Urban farms in Pittsburgh can feed a hunger, if they’re allowed to grow

“I never dreamed I would be doing this,” Liz Boxley tells me. Boxley, a retired bus driver, is swiping through photos of the 3,000-pound harvest grown at Food for the Soul Community Garden in 2023. The garden, where Boxley has volunteered since 2021, is on Fulton St. just a few blocks from Ohio River Blvd. Despite being close to a major roadway, Boxley rightly describes the garden as “so serene.”

Ebony Evans started Food for the Soul, with the help of volunteers like Boxley, because she saw a need in her community for both healthy food and a collaborative, outdoor social space. Boxley says neighbors living on Fulton stop by the garden to help mow the grass or to ask for vegetables when bank accounts and cupboards are bare.

Food for the Soul was one of 15 sites featured in this year’s Pittsburgh Urban Farm Tour, organized by the Pittsburgh Food Policy Council and co-hosted by Grow Pittsburgh, Pasa Sustainable Agriculture, and the Chatham University Food Studies Program. Established in 2017, the tour supports the Urban Growers Scholarship Fund, which helps urban farmers “access professional development opportunities.” This year’s tour, on Sept. 14, “showcased some of the many people who have put Pittsburgh on the map nationally for their work in urban agriculture and helped bring attention to the value of urban agriculture,” says Chris Murakami of Chatham University’s Food Studies Program.

Though “urban farming” might sound like a modern oxymoron, Jared Green at the American Society of Landscape Architects points out that people have been growing crops inside the built environment for ages. In the 20th century, European and American governments encouraged the building of backyard “victory gardens” during the World Wars. The hope was that everyday citizens could boost both food security and morale with a little at-home agriculture. Although urban farms cannot provide all the sustenance city dwellers need, these green spaces can mitigate the effects of heat islands, reduce carbon footprint, bring resources to food deserts, and prepare communities for disruptions to food distribution networks — like those seen during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted something else: two Florida flippers’ plans to turn a quick buck on the historic Casper Reel house in West View. In 2018, the property was purchased by S&B Sofla Ventures, a Deerfield Beach LLC run by Seth and Bradley Cohen — co-founders of Insurance Care Direct and real estate moguls. When the Georgetown Ave. property went back on the market in 2022, Jodi McLaughlin saw an opportunity. She purchased the 18th century log cabin and replaced its lawn with West View Urban Farm. The farm provides food to the West View Hub food pantry, which feeds up to 900 people per week — about 13% of the borough’s residents.

Addressing local hunger is the mission of The Greater Valley Market Garden in Braddock, as well. Part of Greater Valley Community Services, the garden is intended to “improve food insecurity” and provide hands-on education for youth in the area. Although the garden is still a few years out from having a farm stand on Braddock Ave., manager Fitzhugh Shaw says that the garden already distributes food to the Free Store in Braddock and the free fridge at Braddock’s Battlefield History Center.

Urban farms address aesthetic hungers, too. At Sol Patch Garden on Braddock Ave., Collette Walsh leads a team growing celosia, dahlias, marigolds, and other flowers in the shadow of U.S. Steel’s Edgar Thomson Works. Walsh, who lives in Braddock, comes from an agriculture background but didn’t feel connected to growing crops. Pursuing her passion for flower farming, Walsh works against a long history of flowers being a middle- or upper-class luxury by making blossoms affordable for locals.

“Flowers are for the people,” Walsh says, echoing a large painted sign at the back of the farm.

Walsh has a long-term lease and McLaughlin owns the West View farm, but other urban farms are more precariously placed. Ebony Evans of Food for the Soul began her farm through the City of Pittsburgh’s Adopt-A-Lot program, which aims to transform unused city property into green space. Evans had a three-year lease from the City and Urban Redevelopment Authority (each owns half the property) and is now on a one-year lease that ends in July 2025. She’s been notified that the City will not be renewing her lease, effectively closing the farm.

According to the Department of City Planning, “the ultimate goal” of the Adopt-A-Lot program “is the transfer of ownership from the city” to the tenant after the three-year lease. Evans says she was told she would have the opportunity to purchase the four Manchester lots, but is now being denied that chance.

According to the Manchester Citizens Corporation, a North Side-based community development group, the lots occupied by Food for the Soul were slated for development until the pandemic created delays. Four years later, the MCC intends to resume its plans to build low-income housing on the site. LaShawn Burton Faulk, the MCC’s executive director and only paid employee, tells Pittsburgh City Paper the Corporation offered three alternative properties to Evans, but Evans refused them. Evans disputes that the properties were offered, and points to the difficulty of moving something like a farm that cannot be packed into boxes and shipped across town.

Evans says that Food for the Soul has spent over $20,000 on the site, installing a water line, fencing, and raised beds. Despite this monetary input, not to mention countless volunteer hours and neighborhood connections, Food for the Soul is not in the official plans for Fulton St.

“It’s not possible to invest if there isn’t stability,” Sol Patch’s Walsh explains. Prior to finding her farm’s current home, Walsh also had a series of short-term leases which cost her both financially and personally.

Evans contacted Daniel Lavelle, City Councilman for Manchester, hoping to find support for the farm. Lavelle’s office has not responded to Evans, and did not reply to City Paper’s request for comment. Conversations with City officials are critical, according to Jodi McLaughlin of West View Urban Farm. McLaughlin says that officials are often unaware of laws or codes which impede urban farmers from making positive impacts. Urban farmers in Pennsylvania do have their champions, however. In 2023, State Rep. Christopher M. Rabb introduced House Bill 920, which would help “small and mid-size farming operations, beginning farmers, and members of traditionally disadvantaged groups” in urban environments.

Food for the Soul is one of a small number of Black-operated farms in Pennsylvania, making its presence all the more crucial. According to the 2022 USDA Census of Agriculture, there were only 92 Black agricultural producers in Pennsylvania, compared to 89,328 white producers.

As Kent Bey sees it, the low number of Black farmers is tied to gentrification. Bey, founder of Peace & Friendship Farm in the Hill District, argues that the legally-enshrined inequities which have kept Black residents from owning homes have also kept Black residents from participating equally in agriculture and environment issues. As a result, Black residents may feel disconnected from these topics, Bey explains. Although research shows that people of color are more likely to be concerned with climate change than their white peers, Bey’s argument touches on the alienating impacts of racism and gentrification.

Peace & Friendship Farm, established by Bey in 2018 through the Adopt-A-Lot program, transformed an overgrown and “blighted” Hill District lot into an urban green space designed to welcome all, but especially veterans. Bey, a veteran himself, hopes to use the gardens to provide, “healing therapy and economic opportunities for veterans.” He also hopes to foster conversation about environmental issues among the city’s Black residents.

Education is a primary mission of several urban farms, including the West Penn Hospital Healthy Food Center Garden in Friendship. Established in 2024 by Chris Kosin, creator of GaiaScale LLC and a former West Penn Hospital nurse, the garden provides a space for patients to learn about food production and preparation.

Although the garden isn’t integrated into the Healthy Food Center’s programming just yet, Megan Davis says several hospital employees have already expressed interest in volunteering in the garden. Patients, too, are anxious to access the space and learn more about how to grow healthy food at home.

Those who discover they’ve got a green thumb might find additional training at a place like Shiloh Farm in Point Breeze North, a quarter-acre production site run by Grow Pittsburgh. Established in 2011, the farm produces 4,000 pounds of food each year, much of which is sold at Grow Pittsburgh’s produce stands. To make local produce more accessible, the stands accept Farmer’s Market Nutrition Program checks, EBT/SNAP payments, and Food Bucks, alongside the usual cash and card.

In the summer, Shiloh Farm employs students from the Braddock Youth Project to grow crops and sell produce at the stands, providing valuable work experience. The farm also functions as a demonstration garden for Master Gardener training, and offers a work-share program through which volunteers can exchange garden help for fresh produce.

Farm manager Silvan Goddin says she hopes that, in coming years, Shiloh Farm can offer more permanent farm stands, thereby making fresh produce available to Pittsburghers on a continual basis.

Sarah Vandermolen, a volunteer at Shiloh, wishes for something much more difficult to accomplish: “fewer groundhogs.”

This article appears in Oct 9-15, 2024.