In the decades since, the agronomist and history buff traveled the state, stopping at houses where he saw apple trees growing and asking permission to cut a twig, which he would later graft onto rootstock at his home orchard. He cataloged his research varieties in three-ringed binders, which he stored in the guest bedroom of his house.

Cidermaker Diane Flynt, founder of Foggy Ridge Cider in Virginia, still recalls the moment Calhoun—who has been referred to as the “savior” of Southern apples—showed her those binders. It was 2017, and Calhoun had just been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, which would take his life this February, at the age of 85.

Flynt remembers Lee telling her, “I got there at the last minute; these people were [old], and they remembered their grandparents, who were alive in the 1800s, and who really knew what those apples were.”

With Calhoun’s future uncertain at the time, Flynt wanted to be sure that his research lived on, and so she called colleagues at the Southern Oral History Program at the University of North Carolina. A team started recording conversations with Calhoun and cataloging his research to ensure that his legacy would be preserved.

Collecting Southern Apples—and Their Stories

Most traditional apple varieties disappeared from the landscape when growers started planting varieties that were better suited to industrial production. In the 1980s, when Calhoun started researching and cataloging rare varieties, he was tireless in his efforts.

Calhoun would place ads in rural electric co-op newsletters asking for stories about apple trees—and receive hundreds of letters in response.

Knocking on the doors of people’s home, he would ask, “What kind of apple tree is growing in your backyard?” He would place ads in rural co-op newsletters asking for stories about apple trees—and receive hundreds of letters in response.

“The letters are amazing,” says Flynt. “Some are from botanists, and some are from folks who are hardly literate. They all wanted to tell Lee the stories of their apple trees. Some sent pictures or hand-drawn maps to [the locations of] the trees.”

Calhoun eventually traveled from North Carolina to the National Agricultural Library in Maryland to trace the history of the fruit’s varieties.

His collection of research became the basis for his seminal work, Old Southern Apples, first published in 1995. Featuring 1,800 apple varieties that originated in the South or were grown there before 1928, his publisher, Chelsea Green, called the work “an indispensable reference for fruit lovers.” The depth of his research—and his passion for the topic—helped Calhoun earn a reputation as one of the foremost figures in American apple conservation.

“His book produced a shockwave,” says Dr. Elizabeth Engelhardt, John Shelton Reed distinguished professor of Southern Studies at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. At first, people expected Calhoun to find around ten kinds of Southern apples. “He found hundreds, and he found those because in the South, we like to tell stories,” Engelhardt says. “Once you talk about apples, you start to see them… in backyards, along roadways—and Lee cared about the varietals that had these important stories.”

In addition to writing about Southern apples, Calhoun used his knowledge of grafting (which he learned from an article in Sunset magazine) to grow iconic varieties like Nickajack and Magnum Bonum, along with lesser-known ones like Buff and Cullasaga, and to sell them through his nursery.

Lee Calhoun at Horne Creek Farm in 2019. (Photo courtesy of Diane Flynt)

Calhoun operated the nursery, which opened in 1986 with 60 apple trees, with his late wife, Edith. By the time he retired in 2002, he was growing more than 400 varieties. Horne Creek Living Historical Farm in Pinnacle, North Carolina maintains the nursery collection.

Helping Others to Grow

Calhoun was generous with his time, writing letters and spending hours on the phone with apple enthusiasts who had questions, needed help, or wanted to share stories.

Flynt first came across Calhoun’s book in 1997 while researching cider apple varieties for the orchard she was planting in Dugspur, Virginia, to start Foggy Ridge Cider. In addition to offering advice, Calhoun traveled from North Carolina to Virginia to tour the site and help Flynt choose the best cider varieties for her location; it turned into an enduring friendship.

While Flynt has worked to help ensure that Calhoun’s legacy lives on, others, too, are helping make sure his work endures. In 1999, when Calhoun was just getting out of the nursery business, David Vernon, owner of Century Farm Orchards in Reidsville, North Carolina, was just getting started. Vernon had moved back to his family farm and discovered apple trees that his grandfather planted in the 1800s.

“Someone said that the only way to save them was to graft them, and I had no idea how to do that,” Vernon recalls. “I came across an ad in an electrical co-op magazine… and I called him.”

“Lee preserved hundreds of apple trees that would have gone into extinction had he not made them available for other people to grow.”

The phone call led to another long friendship. Calhoun taught Vernon how to graft and, over a period of years, their connection resulted in the passing of the torch. Vernon’s nursery now grows and sells more than 500 varieties of apples, including several from Calhoun’s collection.

“Lee preserved hundreds of apple trees that would have gone into extinction had he not made them available for other people to grow,” Vernon says.

Vernon has found a lot of interest in heritage apples in recent years. While some growers want trees that are well-suited to growing in Southern climates, others are simply looking for non-GMO varieties (there is only one genetically engineered variety on the market, however). Flavor, however, is one of the biggest reasons for the resurgence. “Most of the uses of the apples in the grocery store are for snacks, they’re not for cooking; they’re not for making cider,” Vernon explains.

A Living Legacy

Calhoun donated the papers he kept from the 1970s until 2010 to the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, and last year, Engelhardt assembled a team of archivists from the Southern Historical Collection at Wilson Library to record his oral history. Thanks to those efforts, all of his work—an estimated 1,200 items—have been archived in the library and made available online.

“Lee was, fundamentally, a scientist who was fascinated by the diversity of apples and their complications; he was also fascinated by the stories of apples,” says Engelhardt.

From left: Keia Mastrianni, Lee Calhoun, Diane Flynt, Chef Andrea Resuing. Photo courtesy of Diane Flynt.

Students in the undergraduate Southern Studies program use Calhoun’s papers as the basis of their final projects. Their work ranged from the evolution of apples in advertising to exploring apple smoke flavor to mapping fruit trees around Chapel Hill.

In the Spring of 2019, about a year before he died, Calhoun was the guest of honor at a reception where students presented their work. The attendees included friends, students, apple enthusiasts, and cider makers.

“I think it can feel like if you donate papers to a library, they might just sit there,” Engelhardt says. “But these are not just going to sit there; people are going to use them.” At the reception, Engelhardt continued, “Lee told me that he was especially moved that the students were already using the materials.”

Most importantly, Calhoun’s legacy lives on in the orchards throughout the South, where some of the 400 varieties that he managed to preserve (and the 1,800 Southern apples he cataloged) throughout his lifetime are growing today—apples that would have otherwise disappeared from the landscape.

Top photo by Donn Young, UNC College of Arts & Sciences

The post An Appreciation for Lee Calhoun, the Man who Saved Southern Apples appeared first on Civil Eats.

Now, the dining room is closed, and instead of serving nose-to-tail suppers, chef/owner Heard is filling bags with groceries. In the last two weeks, she has stocked (and sold out of) staples such as eggs, salt, and lemons; customers purchased 100 pounds of flour in a single afternoon. The coronavirus pandemic has led Foreign & Domestic to evolve from a full-service restaurant into a grocery store.

“We knew that people were having trouble finding things at the stores,” Heard recalls. “We thought it could help the neighborhood—and it’s possibly the only reason we’re staying afloat.”

The pandemic dealt a significant blow to restaurants. The latest data from the U.S. Department of Labor shows that the U.S. lost a total of 701,000 jobs in March; restaurants and bars accounted for 60 percent of those losses. The devastation had forced restaurants to get creative to keep their doors open. In addition to offering takeout and deliveries, steakhouses are being reinvented as butcher shops, upscale eateries are hosting virtual cocktail classes, and chefs are creating DIY meal kits. Turning dining rooms into supermarkets is also proving popular.

The trend has touched small restaurants, restaurant groups with multiple outlets, and national chains. In recent days, both Panera and Subway have launched their own grocery stores.

Restaurants depend on different supply chains than grocery stores, providing chefs with access to staples that are sold out in supermarkets. Large restaurant suppliers such as Sysco and U.S. Foods have stockpiles of ingredients that restaurants are no longer ordering for their kitchens. The staples are in restaurant-sized quantities—think 50-pound bags of flour and flats of eggs—that can be shipped out from their warehouses.

The restaurant-turning-grocery-store trend is helping restaurant suppliers keep revenue flowing at a time when chefs aren’t ordering ingredients for their kitchens, and it is providing consumers with staples at a time when they’re scrambling to fill their shopping carts at conventional supermarkets. Sysco even rolled out a portal to help its restaurant customers embrace the “corner-store concept” that includes advice for setting up regular markets or one-time pop-up events.

“It’s a way for chefs to continue supporting the local food system and helps them from going bankrupt.”

“It provides a huge opportunity for restaurants to stay open,” says Katherine Miller, vice president of impact for the James Beard Foundation. “It’s a way for chefs to continue supporting the local food system and… [it] gives them much-needed revenue to help them from going bankrupt.”

‘Like An Emergency Transfusion’

In Washington, D.C., Farmers Restaurant Group (FRG) owner Dan Simons knew takeout and deliveries would not sustain his restaurants. Simons cut the staff of 1,100 down to 80, reduced the salaries of those who remained on the payroll, and launched Founding Farmers Market & Grocery in the hopes pivoting into the retail grocery business would help keep the doors open.

“We needed value pricing and frequent shopping,” Simons explains. “We needed a new business model, and I’d much rather be delivering people $100 or $150 of prepared foods and groceries and staples than try to sell them prime rib, mashed potatoes, and green beans [like they might off the menu at a restaurant] right now.”

The team at FRG developed a complete e-commerce platform to allow customers to order 800-plus supermarket staples alongside prepared foods and cocktails, schedule pick-up times, and have groceries loaded into their vehicles curbside from its locations in Potomac, Maryland, and Tysons, Virginia.

When the website launched on April 5, it logged $50,000 in orders in the first 48 hours. Simons likened the impact of the revenue to an emergency transfusion for an accident victim.

Although restaurants aren’t licensed to operate as supermarkets, few bureaucrats have raised red flags over the pivot. In fact, Texas governor Greg Abbott made an official announcement allowing restaurants to sell retail products from distributors provided the items were in their original packaging.

Public health officials in Los Angeles County initially responded to the trend by shutting down several restaurants for operating without grocery permits, but the county later reversed their stance, allowing the items to be sold by takeout and delivery. Los Angeles-based designer Kelsey Stefanson has since created a spreadsheet and mobile-friendly website listing the 150+ restaurants selling groceries in the city.

The flexibility to create a new model has helped Showmars, a fast casual Greek American restaurant with 30 locations in North and South Carolina, keep the doors open after the lack of lunchtime business forced several high-volume locations to shut down.

General Manager Zack Zitsos wanted to minimize layoffs and maximize cash flow; a grocery model felt like the right move.

When the chain rolled out its Grocery Essentials concept on March 29, sales were 300 percent over the initial projections; several items sold out within the first few hours. The online store now stocks Costco-size quantities of grocery items—everything from whole milk to chicken breasts to frozen peas to toilet paper—distributed by contact-less deliveries. The demand is almost unmanageable; Zitsos limited orders to 100 per day to ensure he could meet the need.

Showmars’ Grocery Essentials best sellers.

The Learning Curve—and the Days to Come

Adjusting to a new model, Zitsos admits, is not without its challenges. “We know how to do the restaurant business right, but this is a whole new process,” he says. “There is a learning curve to getting it right.”

In the restaurant business, he explains, service is limited to the number of seats in the dining room, and timing is more predictable; operators know that the weekend dinner rush will be far more hectic than mid-afternoon on a Wednesday. Grocery orders are harder to predict, Heard says.

Additionally, because food service companies don’t package items for retail sale, some restaurants are selling bulk quantities such as 10-pound packages of ground beef and five-pound boxes of pasta, while others are repackaging staples into smaller quantities for resale—hello single rolls of toilet paper and Ziploc baggies filled with flour (their decision about whether to repackage is often based on local ordinances). On top of that, prep cooks and waitstaff are not to trained in order fulfillment, and establishments must complete all tasks with strict adherence to strict safety protocols to minimize the spread of COVID-19.

Simons is attempting to juggle overwhelming demand with access to protective equipment that will keep his staff safe while filling orders. Given the current state of the restaurant industry—and the economy in general—he is grateful to have the dilemma.

“Without this pivot, I’d be looking at an unsolvable problem” of how to stay in business and pay employees, he says. “We needed this model to keep us in the fight.”

A shuttered restaurant in Claremont Village, California. (Photo CC-licensed by Russ Allison Loar)

Like all restaurant owners, Simons hopes the dining room at Farmers Restaurant Group will be open and serving meals before long, but he anticipates maintaining the grocery model for the foreseeable future. “We might convert part of the dining room into an artisan market and allow shoppers to come inside once restrictions are loosened,” he says. “If there’s another outbreak, we don’t want it to crush us; this [pivot] positions us for what’s ahead.”

Miller of the James Beard Foundation agrees that markets could be the new norm for restaurants. “In restaurants, like in farming, margins are small,” she adds. “I think a lot of chefs and restaurants will stick with these new things to help diversify their revenues when things open back up.”

In Austin, Heard continues adding new items to her online supermarket, but she has no intention of continuing to sell groceries post-pandemic. “It’s not as rewarding,” she says. “I’m super thankful we’re doing it and it’ll bring in enough [revenue] to let us break even, but I miss making food and talking to guests; I’d like to go back to the restaurant business.”

The post Restaurants Are Transforming into Grocery Stores to Survive the Pandemic appeared first on Civil Eats.

“In the regular wildcrafting market, black cohosh is a low-value product,” Pridgen explains. “I agreed to be a test case [for the Appalachian Beginning Forest Farmer Coalition (ABFFC)] to see if getting [United Plant Savers’] Forest Grown Verification (FGV) certification—and working with an herb buyer who valued knowing the source of the product and was willing to reward growers for taking extra steps to ensure sustainability of forest botanicals—would create a market.”

The Forest Grown Verification was created in 2014 to distinguish farmed products from foraged plants and establish parameters to sustainably cultivate woodland botanicals. It requires growers to follow strict practices for ethical, sustainable land and species management to protect wild woodland botanicals from overharvesting.

Black cohosh is a shade-grown, native flowering plant that is prized for the medicinal properties of its roots, which are used to treat coughs, fever, menstrual cramps, and the symptoms of menopause. But concerns about overharvesting it and other wild botanicals, including ginseng, goldenseal, and ramps, have led to new efforts to preserve wild populations. Forest farming, the intentional cultivation of crops in wooded areas, is one potential solution, because it provides an alternative wild populations, and therefor gives them a chance to rebound.

“It’s about optimizing the relationships between crops, trees, and/or livestock to maximize product output and enhance environmental conservation,” explains John Munsell, associate professor of forest resources and environmental conservation at Virginia Tech university and project director for ABFFC.

The 2015 experiment on Pridgen’s property worked. She earned $25 for every pound of wild black cohosh she sold—or 25 times more than the going rate for foraged, non-certified black cohosh. (The current market rate for FGV black cohosh is $40 per pound.)

Washed black cohosh root. (Photo by Priya Jaishanker.)

And instead of spending hours at farmers’ markets selling small quantities of the forest botanicals to multiple customers, Pridgen was able to sell the entire 25-pound harvest in a single transaction to Mountain Rose Herbs, an Oregon-based retailer of organic, sustainable, wild harvested products.

Intentional Cultivation to Protect Biodiversity

Appalachia, one of the most biodiverse regions in the world, is home to 50 medicinal plant species that are in consistent demand thanks to a booming herbal products industry that generated $8.84 billion in retail sales in 2018.

But that growing demand has a dark side. Foragers collected more than 9,000 pounds of wild ginseng in West Virginia in 2018, leading to significant population decline. Some data shows that just 6 percent of ginseng harvests were legal, and foragers often use unsustainable harvesting practices, including removing adult plants before seeds have ripened, which further decimates wild populations.

Overharvesting has also devastated wild populations of goldenseal, ramps, and black cohosh.

Appalachian Beginning Forest Farmer Training. (Photo by Priya Jaishanker)

Although scant data about population levels exists, the Convention of International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES) lists ginseng and goldenseal as vulnerable species, placing strict regulations on harvesting, including limited collection periods and required permitting to harvest on state and federal lands. United Plant Savers (UPS), an Ohio-based nonprofit dedicated to medicinal plant conservation, has added multiple woodland botanicals that are native to Appalachia to its species at risk list, including black cohosh. In Quebec, overharvesting has led to strict limits on picking ramps.

Appalachian Beginning Forest Farmer Coalition was established in 2015 to formalize forest farming efforts for woodland botanicals. The coalition, which connects farmers, universities, government agencies, and nonprofit organizations, received grant funding to provide technical training to beginning forest farmers, teaching them to grow and harvest woodland botanicals while being good stewards of the land.

The nonprofit advocates three different kinds of farming: Wild-stewarded, or the intentional propagation and tending of existing wild population for sustained output (the approach Pridgen uses); wild-simulated farming, which uses seeds or root stocks to start new populations to encourage new growth; and woods-grown (also called woods-cultivated) farming, which mimics more traditional farming.

Regardless of the method, Munsell notes, the goal is to ensure a sustainable supply chain that poses no threat to wild populations.

“Forest farming is a model that allows industry to trace the line of production back to a farmer, back to a community, back to a section of woodland, and understand the nature of production,” he explains. “With wild harvesting, buyers along the supply chain aren’t certain when raw materials will show up.”

Providing Opportunities to a Struggling Region

Munsell estimates at least half of the 50-plus economically distressed communities in the region are in hotspots for forest botanical production and for many low-income folks living in Appalachia, foraging and wildcrafting are some of the only economic options. In a 2019 study, researchers at the University of Georgia found that overharvesting of ginseng was more prevalent in areas with high poverty rates.

Bright red berries on a ginseng plant around mid-August signify maturity. (Photo by Priya Jaishanker for Appalachian Forest Farmers)

Promoting forest farming as an alternative to foraging may provide additional opportunities in the region. “[Foraging] is a deep, embedded part of the culture, and forest farming provides a little more permanence,” Munsell adds. “There are farmers in the mountains that have open space for growing vegetables but also want to extend operations into the woodlands. We’re working to get the prices for the product up so … local communities can take advantage of the opportunities, and we can ensure sustainability.”

Not all low-income, underserved communities have access to land, however, so ABFFC is working to develop common models and low-cost land leasing programs. Additionally, the coalition, which counts an estimated 700 beginning forest farmers among its members, hosts programming to provide education and technical support to help forest farmers grow woodland botanicals.

Developing a Market

So far, just 15 farms—located in West Virginia, Ohio, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, New York, and Maryland—have earned verification for three crops: ginseng, black cohosh, and goldenseal.

Susan Leopold, executive director at UPS, hopes to expand FGV to 30 farms and add certified bloodroot and ramps over the next three years. In the meantime, certified woodland botanicals are in high demand, and buyers are willing to pay premium prices.

ABFFC training session. (Photo by Priya Jaishanker for Appalachian Forest Farmers)

“There is way more demand than supply,” Leopold says. “A lot of people are interested in growing forest botanicals [and] consumers are excited to have access to amazing medicinal herbs without contributing to the endangerment of the species.”

A commitment to sustainable sourcing led several small herb companies, including Mountain Rose Herbs, to seek out FGV products like ginseng.

The Future of Forest Farming

Munsell hopes that ABFFC will continue expanding its resources and educational programming to help beginning forest farmers get started and to support the expansion of the forest farming movement. UPS continues promoting FGV and Fair Wild, a UK-based certification that applies similar standards to wildcrafted herbs and also covers international forest botanicals.

Despite these efforts, woodland botanicals might not provide the same regular income as more conventional crops.

In Independence, Michelle Pridgen last harvested black cohosh in 2015; using the wild-stewarded approach, which increases the time between harvests, she is waiting for her woodland stand of the herb to be plentiful enough for a second harvest.

The FGV certifier, who monitors the crop to ensure compliance with program requirements, suggested she continue letting the population recover before harvesting again. Pridgen estimates the black cohosh will be ready later this year.

Although populations of the perennial, slow-growing species can take several years to mature, a growing number of forest farmers—and consumers—are willing to wait.

“I think this is going to, hopefully, get people into the mindset that this is a really specialized product,” Pridgen says. “And if we value the wild populations and the genetic diversity that we’re so fortunate to have in the Appalachians, we’ll be willing to pay more for the assurance of sustainability.”

Photos CC-licensed by Appalachian Forest Farmers.

This article was updated to correct the fact that Mountain Rose Herbs is based in Oregon, not California.

The post In Appalachia, Forest Farming is Protecting Wild Botanical Plants appeared first on Civil Eats.

The City of Atlanta wants to change that; in 2016, it purchased a 7.1-acre former farm in the underserved neighborhood and turned the land into the nation’s largest food forest. Dozens of walnut, pecan, mulberry, and serviceberry trees were already established on the site, and the project plan calls for the addition of raised beds planted with berries, herbs, root vegetables, and more to transform the edible landscape into a powerful community resource.

A wide view of the Atlanta Food Forest at Browns Mill. (Photo courtesy of AgLanta)

The Urban Food Forest at Browns Mill is the latest example of cities incorporating food forests—or managed edible orchards and gardens open to the public to harvest free of charge—into their landscapes. Although there’s no solid national data on the number of food forests in the U.S., they’ve been popping up in cities ranging from Seattle and San Francisco to Portland, Maine, and Raleigh, North Carolina in recent years. While food forests help preserve green space, provide homes for wildlife, enhance biodiversity, and encourage community gatherings, fighting hunger is the reason most cited by their founders.

“Any time there is another strategy for collaboratively growing food and using underutilized spaces to do it, people get excited,” says Sari Albornoz, the Grow Local program director for the Sustainable Food Center, an Austin, Texas-based nonprofit organization working to improve access to nutritious, affordable food. “Food forests are one more idea people are embracing [in addition to programs like SNAP and WIC, encouraging farmers’ markets in food deserts, and increasing minimum wage], because it has the potential to address food insecurity.”

But while the idea of a food forest may sound good, it’s still unclear whether they are effective—and what little research exists on the model suggests that they face a number of challenges. Research shows that harvests might be fairly small, for example, and that people might not take advantage of the food even when it is available.

Community Garden Manager Douglas Hardeman (right) welcomes visitors to the food forest. (Photo courtesy of AgLanta)

In Atlanta, the Urban Food Forest at Browns Mill is part of an ambitious goal to bring 85 percent of the city’s residents within a half-mile of fresh food before 2022. The city launched the project with the support of $164,000 in grant funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service Community Forest and Open Space Conservation programs and local nonprofits, including Trees Atlanta and The Georgia Conservation Fund. The Atlanta Department of Parks and Recreation will manage the property, and volunteers will help maintain it.

Organizers encourage neighbors to see the food forest as their own outdoor produce aisle and Mario Cambardella, the urban agriculture director for the City of Atlanta, also hopes to start a farmers’ market to help boost the odds that people will take the produce home.

And yet, Cambardella is unsure about whether the food forest will ultimately reduce food insecurity among residents. “The food forest is one piece of the overall strategy of bringing fresh fruits and vegetables to residents,” he says, “but I am not saying we’re going to solve hunger or food insecurity.” The group also hopes to use vacant properties around the city and give low-income communities the opportunity to “take license of property to grow food,” he adds.

Feeding a Need

With the right management, food forests can produce significant quantities of food. In one study, researchers found that a 222-acre plot filled with apple trees could yield enough fruit to meet 108 percent of the daily recommended minimum intake of fruit for the entire population of Burlington, Vermont, for instance. The findings led researchers to conclude that food forests offer “substantial untapped potential” to improve food security.

Albornoz of the Sustainable Food Center appreciates that food forests often do more than just provide food, however. Organizations hire workers to maintain the fruitful landscapes or host markets to sell produce at a profit. The living-wage jobs allow workers to buy fresh, nutrient-dense foods at the supermarket, and revenue from market sales can be used to support nonprofits that are focused on improving food access. Food forests also provide a sense of community as well as a vehicle to start conversations about food insecurity.

Touring the garden beds at the Food Forest at Browns Mill. (Photo courtesy of AgLanta)

“There are an array of benefits that come from giving people opportunities to grow their own food or harvest and eat fresh food other than just the food and the nourishment itself,” Albornoz says. “Food forests are about building community, social cohesion, and social capital and beautifying neighborhoods. Though that can sometimes make people say that they only make a marginal difference in improving food security, I think it can serve both needs.”

A Model with Limitations

Still, depending on food forests to provide adequate quantities of fresh produce to feed food-insecure residents is a risk. At the Beacon Food Forest in Seattle, one of the most well-established food forests in the nation, neighbors harvested 4,250 pounds of produce from the 1.75-acre site in 2017. But issues like weather and pests make yields unpredictable, and the 2018 harvest dropped 40 percent, to 2,821 pounds of produce. For residents who counted on fruits, vegetables, nuts, and herbs from the plot to supplement their diets, the shrinking harvest presented a major challenge.

Volunteers at a work party at the Beacon Food Forest in July 2019. (Photo © Jonathan H. Lee – subtledream.com)

A 2018 study published in the journal Sustainability noted that legalizing food production in urban areas is not enough to promote food equity and food justice, and expanding urban agriculture doesn’t guarantee that food insecure residents will access the food. A lack of knowledge that food forests exist—or a lack of understanding about their purpose—as well as struggles with transportation to the sites and too little time to harvest the food could deter some people from taking advantage of the resource.

In Atlanta, Cambardella worries that the overwhelming amount of press the food forest has received will turn it into a local attraction that may not serve people in need. He also worries that the attention will draw people who may abuse the access. “The other day we walked on the site and someone had harvested half the mint—and it was a big stand—which left us [thinking], ‘One person does not need that much mint.’”

Outside of food forests, research published in the Journal of Urban Ecology in 2019 found that even foragers who had access to an abundance of wild edibles could not access sufficient quantities to meet their nutritional needs. The study found that lower-income neighborhoods have fewer edible trees and less foraging potential than higher-income neighborhoods; most foragers have to travel far from home to access free edible foods.

Birdwatching at the Atlanta Food Forest. (Photo courtesy of AgLanta)

“Does foraging address food sovereignty? The right of people to find their own culturally appropriate food system? Absolutely,” says Avalon Bunge, lead researcher of the Journal of Urban Ecology study. “But food insecurity? That’s a problem.”

A participatory research project in California’s East Bay, where almost one-third of the population is food insecure, is examining the agronomic problems facing urban agriculture projects in the area (including pests, soil contaminants, and more) in hopes of finding ways to improve growing practices, increase yields, and contribute to food security.

Organizers of the Festival Beach Food Forest in Austin, Texas, are also grappling with how to provide enough produce to make a dent in the local need. In a county where 16 percent of residents lack access to affordable, nutritious food, Austin Parks and Recreation Department set aside just two-thirds of an acre to create a food forest. The first plants went into the ground in 2015. Neighbors harvest produce, and volunteers pick what’s left  donates it to local food pantries.

No data is being collected on the amount of produce harvested or what percentage of the yield gets into the hands of those in need (though the project does donate a portion of its harvest to the local food bank), but co-founder Jodi Lane often sees people harvesting food, which gives her hope that the effort is having an impact.

It’s too soon to know how the urban food forest in Atlanta will benefit residents of the Lakewood-Browns Mill neighborhood, but Cambardella is hopeful that it will have an impact on underserved residents.

“We’re building a local food economy, and we’re working toward abundance,” he says. “These communities have been resilient in this neighborhood for a long time, and this will just be another part of the infrastructure to battle food insecurity.”

Top photo: A wide view of the Atlanta Food Forest at Browns Mill. (Photo courtesy of AgLanta)

The post Can Food Forests Fight Hunger? appeared first on Civil Eats.

The study, from the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future and the U.S. Forest Service, surveyed 105 self-identified foragers in Baltimore to understand the motivations of people who seek out parks, forests, residential neighborhoods, and corporate campuses for wild edibles including berries, mushrooms, rose hips, and dandelions.

“If foraging is comprising a large fraction of your diet, there may be economic motivations for that,” said Dr. Keeve Nachman, one of the researchers of the study and the director of the food production and public health program at Johns Hopkins. More than half of the foragers cited economic benefits as their main motivation. And foraged foods made up three times more of the diets of Baltimore residents earning less than $40,000 per year than those earning more than $100,000. Moreover, for 10 percent of foragers, wild edibles accounted for 20 percent or more of their diets.

Not only are wild edibles widely available and free for the taking—most are nutrient-dense as well. For example, lambsquarters are an excellent source of vitamins B6 and K, folate, and riboflavin; rose hips are rich in vitamin C; and hazelnuts contain protein, fat, and fiber. But factors including cultural norms, potential environmental contamination, and local laws often inhibit the practice’s ability to proliferate.

“There are a lot of high-end restaurants and hipsters embracing [edible] weeds, but there are still social and cultural barriers to foraging,” said Philip Stark, associate dean of mathematics and physical sciences at the University of California, Berkeley, and founder of Berkeley Open Source Food.

Stark noted that foraging fell out of favor with the rise of industrial agriculture, triggering a belief that food sold in a package or stocked in a supermarket is safe, but food plucked from the soil is icky.

“The more we normalize weeds as foods, the more we can change people’s attitudes about foraging,” he said, “but I don’t think we’ll ever get a substantial percentage of the population to forage.”

Eric Kelly, one of the foragers included in the Johns Hopkins’ study, agrees. Even those interested in foraging often give up upon realizing the amount of education and effort it takes to find and harvest wild edibles. “You have to spend a lot of time learning to identify plants and process them so they don’t taste like bubbling garbage,” he said.

Overcoming the “ick” factor is just one roadblock. Nachman also worries about potential chemical exposures from consuming foraged foods, especially those harvested in risky areas.

The Urban Forestry and Urban Greening study found that 15 percent of foraging sites were commercial, including industrial and agricultural lands where contaminants are more prevalent. In the next phase of his research, Nachman plans to gather samples from foraging sites across Baltimore and test them for toxic residues.

Additionally, harvesting food from public or private lands is often illegal. In 2013, a Chicago Tribune article noted that a 75-year-old man, “barely making it on Social Security,” was fined $75 for picking dandelions to make a salad. The Daily Mail reported that a nurse foraging for mushrooms in the U.K. was ordered to pay £364 in fines and court costs in 2016.

For those lacking funds to fill their refrigerators, the possibility of being fined for foraging could be too large of a risk. But Marla R. Emery, research geographer at the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service and co-author of the Baltimore foraging research, notes that policies prohibiting foraging could be ripe for change.

“We’ve heard concerns about the ecological impacts of foraging and concerns about potential exposure to contaminates,” Emery said. “But park managers are increasingly interested in managing parks as multi-functional landscapes that provide a variety of benefits to the citizens.” Emery added that sharing with park managers the findings that the five most frequently foraged edibles are both weedy species and quite nutrient-dense could help managers decide “whether or not there might be scope for allowing at least some foraging in the lands that they manage.”

Although the Johns Hopkins study doesn’t address the larger issues that drive food insecurity—such as poverty and a lack of affordable housing—the authors do note that their results point the way toward creating urban planning, policy, and design guidelines that can encourage, or at least not criminalize, gathering wild foods.

And cities around the country are starting to take action. Seattle recently changed its rules about foraging and, in its 2013 Urban Forest Stewardship Plan, stated that fruit and nut trees and other wild foods provided a valuable food source for residents and that foraging maintains traditions and deepens connections to nature, making it a legitimate use of urban forests.  Free-food parks have also been popping up nationwide in recent years.

Even as public attitudes and policies are slowly changing, the trend of foraging is raising its profile for profit-making.

“There are already people commoditizing on our romantic notions of wild foods on our plates,” Baltimore forager Eric Kelly said. “You can buy dandelion greens at Whole Foods.”

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Until spring, almost all of the fresh fruits and vegetables distributed through the Community Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma are imported from warmer climes like Mexico and California. Those donations are few and far between, often leaving the food bank distributing non-perishable items such as canned tomatoes, peanut butter, and pasta instead of fresh foods. To address this gap, the food bank started to grow its own greens, ensuring a stable supply of fresh, locally-grown produce for its clients.

“Our priority is getting healthy foods to the people that need them, but getting donated produce has been a big challenge for us—and having fresh produce is even tougher in the winter months,” said John McCarthy, the food bank’s director of community incentives.

Inside the Community Food Bank of Oklahoma’s vertical farm. (Photo courtesy Growtainers)

In 2016, the food bank installed a vertical farm—an indoor, temperature-controlled environment where food is grown in stacked towers under LED lights. The two 40-foot by 8-foot shipping containers that make up the operation were upfitted into indoor hydroponic farms by Growtainers, one of several manufacturers of vertical farm systems. The containers are designed to produce up to 1,800 heads of lettuce and other leafy greens every 45 days—regardless of the time of year.

“We harvest greens in the morning, and they’re available in the afternoon, producing a really nice product we can count on,” McCarthy said.

Farming is generally not commonplace among food banks. Feeding America, a nonprofit, nationwide network of food banks, reports that only 29 of its 200 members operate farms and distribute that produce to food insecure and low-income clients. And this is mostly because land is expensive to acquire or lease; growing food is time- and labor-intensive and requires specialized knowledge; and many food banks choose instead to focus their efforts on the logistics of getting food to people in need.

But vertical farms—with manufacturers’ promises of producing large amounts of food in a small footprint through high-tech, plug-and-play growing operations—could bring about a shift in food banks’ willingness to grow their own food. Unlike greenhouses, which can lack light and temperature control, thereby limiting the growing season, vertical farms might offer food banks the ability to grow food year-round.

With the National Organic Standards Board recently making the controversial recommendation that hydroponic and aeroponic systems be eligible to earn organic certification, vertical farms are poised to reach new levels of popularity. And though there is no data on the number of food banks operating vertical farms, several appear to be experimenting with the high-tech approach.

Cultivating the Right Approach for the Climate

One of the biggest arguments against food banks getting into the vertical-farming business is simply that these systems are pricey. The Community Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma paid $140,000 for its two Growtainers, securing a grant from the Morningcrest Healthcare Foundation to purchase the vertical farms. It costs an additional $680 per month for electricity to power them.

For nonprofits, cost can be a barrier and, in some locations, indoor farms are an unnecessary expense. The learning curve can also be steep and most food banks rely on volunteer labor to handle maintenance and harvesting, often with training from the manufacturers of the vertical systems.

The climate was the main reason the Surrey Food Bank, the second-largest food bank in British Columbia, installed a vertical farm from Living Garden Foods at one of its four locations earlier this year. The wall-mounted towers grow produce in eight rows; fresh lettuce and kale are harvested every six weeks, allowing the food bank to provide fresh greens for up to 80 families at its Cloverdale location.

“A lot of food banks have outdoor community gardens, but this is a new thing, and we think it’s working well,” said Feezah Jaffer, the food bank’s executive director.

The Surrey Food Bank’s vertical farm system. (Photo © Pixel Perfect Photography)

Still, some food banks growing food in warmer climates are continuing to grow outside. San Antonio Food Bank, for example. operates a 75-acre farm and an urban orchard with 170 fruit trees, distributing produce to clients in 16 counties across Texas. The conventional farming plots grow everything from onions and potatoes to watermelons and cantaloupe, helping the food bank achieve its mission to provide fresh, healthy foods to those in need.

Because of the success of the farms, Patrick Brennan, manager of facilities and agricultural initiatives at the San Antonio Food Bank, has no immediate plans to add vertical farming to the agricultural operations.

“In more extreme climates, growing indoors is a more attractive option,” Brennan explained. “We do get temperature fluctuations and occasional freezes, so vertical farming might be in our future, but for now we have the ability in Central Texas to decrease costs by growing produce traditionally.”

Working Through the Growing Pains

For food banks where the climate isn’t as friendly to outdoor farming, vertical farms may hold promise. Given their positive experience with vertical farming, Surrey Food Bank in B.C. is hoping to install similar systems at the bank’s three other sites as well. While farmers donate apples, pears, cherries, and other locally grown fruits and vegetables to the food bank, those donations often fall short of demand, requiring the food bank to allocate part of its budget to purchase fresh produce. All together, produce comprises 45 percent of the food the bank distributes.

Before expanding the farming effort, however, Jaffer wants to address some of the challenges facing the current operation.

First harvest in the Community Food Bank of Oklahoma’s Growtainers. (Photo courtesy Growtainers)

Less than six months into production, volunteers at the Surrey Food Bank are still figuring out how to maximize the farm’s output. Some of the greens failed to grow, and others went to seed too fast. Additionally, varieties like Swiss chard grew well, but clients were unfamiliar with the greens or disliked their flavor. As volunteers gained experience with the vertical towers, production problems became less common and surveying families about what kinds of greens they prefer helped the food bank tweak its crop mix so no greens went uneaten.

The Community Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma also adjusted its approach based on feedback from clients and experience with the vertical growing system. In addition to experimenting with growing tomatoes in one of its Growtainers, the food bank reduced output of non-nutrient-dense greens such as butter lettuce, romaine, and mesclun in favor of growing more kale and spinach—and teaching clients on how to prepare it by offering recipes—to maximize the nutritional value, and reduce waste.

Jaffer at the Surrey Food Bank believes asking clients about their preferences helps provide a sense of ownership in the harvest and increases their willingness to add fresh greens to their food baskets.

“There have been growing pains, but the more we learn these lessons, the bigger of a success it becomes,” she said. “We think food banks need to evolve to meet the needs of our clients, and embracing vertical farming technology is one way we can do that.”

Top photo: The Community Food Bank of Oklahoma’s Growtainers. Photo courtesy of Growtainers.

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Fresh Truck is more than just a mobile supermarket, however; the nonprofit is working to get nutritious foods into the hands of people who lack access. Unlike traditional supermarkets, the shelves of the old bus are stocked with fresh fruits and vegetables and devoid of salt- and sugar-laden processed foods; shoppers can use cash, debit/credit, and EBT state welfare benefit payment cards.

Executive director Josh Trautwein came up with the idea for a mobile fresh food market while coordinating nutrition education for a Boston health center. “At the time, the only grocery store in the neighborhood closed down, so there was a big gap in our programming,” he recalled. “We were encouraging families to eat healthier, but there was nowhere close by for them to shop.”

Fresh Truck launched in 2013 with a mission to improve the health of Boston residents. The nonprofit’s two school bus-based markets make 11 stops throughout the city each week, mostly in low-income neighborhoods and food deserts where residents lack access to fresh foods and often resort to purchasing their groceries from corner stores with limited selection.

Betty Akpan says her diet has improved since she started receiving weekly $10 vouchers from South End Community Health Center in 2016. “I’m a senior citizen on a fixed income and the vouchers help a lot,” she said.

Thanks to the vouchers, Akpan can often purchase enough fruits and vegetables for several meals. Fresh Truck has a better selection than local food pantries (where Akpan can usually only get potatoes and onions) and the prices are lower than the local supermarket. “I use the vouchers and even spend a little of my own money when I have it,” she said. Convenience is also a factor: instead of taking a bus several stops to get to the supermarket, Akpan walks to Fresh Truck.

Health centers and social service agencies across Boston—including Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital, Boston Medical Center HealthNet Plan, and Boston Centers for Youth and Families—underwrite the program, providing vouchers (that work like gift cards) to organizations such as schools, housing developments, and social service agencies to purchase produce from Fresh Truck.

To further its impact, Fresh Truck introduced FreshRx in 2015, a program that accepts “prescription” gift cards from local partners in exchange for produce. Through the program, healthcare partners identify a group of patients who receive a FreshRx card for $10 per week in groceries. Fresh Truck records the patient transactions and sends data back to healthcare providers to help them study outcomes.

To date, the nonprofit has sold more than $100,000 in fresh food through the FreshRx program.

Building on a Nationwide Trend

Supermarkets on wheels started popping up almost a decade ago. New York City appears to be one of the first to use mobile markets to improve fresh food access in underserved areas through its Green Carts initiative. Since then, mobile markets have launched in several cities, including Farmshare Austin in Texas and Arcadia’s Mobile Markets in the Washington, D.C. area.

Despite the rising popularity of mobile markets, research on the trend has uncovered mixed results.

A report published after the inaugural year of the Green Carts program found that neighborhood residents relied on the fresh fruit and vegetable vendors for their produce needs and cited convenience and price of produce as the main drivers for purchasing produce from mobile markets.

One United States Department of Agriculture report found that those who shopped at mobile markets ate more fruits and vegetables, but often lacked the motivation to cook or the cooking skills to prepare fresh produce. Other research found that improving access to nutritious foods failed to change purchasing and consumption habits, in part because processed foods are cheaper and more convenient.

Trautwein acknowledges the challenges of creating a new model to improve food access. But he also recognizes the need to bridge the gaps in the system. Food pantries, he argues, offer limited fresh produce, and the fresh fruits and vegetables that are abundant at farmers’ markets are perceived as out-of-reach, pricewise.

In an attempt to avoid the pitfalls that have befallen mobile markets in the past—as well as challenges Fresh Truck had encountered, including building brand awareness and a setup that makes it impossible to sell refrigerated items such as meat and dairy—the startup is constantly evaluating operations and customer needs, which led to the development of cooking education and nutrition literacy programming.

“We would love to see families in a few of our different locations shopping for more nutrient-dense greens—like kale and collard greens and spinach—and less fruit,” Trautwein explained.

To boost sales of under-performing produce, Fresh Truck introduced a Vegetable of the Month program that includes fun facts about the food, simple suggestions to prepare it, and sales to encourage shoppers to purchase the produce. The nonprofit also hosts cooking demonstrations and other special events in conjunction with community partners like the YMCA and Boys and Girls Clubs.

“It’s a long-term play, but we are trying to help our families get to a place where they’re developing a more balanced diet and repertoire of cooking skills,” Trautwein said. “We see part of our job as helping our families shift their habits around how they shop and eat.”

Food Prescriptions

South End Community Health Center has been participating in the FreshRx program since 2016. Patients are given weekly prescriptions for fresh foods, along with a $10 voucher and recommended shopping list from a staff doctor or nutritionist.

“Our approach to healthcare is to address the social determinants of health,” explained chief operating officer Karen van Unen. “By making access to healthy, fresh, low-cost produce available to patients and the larger community, we help to at least minimize one barrier to healthy lifestyles.”

The hope is that subsidizing fresh foods can help address a root cause of nutrition-related illnesses like heart disease and diabetes.

So far, FreshRx has proven popular with patients: Fresh Truck processes more than 110 transactions during its three-hour stop at South End Community Health Center on Friday afternoons, and the average shopper spends an additional $2 (above the value of their prescription voucher) on fresh produce.

Trautwein believes that partnering with healthcare providers and promoting “prescriptions” for fresh foods fuels the narrative that food should be an integrated part of preventive medicine and treatment. Another effort is currently being explored in California that would deliver prescription meals to those with chronic illnesses. In order to expand the “food is medicine” conversation and grow FreshRx’s impact, Trautwein hopes to expand Fresh Truck’s partnerships with local healthcare organizations.

“There is a fascinating shift, a realization that the healthcare sector needs to do more work to contain healthcare costs related to more upstream causes of poor health,” Trautwein said. “Our healthcare stakeholders are really excited about the fact that we’ve introduced this agile, pretty cheap solution to address the fact that people can’t always afford healthy food.”

Photos courtesy of Fresh Truck.

The post A Fresh Idea to Improve Food Access appeared first on Civil Eats.

Earlier this year, The California Food is Medicine Coalition, which is made up of six California nonprofits: Ceres Community Project in Santa Rosa, Mama’s Kitchen in San Diego, Project Open Hand in San Francisco, HealthTrust in San Jose, Food for Thought in Sonoma County, and Project Angel Food in Los Angeles—all groups that for the most part started delivering medically tailored meals during the HIV/AIDS crisis and saw the impact on patients’ quality of life—worked with state Senator Mike McGuire to request funding to pilot the program.

“We’re trying to make the case that high-quality nutritional support in the form of a meal-delivery program to meet the nutritional needs of patients with specific illnesses should be considered a medical intervention without which the patient will not do nearly as well,” said Cathryn Couch, executive director of Ceres Project. “This kind of work is being done in other states and we’re behind.”

If the coalition’s request for $9 million in funding over three years is approved, it would be the first multi-organization, multi-county, multi-disease pilot in the country—and it could have a significant impact on healthcare costs and health outcomes.

[Update: On June 27, Governor Jerry Brown signed the state’s budget that included $2 million in funding for the California Food is Medicine Coalition. The groups are determining their research design and plan to launch the program on January 1, 2018.]

Earlier work in Philadelphia, led by the nonprofit MANNA and documented in a 2013 study published in the Journal of Primary Care and Community Health, showed promising results. After delivering three medically tailored meals per day to 65 patients with different chronic illnesses for six months, researchers found that the healthcare costs for those patients dropped from $38,937 per month to $28,183 per month, and were 55 percent lower than the healthcare costs of a comparison group. The frequency of hospital admissions and length of hospital stays also declined.

A healthful and diverse diet, say these groups, can work wonders to bring patients back to health. “With our model, you don’t have to wait years to see results,” said MANNA CEO Sue Daugherty. “With hypertension, we can see the results in one month; with A1C [a blood test for average blood glucose], we can see the results in three months.”

Food Heals

MANNA, like many members of the Food is Medicine Coalition, started delivering meals to those living with HIV/AIDS in the 1990s. The program expanded over time and, in 2014, thanks to a partnership with local insurer Health Partners Plans, MANNA started tailoring meals for 80 different health conditions ranging from cancer and kidney disease to diabetes and HIV/AIDS.

The dietician-designed menus offered by Ceres Project feature dishes such as mushroom quiche, chickpea burgers, lentil soup, fish stew, and pasta with summer vegetables.

Preparations are further tailored to specific illnesses. Meals for diabetes patients would have fewer carbohydrates while meals for patients with heart disease would limit sodium and saturated fats. All meals are based around fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and high quality proteins.

Groups also allow for dietary modifications. MANNA, for example, provides pureed meals for those who struggle to chew or swallow, low spice meals, low lactose, and seafood-free meals for those with allergies.

A 2016 study found that home-delivered, medically tailored meals helped cancer patients decrease fatigue, eat more nutritiously, and live more independently.

And the Harvard Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation has reported that medically tailored meals help lower blood glucose levels, reduce the number of hospitalizations and ER visits, and increase medication adherence among those with diabetes. Harvard’s study also showed that providing three meals per day for six months costs less than a single night of hospitalization.

The opportunity to improve health outcomes helped MANNA secure partnerships with three insurers. The nonprofit operates out of a new commercial kitchen with 36 staff members and 4,500 active volunteers to deliver meals to roster of 1,000 clients who receive 1 million meals annually.

“There is finally recognition that a prescription diet is just as important as prescription medications,” Daugherty says.

Statewide Support

While MANNA secures its funding through a number of channels including contracts with insurers, individual donations, foundations, and corporate giving, the Food is Medicine Coalition hopes to have funding embedded into the state budget and will then allocate resources to patients receiving public health insurance through Medi-Cal, California’s implementation of Medicaid.

According to Couch, the program has the support of the California Department of Public Health, California Department of Healthcare Services, and other key stakeholders.

The Department of Public Health declined to comment on pending legislation, but a spokesperson said in a statement: “For those individuals diagnosed with chronic disease such as diabetes and heart disease, proper nutrition can be a key component of treatment.”

Couch believes the intervention is critical for supporting patients but admits there are still logistics to work out.

The goal is to have Medi-Cal refer patients to local organizations such as Mama’s Kitchen and Project Open Hand, which can deliver the meals in their respective counties.

As part of the pilot, the coalition will track healthcare utilization and health outcomes before, during, and after the intervention. Couch estimates that a $9 million investment would shave $19 million in healthcare costs during the first year of the program.

“We’re talking about patients who have to decide whether to pay for their medications or their utilities,” Couch says. “This is a population without any food support and the sooner we can demonstrate the positive outcomes to healthcare utilization and insurance costs, the sooner we can show that it makes sense to include medically tailored meal deliveries as an essential health benefit.”

Thanks to their dogged determination, the coalition received good news: In June, members of the state Senate approved $6 million over three years to pilot the program. While the Assembly did not include funding in its budget, the joint Conference Committee on the Budget voted to include the funding in the final budget. The budget is expected to be ratified today, and will go to the governor’s desk soon after. There is still a chance Brown could veto the expenditure, but Couch is hopeful.

“It’s such a small amount of money compared to the overall healthcare budget in California,” she said. “Even if it doesn’t go through this year, we’ll be back in 2018. We’ve come too far to give up now.”

Photo courtesy of the Ceres Community Project.

The post Bringing Healing Meals to the Chronically Ill in California appeared first on Civil Eats.

“I became disenchanted watching the same people come back week after week,” says the 41-year-old former software sales executive. “Giving them food was not solving the problem; I wanted to do something to empower people to feed themselves.”

Rather than handing out nonperishable foods, Mauro believed he could have a more powerful impact using the buy one, give one model pioneered by companies like the shoe maker TOMS and the eyeglass company Warby Parker to help people grow their own food.

In 2015, Mauro founded Mauro Seed Company. The concept is simple: For every package of beet, broccoli, kale, collard, carrot, or other open-pollinated, non-GMO vegetable seeds purchased, the startup donates a package to partner organizations, including churches, school gardens, and international outreach missions both in the United States and abroad. The company aims to work with partners committed to teaching members of their communities how to plant and manage gardens.

“Seeds have the greatest ability to feed most people at the lowest cost,” Mauro says. “The seeds we gave [to our partners] last year will continue to produce food for years to come.”

To carry out the work, Mauro converted his basement into company headquarters and partnered with Tennessee seed growers to source the seeds. With the help of his wife, children, and three part-time employees, he packages the seeds in his home and ships them to customers and nonprofit partners around the world. He conducts sales exclusively through the company website.

So far, Mauro Seed Company is making a mark with its mission. In 2016—its first full year in business—it donated enough seeds to grow one million pounds of food to partner organizations that teach others to grow their own food.

Tennessee-based nonprofit cul2vate was one of the first partner organizations to benefit from a donation. Last summer, the nonprofit used the seeds to grow food on its two-and-a-half-acre site as part of a farmer training program for the chronically unemployed. Cul2vate also gave seeds to low-income members of the local community who wanted to start their own gardens.

“The seed donation allows us to focus our financial resources on curriculum development and training,” explains cul2vate executive director Joey Lankford.

This year, Mauro Seed Company is doubling its giving goal and hopes to sell enough $3 seed packets to donate the equivalent of two million pounds of food.

Buy One, Give One Models

Around the country, several other buy one, give one seed companies have realized success in recent years. In New York, Bentley Seed Company introduced a Give & Grow program in 2014. For each packet of seeds purchased through one of its dealers, the 40-year-old company donates a packet of its non-GMO seeds to partner non-profit organizations that offer garden classes. In its first year, the Give & Grow program donated 10,000 packets of seeds.

Finney Farm in Concrete, Washington, also operates a similar program, donating about 8,000 packages of seed each year.

While the popularity of altruistic seed donations appears to be growing, the model is not without its critics. TOMS, the pioneer of the buy one, give one model, has come under fire for, among other things, displacing local shoemakers and providing a Band-Aid solution instead of addressing the root cause of the problem in the process of donating 60 million pairs of shoes.

While the seed giveaway model is still too small and niche to attract attention from critics, Mauro understands the criticism, but unlike shoes, he points out, seeds can be saved and used indefinitely to address global hunger. Moreover, he believes, donating seeds—as opposed to food—empowers recipients to grow their own food as opposed to relying on others for donations.

“Once the giver disappears, the gift continues giving,” Mauro says.

Seeking Partners that Share the Mauro Vision

Fortunately for Mauro, the interest in growing fruits and vegetables is at an all-time high. In 2016, Americans spent $3.6 billion growing food, with Millennials making up more than 80 percent of new food gardeners, according to the National Gardening Survey.

“We’re not getting grandpa who’s been buying seeds for 30 years and is loyal to big seed companies,” Mauro explains. “Our focus is the younger generation who are growing their first gardens and inclined to support a company for its values as well as its products.”

Still, Mauro has discovered that executing his vision has its challenges. Mauro vets each potential partner organization through an application and interview process and has found identifying partners challenging.

“We’re about more than just getting seeds into the hands of people who need them,” Mauro says. “It’s been difficult to find partners that are able to provide the knowledge, training, and education to empower people to grow their own food.”

Mauro Seed Company sends about 75 percent of its donated seeds abroad through organizations like Foundations for Farming in Zimbabwe and Semilla Nueva in Guatemala. The reason, according to Mauro, is that there is more focus on educating people to grow their own food in developing countries.

In the U.S., most of Mauro’s partners use the seeds to grow fresh vegetables for those in need rather than teaching them to grow their own food.

“These groups are doing important work, and we’re not [opposed to] their approach, but it’s not the core of our mission,” Mauro says.

Grow Appalachia, based out of Berea, Kentucky, is a proponent of the seed company’s approach. One of the few U.S. partners that aligns almost exactly with Mauro’s central mission, the organization promotes self-sufficiency by teaching residents of rural Appalachia to garden. Founded in 2009, Grow Appalachia has helped more than 14,000 gardeners grow almost three million pounds of food over the last eight years.

“Learning to grow food is about more than a meal,” explains director David Cooke. “It’s giving people control over one element of their destiny.”

Under a new partnership with the Mauro Seed Company, the nonprofit has received over 400 pounds of bean, pea, corn, cucumber, cabbage, squash, and watermelon seeds that will produce hundreds of thousands of pounds of food for program participants. In addition to being used in educational gardening programs, the seeds will be given to participants to use at home.

The donation, according to Cooke, will free up resources to offer classes and purchase equipment like hoses and hand tools that residents of the economically depressed rural communities could not otherwise afford. “Seeds are one part of the entire system,” Cooke says. “You have to know what to do with them and have the tools to maintain them. We can focus on that if we’re not worried about paying for the seeds.”

Mauro hopes to support an increasing number of nonprofits like Growing Appalachia and cul2vate and to double sales—and donations—in 2017. But he insists he’s not trying to build his company into a brand that will compete with major players like Johnny’s Selected Seeds or Burpee.

“We’re not trying to be the biggest, but we are trying to have the biggest impact,” he says.

Photos courtesy of Mauro Seed Company.

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