What is it?
The bill itself is ambitious, and has the potential to set Pennsylvania farming in a new direction. It introduces a block of funding for reimbursement grants for urban farmers. This is some of the first official legislation to acknowledge and support urban farmers.
We talked to Dr. Scott Sheely of the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture to gain some new perspective on what this bill might mean for Pennsylvania farmers.
“It’s been a busy week!” Based in Harrisburg, Dr. Sheely does a lot of different things. Originally from Lancaster, he is a gardener, an agriculture educator, and a special assistant to the Pennsylvania Board of Agriculture. He grows a garden by his patio with everything he needs to make homemade salsa, supplemented by tomatoes from the farmer’s market. From workforce development to agriculture education, his work is in connecting farmers to resources and in making sure those resources are viable. For the last four years, he has been the department’s outreach for urban agriculture. He connects to urban farms and gardens, increasingly in new metropolitan areas of the commonwealth. Erie, Altoona, Easton, and others have all grown tremendously in the past few years. It’s Scott’s job to find out what goes on at these farms and to find out what they need, integrating them into a larger food system.
“Pittsburgh has probably taken this the furthest... looking at what food exists in the region, and what they actually produce.” Can these farms actually provide enough for the city? What does it mean that we import most of the city’s food? Where we’re going will be determined by this bill.
Scott is primarily dealing with the “nitty gritty” of what it means to support urban farming. This year, they were able to funnel grant money to fund the needs of urban agriculture entities at two separate levels: a micro-grant of $2500 helps local entities buy what they need, provided it is oriented towards infrastructure. Things like equipment, fencing, and enclosures fall under this category. An individual garden or farm can elevate their productivity and ease of growth with a rototiller, fencing, or wood for raised beds. The other level is a Collaborative Grant, supporting bigger partnerships with groups of people. There were six to eight gardens which got together to apply for funding for a refrigerator to keep their harvest safe before taking it to market. With these grants, the infrastructure that is often overlooked gives new opportunities for farms and gardens to survive and thrive. While many farms and gardens would prefer to get funding for staffing, the state holds that this must be provided by the local area in which the garden or farm grows. The goal is long-term impact with one-time buys in the interest of sustainability.
In Pennsylvania, there are nineteen counties which are considered urban by population density. While small town farming might have plenty in common with urban agriculture, its practitioners are not able to apply for the same grants. These are small or large, commercial agriculture. Frequently, gardeners are taking over vacant lots. Scatter sites are places which hold a handful of vacant lots which are not necessarily connected, but all run by the same group of people.
While Dr. Sheely works for the department in a number of portfolios, he is able to visit sites of new urban farms. When a new one is started, he tries to visit and make sure that they are in tune with their local networks. Dr. Sheely claims that these gardens are primarily served by local entities within the metropolitan regions. Philadelphia and Pittsburgh both have several organizations which work with farmers. Eerie’s regional help is run by the health department, and Altoona’s is organized by the conservation department. Farms touch local life in so many ways that it becomes difficult to categorize who might be responsible. However, support is available.
There is a Pennsylvania Urban Agriculture Advisory Committee which is comprised of members of the projects identified as Urban Agriculture. They meet once or twice a year to talk about what they need and how things are going. In the summer, Secretary of Agriculture Russell C. Redding and Dr. Sheely visit each site at least once. The schedule is busy, but communication is constant. “I’ve always felt we need to be out there and be present, and I think I’ve been to every site that we serve. It’s good to have that kind of relationship.” says Dr. Sheely. “I got involved because I handle some of the workforce development stuff, and we found that many of these sites were very youth-oriented.” Summer youth programs, after school horticulture club, and workskill training are all integral parts of many urban farms. “If we look at our programs—and there’s probably at least 250 around the Commonwealth—most of them are into it not as an economic or training program, but as a community development piece. The main reason for existence is to enhance the community, improve nutrition, and improve access to healthy food. That’s the driving force behind most of this kind of project. Neighbors are there.” The impact of the farm on a local community is clear when speaking to farmers. Those connections become more and more important as agriculture takes its place in urban settings. Typically, urban farms are more focused on community development, whereas rural farms have more clear-cut goals of food production.
When we look at the demographics of those involved in these connections, it is often “young people, idealistic, concerned with feeding their neighbors, feeding the world.” While these passionate ideals are often enough to break ground on these projects, the connection to community is what sustains them. From Dr. Sheely’s observation, the most successful agriculture circles are the ones firmly rooted in community, and ones understanding the necessity of citizen input. “You can’t just have upper middle class white people who like the idea of feeding the world and want to find a way to contribute. You have to involve people of color. It’s got to be part of the neighborhood... you have to be really honest about sharing the role of governance and the rest of it.”
“It’s the importance of working together. Really working. If you’re just offering produce out of your garden to people, that’s not enough to make an impact. But if you get together with five other gardens, then you can start to see some real change.” The goal of the infrastructure grants is to create opportunities for collective power. “You have to make sure your community is really represented. They should have some degree of ownership to be empowered and involved.”
Some projects do this better than others, of course. The farm bill is attempting to build a more firm base, more precedence for these successful projects to sustain themselves. Larger scale projects seem to be more successful in the long run, though they are more difficult to begin. The challenges are numerous, from water access to city zoning restrictions. However, there are many collaborative and creative ways of stretching resources and making them accessible. The connection is crucial. If the city is already collecting dry leaves in the fall, this could make excellent mulch come spring time. If the local park has too many seedlings growing in a ball park, those could be transferred to a garden or farm. These are systemic problems which stunt growth. The farm bill seeks to fill in some of these gaps at a local level.
When it comes to the connection between rural and urban farms, it isn’t immediately easy to understand. However, there is plenty to learn from each other. We have seen an evolution in relation to industry within agriculture as the economy dictates. Pennsylvania is becoming one of the fastest growing states for organic vegetables, and dairy farmers are often leaving their old business practices and looking to grow organic. The methods of care involved in urban gardens may show us new opportunities for growth. Additionally, as organic farming becomes more popular, urban gardeners and farmers upkeeping these practices may be able to shift to a larger scale in a more rural area. This shift towards organic farming and learning from urban practices is somewhat new to Pennsylvania agriculture. However, it is not a technological advancement so much as a change in best practices.
What could bring people together more than food? From potlucks to swapping recipes, many of us have wonderful memories surrounding the breaking of bread. Dr. Sheeley’s wife was a pastor in Akron, Pennsylvania, and the church potluck remains a stronghold. This bill affects all of us and is not a one dimensional bill. It addresses over fifty programs across different areas of Pennsylvania farming. A few of the other programs it addresses include locally grown meat in an attempt to address a shortage. Additionally, the agriculture education section hopes to reach a much wider audience than Future Farmers of America with a Farm to School bill.
As with any bill, we must guess at what might be impactful to the people. Dr. Sheeley is biased, but the urban agriculture is especially exciting. Agriculture funding is primarily a federal issue, and when looking at the large scale, urban farming is often missed. As Pennsylvania’s first ever farm bill, this sets a new precedent using all state funding. It also supports conservation practices and the ecological health of the Chesapeake Bay. Beyond a broadly conservationist approach, this affects some of our closest neighbors in Pittsburgh.
Raqueeb Bey, introduced to me as “Miss Queeba” through one of our past story features, Zaheen, is a well of warmth and enthusiasm for urban farming. She corrects me readily—she is not a gardener, and not a hippie. She is a farmer and she rolls with anarchists. She introduces herself as an urban agriculturalist, a community organizer, and activist. If you’ve walked up Fifth Ave, through the Hill District between Downtown and Oakland, you’ve likely passed one of her grow sites, where they will be planting garlic next Sunday.
Raqueeb Bey has been working for GROW Pittsburgh since 2015, but growing food is a part of her lifeblood. She aligns urban agriculture with community organizing and environmental protection. Her daughter Essence used to work at Grow Pittsburgh, and now works for BUGFPC as the community outreach liason and farm staff. She and Dr. Sheely are alike in their many-layered responsibilities and belief in the fantastic progress of Pennsylvania farming. Between administrative work, meetings, and day-to-day, she still tries to visit the Homewood Farm as often as she can. She refers to this summer as a learning curve, working with management and city support to begin new endeavors in Homewood. BUGFPC will also begin winter food production for the first time this year.
Bey is also on the steering committee of PAWAgN, the Pennsylvania Women’s Agricultural Network, based out of Penn State. Their goal is to connect urban farmers to rural farmers and share in both practices and community. They hold a yearly symposium which has recently moved from State College to Pittsburgh. This year will be held in Philadelphia. Though at one symposium, Miss Queeba was asked if anyone shot up the gardens, the primary concern of both is how they sustain the land where they grow. Urban farmers constantly face the threat of redevelopment. Rural farmers face shaky investments and a lack of connection. They both face deer and groundhogs. There is nowhere where farming is not hard work.
In 2011, Miss Queeba and a group of twelve friends and family decided to teach their children to grow food. Between them, there were seventeen children. Close to their community in the Lower Hill, there was Landslide Community Farm, a lot with a few raised beds. She asked a fellow volunteer at the farm if she could start a program to educate their children, and they were granted a small plot of land. Mama Africa’s Green Scouts was born. Their mission was to teach African American and Black youth farming and sustainable agriculture skills, as well as a community responsibility. Children from around the block came to help, and Bey’s background in activism bolstered the efforts. Soon, groups of people were coming together to talk about the future of community agriculture in Pittsburgh. They found that, often, Black Gardeners and Urban Farmers were left out of policy-making decisions regarding their livelihood. These decisions, made by people disconnected from Pittsburgh’s Black communities, were unfortunate but unsurprising. Black Agriculture in Pittsburgh wasn’t only being left out of conversations, but out of sustaining grants and funding opportunities. Huge budgets for groups led by white people trickled down to leave Bey’s groups with gift cards.
Though members of these decision-making groups may have rubbed elbows, networked, and even volunteered with gardens with more people of color, those people were simply being left out of conversations. In 2015, The Black Urban Gardeners and Farmers League was founded. The first meeting had ten people in attendance. Each one was there not only as a gardener, but as an activist and organizer. They laid out their goals then and there, utilizing strategies of community organizing. Firstly, they committed to the recognition that gardening, farming, and agricultural education is hard work and that they needed each other’s labor and resources to continue. Next, they collectively claimed space in a system put in place by white systemic racism. They refused to be left out of any more conversations about urban agriculture in Pittsburgh. Still, despite state support and their work with Representative Jake Wheatley, there are anecdotes of meetings where Representative Wheatley hears that there are simply no Black farmers in Pennsylvania. Obviously, this is far from true.
“It’s nothing new to our people. Being in Black collectives, for farming or agriculture is nothing new. After slavery, when a lot of our people worked as sharecroppers, the Klan would burn up their crops, so they formed Black Collectives for Farming. After World War II, Black farmers were being left out of grants from the government because they were Black. to create farms, even left out of funding for veterans. Agricultural organizing for Black people was strong then, too. In the sixties, too. Black people have always had to protect their land. It’s nothing new, it’s just new to Pittsburgh.”
The Farm Bill is a wonderful opportunity for urban farmers, and Bey tends to agree with its measures. In particular, she praises its conservation efforts. However, a recent grant included Urban Agriculture, but required its recipients to commit $10,000 to be included as part of a reimbursement program. Many organizations, especially community-serving grassroots organizations, simply do not have that kind of money. Community visibility must increase in order for the available support to meet their actual needs. On the horizon is a meeting of the Urban Agriculture Meeting Group with Secretary of Agriculture Russel C. Redding in order to try to fill these gaps which often leave out Black, Brown, and poor white people. Bey gives ample credit where it is due to the diligent work of Dr. Scott Sheely and Pennsylvania Agricultural Secretary Redding.
Alongside their dedication to working together and their commitment to fighting systemic racism, the group chose a neighborhood in which to begin their work. Homewood is a food apartheid area. According to Bey, due to years of the effects of white supremacy, it is no accident or oversight that areas of Homewood exist with 6000 residents and no grocery since the mid 1990s. A Family Dollar was built two years ago, which Bey refers to as “the face of food apartheid. If you had asked the community what they need, they would say a farmer’s market, a grocery store. So we built that instead.”
The Western Pennsylvania Conservancy Community Garden started in the mid-nineties and her family had a forty by forty foot plot. When her dad got sick in 2000, she moved back to Pittsburgh to help her mom take care of him. In the garden, there were elders to lead the way, for whom Bey was grateful. Within a year, she held a key role within this particular garden, and was there two years later when Allegheny Housing Rehabilitation Corporation refused to continue sharing its water.
Fast forward some years later, and Raqueeb Bey is managing backyard gardens, coordinating loans and pooling resources between various agricultural groups across the city. The city’s sharing of top soil, straw, fertilizer, and compost are all within her charge. She says that we grow as we go. “I learn something new about tomatoes every year!” Her favorite thing to grow, aside from greens and watermelon, are minds.
For two years now, the Black Urban Gardeners and Farmers have held a farmer’s market in Homewood. Raqueeb has started a Homewood Food Access Network, to share food between various gardens, farms, and markets in Homewood. She is building the infrastructure the city neglected. Currently, they are working towards a Food Co-op. They have bimonthly meetings for Homewood residents and are currently taking memberships. The Urban Redevelopment Authority has offered them a building and Bey speaks highly of the mayor’s office’s involvement in the process. In a demonstration of continued commitment to community-driven efforts, the first six months of this project will be open to residents of Homewood only and remain paramount to membership. They have taken the time to listen to what the residents of Homewood want and need in their Food Co-Op. Homewood also has a hoop house and a thirty thousand square foot farm, where food production goes on year-round.
This year, they also hope to begin a program with the Department of Corrections, and have been in touch with the department secretary, John Wetzel. They hope to form a work development and re-entry program for women who are being released from State Correctional Institutions to begin a career in urban agriculture and agriculture education.
“I’m a farmer, not a gardener. Some people do say gardening. I look at gardening as having pretty little gloves on and messing around with flowers. And shout out to them—I know some folks who are wonderful at it. But farming is not just dealing with produce—we have bees! People are farming with chickens. It takes on a holistic perspective. It’s sustainable and needed. Farming isn’t just dealing with fruits and vegetables.”
Bey also speaks to the indigenous nature of Black farming and gardening itself. She takes cues from West and South African farmers in her methods, but takes care to acknowledge that Black people have been part of Appalachia before slavery. “There’s nothing new here. But when I was in school, unless my parents taught me, or it happened to be Black History month, all I learned was Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King, Jr., and maybe Rosa Parks.” She also speaks to some of the earliest evidence of irrigation being found in Egypt and part of Black heritage.
She is committed to teaching these histories. Mama Africa’s Green Scouts, and everything that came from it, are about more than just best planting practices. They want to intentionally share their heritage and tradition through this act of growing. We wanted to make sure they understood a strong foundation of Africa in their culture. Their strategy for development includes a practice of “Ubuntu: I Am Because You Are.”
I asked Miss Queeba about the idealism of the community garden and how it operates as a bastion of misplaced white saviorism. She said that often, these gardens operate without the involvement of the neighborhood, with minimal outreach. Without that outreach, they are easily written off as well-to-do hippies. It is impossible to overstate the vital importance of this community outreach and the deep listening that must accompany it. “We fight against gentrification because gentrification is redevelopment without community input. We need to practice what we preach. We are growing and sustaining.”