Progress report for CNE25-003
Project Information
Too often, aspiring farmers cannot picture themselves actually farming, because there are few successful farmers they can model themselves after. In contrast, in Prince George's County where ECO City Farms' pioneered farming, 90% of the population have similar demographic characteristics that are relatable, improving the model.
Our project's goal is to find the best pathway for farms and farmers to achieve their farming dreams of providing food for their communities. We do so by intentionally partnering the new farmers (who launched their farms at ECO's Farm Incubator two years ago) with more senior how were participants in ECO's beginning farmer training program, to work and learn together. It is our hypothesis and expectation that a significant leap in motivation, inspiration and learning will occur for both parties through the collaboration- thereby enhancing their potential for success.
Our innovative proposal responds to the epidemic of diet-related diseases that is not accidental, but the result of the excessive availability of cheap processed food. There is also a lack of availability of fresh, nutritious food. The Capital Area Food Bank reports that in 2024 more than 50% of County's residents are food insecure. Because the consumption of healthy food is the best route to improved health outcomes, ECO showcases small scale farming's potential to enhance food security and community health.
Our project's goal is to find the best pathway for farmers to achieve their farming dreams and provide food for their communities. ECO launched its Urban Farm Incubator (UFI) in 2023, providing ½ acre of land, farm infrastructure and marketing training to graduates of Beginning Farmer Training Programs (at ECO or elsewhere). Currently at UFI there are 10 entrepreneurial farming enterprises, 90% of whom identify as farmers of color. Through the recruitment, training and support of new farmers, we also discover more about the gaps in experience and other barriers farmers face in becoming practicing production farmers. During their first two years, most of these new businesses realized that they did not know-how to recruit, hire or manage the farm-hand assistance they required, and were unable to actually pay critical helpers a subsistence wage.
We simultaneously learned that some of our most promising aspiring farmers are unable to gain the experience at the scale they require to test out their newly acquired knowledge and skills. With this proposal, we seek to improve and redesign our preliminary training so that our trainees can more easily make the leap to successful production farming. What appears to be missing from our model is sufficient experiential, hands-on learning required of all apprentices and journeymen hoping to become masters. Far too many of our trainees have never been accorded the opportunity to work closely with a production farmer to practice and acquire needed skills. However, for farmers, learning from a conventional farmer often presents more problems than it solves, as there are cultural and other nuances that make for misunderstandings and suspicions. Instead, we find that our peer to near-peer training approach is more effective. In recent years, our Beginning Farmer Program (BFP) staff have also emerged from the ranks of our BFP graduates, only slightly more advanced than our trainees. In fact, three of the proposed support staff for this project are ECO employees who have faced, and overcome, many of the challenges and obstacles confronted by our beginner trainees less than five years ago.
This innovative proposal seeks to marry ECO's two signature offerings for mutual benefit and growth, and to research and track the impacts and results. In sum, we propose to match a number of our BFP trainees with UFI farmers, creating a new layer of mentee, mentor relationship for the program, supplementing the BFP by encouraging and incentivizing aspiring farmer trainees to work on farms alongside the UFI farmers.
It is our hypothesis and expectation that a significant leap in motivation, inspiration and learning will occur for both parties through the collaboration- thereby enhancing their potential for success. We anticipate that UFI farmers will acquire needed management skills while sharing their business knowledge, plans and practice with the trainees, and that the trainees will acquire valuable hands-on experience at a scale they require, while providing the new farmer with extra sets of hands and renewed enthusiasm for the work. In this way we can optimize the chances for success of the HU farmers already launching their businesses at the UFI by providing them with the inspired and motivated assistance of newly trained HU farmer trainees who look to them as near-peer mentors and allies.
Objectives
- Reduce barriers for 18-20 farmer trainees to gain the hands-on farming experience required to become competent and confident urban production farmers
- Support at least 6-10 UFI farmers to achieve their business goals through capable and motivated hands-on mentee assistance
- 18 farmer trainees are able to better understand and define their farming goals based on UFI mentor experience
- 13 farmer trainees find employment or other opportunities to continue farming beyond program through mutually supportive network and farm employment opportunities
- Support PGC farmer peer-to-near-peer learning network
Working in low-income, low-food-access communities within Prince George's County (PGC) as listed in the USDA Food Access Research Atlas (zip codes 20781, 20737, 20710, 20773, 20774), we discovered that 71% of adults are obese or overweight; ⅓ of the population report hypertension diagnoses; diet-related cancer is the 2nd highest cause of death; and chronic heart disease, diabetes, and stroke continue to plague young and old alike. This epidemic of diet-related diseases is not accidental, but the result of the excessive availability in our communities of cheap, over-processed food, along with the lack of availability of fresh, nutritious food. The Capital Area Food Bank reports that in 2024 more than 50% of County's residents are food insecure. Because the consumption of healthy food is the best route to improved health outcomes, ECO showcases urban farming's potential to enhance food security and community health. There is now consensus amongst residents and leaders that we need more local farms to source healthy food and improve health. We came to understand and work to address these community imperatives over the 15-plus years that ECO has cultivated healthy local food- through direct interaction with youth and families and partnering with key government officials, schools and non-profit organizations. There is substantial pent up area demand for all aspects of our work. County residents are anxious to learn about tending the earth and growing healthy food because they consider themselves hostages of an untrustworthy, dangerous food system. Because they no longer regard themselves as resilient and strong, and are at risk for diet-related ailments. Because they are unwilling to be victims. Because they want to repair themselves, their families, the food system and the environment itself. Because they want to return to the wisdom and knowledge of their grandparents and ancestors. Because they want to be whole.
ECO is a place-based institution with farms that are deeply rooted in working-class Port Towns communities of Prince George's County, Maryland. 15 years ago, ECO first brought urban agriculture to the DC metropolitan area, transforming two blighted sites into places of nutrition, health, opportunity and collegial community. We work to address historic injustices while advancing inter-generational and multi-cultural collaboration and respect for all people, species and the environment we share. We increase access to fresh healthy affordable food, and restore the dignity of farm work and the land itself in a society where manual labor is often stigmatized, green space is often undervalued, eating overly processed food with minimal nutritional value is often the norm, and unhealthy environmental conditions too often prevail. ECO serves the many thousands of historically-underserved youth and aspiring farmers in the DC metro area who take our courses, volunteer at our farms and participate in our educational activities. As a non profit urban teaching and learning farm, our mission is to grow great food, farms and farmers in ways that protect, restore and sustain the natural environment and the health of local communities.
The residents we train at our two farms, and the beginning farmers who launched their businesses at our UFI, closely reflect the characteristics of County residents - 89% of whom are descendants of the African and Latin diaspora. The majority are African diasporan women of nearby Washington, DC and PGC, Maryland who are dissatisfied with their ability to obtain nutritious, chemical-free, culturally-appropriate and affordable food in their neighborhoods. Many began growing food at home due to their inability to otherwise access fresh, culturally-appropriate food and/or because family members have compromised health conditions and now want to farm for others as well.
The ECO's 2024 BFP graduates are largely migrants from the African continent and Caribbean who are deeply committed to cultivate culturally appropriate, healthy food for their local community. However, they indicate that they require support in finding land and resources, and additional experiential-based training to begin farming in earnest.
ECO continues to seek the means to meet the needs of these new farmers, and to research, design and advocate for programs that assure their success. This proposed project was conceived with, designed by, and developed in consultation with our long-term partners, our diverse staff and apprentices, and the past and present participants of our training programs, with whom we have met quarterly and at the project's end to discuss how to best address their needs. Overwhelmingly, they report that the scope and quality of our training well-equips them to take the next step in growing food in community with others. At the same time, many are concerned that their lack of opportunity to practice new skills in a commercial farm setting is a major obstacle to confidently move forward. This proposal intentionally addresses this collective desire to practice farming, while supporting our new farmers and new farms.
ECO is a non-profit corporation with a Board of Directors to whom the CEO is answerable. The Board sets our strategic direction and decides upon significant financial, legal and contractual matters. This structure gives our funders and donors the confidence they require to invest in the organization. At the same time, in the setting and meeting of goals, we practice inclusive and participatory decision-making. ECO's staff are empowered to influence the programs in which they work, the conditions of their workplace, their own career paths, and the direction of the organization. Distributive leadership makes us more effective in advancing our mission, more responsive and accountable to our community, and a better, more productive and gratifying place to work. And this model of leadership is replicated in empowering our HU communities. Working to empower others begins with self-empowerment. Staff meetings become exercises in speaking up and speaking out. Everyone involved in ECO programs has a voice at our meetings. Moreover, unlike many corporate and larger non-profit settings, ECO salaries are as close to flat as possible, with only a small difference between the highest and lowest. This signifies the reality that we each have an important role to play and that each role is needed and valued. In a setting with greatly divergent hourly pay rates, it is impossible to believe that everyone adds value or that the institution works to embody justice. Our decision-making matrix seeks to ensure that the principles of justice, equity, inclusion and community engagement are foundational. Much of our organizational planning and goal setting takes place in weekly staff meetings, where many aspects of the organization as a whole, as well as each major activity or program, are discussed to determine immediate, intermediary and long-term needs. Detailed notes are kept and shared for easy review and joint action, as well as for establishing collective accountability. By placing key decision-making in the hands of those that have direct relationships and interactions with the programs and the people we serve, we are able to be more responsive to unfolding and evolving community needs. And through participation and inclusion, every staff member becomes more skilled and empowered to respond to what they hear on-the-ground, developing and proposing actions, solutions, and new projects. We create feed-back loops with community participants and partners in all of our activities and programs. The process of individual and group reflection and routine assessments allows us to catch missteps before they become reified. As we examine the products and impact of our work, we seek to assure that every project participant gets what they need to achieve self-established and expressed goals. Employing an equity and inclusion lens to our decision-making enables us to ensure that no one is disproportionately impacted by a new policy, project or procedure, and that we achieve the desired outcome for all.
ECO was an original member of the Port Towns Community Health Partnership, made up of local residents, organizations, and funders, all collaborating to improve community conditions, with the end goal of making the Port Towns a healthy place to live, learn, work, play, and worship. Other PTCHP partners included Ecumenical Health Council, End Times Harvest Ministries, Cottage City Community Garden, Colmar Manor Community Garden, Food Equity Council, the leadership of each of the Port Towns, and Kaiser Permanente of the Mid-Atlantic States. Many of these groups and municipalities continue to work with ECO since the formal ending of the partnership in 2019, each bringing a different perspective and set of constituents to the table to advance inclusively and more justly expand and allocate community resources. Together we continue to work for the well being of Port Town residents and to counter health disparities and related ailments faced by area HU low-income communities and peoples.
ECO's listing of the challenges faced by our 90% non-white County and the communities we serve above did not also enumerate the many assets and strengths of the area's diverse population and the many capable, committed people and organizations our area has engendered. ECO's alliances are long-lived and diverse, as are the many off shoots of work we began 15 years ago. We now work with coalitions like the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (COG) who have begun to fund activities to strengthen local food chains, advocate for urban farming, especially amongst those historically excluded, and counter food insecurity. We work with University of Maryland Extension, PG Community College, and public and private K-12 schools to change their perceptions of food and farming, and to include urban agriculture in their curricula. We teach and inspire food and environmental justice courses and information about resource conservation, nutrition and soil remediation through composting throughout the education system. We helped to build and support a local movement for equity, community empowerment, urban farming and food justice, and have been instrumental in helping people create the institutions and lives they wish to lead instead of seeking out other people's jobs and filling other entity's needs.
The intent of this project is to strengthen and enrich the training of new farmers. We aim to ensure that the UFI farmer entrepreneurs are successful because many local jurisdictions are considering replicating our incubator model for aspiring farmers. We support local entrepreneurs- educators, chefs, composters, nutritionists, and others who are drawn to ECO as a gathering place, a learning laboratory, and a home for innovative community-serving projects. We need their efforts to be successful and thereby grow urban farming in our region as the health of our area depends upon increasing the availability of healthy food for all. We learn from one another to ensure that those who have been historically excluded and are no longer excluded and to make our community work inspiring, contagious, collaborative and successful.
Stories / Quotes from previous Beginning Farmer Training Program Participants
- After I completed my BFRDP training at ECO, I was determined to start farming. Many of my friends and family told me: “You didn’t get your MBA to farm.” But they don’t know my heart. I AM a farmer! It’s what I love. I farm because I am in training to be an ancestor!
- I learned many important things about the practice and art of farming during my BFRDP training. But the most important one, that has allowed me to continue farming despite my physical challenges of age and a bad back is: Farming is about embracing your flaws and making them work for you. You’ve got to work with the body you are in. There is no cookie cutter way to farm. You are the tool you have!
- I completed my BFRDP at ECO City Farms and now people ask me: What’s it like to be a new farmer? My answer is that it's hard, but it's also about being ok with everything. Like not getting it all done. I am not a superhero. My dishes remain unwashed for days. I don’t think I did my hair the entire summer!
- After completing the ECO BFRDP and working all summer at it, I am now a farmer. It used to be my hobby. Now I take my computer and do my other job at my farm site. Farming is about making things work for you.
- I grow flowers. How do I decide what to grow? Not those fancy ones. No, I grow what’s easy to grow and matches my color palate. When I give tours of my farm, I pick flowers as I go. At the end, I hand a bouquet to my visitor. That’s worth the price of admission to my farm!
- I completed my BFRDP at ECO and now I am going ‘old school” and working with my brother who is a barber, who said: “Let’s give them advice about health at the barbershop!” That’s where I am taking my healing herbs.
- I grew a great deal personally in my quest to become a farmer. I think it’s important to build meaningful collaborations with other people and organizations. I started to think through whether I want to be a worker, a manager, or an owner. The program was one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve had in a very long time. It felt rewarding to have community not based in nightlife and partying! It was indeed very cool to be with people who have genuinely similar interests. I feel very much more prepared to make a move into bigger scale. It was very cool to be able to make and sell bouquets as I learned this year. The program touched on pretty much everything I needed. I learned that the knowledge I gained about growing food was interchangeable with the flower farming I’ve been doing. I truly appreciated the hands-on classes. The class on irrigation helped me move through some of the intimidation about the topic that I felt prior. I loved the budgeting and financial planning portion of the program and the farm tours! Learning about composting was a game changer! And I truly appreciated that is was free, which made it possible for me
- I want to stay connected to ECO City Farms! I will do an apprenticeship; get involved with the next cohort; talk to them about my experiences and help them advance. I’d love to do anything for the futures class and also participate in a networking event with all of ECO’ previous trainees! How can I help to mentor new folks?
- The project was perfect for covering all the basics everyone needs to know if they want to grow food. The hands-on portion of the program was exciting because I got to experience everything from seed to harvest. I wouldn’t change anything about the program! I know more than I have so far been able to show. Can’t wait to get my hands dirty and to help launch gardens/help install farms throughout my community.
- How would I describe my experience training at ECO? Open, welcoming, available! I really liked the combination of in-class learning followed by hands-on application. And I truly appreciated learning about the business side of things. I feel equipped to start a farm business right now!
- The opportunities ECO’s BFRDP gave me made me want more! There’s so much more to learn. Every experience helped me to understand that there is so much more happening behind it. The training made it clear to me that this is only the beginning. I learned so much from working with others, not just from the instructors. And after learning, I tried applying my new knowledge to my own situation. The teachers were friendly, engaging and funny and used technology to our collective advantage- like starting a Whatsapp account for sharing information now and in the future.
- The entire course was exactly what was needed to give me the nudge I needed to finally get started farming. It’s been a phenomenal experience: you all have a phenomenal program and are phenomenal teachers! You offered everything I needed: flexible schedule, availability, helpfulness, supportive atmosphere, childcare. All of this REALLY helped facilitate my participation in the program. Result number one? I will be expanding my CSA and will begin with developing an outreach/education effort around what a CSA is to folks who live near farm.
- How to evaluate my time in the program? Let me just say that I am actively looking for land while building raised beds in my backyard right now where I plan to plant tons of garlic! Yep, I’m getting started!
- Throughout this 10 month program I truly learned a lot. I had exposure to many different aspects of farming. I started seeing flower farming as a viable business option, to combine with growing herbs and veggies. The program exposed me to the hard financial realities of being a farmer. Would recommend the program, would do it again and will definitely tell other people to take it!
Cooperators
Research
For year one of our work plan, starting in June of 2025, we will select 4 trainees from the cadre of beginning farmer trainees who we began to train in January of 2025. Prior to being matched with UFI mentors, the trainees enrolled in the farmer-led 10 class session BFT program will focus on farming topics related to commercial production. Staff will select the beginning farmers who will move on to the UFI mentorship as well as recruit the UFI Farmer mentors. Mentees will be matched with mentors based on common interests and goals, such as traditional food ways, herbs, flowers, or production techniques. For this arrangement, working agreements and schedules will be established. From June to October the trainees will work on average 8 hrs/week, totaling 160 hours. Supplemental workshops and farm tours will be offered throughout the season. Staff will conduct regular check-ins to ensure a mutually productive relationship between the mentee-mentor as well as a final comprehensive assessment at the end of the term. Once the pilot is launched and we have learned our lessons, we propose to bring 2 additional new cadres of beginning farmers together with our entrepreneurial farmers at the incubator, starting with the 2026 class recruited at the end of 2025. The resources of the HUF grant will be used to (1) provide stipends for new farmer trainees to work as farm-hands for and with the incubator farmers, (2) compensate the incubator farmers for instructing and mentoring the trainees, (3) fund a ½ time project coordinator to facilitate and evaluate, the teaching and learning processes involved, and (4) support the 2026 and 2027 foundational beginning farmer training.
Timeline and Activities
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Year 1 - June 2025 - May 2026 |
Year 2 - June 2026 - May 2027 |
Year 3 - June 2027 - November 2027 |
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Summer - Fall |
Match 4 trainees with 3 UFI Farmers. |
Match 6 trainees with 4 UFI Farmers. |
Match 8 trainees 5 UFI Farmers and final program assessment |
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Winter |
Recruit 12 trainees for 2026 BFP and conduct 10 classes |
Recruit 12 trainees for 2027 BFP and conduct 10 classes |
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Spring |
Select trainees for UFI mentorship and onboard UFI farmers |
Select trainees for UFI mentorship and onboard UFI farmers |
June 2025 - December 2025 Progress Report
Pilot phase of mentor matching (September - November, 2025)
During this period, we matched the beginning farmer trainees with their mentors at the Urban Farm Incubator, based on common interests and goals. The beginning farmers had recently completed 8.5 months of training with ECO through its Beginning Farmer Training Program. This final phase also served as a pilot phase for the HUF program design. Under the direction of the Farmer Cooperator/Farmer Tolu, trainee work agreements and schedules for each trainee were established.
From mid-September to mid-November, the trainees had worked on average 8 hrs/week, together completing 245 hours of cumulative on-farm work for which the trainees received stipends amounting to $3,750. Farmer Tolu Igun conducted check-in meetings with the 4 hiring farmers and with trainees– together and separately– to ensure mutually productive relationships between the mentees- and mentors and that both the anticipated learning and the desired tasks were accomplished.
In the words of one of the participants: (...The final hands-on) training support has truly helped me strengthen my practical skills in organic production and community-focused sustainable agriculture. Also, you provided the perfect environment to deepen my commitment to ecological stewardship. I have been able to strengthen my skills—such as crop care, organic pest control, compost management, CSA washing and prepping, and overall field support—and am eager to contribute meaningfully to a team dedicated to sustainable food systems.
Lessons Learned; The farmer mentors felt that they had benefitted from working with such motivated and energized learners. At the same time, they observed that establishing a predictable and consistent schedule for the work between trainees and mentors was essential to making this program work as planned. Moreover, it was important to carefully and consistently pair the same mentees and mentors for the entire period in order to establish the camaraderie and rapport required to achieve the desired learning results.
In short, to get the anticipated project results, a sound foundation of ground rules and expectations needs to be established, consistent monitoring procedures need to be put in place, feedback mechanisms need to be established, and a procedure for catching and resolving potential conflicts put in place. Moreover, to ensure full program success both parties must mutually benefit from the association. In particular, the new farmer needs to experience the key production-related activities needed to start their own farm or accepting a position at a commercial production farm.
4 trainees worked at UFI with 4 of UFI farmers
- Stephon Green
- Saskia Sams-Yeboah
- Oluwatobi Clement
- Christina Myrick
UFI Farmer Mentors and their Farms
- Maiya Lay, Love Bug Farm
- Tolu Igun, OlaLekan Farm
- Jasmine Bestul-Taylor, Sun Goddess Farm
- Ginette and Philippe Jean, SOFGI
2026 Beginning Farmer Program Recruitment and Trainees Selection (October - December, 2025)
In October 2025, we began to promote and recruit for the new funded 2026 Beginning Farmer Program (BFP) by advertising through our area networks in newsletters, social media posts, and partner listservs. The materials stipulated that trainees were to have at least three years of progressively more productive farming experience, and be committed to starting their own urban farms. We particularly targeted our outreach to historically underserved populations and to local organizations and allies that serve such populations.
In November, ECO hired Maura McCasted as the Director of Farm Education and Training and Program Coordinator for the BFP. [Note: McCasted is a Certified Project Management Professional (PMP), who previously served as ECO’s Beginning Farmers Training Coordinator, starting in January 2025 in a part-time capacity. Her professional background includes 18 years of federal financial management experience, ranging from audits, audit remediation, process improvement and design, and risk management programs. In addition, since 2022, McCasted has owned and operated her own farm and CSA, and raised funds for, and managed the construction of critical infrastructure at her farm. A Black female farmer and graduate of ECO’s farmer training program, McCasted intimately understands the value of mentorship and community-building.]
McCasted was tasked with laying out the entire program schedule complete with recruiting and hiring guest lecturers and instructors for the classroom portion of the training to start in January 2026.
By November’s end, ECO received 52 applications for the BFP. Each application was carefully reviewed according to a pre-determined and consistent rubric. 20 priority candidates were selected to be interviewed. 20 ½ hour long interviews were scheduled with these 20 applicants. McCasted and Lead Project Investigator, Margaret Morgan-Hubbard, used a well-tested, consistent rubric for each interview and together conducted all 20 candidates . Before the end of the year, 15 trainees were notified they were selected to join the program from which 6 trainees will be chosen for the HUF mentorship to begin in April.
The official training will commence in early January 2026.
Education & outreach activities and participation summary
Participation summary:
- Four (4) trainees from ECO’s 2025 Beginning Farmer cohort were selected as pilot program participants to test out the feasibility of our design. They completed their on-farm mentorships under four (4) UFI farmer mentors and provided feedback. ECO compiled relevant lessons learned for the implementation phase.
- Promotion of the 2026 Beginning Farmer Program through our area network via newsletters, social media posts, and partner listservs to recruit suitable and sufficient program participants, particularly targeted to potential farmers with three years of progressively more productive farming yields and experiences, who meet the definition of Historically Underserved.