I’ve been missing a bunch of deadlines lately. NOFFN recently partnered up with the Office of Service Learning at Delgado to develop a brochure about NOFFN’s work. I was late turning it in, but the pressure of having to give something to students forced me to confront the question that many non-profits face – What exactly do we do?
I have an answer. It’s an answer that may be different from what you thought NOFFN did.
NOFFN is a unique organization. It started out as a response to address the gaps in the food system that our founders saw – we had a strong thriving farmers market culture thanks to the work of marketumbrella and others. We still had limited food access in many neighborhoods. We started doing very basic organizing activities – backyard gardens, fruit trees distributed to residents, getting people to sign the Food Charter showing their support for building a local food system.
Over the past decade, the New Orleans Food & Farm Network (NOFFN) has helped to incubate many asset-based food projects (providing organizational support, capacity-building, and technical assistance) throughout the City – Our School at Blair Grocery, Backyard Gardeners Network, Grow Dat Youth Farm, Hollygrove Market & Farm, NOLA Green Roots, and Good Food NOLA among others.
Despite these successes, there has been little significant increase in the number of urban farmers.
About Us
Access to fresh, healthy, affordable local food is one of the most critical, and unmet, needs that New Orleans currently faces.
NOFFN is a food justice organization. We support the transformation of where, what, and how food is grown, produced, transported, accessed, and eaten to ensure equal access to safe, nutritious, enjoyable food for everyone and to build the local food economy.
NOFFN sees food justice as education, awareness, and outreach coupled with action – to help create viable alternatives. Alternatives that not only provide food, but help strengthen neighborhood economies, provide employment and entrepreneurial opportunities for residents and offer innovative ways to utilize vacant space.
We help incubate neighborhood-led projects and the regional food economy by working at all scales, from backyards, to city lots, to a network of commercial farms, with a goal of achieving food justice.
Sustainable farming – urban and rural – now and in the future – needs direct help to enable them to survive and thrive. NOFFN does this by:
- Methodically develop the sustainable supply of produce in New Orleans.
- Identifying interested urban farmers, building their business and horticultural capacities.
- Inserting the will of the city for fresh food into development plans and funding.
- Creating vacant land policies and development mechanisms that are supportive to urban agriculture.
- At the same time, immediate food access and the future farmers come from getting folks interested in growing in their backyards and community gardens for their own consumption.
NOLA Farms Toolbox
We are developing a NOLA Farms Toolbox that is a collection of best practices and tools designed to overcome the main obstacles to urban agriculture:
Land Access
- Farm This Now! Map (an on-line vacant lot finder)
- Land Acquisition Handbook
- Farmer-Landowner Lease Template
- Other Land Issues (insurance, water access, vending, zoning, soil resources)
- Project Development Assistance (land acquisition, project planning, community engagement)
Training & Mentoring
- New & Beginning Urban Farmer Trainings (production/management; business management/decision-support; marketing; and legal matters relative to farming in NOLA)
- Farmer Internship Program
- Grow Mo’ Betta Workshops (sustainable food growing techniques)
- Community Food Education Workshops (cooking, storage, and nutrition instruction)
- NOLA Farms Workshops (specifically for neighborhoods – garden starting, organic growing, soil building, rainwater catchment/ irrigation, animals & orchards)
- NOLA Farms Leaders (train-the-trainer program of community practitioners and experts)
Farm Financing
- Farm Financing Reference Manual — a much-appreciated thanks to Jean-Michel, Miguel, Cristiano, Romario and the John Deere’s Inspiring Leadership Program for helping on this – to be distributed soon.
- Funding Resource Directory
- Small groups can apply for Fiscal Sponsorship for specific grants
Market Development
- Market Farmer Guidance (product lists, pricing/marketing, best handling & food safety practices, growing/harvesting/cleaning/packaging/storage, transportation & food hubs, and product liability insurance)
Toolbox + Action = Change
These tools and best practices will serve as the intellectual architecture for our local food system. Yet we also know that tools alone cannot create the changes we need. Along with the coordinated action of lots of people and groups, neighborhood organizing, and catalyst projects to initiate neighborhood collaboration, the Toolbox can help people transform vacant lots into urban farms.
Repurposing land within neighborhoods is crucial to the advancement of urban agriculture and to New Orleans neighborhoods realizing its many benefits. Scores of New Orleans gardens and small farms already produce fresh, healthy food for family consumption and for sale at markets, and more and more people are starting agricultural projects each year.
Our intent is to create the opportunity for neighborhoods to create wealth and develop the potential to use the land.
Farm This Now! Organizing
- The Farm This Now! map will allow people to search lots near them and get in touch with each other.
- Our focus is on a print poster – distributed by neighbors, staff, interns, volunteers, partners, and volunteer groups – because we know that it’s the best way to get in touch with people who live near the lots.
- There is little to distinguish one vacant lot from another when you walk through a neighborhood.
- You can’t tell who the owner is (be it a private landowner or a government agency).
- People who notice the poster and have been thinking about doing something with the lot see this as their opportunity and get in touch with us.
- Turning unused space into something positive changes how people view, and interact in, their neighborhood.
- Working on reclaiming a vacant lot provides an avenue for neighbors to get to know each other and work through issues directly.
Catalyst Projects
- To begin the collaborative process between neighbors and organizations, NOFFN is initiating catalyst projects – specifically, Neighborhood Orchards and Tool Lending Libraries.
- Engaging people on a common project helps organizations and neighbors build trust and communication lines that will support future projects.
NOFFN wants to build the movement toward food sovereignty. We want to do it democratically. We want to ensure that our neighbors get a fair opportunity to be part of the local food system. We want to figure out a way that NOLA neighborhoods address and counter the Agricultural Gentrification** we see picking up steam in other places.(** more on this topic in a later EDblog post)
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The challenge for the Delgado students is to crunch all the above onto 6 panels with a max of 258 words.
