Grant will help Camden’s urban farms grow
$300,000 U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) grant to help them keep growing
By Phaedra Trethan
Cherry Hill Courier-Post
Oct 5, 2020
Excerpt:
Resilient Roots Farm is part of the Camden Urban Agriculture Collaborative (CUAC), which was awarded the $293,411 grant, as well as a grant for $33,000 from Parkside Business and Community in Partnership (PBCIP), a Camden community development corporation that’s facilitating its own neighborhood garden.
The grants, which will fund CUAC’s Urban Agriculture Leadership Pipeline Project through 2022, are part of a larger effort to help Camden residents grow more fresh foods, then sell them to local buyers.
The farmers can use that money to pay young people, showing them not only how to grow their own food, but also that agriculture can be a viable career path, even in urbanized settings.
And the buyers will include local health systems, which prescribe healthy foods and fresh produce as part of patients’ regular medical care.
Urban farming has had “ebbs and flows,” said Jonathan Wetstein, Roots to Market coordinator for PBCIP, with groups scattered throughout Camden. But there has not been a single sales outlet, or a way for them to work together to pool resources like compost, clean soil, seeds, equipment or support.
“It’s been a patchwork of farmers, all doing different work,” he said. An earlier grant, last year’s Build Health grant, has brought those farmers together, “like turning on a switch instantaneously.”
