The Independent View: Grow Appalachia Community Gardens

In my ongoing quest for projects dealing with poverty and healthy food production, I found "Grow Appalachia Community Gardens".

Grow Appalachia was created in 2009 through funding from John Paul Dejoria, co-founder and owner of John Paul Mitchell Systems (JPMS) and Patron Tequila, to address the problem of food security in Appalachia. Tommy Callahan, a friend of John Paul’s and Senior Vice President of Training and Development at JPMS, told John Paul about his experience growing up in Harlan County, Kentucky, where food insecurity is still pervasive and healthy food is frequently unavailable. A natural entrepreneur and problem-solver, John Paul began cultivating a unique vision for tackling food insecurity. He believes that the best way to help people is to empower them to help themselves—even when facing steep, structural challenges.

The food system in America has failed the poor. Food stamps create a culture of dependency. Large factory farms, while capable of providing vast amounts of affordable priced food, have isolated families from their food sources. Despite the rural environment of Appalachia, gardening and farming have become less popular and less profitable in the region. There is a terrible irony in the lack of locally grown food in the midst of one of the world’s most diverse and productive ecosystems. The type of food available in grocery stores, particularly in “food deserts” common in rural Appalachia, is overwhelmingly high-calorie and low-nutrition. In this environment, healthy eating simply isn’t an option, leading to obesity and nutrition-related diseases.

Gardening addresses such issues in several ways:

- It requires people to do the work for themselves.

- It produces both healthy food and outdoor exercise.

- It has long been a tradition of the people of rural Appalachia and the land is suited for producing.

- It becomes an entrepreneurial endeavor when gardens are expanded beyond the needs of the families. Selling those extra tomatoes or melons can be the beginning of a business.

In order to start growing as quickly as possible, John Paul began collaborating with Berea College in Berea, Kentucky, to develop a program that would both meet needs and leverage existing community strengths. Director David Cooke—a West Virginia native, a lifelong gardener, and formerly the program coordinator of the college’s Entrepreneurship for the Public Good Program answered the call and has been responsible for developing the Grow Appalachia program and its partnerships ever since. In turn, Berea College has consistently served as generous host since the program’s founding.

In 2010, their first year, Grow Appalachia participants at four partner sites in Kentucky grew some 120,000 pounds of food for more than 2,800 people. In 2011, their program expanded to a total of seven sites across four states: Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia. Despite a difficult growing season, Grow Appalachia gardeners still managed to grow approximately 134,000 pounds of food for 3,694 people. This program also provided part-time employment for over 70 people as gardening coordinators, field workers and site supervisors.

In 2012 they partnered with 15 sites across the same states. They created over 400 individual gardens and 41 community gardens in 30 counties. These community gardens are plots provided by their respective communities. This approach creates value from unused or underutilized land that’s available in abundance across the region. And it highlights just how much communities believe in Grow Appalachia. They’re willing to support the project without asking anything in return.

They also created 90 full and part-time jobs and continue working to create additional jobs through the Grow Appalachia model in the future. These gardens produced over 320,000 pounds of high quality vegetables and fruits that were shared among over 9000 people.

Their goal in 2013 was to expand to new counties throughout Appalachia to provide even more people with the ability to garden and move the whole region toward self-sustaining food systems. To this aim, they also began providing small livestock to the program participants. Original efforts focused on laying hens and bees. Fresh eggs from just a few hens can add a substantial amount of high quality protein to a family’s diet and excess eggs can always be sold or bartered. The benefits of bees are numerous and locally produced honey always sells at a premium and at least one site is producing skin care products using their own beeswax and herbs from their garden. Through providing the initial infrastructure investment, John Paul jump started food production in the region and made rural gardening both possible and profitable.

Rather than apply a cookie cutter approach to nutrition based wellness, Grow Appalachia meets families where they live and addresses their specific needs. Some families need only help with tillage and fertilization. Some families need to start from scratch. Some elderly and disabled gardeners need help with the hard labor of preparing beds, planting and cultivation, and Grow Appalachia connects them with young people to enable them to keep food security at their own homes.

Appalachia emphasizes food production in order to introduce as much no-cost, fresh, healthy food as possible to the region. The basic goal is to help as many families grow as much of their own food as possible. Here’s how:

- Gardening grants available to communities through partner nonprofits (called “partner sites”). These partner sites have a high level of credibility and history of service in their communities, a demonstrated history of working in food security/food access issues and a reputation for rigid fiscal management standards.

- Each Grow Appalachia participant chooses from classes offered by their partner site throughout the year on topics such as garden planning, planting and maintenance, heart-healthy cooking and up to date food processing and preservation techniques. Grow Appalachia practices what is called “science assisted craft agriculture” (a phrase borrowed from David Kennedy at Leaf for Life). The use of open pollinated and heirloom varieties is required at every site as is the practice of seed saving to preserve and strengthen Appalachia’s horticultural heritage. Classes are shaped by the unique needs of each community and then education is then shared between partner sites.

- Provide technical and physical assistance to every gardener throughout the growing season, ensuring that they have access to solutions and help getting started. Provide plants, seeds, organic soil amendments and pesticides, and quality hand tools.

- Donate a portion of the harvest from each partner site to a local food bank or others who cannot garden for themselves.

- Encourage growers to move toward entrepreneurship by providing technical assistance, which improves garden yields, and access to efficient kitchens and markets. This way, growers can save on grocery costs and begin to make extra money on surplus produce and develop value-added goods such as jellies and salsas.

- Leverage community assets in the form of universities, churches, volunteer workers, external grant sources, leveraged resources of all kinds, unused land and AmeriCorps VISTA volunteers to ensure maximum participation. Grow Appalachia has never paid for the use of land for community gardens — communities see the need for the program and lend land to support it.

As of April, 2013, Grow Appalachia is working with over 25 partner sites in 39 counties with the goal of working with 1000 families and supporting 50 community gardens.