNITY LAND TRUST/LUCAS FOGLIA
TRUST AND BELIEVE: At Templot Community Garden in Olneyville, from left, are gardeners Jairo Rosales, Irma Noreiga and Southside Community Land Trust Development Director Susan Sakash. / COURTESY SOUTHSIDE COMMUNITY LAND TRUST/LUCAS FOGLIA

For somewhere between $20 and $75 a year, based on income, a gardener can rent a chunk of Providence land and plant seeds that may blossom into a new way to earn a living. For that small investment, the urban farmer will get fencing, good soil and a water supply.
That’s one part of the multilayered vision for Lots of Hope, a program launched in January by the city, in collaboration with Southside Community Land Trust.
“This is not the first time gardeners will be growing food on city property. We’ve helped create community gardens in many city parks,” said Providence Director of Sustainability Sheila Dormody. “With Lots of Hope, we want to encourage farmers to make a living growing food in the city.”
Providence is one of six cities in the U.S. awarded a $50,000 grant from the Florida-based Local Sustainability Matching Fund. The grant requires a local matching fund – that came from The Rhode Island Foundation – a city sustainability office, and a local partner – that’s Southside Community Land Trust.
“A family could make a substantial portion of their annual income with urban agriculture in Providence,” said Margaret DeVos, executive director of Southside Community Land Trust.
“Our farm is a demonstration farm, so the goal is not just to earn money. We do a lot of teaching there and that three-quarters-of-an-acre brings in $65,000 a year in revenue,” DeVos said. “I think $65,000 in revenue could be brought in on other urban farms of the same size.”
The gardener will have to invest in some equipment, compost and seeds, and the land trust offers those at reduced costs, she said.
Growing the state’s urban-agriculture industry, even by one family at a time, is economic development, said DeVos.
“When you think about economic development, people often think of millions of dollars in profits, but this is economic development on the scale of the individual,” DeVos said. “At this investment scale, these revenues and the grocery savings are significant.”
In addition to growing the urban-agriculture industry in Providence, Lots of Hope fits in with the city’s comprehensive plan.
The Providence comprehensive plan calls for establishing “a goal that every Providence resident live within a 10-minute walk of a community garden.” “That is within the comprehensive plan, there’s no timeline,” said Dormody. “We’re working on the creation of a sustainability action plan and promoting urban agriculture is expected to be in there.”
Dormody said the sustainability action plan will be coordinated with the city’s comprehensive plan.
In addition to encouraging urban farming, the vision for Lots of Hope includes addressing environmental and community issues.
“Some of the urban farmers have tenuous relationships with the property owners. For instance, the owner might decide to sell the property,” Dormody said. “We have some underused properties in the city that farmers can use so they’ll have a more stable place to use for a business.”
Some of the underutilized lots are in the middle of neighborhoods and are overgrown or being used by neighbors as a parking lot, Dormody said. So creating well-tended green space will be a positive addition to the neighborhood.
Increased green space from Lots of Hope is also expected to be a positive step in addressing air pollution and stormwater management.
“We have so much paved land in the city and so much compacted land that’s just been pounded down and can’t absorb water,” Dormody said.
“We have stormwater-management problems in the city. We have streets that flood when we get an inch of rain,” she said. “Well-tilled land can better absorb water.”
Stormwater picks up contaminants from cars and others pollution as it runs over paved surfaces.
“It’s not good for the fish or the other critters in our waters and it clogs up our storm drains,” Dormody said. “We’ve had times when so much sediment was carried into the basin at Waterplace Park that we can’t use the entire basin for WaterFire.”
Some of the city’s underused or vacant lots managed by the redevelopment authority will be returned to the tax rolls, and those won’t be considered for Lots of Hope, Dormody said. Neither will lots with a substantial number of trees be used because of the positive environmental impact of the trees and because urban gardens need sunshine, she said. The city is in the process of reviewing parcels appropriate for Lots of Hope and plans to have the first ones ready to till by the start of spring planting season, Dormody said.
Naomi Smith is an urban gardener who’s been tending a Southside Community Land Trust garden on Somerset Street for two years. While Somerset Garden is not anticipated to come under the Lots of Hope program, Smith is a voice for the many values of urban gardening.
Smith lived in Liberia, West Africa, until she came to the U.S. in 1997.
“That’s what we do in Africa. I had a backyard garden,” said Smith. “My aunt used to garden in the Southside garden here, so I used to go and help.”
Smith is a pastor at Generations for Christ Mission Church on Cranston Street in Providence and has a character- and community-building component to her gardening.
She took about 15 young people, ages 9 to 18, to help in the garden and she saw them enjoying it.
“I’m encouraging the kids in the church to get involved in gardening and I want their parents to get involved,” Smith said. “The kids can do their science projects for school there. And the ones who are interested in agriculture can come see the crops.”
Smith has some special crops, and they are typical of the cultural and ethnic aspects that make urban farming in Providence an addition to the state’s cultural richness, Devos said.
“In addition to salad greens like lettuce, cooking greens like kale and collards, and lots of basil and chives, Providence gardeners grow a lot of ethnic vegetables from their homelands in southeast Asia or Latin America or Africa,” said DeVos.
That’s where Smith adds her heritage to the mix of fresh vegetables.
“I grow collard greens, peppers, eggplant, cabbage and I had some of an African leaf. You cook it like collard greens,” said Smith, who had the seeds sent over from Africa.
While Smith will be encouraging young people and their parents to get involved in community gardening, perhaps even as a way to earn a living, she will be giving away her crops.
“I’m a family type of person and I have a church, so I share it with people,” Smith said. “I’m not into selling right now.” •

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