TULANE HULLABALOO
Urban farming in a food desert
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 11, 2012
SAM MOORE
FOR SAM KIYOMI TURNER, TULANE REPRESENTS ONLY A FRACTION OF HIS INVOLVEMENT WITH NEW ORLEANS. WHEN HE’S NOT ATTENDING CLASS, THE UNDERGRAD TEACHES AND LEARNS IN DIFFERENT ATMOSPHERES — AS AN URBAN FARMER IN THE LOWER NINTH WARD OF NEW ORLEANS.
FOR THE PAST SEVERAL WEEKS, TURNER HAS LED STUDENTS FROM HIS SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP CLASS ON WEEKEND SERVICE TRIPS TO OUR SCHOOL AT BLAIR GROCERY, AN INNOVATIVE COMMUNITY FARMING INITIATIVE AT THE CORNER OF NORTH ROMAN AND BENTON STREETS. HE IS UP FRONT ABOUT THE ECONOMIC VALUE OF THE PROJECT: “WE’RE ONE OF THE BIGGEST EMPLOYERS IN THE LOWER NINTH.”
TURNER HAS BEEN WORKING ON THE FARM FOR SEVERAL YEARS AND IS AN INTEGRAL PART OF DAY-TO-DAY OPERATIONS, FOUNDER NAT TURNER SAID. AN EX-NEW YORK SCHOOLTEACHER, THE ELDER TURNER SET OUT IN 2008 ON A MISSION TO REVITALIZE THE POST-HURRICANE KATRINA NEIGHBORHOOD THROUGH AGRICULTURE. TODAY, OSBG CONFRONTS MANY OF THE SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC ISSUES THAT PLAGUE NEW ORLEANS.
THE PRIMARY GOAL OF THIS TYPE OF URBAN FARMING IS TO PROVIDE FOOD SECURITY: HEALTHY, LOCAL, AND AFFORDABLE PRODUCE IN AN AREA THAT THE USDA CLASSIFIES AS A “FOOD DESERT.” RESIDENTS OF FOOD DESERTS, A HIGH PROPORTION OF WHOM ARE LOW-INCOME, HAVE LIMITED ACCESS TO THE LARGE GROCERY STORES OR SUPERMARKETS WHERE MANY BASIC FOOD OPTIONS ARE FOUND. IN THE LOWER NINTH WARD THIS PROBLEM IS COMPOUNDED BY OTHER INSTITUTIONAL SHORTCOMINGS, PARTICULARLY IN EDUCATION AND EMPLOYMENT, CREATING A HARSH SET OF CIRCUMSTANCES THAT MAY BE UNFAMILIAR TO, FOR EXAMPLE, A TULANE STUDENT LIVING UPTOWN. THE FUNDAMENTAL QUESTION FOR FOUNDER NAT TURNER IS, “HOW DO WE CHIP AWAY AT THE CONTINUED MARGINALIZATION OF CERTAIN GROUPS OF PEOPLE IN THIS CITY?”
OUR SCHOOL AT BLAIR GROCERY, DESPITE ITS MISSION OF EMPOWERMENT AND MAKING CHANGE, IS NOT OVERLY DEPENDENT ON CHARITY. IT HAS CULTIVATED MANY MUTUALLY BENEFICIAL RELATIONSHIPS IN NEW ORLEANS TO MAINTAIN FINANCIAL INDEPENDENCE. AMONG ITS RESTAURANT PARTNERS IS EMERIL’S DELMONICO, A REGULAR BUYER OF THE FARM’S SIGNATURE ARUGULA. OSBG ALSO RECEIVES COMPOSTABLE WASTE FROM SEVERAL DIFFERENT ORGANIZATIONS, AND WORKS WITH AN OFF-SITE CATTLE FARM FOR EXTRA COMPOSTING AND GROWING SPACE. THE EXTENT TO WHICH THE FARM TRIES TO SUCCEED AS A BUSINESS DIFFERENTIATES IT FROM SOME OF THE OTHER URBAN FARMING ORGANIZATIONS IN TOWN, SUCH AS EDIBLE CLASSROOM, WHICH IS HEAVY ON EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING BUT NOT AS FOCUSED ON LARGE SCALE PRODUCE.
TO OVERCOME UNFORESEEN PROBLEMS, THE FARM NEEDS TWO THINGS: MANPOWER AND MONEY. THE MANPOWER PART IS WHERE TULANE SERVICE LEARNERS HOPE TO MAKE THE MOST DIFFERENCE.
“I THINK IT’S ABSOLUTELY VITAL FOR COLLEGE STUDENTS TO GET INVOLVED WITH URBAN FARMING AND FOOD JUSTICE MOVEMENTS,” SAID DOR HABERER, WHO WORKS WITH TULANE’S HOPE GARDENS ORGANIZATION SAID.
HABERER SAID THAT USING EVER-EXPANDING URBAN SPACES TO GROW HEALTHY, ORGANIC PRODUCE WILL HELP US BECOME MORE OF A RESPONSIBLE AND CONSCIENTIOUS GENERATION, AND WILL REDUCE WASTE AND TOXINS WHILE PROVIDING A WHOLESOME DIET TO THOSE IN NEED. FOUNDER NAT TURNER SAID THAT IT’S ABOUT “THE IDEA THAT A TULANE STUDENT CAN COME TO THE WORST NEIGHBORHOOD IN NEW ORLEANS AND DO SOMETHING PRODUCTIVE AND GREEN SIDE BY SIDE WITH LOCAL PEOPLE.” THIS KIND OF SUSTAINED VOLUNTEER EFFORT, TURNER SAYS, IS “WAY DIFFERENT FROM TALKING ABOUT ‘RACE IN AMERICA’ IN SOCIOLOGY 101.”
RELIGION AND ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY on PBS
Watch Food Desert on PBS. See more from Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly.
"Growing Cities" shout out on Grist
Q. You visited with 80 urban farmers; who stood out and why?
A. Something incredible is happening down in the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans with Our School at Blair Grocery, a food justice academy. Nat Turner and company are working to empower youth by engaging them deeply with their food system, including planting, harvesting, and selling food to local restaurants. Those kids have stories of struggle — guns, gangs, violence — and every day they work on the farm is a new day for them, in a safe place where something positive happens with their hands. It doesn’t get much better than that.
Read the whole article here.
"You Are God" Trailer
New Orleans school cultivates a generation of forward-thinking farmers
Nat Turner (third from left, white shirt) stands on a new compost pile with a group of OSBG interns, Americorps employees, and volunteers.
Nat Turner, a former New York City public-school teacher, moved to New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward on Thanksgiving Day, 2008. He didn’t know anything about gardening — “I could barely keep a cactus alive” — but he had a vision to start an urban farm that would be a vehicle for educating and empowering the neighborhood’s youth. He’d been making service trips to the Big Easy with students, but he wanted an opportunity to dig deeper, literally and figuratively, into the city’s revitalization.
Hurricane Katrina not only changed the landscape of much of southern Louisiana and Mississippi, it affected entire communities. The hurricane separated families, and made communities already struggling all the more desperate.
"Hurricane Katrina had a pretty severe impact on this neighborhood... Outside our building there would have probably been about fourteen feet of water," says Nat Turner, Founder and Director of Our School at Blair Grocery.
'Turner', as he is known by community members of New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward, started life as a teacher for a premier New York City high school. For two years following Katrina, Turner worked in the Lower Ninth and became attached to the people, all the while aware of the problems that affected many in the community, especially young people. "All the kids I met down here were cool and fun, and I thought they needed more opportunities."
[Text from Huffington Post, September 2012]
Summer 2011 - Whole Foods
Our School At Blair Grocery' - In the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, Nat Turner is getting kids off the street and into the garden for food and learning. His dream of expanding into a much larger production farm poised to blossom.
August 1, 2011 - Ari Levaux, The Atlantic
In the syrupy charm of New Orleans's Garden District or the debauchery of the French Quarter, you might think the city has recovered from the trauma of Katrina. Streetcars are running, music is playing, and tourists have stumbled back with beads on. But in the poorest part of the city, which also happens to be the lowest part, it's a different story. Nearly six years on, only 20 percent of pre-hurricane residents have returned to the Lower Ninth Ward. Citywide, the same percentage of residents had returned only four months after the storm.
Christian Adams, 18, told me he has no idea what happened to most of his friends and former neighbors. We shared a bench behind a washed-out store formerly known as Blair Grocery. Now it's a school: Our School at Blair Grocery (OSBG)—a supportive oasis in a neighborhood that also happens to be a food desert, without easy access to fresh produce.
The air smelled of compost, some of which was splattered on Adams's boots. Other neighborhood teens were planting sprouts, harvesting okra and figs, and screening potting soil.
The school is not accredited, and many of its students can't read. Learning to read is not mandatory, says the school's founder, Nat Turner. "If a student wants to learn to read we'll help them learn. If a student wants to take the GED we'll help them prepare," he told me as we rumbled toward Uptown in a creaky pickup at 6:30 in the morning. Turner is lanky, with endless energy. He smoked a hand-rolled cigarette as he drove, switching topics easily between the likes of compost science, racial politics, and global warming.
We pulled in to the dock behind Whole Foods and loaded about 500 pounds of old produce onto the truck, for OSBG's compost pile. Compost is gold at OSBG. Eventually they'll sell the excess soil they build, but now they need all they can make.
At last count, three-quarters of an acre was under cultivation, including bits of unused land on the adjoining, entirely vacant block. The school is largely funded by produce sales, which average $1,500 a week. High-end restaurants on higher ground pay a premium for the produce, which they sell locally at a discount.
Christian Adams, 18, told me he has no idea what happened to most of his friends and former neighbors. We shared a bench behind a washed-out store formerly known as Blair Grocery. Now it's a school: Our School at Blair Grocery (OSBG)—a supportive oasis in a neighborhood that also happens to be a food desert, without easy access to fresh produce.
The school is not accredited, and many of its students can't read. Learning to read is not mandatory, says the school's founder, Nat Turner. "If a student wants to learn to read we'll help them learn. If a student wants to take the GED we'll help them prepare," he told me as we rumbled toward Uptown in a creaky pickup at 6:30 in the morning. Turner is lanky, with endless energy. He smoked a hand-rolled cigarette as he drove, switching topics easily between the likes of compost science, racial politics, and global warming.
We pulled in to the dock behind Whole Foods and loaded about 500 pounds of old produce onto the truck, for OSBG's compost pile. Compost is gold at OSBG. Eventually they'll sell the excess soil they build, but now they need all they can make.
At last count, three-quarters of an acre was under cultivation, including bits of unused land on the adjoining, entirely vacant block. The school is largely funded by produce sales, which average $1,500 a week. High-end restaurants on higher ground pay a premium for the produce, which they sell locally at a discount.
Summer 2011 - Jeffery Leuenberger, American Planning Association Louisiana Chapter
"Our School at Blair Grocery (OSBG) began with $12 and a dream of a young Minnesota native teaching public school in New York City. Nat Turner assisted in bringing approximately 1,500 youth to New Orleans to volunteer in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, but felt compelled to do more. In 2008, he relocated to New Orleans and founded the OSBG whose mission is “to create a resource rich safe space for youth empowerment and sustainable community development.” Faced with despair, poverty, high crime and dropout rates, blight and food deserts, OSBG utilizes internationally recognized models of success from Brazil, Growing Power, and the Edible Schoolyard to “grow the growers” to take the front lines in the good food revolution..."
Winter 2011 - Edible New Orleans - by Matt Davis, Photographs by Andy Cook
"Basically, I just love this place way too much to ever leave," says 16-year-old Anthony Johnson, a young man from the Lower Ninth Ward who has recently started working at Our School at Blair Grocery. He's standing on a vegetable plot inside a wire fence on the corner of Benton and Roman streets in the Lower Nine. As Johnson points to a three-foot-tall basil bush, some children who look at most ten years old ride past on their bikes...."
January 15, 2011 - New York Times - by Charles Wilson
"Five years after the levees broke in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the Lower Ninth Ward remains largely a place where time has stood still. Lots where shotgun houses once stood are empty and overgrown with tall grasses. Gutted homes with smashed windows list to one side.... At his new farm of less than an acre on the corner of Benton and Roman Streets, he spoke recently of the reasons that brought him here..."
October 11, 2010 - Yes! Magazine - by David Ferris
Driving on Claiborne Avenue in the Lower Ninth Ward you notice the Magnolia Corner Store, Martin Luther King Elementary School, and a gas station. North of Claiborne, the view resembles a jungle. Thousands of lots remain vacant and hundreds more are neglected, overgrown. A mere 10 percent of the neighborhood population has returned since Katrina demolished New Orleans in 2005...Out of this landscape appears an oasis..."
August 27, 2010 - Time Magazine - by Phil Bildner
"When the levee along the Industrial Canal failed back in 2005 and the wall of water drowned much of New Orleans' Lower Nine, the area north of Claiborne Avenue — the poorest section of the neighborhood — was hardest hit. Not surprisingly, the stretch has been slowest to recover. Five years after the devastating hurricane, the area still does not have a supermarket or store that sells fresh produce..."
