By: Adena J. White

Overconsumption of processed foods has been linked to the rising rates of diabetes, hypertension and other chronic health conditions. Access and cost are the major barriers. 

To address these barriers and help improve the physical and economic health of Jefferson County, Communities Unlimited was recently awarded an “Access to Local Foods”’ grant from Arkansas Community Foundation to launch a “Food Farmacy” pilot program.

This program will provide enrolled families with access to fresh, nutritious food – as well as education and healthcare services – with the ultimate goal of improving their overall health.

Part rural development hub and part community development financial institution, or CDFI, Communities Unlimited Inc. works alongside rural community leaders and small businesses to create fair access to resources needed to sustain healthy communities, healthy businesses and healthy families.

Brenda Williams, manager of Communities Unlimited’s healthy foods initiative, wrote the grant application for the Food Farmacy project in Jefferson County, expanding upon a similar grant-funded project the organization introduced in Clarksdale, Mississippi, back in 2020. Both projects are personal to Williams, who grew up in Blytheville, Arkansas, and now lives in Mississippi.

“I definitely consider myself a Delta girl or a country girl at heart,” she said. “Every person has the right to access healthy and nutritious foods, no matter where they live.”

Through her role with Communities Unlimited, Williams works with small-scale, underserved growers, mostly Black farmers, to help them build farm capacity as well as connect them with market opportunities where they can sell wholesale. The Food Farmacy program will purchase locally grown produce from small-scale growers to provide fresh produce to families in Jefferson County.

Burthel Thomas, a local grower from Pine Bluff, is one of the farmers partnering with Communities Unlimited on the Food Farmacy initiative. The Dumas native did not grow up on a farm but has always aspired to farm and own land. He turned his dream into a reality and now owns 275 acres in Jefferson County near Wabbaseka and Altheimer.

Through the partnership with Communities Unlimited, Thomas and other small-scale farmers in the area can obtain additional market opportunities while supplying people in their community with healthy foods.

“The Food Farmacy project is a win-win for me and my neighbors who farm because we can partner with each other. It improves our ability to market and provides more food to people on a larger scale,” Thomas said.

Beginning this summer, the farmers will provide an assortment of fresh produce – including sweet potatoes, tomatoes and sweet corn – to select Jefferson County residents through a local healthcare clinic in Pine Bluff. The clinic has identified 20 to 25 patients with chronic health issues to participate in the Food Farmacy program.

The 12-week pilot project will use the “food as medicine” model to address food insecurity and provide patients and their families with a produce voucher to be redeemed at the Food Farmacy for locally grown produce. Similar to a traditional pharmacy, the idea behind the Food Farmacy is to write patients a “prescription” to eat healthy foods to improve their health and help them better manage their underlying health conditions. It will also incorporate services that include behavior-change coaching along with cooking demonstrations by nutrition educators to support patients in the development of healthy eating habits.

“Our aim with this pilot is to help bridge the divide between food insecurity and healthcare by providing healthy foods, clinical services and nutrition education to patients,” Williams said. “We definitely want to provide nutrition education and recipes so that we’re not just giving these families produce and telling them, ‘Now go and eat well.’ The idea is to equip them with the know-how for preparing the produce that is in their boxes.”

To measure the impact of the program on health outcomes, Communities Unlimited will collect baseline labs and biometric data at the beginning of enrollment.

“Our hope is that by providing fresh, healthy foods, we will see changes in behavior that will influence the health of the participants in positive ways while supporting small-scale growers in Jefferson County,” Williams said.

Urban Patchwork and its network of growers promote urban farming across Pulaski County

By Adena J. White

“Growing food is in my blood.”

For Gabe Bland, farming is part of his lineage. The Elaine, Arkansas, native comes from a family of sharecroppers. He calls Little Rock home, too, splitting his time between Elaine and the capital city as a child and eventually graduating from Little Rock Central High School.

Bland’s rural and urban upbringing are what fuels his passion. He uses both the process of farming and the food he produces to connect people. He is building relationships with neighbors and other community members – while educating them about urban farming practices and providing healthy foods.

Connecting the Community through Food

Bland began operating his third urban farm, Turtle Island, in the South End neighborhood of Little Rock, which runs south of Roosevelt to Interstate 30, in June 2022. An experienced property manager, he saw an opportunity to purchase lots that once housed vacant apartment buildings, transforming 3314 South Arch Street into a small farm and roadside food stand.

Through a partnership with Urban Patchwork, Bland plans to expand Turtle Island into a neighborhood food hub and commercial kitchen for growing, storing, selling and socializing around food in the South End. His vision is to bring the community together by hosting block parties, cookouts on a hibachi grill where guests can prepare and eat food grown on the farm, gardening classes and even yoga sessions.

“I want this to be more than just a store,” he said. “We want to bring people together around food.”

Urban Patchwork is a nonprofit network of farmers and backyard gardeners with a shared goal to increase access to fresh food in urban neighborhoods. For the past eight years, experienced growers like Bland who are part of the network have provided materials, tools, hands-on learning experiences, administrative assistance and marketing opportunities to community members. Turtle Island will serve as an educational space centralizing regional resources to help people in low-income, low-access neighborhoods – as designated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture – become more self-reliant.

“The farms that are part of Urban Patchwork are not all large urban farms like Gabe’s,” said Dr. Jimmy Parks, executive director of Urban Patchwork. “Some people have small, raised-bed gardens while others may build a chicken coop in the backyard so they can have chickens and eggs. There is activity going on all over town, and we want to help remove any barriers – either real or perceived – that may prevent people from urban farming.”

While access to healthy food is important, bringing people together around food in the South End neighborhood, or any neighborhood, is an equally big part of what Urban Patchwork is all about.

“Motivating people to eat healthy food is not our objective, but I think if they’re around it, see that it tastes good and are able to have some fun growing and cooking it, they will naturally eat more of it.”

Educating Community Members about Urban Farming

Through hands-on learning experiences, Urban Patchwork aims to equip people of all ages with the skills necessary to practice sustainable urban farming. Educational opportunities include building garden beds and picnic tables, growing mushrooms, preserving food and harvesting chickens.

“We try to turn everything we do into a class,” Parks said.

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Community members who participate in Urban Patchwork’s learning opportunities leave with a better understanding about what is possible to produce on a small amount of land.

“You don’t have to have a lot of space to be able to produce a fair amount of food,” said Urban Patchwork board member Neil Denman. “It can be done in anybody’s yard, apartment patio or terrace, or right outside of an office. You can garden just about anywhere.”

Another benefit to educating people is to help them expand their palate. Bland said that many people buy the same produce because they may not know how to prepare foods they are unfamiliar with.

“I admit that I didn’t know what arugula was,” he said. “Even though I was eating it in a mixed salad. I want to help expose people to different types of healthy foods and teach them how they can pair and prepare them.”

Increasing Access to Healthy Food

Through its network of urban farms across Pulaski County, Urban Patchwork aims to expand access to fresh, local food in neighborhoods that do not have a grocery store within walking distance of their home. One purpose of the project at Turtle Island is to increase the capacity of the neighborhood food hub to provide local food to the 2,300 residents in the South End neighborhood.

When successful, Parks expects that the community will be less dependent on stores and providers outside of their neighborhood. The ultimate goal is that the health of these neighborhoods – both the physical health of the residents and the social cohesion – will improve as more people grow, prepare, eat and share local food.

“One reason people have limited access to local food is that they just don’t know where to get it,” Parks said. “The Turtle Island project is a way to introduce people to one another at food- and garden-related social events in the South End neighborhood.”

Since opening nearly a year ago, Turtle Island has provided fresh, nutritious produce from more than 20 local growers to neighborhood customers. Consistent with its commitment to education, customers receive a recipe card with each purchase on how to prepare the food. The stand at Turtle Island is currently open one day a week for four hours, weather permitting, with plans to expand its hours, recruit more local food producers, and host more events and classes once the commercial kitchen is constructed.

“We want to make it a whole thing,” Bland said.

By Kim Dishongh

The landscape is changing in and around Elaine in Phillips County, as unkempt, often litter-strewn vacant lots are being replaced by neat rows of peas, peppers, tomatoes and more.

It makes for a more appealing view. Aesthetics aside, this evolution is helping to educate, employ and nourish residents of the little Arkansas Delta town.

James White, director of the Elaine Legacy Center, has made it his mission to improve life for the 600 or so residents of Elaine. One way to do that, he hopes, is to encourage people who own vacant lots around town to allow the Legacy Center to clear them, till them and find people to turn them into gardens.

White grew up helping his grandparents on their farm, and he formed lasting memories around the fresh produce they grew there.

“Back then, you lived off of your garden. Everybody around here used to have one,” he said. “They don’t anymore. People stopped doing that some time back.”

Not only are fewer people in Elaine growing fresh produce themselves, they often run into challenges buying it.

“From Elaine, we have to drive 20 or 30 minutes to get to a grocery store where we can get fresh vegetables,” he said. “There’s not anywhere here you can just go buy stuff like that.”

Dr. Mary Olson, spokesperson for the Legacy Center, said access to fresh whole foods is one issue, and so is poverty. Fresh produce costs more – and spoils faster – than packaged foods. People may not be able to afford the higher-priced, albeit healthier foods, and they also may not have the time or kitchen tools to prepare it.

“The mission of the Legacy Center is two-pronged,” Olson said. The nonprofit was formed by descendants of Black Elaine residents who were killed during violence that erupted in 1919 as Black workers sought to receive better payments for the crops they harvested.

“It is, first of all, the research, preservation and sharing of the oral histories of Elaine on which to build a foundation for a poverty-free Elaine. It is also a service wing to Elaine right now that recognizes that most of the people are in poverty, and while people are still in poverty, as we wait for the heritage and tourism to eliminate it, we serve as a community. So we are big time on closing the food gap, working with teenagers and doing what the community needs to have done – and wants to have done.”

Elaine Legacy Center supporters have traditionally grown collard greens, purple hull peas and okra on their own grounds and have given much of that produce to people in the community. They also have several plots of cacti.

“Cactus is the healthiest vegetable known to humanity,” Olson said. “It is niched in the Hispanic Mexican culture and because we have a strong Hispanic population with whom we work, we started growing cactus.”
The flavor, she said, is similar to green beans, and it can be roasted, eaten raw in a salad, boiled or juiced.

“One of our goals is to get it out of just the Hispanic culture and into the general public,” said Olson.

White started a farmers’ market in Elaine where smallholder farmers working in the vacant lot initiative could sell their harvests — and where Elaine residents could buy fresh fruits and vegetables locally. To increase the diversity of the market, White has occasionally traveled to other parts of the Delta to pick up produce to offer patrons. His goal is to support the farmers in the program to diversify their crops so they can grow the crops that are most in demand.

“We’re also planning for teenagers to work in the gardens this summer,” Olson said. “We are hoping that this will be so successful that some of our young people can get agricultural degrees while they are growing vegetables to make a profit. Then they can come back to Elaine earning enough money in this kind of vegetable production to make a better income here than they would make going somewhere else. So, we have high hopes for this.”

Scottie Smith of Lexa has helped plow gardens for the Elaine Legacy Center for several years. For the last couple of years, he has tended gardens of his own as well.

“I started doing it because other people had asked me to till up gardens for them,” said Smith, whose gardens are in Helena. “I had a couple of acres so I decided I would start doing it myself, too.”

Smith’s paternal grandparents farmed, and he worked on farms growing up.

“But I wasn’t growing anything when I worked on the farm,” he said. “I was cutting and chopping and stuff like that, but I didn’t know anything about the planting. I’m still learning that now.”

Smith, whose full-time job is driving trucks for the city of Helena/West Helena, is growing cucumbers, squash, greens, tomatoes, peppers and watermelons, and he also raises chickens. He shares produce and eggs with people in his area who he knows need them. The pandemic and subsequent inflation have created hardships for many, he knows.

“I get to help,” Smith said. “I just try to help people get fresh vegetables in the area because there’s a lack of it here. I try to sell, and sometimes I just give it to them. Outside of that, we just try to feed our family here and keep them healthier.” Smith enlists the help of his 10-year-old son, and he hopes he will learn along with him.

“I want to make money, too, and Dr. Olson introduced me a couple of weeks ago to a guy that proposed to help us sell food to the food bank,” said Smith. “We’re looking at planting a couple of acres of just peas. I don’t know yet how that’s going to go.”

Olson expects to see more vacant lot farms this year, as well as growth in some put in in years past. There will also be a few new gardens outside Elaine, she said.

“All of us at the Elaine Legacy Center are grateful for the two years of funding from Arkansas Community Foundation,” Olson said. “This funding allows us to strengthen vacant lot farming in Elaine and expand it to other places, as well as add collaborators.”

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Elaine Legacy Center received an “Access to Local Foods” grant from Arkansas Community Foundation in 2022 to help increase Arkansans’s access to locally grown food.

The Community Foundation is committed to working with you and your family to fulfill your charitable goals, whether those goals relate to making an impact, leaving a legacy, saving money on taxes, expressing gratitude, or a combination of objectives. If you have not yet established a fund at the Community foundation (and even if you have!), it might interest you to know that a donor-advised fund or other type of fund not only offers flexibility to meet your giving goals, but also gives you options for recognition or anonymity, depending on your goals and preferences.    

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When you recommend grants to your favorite charities from your donor-advised fund the Community Foundation will typically issue the grant checks to the charities noting that the gift is from your fund so that you receive the recognition. Sometimes, though, fundholders have good reasons for wanting their support to be anonymous, whether because of modesty, religious convictions, avoidance of unwanted solicitations, or wanting to keep the focus on the charity.  

Whatever the reasons you might prefer to give anonymously, whether from time to time or across the board, the Community Foundation respects your wishes and can help in a variety of ways.  More details can be found on our blog here. (Jump to rest of the article/blog)

–First and foremost, our team will listen intently to understand your charitable goals and interests and make sure that we are structuring your fund(s) to achieve your charitable giving and family philanthropy goals. Indeed, some individuals and families set up multiple funds to serve different needs, including the desire for anonymity for a portion of their giving but not all. Our team will be sure to ask clarifying questions to determine how best to structure your charitable funds to achieve your desired level of recognition. Do you prefer anonymity for every grant? Is there a threshold amount where smaller grants can be acknowledged? Does the restriction apply only to a public disclosure by the grantee, but the grantee organization is itself aware? We know these discussions can be delicate. 

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