Project Overview
Commodities
- Vegetables: greens (leafy), greens (lettuces), okra
- Additional Plants: herbs
- Miscellaneous: mushrooms
Practices
- Education and Training: demonstration, farmer to farmer, mentoring, networking, workshop
- Farm Business Management: business planning, cooperatives, farm-to-restaurant, land access, whole farm planning
- Soil Management: composting, organic matter, soil quality/health
- Sustainable Communities: community development, food access and security, food sovereignty, new business opportunities, urban agriculture
Proposal abstract:
Acres4Change was born out of the nationwide movement catalyzed by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Our mission is to expand access and ownership of farmland for urban farmers. We expand access through our Stewardship Program and its educational hub: Charm City Caps Mushroom Farm at Green Street Academy. This farm isn't just a space for learning; it's a working farm generating revenue that supports the purchase and management of urban farm collectives in Baltimore.
Our work is rooted in coalition-building. Our partner network has offered valuable insights into opportunity gaps, specifically land access and ownership, faced by their training program graduates and the Baltimore farming community. Our urban farm partners have highlighted a critical gap in their beginner farmer training programs: many farmers were graduating with valuable skills but had no access to land to apply what they learned. For example, despite a decade of nourishing their community, Cherry Hill Urban Community Garden was displaced due to a lack of land ownership and long-term security. The Baltimore farming community and A4C are breaking down the barriers to land access and ownership while providing in-house and partner-led agriculture and farm business training. We're not reinventing the wheel; instead, we're building on our track record of connecting existing agriculture communities with resource opportunities.
Solution and Approach:
A4C supports beginning and experienced farmers through its Stewardship Program, offering hands-on agricultural and business training in collaboration with partners like Innovation Works Baltimore, Wellspring Forest Farm, Farm Alliance of Baltimore, Future Harvest, and others. We enrich new farmer training programs by providing land access and ownership opportunities for their graduates. With these partnerships, we're able to offer tailored programming that equips farmers with essential skills and, most importantly, the chance to attain ownership of farmland and build generational wealth. Our education and demonstration mushroom farm Charm City Caps at Green Street Academy serves as a practical, working business model, allowing Stewards to apply their business and marketing skills while generating revenue through mushroom sales to local restaurants and farmers markets. We're committed to helping farmers of color succeed and build financial equity through land ownership. In October of 2024, we purchased our first parcel of land and established Sankofa Homestead Farm Collective for our inaugural cohort of Stewards, setting the stage for future cohorts of farmers to replicate in Maryland and beyond.
Performance targets from proposal:
By the end of the 3-year project, 15 farmer stewards will collectively produce approximately 5 tons of mushrooms to finance the establishment of three urban farm collectives, engage in direct-to-consumer sales, and achieve positive gross margins. The Stewardship Program and educational mushroom farm operation will generate estimated economic returns of $60,000 annually and provide a scalable model for sustainable urban farming and collective landownership beyond the initial geographic focus area.