Nashville Grown is a nonprofit startup aimed at jumpstarting urban agriculture in Nashville by offering free or low-cost land to urban farmers; providing urban farming training opportunities; aggregating and distributing locally grown produce to reach larger markets; and raising awareness of Nashville’s farmers via innovative and transparent labeling.

The demand for local produce is here, as evidenced by the proliferation of farmers markets in the city, but the systemic solutions are not. Many small farmers in the Nashville area do not grow enough to reliably meet the demand of grocery stores, restaurants, and other larger distribution outlets. Farmers markets and CSAs are a great option for such farmers, but they are a huge time commitment for already overburdened farmers, often result in wasted produce given refrigeration challenges, and are not compatible with the work schedules of many consumers. By offering small farmers the option to opt-in to shared washing, storage, packaging, labeling, marketing, and distribution services, we can eliminate many of the economies of scale that give the advantage to large farms, dramatically lowering the costs of these small farmers while giving them access to bigger markets. Plus, a shared, carefully designed and targeted local brand can bring greater awareness and interest in locally-grown produce, further increasing demand. An urban food hub can do more than save jobs–it can create them. The unemployment rate in Nashville is 7.2 percent. As explained above, the land is there, with the potential for millions of dollars in agricultural value and hundreds of jobs–but without a system to make that land available to prospective growers, offer training, and efficiently feed the produce into larger markets, that potential will be wasted.

Some math: Of the 668 acres in Nashville’s Central Business Improvement District (the area between Peabody St, 10th Ave, Charlotte Ave, and the river), 131 — nearly 20 percent — are vacant. Columbia University’s Urban Design Lab estimates that 59% of the 8,465 vacant acres in New York City are suitable for farming. It’s likely that the agricultural suitability of Nashville’s vacant land is at least as great, but let’s stick with 59%, or 77 acres. Bio-intensive low average yields for dark greens like broccoli, collards, kale, and lettuce are 41,382 lbs/acre in climates such as Nashville’s, according to John Jeavons’ “How to Grow More Vegetables.” Multiply that by the 77 acres of agriculturally-suitable vacant land in downtown Nashville, and you get 3.2 million lbs of leafy greens per year. Americans eat on average 160 lbs of produce per year. Thus, vacant land in downtown could fill 19,990 Nashvillians’ entire yearly produce needs. Based on prices from the USDA Economic Research Service (2011) and the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service (2010), the crop value per square foot of organically grown produce is $6 for collards and $3 for kale or leaf lettuce–so downtown Nashville could generate up to 20 million dollars of value annually in agriculture. These are, of course, extremely rough estimates. And we’re not out to convert Nashville into a giant kale farm. But the point is, there is immense potential for urban agriculture in Nashville, even in densest heart of the city, which represents only 5% of Davidson County’s total land area. To realize that potential, however, we need to have a system that can coordinate activity and share expenses to make farming on vacant land practical and efficient–many of the plots are otherwise too small to justify the costs of washing, storing, packaging, and marketing the produce grown on them.

1. Bring Nashville’s farmers into the limelight. Create a brand for food grown in the Nashville area through the use of appealing labels and packaging. Available for all farmers within an hour’s drive of the city who use sustainable growing methods, these labels will unify Nashville’s farms under a common label while also giving consumers exciting, unprecedented access to information about their food–where exactly it was grown, how it was grown, the story of their farmer, the history of the farm, etc. Check out an example of what we’re talking about here. 2. Rinse and repeat. Get as many local farms and gardens as possible on board with this labeling, so it’s as comprehensive as possible. We want every farm on the map! 3. Create new farming opportunities. Join Nashville’s food, agriculture, and health organizations to work to make vacant urban land available for farming at low or no cost, and create incentives for agricultural use of this land. 4. Make it easy (well, easier). Offer shared storage, packaging, ordering, and distribution services to decrease costs for farmers and make it possible for even the smallest of them to access large markets such as grocery stores and institutional cafeterias. 5. Grow new farmers. Offer education, training, and skill-sharing opportunities for city residents to farm profitably in small spaces, taking advantage of the Nashville Grown distribution infrastructure to overcome the challenges of turning a profit at such a small scale. 6. Sprout new roots. We have no illusions that steps 1-5 will take a while, but once we’ve done them well, we are committed to taking what we’ve learned to help other cities grow robust, effective, and economically successful local and urban agriculture networks.