Deep Roots - Georgia Trend
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Georgia is blessed with an almost year-round growing season – one reason that agribusiness routinely ranks as the state’s No. 1 industry. With almost 10 million acres of farmland, the Peach State has a long history of agriculture. Anyone who’s been to a farmers market in Atlanta or Savannah or pulled over on the side of a two-lane road in the summer to check out a farmstand can attest to the state’s bounty. Yet still it may surprise you to learn that out of Georgia’s 42,439 farms, about half are under 70 acres. Some, nestled in little spots of undeveloped land in the midst of big cities, are even tinier – just a few acres.
Georgia’s small and urban farms are a growing part of the way we shop and eat, if you’ll pardon the word choice. And as COVID disrupted, well, everything, many people turned to them to have enough to eat. Some joined CSAs (community supported agriculture – the fruit and vegetable “boxes” you sign up to get every week), while others depended on programs offering locally grown produce to literally keep food on the table while they were out of work.
COVID put a spotlight on supply chains and “the need to really think about where your food comes from and how you want to access food,” says Kate Conner, executive director of Food Well Alliance, an organization that works to offer resources and support to local growers, community gardens and urban farms in Metro Atlanta in order to build healthier communities.
Food Well, started in 2015 by Bill Bolling (founder of the Atlanta Community Food Bank) and Jim Kennedy (chair of Cox Enterprises) works with 35 urban farms and more than 120 community gardens in the five core metro counties of Fulton, DeKalb, Cobb, Gwinnett and Clayton. The organization found itself pivoting in the midst of the pandemic, shifting from large-scale grantmaking to more immediate concerns about “what do people need right now to truly get food into the ground?” Conner says. That could mean delivering seeds, compost, labor, tools – anything needed to get crops planted (and as a byproduct, help keep farm workers employed.)
As they weathered this different kind of storm, Georgia’s growers and the organizations that help them emerged grateful for the support of existing customers and new ones, and more cognizant than ever of the need for local food.
