For the past two years, I have urged the Sweet Potato Project youth to see themselves as “urban pioneers.” I tell them they will lead a food-based economic movement in long-neglected, impoverished neighborhoods.
Today, they are planting sweet potatoes on vacant lots. The yield is used for the sweet potato cookies they will sell in a couple weeks. I ask them to imagine whole blocks where food is grown in North St. Louis, processed and turned into products that can be used locally and sold regionally or nationally.
I have told them they will become entrepreneurs, business owners and employers who will run spin-off businesses such as bakeries, grocers or trucking companies. Is this a pipe dream?
Absolutely not, says Chef Steve Jenkins, director of the Food Innovation and Entrepreneurship Program with Saint Louis University’s Department of Nutrition and Dietetics.
Recently, the Sweet Potato Project partnered with SLU to produce sweet potato cookies and other products. It is a good fit, Jenkins contends, considering that Mildred Mattfeldt-Beman, chair of the department, is a pioneer in the region’s locally grown food and product movement.
“She understands the power of food and the issue of social justice within our food systems,” Jenkins said of Mattfeldt-Beman, “and she recognizes the disparities that exist within them.”
Working out of SLU’s Salus Center, Jenkins’ crew provides breakfast, lunch and snacks made from locally-grown harvests to public, private and charter schools. The department also trains students in the art of culinary entrepreneurship.
A food-based revolution is exploding in America. The Evergreen Cooperatives in Cleveland, Ohio are worker-owned cooperative groups committed to local job creation and sustainable workplaces and economic development. Its spin-off initiatives include the Cooperative Laundry, Ohio Cooperative Solar and the Green City Growers Cooperative.
Detroit’s Black Community Food Security Network is a non-profit, grassroots organization engaged in urban agriculture based on a mission to address food disparities and “grasp larger control” over foods systems to build “self-reliance” in urban communities.
The Hattie Cartham Community Garden in Brooklyn, N.Y., reclaims empty or abandoned spaces in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, which are used for urban gardens and community educational centers. The agency grows fruits and vegetables, as well as medicinal herbs for local residents, and offers entrepreneurship programs.
According to Mike Sorth, executive director of Gateway Greening, St. Louis is uniquely positioned to join this revolution.
“We were founded on the fur trade, and we grew on agriculture,” Sorth said of St. Louis. “We’re surrounded by farms in southern Illinois and throughout Missouri, but most of what’s grown are commodity crops (corn, soybeans, etc.). We need more of what’s known as ‘specialty crops’ – the food we eat daily or buy at grocery stores every day.”
Gateway Greening supports more than 200 community gardens and urban greening projects and offers about 75 school and youth-focused gardens. It also operates the City Seeds Urban Farm program on a 2.5-acre vegetable farm downtown, where disadvantaged clients are mentored in horticulture and job training while learning hands-on vegetable production and landscape maintenance.
Karen Davis, regional horticulture specialist for Lincoln University’s Urban Impact Center, believes the possibilities for urban agriculture are endless, especially if we utilize the recently passed House Bill 542. Signed into law this year, it allows local municipalities to create Urban Agriculture Zones (UAZ) within low-income communities. These areas are eligible for tax incentives for “systematic repurposing of blighted areas” in the state’s urban core.
Although Kansas City has signed on, Davis contends that city aldermen must be informed and urged to promote passage of urban agriculture zoning in St Louis.
“There’s a bunch of us working to educate the aldermen to get it approved in St. Louis,” Davis said. “If we do, it opens the door to even more possibilities – tax write-offs for businesses, farming on vacant land tax abatements, and allocations to start urban farming programs in schools. We’re on the cusp of an agricultural renaissance in the city of St. Louis.”
This is the second of a four-part series that explores the possibilities of economic turn-around in long-neglected areas of St. Louis.
For more information , visit sweetpotatoprojectstl.org or call 314-341-4071.
