local foods

Boosting urban food security — and with it, farms and nutrition

Cleveland’s Gateway 105 Farmers’ Market is one of more than two dozen farmers markets in and around Cuyahoga County participating in the Produce Perks program. (Photo: Ken Chamberlain, CFAES.)

Cleveland’s Gateway 105 Farmers’ Market is one of more than two dozen farmers markets in and around Cuyahoga County participating in the Produce Perks program. (Photo: Ken Chamberlain, CFAES.)

A program called Produce Perks is tackling northeast Ohio’s urban food deserts while boosting small farms and food security.

Participating farmers’ markets give two-for-one incentive tokens, or “Produce Perks,” to customers who use an Ohio Direction Card — their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits — to buy food. The program provides a dollar-for-dollar match up to $10 for every dollar spent at the market on produce.

The Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Food Policy Coalition — established by local food leaders, including Ohio State University Extension’s Cuyahoga County office — runs the program.

“Produce Perks has brought many low-income and food-insecure residents to farmers’ markets for the first time,” said Nico Boyd, formerly the community development coordinator in the office and the coalition’s project coordinator. “Not only does it help stretch people’s food dollars to buy more fresh, local produce, it keeps food dollars here.”

“Families can stretch their food dollars by utilizing Produce Perks to double their whole-food purchases,” said Veronica Walton, who manages the Gateway 105 Farmers’ Market in Cleveland for the Famicos Foundation. “The relaxed atmosphere at farmers markets is perfect for conversations about meal preparation, food storage and preservation, all of which decrease food insecurities.”

Essentials

  • Some 55 percent of Clevelanders live in food deserts. People in food deserts have little access to fresh, healthy, affordable food.
  • OSU Extension’s Cuyahoga County office recently expanded Produce Perks to include 30 area farmers markets. A subgrant from Wholesome Wave, a nonprofit targeting food issues, funded the expansion.
  • Another Wholesome Wave subgrant allowed OSU Extension’s Hamilton County office to expand a produce buying incentive program in greater Cincinnati.
  • When the Broadway Farmers’ Market in Cleveland’s Slavic Village joined the Produce Perks program, it saw a 191 percent increase in Ohio Direction Card sales in a single year, according to an article in northeast Ohio’s Fresh Water e-magazine.

Learn more about the Produce Perks program here.

A simple, low-cost way to grow more food

Urban Farms of Central Ohio, part of the Mid-Ohio Foodbank, uses high-tunnel technology developed by OARDC scientists to train new farmers and help feed the hungry. (Photo: Ken Chamberlain, CFAES.)

Urban Farms of Central Ohio uses high-tunnel technology developed by OARDC scientists to train new farmers and help feed the hungry. (Photo: Ken Chamberlain, CFAES.)

High tunnels help farmers grow more food of higher quality, and Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center scientists are working to widen their use.

Especially suited to small and urban farms, the simple, low-cost structures make the growing season longer.

Inside, fruits and vegetables ripen earlier in spring and yield later in fall, with no need for fossil-fuel heat.

“High tunnels translate into greater food production, greater food security and greater potential farm income,” said OARDC scientist Matt Kleinhenz.

At OARDC facilities in Piketon and Wooster and on cooperating farms, Kleinhenz and OARDC colleague Brad Bergefurd are studying high tunnels, documenting their benefits and refining the best ways to use them. Then, they’re sharing their findings with farmers.

“We’ve used OARDC’s high tunnel research to increase our impact by providing high-quality produce for more months of the year,” said Dana Hilfinger, farm manager for Urban Farms of Central Ohio (pictured above, right).

“We’re a nonprofit commercial farming organization providing fresh produce access to food-insecure individuals,” she said. “We’ve been able to market our produce earlier in the season, generating more revenue to support our mission and generally supporting central Ohio’s local food economy,”

Essentials

  • In Ohio, high tunnels can extend the marketing season of a farm from six months to year-round.
  • High tunnels increase a farm’s annual food production. Warm- and cool-season crops are grown and sold in succession. Hundreds to thousands of pounds of more and different kinds of produce are taken from tunnels when outside fields are dormant. That means more revenue to growers and greater choice and health benefits to consumers.
  • Weather extremes disrupt normal farming practices outside, but not so much inside high tunnels. High tunnels protect crops from rain, snow, wind, cold and other stresses, including some pests and disease-causing pathogens. Tunnel production can use less fertilizer, irrigation, pesticides and labor.

Get further details on this research here.

Kale! Kale! The gang’s all here … in an Ohio State greenhouse growing veggies for students

Lesa Holford, right, corporate executive chef with Ohio State University's Student Life Dining Services department, and Courtney George, a sophomore food science major, tend plants they’ve helped grow in a university greenhouse. (Photo: K.D. Chamberlain, CFAES Communications.)

Lesa Holford, right, corporate executive chef with Ohio State University’s Student Life Dining Services department, and Courtney George, a sophomore food science major, tend kale and basil plants in a university greenhouse. (Photo: K.D. Chamberlain, CFAES Communications.)

There’s a new spin to eating on campus.

Ohio State’s Student Life Dining Services department and the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences have teamed to grow some of the produce served in the university’s dining halls.

In a greenhouse run by the college’s Department of Horticulture and Crop Science, plant experts from the department, food experts with Dining Services and student volunteers oversee hundreds of robust kale, basil and romaine lettuce plants.

After harvest, the crops go into such dishes as Caesar salads, caprese sandwiches, and kale and bacon tarts (recipe here), all served in campus eateries.

Systems like this one are part of the growing “farm-to-table” movement. Farm-to-table systems aim to shorten the distance as much as possible between where a food is produced and where it’s consumed.

Fresh from the Buckeyes’ backyard

  • Horticulture and Crop Science staff “have taught us so much,” said Lesa Holford, corporate executive chef with Student Life Dining Services. She said she’s more than pleased with the project’s first fruits: more than 230 pounds of greens and herbs in the first three months.
  • Zia Ahmed, senior director of Student Life Dining Services, said, “One day (the project) may lead to a significant amount of production coming out of our own backyard to feed our students. … It’s a great privilege to have the opportunity to grow our own food.”
  • To contact the sources: Lesa Holford at holford.8@osu.edu; Zia Ahmed at ahmed.290@osu.edu.

Read more.

Serving, growing Ohio’s grape and wine industry

Nick Ferrante checks his vineyards in Ashtabula County. The winter of 2013-14 devastated his crop. But OARDC research offers hope for recovery.

Nick Ferrante checks his vineyards in Ashtabula County. The winter of 2013-14 devastated his crop. But OARDC research offers hope for recovery.

The “polar vortex” winter of 2013–2014 hit Ohio’s wine grapes hard. Nick Ferrante knows it. The owner of Geneva’s Ferrante Winery lost his entire 2014 vinifera crop. And he wasn’t alone. Ohio grape growers estimated their vinifera losses at 97 percent, and officials expected damage to all the state’s grape varieties to top $12 million. Vinifera, or European, grapes go into such wines as Chardonnay.

“This was probably the worst grape damage on record in Ohio,” said Imed Dami, who works to help growers recover from that damage and reduce or prevent it in the future.

As leader of the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center’s viticulture, or grape-growing, research, Dami studies, for example, new grape varieties’ cold hardiness and how to prune winter-damaged vines. Then he shares his findings for growers to use — a sustained flow of new science-based knowledge that Ferrante calls “a great asset to the industry.”

Essentials

  • OARDC’s grape and wine research program is the only long-term, university-backed research program serving Ohio’s grape and wine industry.
  • Ohio’s grape and wine industry has a $786 million annual economic impact, a figure that has grown by a third in just the past six years.
  • The industry created 1,200 new jobs during that growth and now supports more than 5,000 full-time jobs.
  • Following last winter’s devastation, Dami has taught an ongoing statewide workshop series on pruning winter-damaged vines. The goal is to return Ohio grape growers to full production as soon as possible.
  • Dami and colleagues do extensive research on improved grape production methods. Field trials take place in Wooster, at OARDC’s Ashtabula Agricultural Research Station in Kingsville and in vineyards of cooperating growers.
  • Dami has attracted nearly $3.4 million in grant support from industry and others since 2008.

“Imed Dami’s research has impacted all of Ohio’s vineyards, especially in the Grand River Valley, which produces some of the state’s finest vinifera wines and has won many prestigious awards,” Ferrante said. “We’ve used many of Imed’s strategies to improve vine health, yields and wine quality.”

More: go.osu.edu/GrowingGrapes

Local foods programs promote healthy, sustainable and equitable food systems in urban cities

Urban agriculture offers city-dwellers the ability to grow their own produce and increase the community’s access to safe, local foods. (pictured: Carol Contrada, Lucas County commissioner)

Urban agriculture offers city-dwellers the ability to grow their own produce and increase the community’s
access to safe, local foods. (pictured: Carol Contrada, Lucas County commissioner)

More Ohio urban neighborhoods are seeing an increase in season-extending gardens. The gardens offer city-dwellers the ability to grow their own foods and to become food entrepreneurs right where they live.

Seasonal high tunnels are similar to but less expensive than greenhouses, require no artificial energy and help keep local produce reaching consumers even when weather turns nasty. These domed structures are now in inner-city neighborhoods in Cleveland, Columbus and Youngstown, where they help urban farmers and gardeners grow food almost year-round. Ohio State University Extension provides technical support and marketing education to help the residents utilize the tunnels to increase profits.

Such programming occurs in all Ohio counties, with efforts to increase access to local foods by helping to create community gardens to promote urban agriculture and opportunities for vocational agricultural training. Efforts also strive to increase students’ access to healthy foods in schools, and to create local food councils similar to the Northwest Ohio Food Council.

Essentials

  • According to Ken Meter’s “Finding Food in Northwest Ohio,” if each resident of Northwest Ohio bought $5 worth of food weekly from a local farm, $345 million of new farm income would be generated.
  • OSU Extension supports 239 community gardens in Cuyahoga County that yield nearly $3.1 million in fruits and vegetables each growing season. Annually, Extension donates more than 10,000 pounds of produce to nonprofit agencies and shelters.
  • Market gardens are for-profit agricultural enterprises — including urban farms — that provide jobs and fresh, local food. Through the Market Gardener Training Program in Cuyahoga County, OSU Extension has trained 215 residents, 51 of whom have created microbusinesses such as farm stands and restaurants.
  • Kinsman Farms is OSU Extension’s 6-acre incubator farm in Cleveland. It supports 13 beginning urban farmers and saw aggregated sales of $98,870 in 2013.

“Eliminating food deserts and including fresh fruits and vegetables at convenience stores are some strategies being developed by the Northwest Ohio Food Council in partnership with Ohio State University Extension and other organizations designed to increase access to local, healthier foods in urban areas,” said Carol Contrada, Lucas County commissioner.

For more information: localfoods.osu.edu.