Earlier this fall, the Central Arkansas Sphinx Foundation met at Crump Park in Little Rock for an important announcement: The nonprofit had received another major grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to support its Pathway to Food Security and Equity initiative, a program focused on combating food insecurity and food deserts via urban farming and community gardening.
Founded in 2002, the Central Arkansas Sphinx Foundation, or CASF, works on a number of projects in the Little Rock area focused on community development, education and creating opportunities for at-risk children and youth. But its Pathway to Food Security and Equity initiative takes a creative approach to addressing hunger and food deserts by training individuals how to grow their own produce, largely using raised beds and community gardens.
In 2022, the organization received its first USDA grant of $650,000 to kick off the program. In October, the USDA awarded CASF nearly $700,000 in additional funding.
“When we got our initial grant, we first did an assessment of what the needs were,” Kalven Trice, the program’s project manager, said. “And what we did through the grants was to provide all the inputs – the soil, fertilizer, raised beds – to be able to build the infrastructure so that after the grant is over, there is something left.”
Through the USDA grants, CASF has built 18 community gardens across southeast and southwest Little Rock to supply nearby residents with free, fresh produce. Volunteers help Trice and other project leaders plant and maintain the gardens.
CASF received additional grants from the Natural Resources Conservation Service to build out urban farming, such as patio gardens, backyard gardens and community gardens. They also offer workshops for creating raised beds.
Food deserts are areas where access to fresh fruits and vegetables are limited due to the absence of grocery stores in a neighborhood. According to the USDA, much of southwest and eastern Little Rock are more than a mile from a grocery store.
“What we’ve tried to do, which is [similar] to mobile grocery stores, is target our efforts of community garden support to those areas where there are the largest food deserts,” Trice said. “Trying to get fresh vegetable production closer to areas that don’t have a grocery store.”
Trice worked for the USDA for more than twenty years. CASF is affiliated with the historically black fraternity Alpha Phi Alpha. Trice works with Charles Donaldson, a retired vice chancellor and professor at University of Arkansas – Little Rock, to implement the two major parts of the program.
“We recognize this is only a small step toward dealing with the food insecurity issue, but it’s going to take an entire community, and an entire state, to change what is happening in Arkansas,” Donaldson said. “We are also an agrarian state, and it’s hard to believe we would have food insecurity, but we have it. Working with the gardens, we were able to provide anything they needed to get started.”
Charles Donaldson (left), Dorothy Brown (middle),Kalven Trice (right), at the community garden in Crump Park in southeast Little Rock Credit: Phillip Powell
Arkansas is consistently ranked as one the most food insecure states in the nation.
Little Rock and the state have made more efforts to combat food insecurity, with a local organization winning a state grant over the summer to pilot a mobile grocery store. The Little Rock Board of Directors also approved a contract for over $850,000 to roll out mobile grocery stores in food-insecure neighborhoods.
Trice and Donaldson hope their project can expand efforts to tackle food insecurity in Arkansas. The USDA grant that was announced in early October will be focused on educating urban growers on how to take advantage of USDA resources and programs. Through the latest funding, they will provide micro-grants to the various community gardens they’ve helped set up.
“You have a group that are hobbyists, and you have those who want to get their operation big enough where they could start to sell,” Trice said of the gardeners they help train. “So, similar to a small farmer going from a smaller operation to a larger operation, but we are starting from scratch. Many of these folks have never heard of the USDA. So what we are trying to do is grow the operation from a hobby.”
With Donaldson’s background in education and research, and Trice’s background working in agriculture, the duo have the perfect combination of skills for such a project. Donaldson emphasized the educational impact for students as well by engaging schoolchildren with gardening.
The project also includes leading workshops in the community gardens to show more people how to cultivate plants. The USDA started a new urban county committee in Little Rock in July 2023 to coordinate the agency’s local programming. CASF leadership said they hope to be on the front lines of USDA’s efforts to grow urban farming in the future.
One of CASF’s largest community gardens is in Crump Park in south Little Rock, where the neighborhood is half a mile from the nearest grocery store, according to USDA data. While the area is not considered a food desert by the USDA’s definition, many of the other community gardens the group is helping build across the city are in areas that are.
“What I do is I help plant and harvest, and when we harvest our vegetables, we sell nothing,” Dorothy Brown, a volunteer at Crump Park, said. “We send out notices to the community and tell them that we have free vegetables. It’s first come and first serve, and it’s given away.”
Brown said almost 30 families are served by the garden twice a month. Produce is also shared with neighborhood associations.
According to Brown, the largest challenges for the projects in Crump Park and elsewhere is recruiting volunteers to plant and maintain the gardens. Donaldson is also concerned about sustaining the projects after the grant funding runs dry. But by working with the new USDA urban county committee in Little Rock, the group hopes that their efforts can continue to bring agricultural opportunities to the city.
“The sustainability is access to USDA programs,” Trice said. “We are planting a seed for USDA. We act in many cases like technical service providers for them, bringing the resources of USDA to the table so folks can understand what is available for them.”
