Providing Immigrant and Refugee Families access to locally grown, nutrient-dense and culturally relevant produce in South Indianapolis

Commodities

Practices

If you were to search Indianapolis on the USDA Food Access Research Atlas interactive guide, you would see about 40% of Indianapolis bathed in green. The green represents low income residents who live more than 1 mile from the nearest supermarket. Because most Indianapolis residents live in food deserts, imagine the struggle for low-income, immigrant and refugee families to find locally grown, nutrient-dense and culturally relevant produce. 

In the agricultural world, there is a lack of crop diversity and producer diversity. The 2022 USDA census reported that Asian producers made up 0.8% of 3.4 million producers across the country. The lack of Asian representation in agricultural fields may cause limited nutrition education, food system education, and professional and personal aspirations in Asian households. 

The core issue I’d like to address is the lack of access for immigrant and refugee families to locate locally grown, nutrient-dense and culturally relevant produce in Indianapolis. Along with this, I’d like to address the lack of diversity in crops, the lack of diversity in farmers, community well-being and food system education in Indianapolis.

My solution is a combined research and education project. The crops that I would like to grow for this research project include Japanese sweet potatoes, turmeric and ginger, all heat-loving crops. These 3 crops are widely used across cultures and are crops you do not tend to see at farmer’s markets in Indianapolis. This research project will incorporate the use of growing the three mentioned crops in raised beds, raised beds with a plastic hoop attachment and a polytunnel to find the most practical way of growing each crop. I will use 6 raised beds in total with 3 of the raised beds having the hoop attachment along with a 20 x 10 ft polytunnel divided into 3 rows (20x2.5ft). In the first season of growing, each crop will grow in 2 raised beds (1 with hoop attachment, 1 without)  and (1)  20 x 2.5 ft row in the polytunnel. Throughout the growing season, I will measure each crop's progress in each setting by documenting the crops yields, the time it takes to produce a mature fruit and provide pictures each week of its progress. The purpose of finding the best growing practice for these crops is to share with community these sustainable practices and empower them to replicate these practices at home. 

With the education piece of this project, I plan to invite members of immigrant and refugee families to visit my urban farm with three different field days. The first field day will be at the beginning of the season where I will demonstrate how to build raised beds along with the hoop attachment and build the polytunnel with the volunteers. After that, I will demonstrate how to plant each crop and how to care for it throughout the season. Once the infrastructure is built and the crops are planted, we will have an informative luncheon where I will talk about my mission of the farm, describe the project and why supporting local food systems is important. Then, everyone will leave with handouts of how to build their own beds and polytunnel, where to source materials and where to place them in their home or backyard, informational care on each crop and where to source seeds/slips. In the middle of the season, I will invite the same and new volunteers back to the farm to check on each crop’s progress, have a discussion luncheon of what I have encountered with each growing technique and demonstrate mid-season care techniques for each crop. At the time of harvest for each crop, the last field day will occur and I will demonstrate how to harvest, cure and store the crops for volunteers and they will get a chance to harvest produce themselves and take some home along with a handout of how to cure and store the crops in their home. Then a discussion luncheonof which growing technique was most successful for each crop will occur along with a conversation of how to cook the crops. 

In the second growing season, I will repeat this research method and education techniques with different varieties of the sweet potato, ginger and turmeric. 

Objectives: 

• Examine the effectiveness of growing in raised beds, raised beds with hoop attachments and a polytunnel for 3 different root vegetables plus 2 different varieties of each. 
• Increase food access for immigrant and refugee populations to culturally relevant produce
• Empower the community to grow their own food and explore self-sufficiency 
• Educate immigrant and refugee families on careers in agriculture
• Grow diversity in the local food system of Indianapolis 
• Increase immigrant and refugee people’s participation in the local food system