The Grow America Garden Act

I. Education
School Gardens and Nutrition
All middle schools will have a working, teachable garden. Each school will also have a dedicated garden manager to maintain the garden, teach basic gardening skills and nutrition. Human nutrition and plant nutrition are very similar. By teaching human nutrition alongside plant nutrition students will have a deep understanding of how living organisms depend on the nutrients they ingest. By teaching them what is healthy for the plants they learn what is healthy for themselves.

Through proper diet, we can prevent and cure Cardiovascular disease, Osteoporosis, Obesity, Diabetes, and certain Cancers. While the children are being taught in school, insurance companies, hospitals, and medical centers are encouraged to provide resources for the local community to learn about nutrition. Doctors need to recommend nutrition education for all patients.

Grow America Garden Classes
Through the various statewide Master Gardener offices, home gardening and urban ag classes can be taught in all major urban centers. In Los Angeles, the Grow LA Victory Garden Initiative (“GLAVG”), which began in 2010, is presented by the University of California Cooperative Extension (UCCE). The classes teach residents how to grow fruits and vegetables in their own backyard or at a community garden. Led by UCCE Master Gardener volunteers, the topics covered during these classes include the following:

Week 1: planning, seed starting, raised beds, container gardening, plant selection (what to grow and when to grow it).

Week 2: tools, soil structure, soil preparation, plant nutrition, organic fertilizers, transplanting, irrigation, mulching

Week 3: integrated pest management (weeds, diseases, insects), organic pesticides, composting and worm composting (composting decreases landfill)

Week 4: pollination, seed saving, fruit trees, harvesting, review, and graduation.

Upon completing all four classes, participants are given a certificate of completion from the UCCE.

Additional classes for intermediate gardeners such as beekeeping, grafting, pickling, etc. may also be offered.

Graduates are now able to grow food for themselves and their families as well as turn their passion and expertise into a business. They can grow food for restaurants. Save seeds and start a business. They can make sauces, jams, and pickles, etc. for the consumer market. They could also network with their community and neighbors to buy, sell, and share locally grown produce.

MG History and Network

The instructors of the Grow America Garden classes are certified Master Gardeners (“MGs”). The Master Gardener Program is an offshoot of the Cooperative Extension Service (“CE”) that is present in every state of the country. Schools can also employ master gardeners to be their garden educators/managers.

The Master Gardener Program is an outgrowth of The Smith-Lever Act of 1914* which established the Cooperative Extension Service (“CE”) and The Morril Act of 1862 and 1890 which established land grant universities.

The MG program began in Washington State in 1972. A CE agent was so inundated with requests for horticultural information that he came up with the idea of using specialty-trained local garden enthusiasts to teach the overflow of questions coming into his office. The applicants would be screened and vetted (one requirement is being fingerprinted), given special training using university-researched information and then volunteer their time disseminating their horticultural knowledge.

It has become such a huge success that there are now MG offices in nearly every county of every state.

This act will spur interest in the master gardener program which will help pay for the program. Only those in the MG program can be Grow America Garden Class teachers.

In Los Angeles, CA, Master Gardener training involves all-day Saturday class for 14 weeks. The cost is $250 (nationwide prices may vary). Once graduated an MG must then volunteer 25-50 hours a year and take 10 hours of continuing education (numbers vary by state).

Each state will hire a Grow America Administrator that will coordinate with county heads the implementation of the Grow America Garden program. Their duties include helping to recruit new MGs as well as recruiting existing MGs to teach the garden classes and become advocates for school gardens, community gardens, and backyard growers. The MG’s will be trained in content, promotion, material handouts, administration, and record-keeping. Classes may also be taught online with Zoom, Google classroom, and Flipgrid being used as educational platforms.

II. Municipalities

We call on all citizens and civic leaders to petition local representatives to set aside land for community gardens. We also call on all city and state governments to turn empty lots into community gardens and require garden spaces to be part of urban development and renewal. City Planners will be asked to set aside land for local farming.

Greenhouse lessons and incentives for greenhouse purchases should be targeted for those in cold climates. Indoor shipping container facilities can feed whole square blocks. They can be commercially owned or community-owned.  For a community-owned facility, we will provide low rate loans to purchase the equipment. Community members can run it like a community garden or as a business- sell the produce to local neighbors, restaurants, or through a CSA program (Community Supported Agriculture).

In California and other states, Food Policy Councils are emerging as a model to address gaps in local policies. “Food policy councils (FPCs) are an important way to bring community members together with local government to promote the social, economic and environmental health of local and regional food systems.”

III. The Grow America Fruit Stand

The Grow America Fruit Stand is an online digital marketplace that connects local growers to their neighbors. Graduates of the Grow America garden classes (as well as others) can offer organic, locally grown fruits and vegetables to their neighbors for a fee.

Local citizens will be able to trade fruits and veggies with one another for credits and/or micropayments. Anyone can put a vegetable garden or fruit orchard in their backyard. Homeowners, community gardeners, school gardens, etc can all network among one another by setting a mile radius to their location. They can set up their own vegetable/fruit stand and have people come over and purchase their fruits and vegetables for an agreed-upon price. Block parties can be arranged by neighbors to share locally grown fruits and vegetables. If there is excess they could sell at local farmers’ markets. (Farmer’s Markets have increased greatly in numbers, see USDA page, National Farmers Market Directory, currently over 8500 markets nationwide).

On the Grow America website and app, gardeners within a designated area can trade with one another by listing what they’re growing and what they’re looking for. If there is a need in a certain area for more tomatoes then more people will plant tomatoes. If someone is looking for hot peppers or a rare herb and cannot find it, one could plant it for them and sell it to them.

Each seller makes a list of his or her offerings and what they are looking to trade. All sellers appear on a cumulative list that is automatically created for search purposes. Fruits and Produce are listed by name or zip code.

A buyer wishlist is also automatically generated during registration. Buyers list what they are looking for and the price they want to pay (or leave it up to the buyer). Sellers entering the market can grow produce that is lacking or advertise special offers. All growers also get an individual sales page to describe and list what they are selling. Pictures, prices and contact info is included.

In addition to fruits and vegetables, sellers can offer seeds and seedlings or items made from the produce they grew (i.e. jams, pickles, sauces, etc). All products must be self-grown.

There will also be a category of resources that companies can advertise specials on. People are going to need tools, greenhouses, irrigation equipment, etc. It will be a separate tab that participants can choose to utilize or not. It will also be a way to maintain the Grow America Fruit Stand.

Buyers contract with Sellers at a designated price. Delivery or pick-up will be arranged by the two parties involved. Buyers will also be able to buy futures of produce if they happen to find a particular product or vendor that they like.

Growers may be paid in cash or GrowCoins. To encourage trading and swapping among gardeners we created the GrowCoin. Each coin is worth $1.00. Theoretically, you can buy 4 radishes for one GrowCoin, or one tomato. A 10 lb heirloom watermelon might be 5 GrowCoins. All vendors on the network will accept GrowCoins, which can then be redeemed for cash onto their credit card through the website.

To encourage sellers to grow produce for the market, those who do not offer produce will pay a slightly higher price.

A beginning promotion will offer $5.00 in GrowCoins to the first one million people to signup. When the dollar amount is spent users will need to buy more (in $5 increments) using a credit card. Only those with GrowCoins in their account may use the Grow America Fruit Stand.

A 10% fee will be added to all transactions, to be paid by the buyer, to maintain the system.

The grower sets the price. Buyer scans a QR code from the seller and GrowCoins are instantly transferred. The more you grow, the more you can sell. The more you sell the more GrowCoins you get, which can then be used to purchase from anyone else on the network or turn it into cash.

Corporations and co-sponsors could contribute money in the form of GrowCoins so ensure healthy food for their followers. Governments can use GrowCoins to give to welfare participants so they too can eat healthily and not be worried that welfare participants are using welfare dollars to buy cigarettes and sodas and other unhealthy foods.

During registration buyers and sellers will enter their zip code and designate how narrow or wide they want their radius to be. Some may want to deal only with local people, while others may want to extend their reach to be neighboring, cities, towns, etc.

Everyone should have the right to grow his or her own food. We are going to make our country great again by making our country healthy.

We invite all to participate.

IV. Budget

1. 50 State Coordinators ($100,000/yr) – $5 million

2. 50 State Budgets ($1million each) – $50 million

3. Office, Staff, Equipment – $5 million

4. Develop Grow America Fruit Stand – $5 million

5. Promotion and Marketing – 35 million (Give first 5 million users $5 to get started on the Grow America Fruit Stand)

Total – $100 million

* There are approximately 30,000 middle schools in the United States. Each will need $35,000 ($30,000 for a garden manager to build, maintain, and instruct students and a budget of $5,000 for materials). Total: $1.05 billion. This amount will need to be raised in the private sector or by each participating school. Schools may also avail themselves of virtual garden lessons at a much lower cost.

Read More

See Urban Agriculture Across America for examples of successful programs.

Articles

1. Developing a National Strategic Plan for Consumer Horticulture. Presented by American Society for Horticultural Science – In 2008, 31% of all U.S. households (an estimated 36 million households) participated in food gardening (National Gardening Association, 2009), and the number increases annually (Butterfield, 2013). These gardeners represent a broad cross-section of the U.S. population and include all ages, ethnicities, education levels, income levels, marital statuses, household sizes, genders, and regional locations. Consumer horticulture stakeholders also include the 83,389 Extension Master Gardener (EMG) volunteers in the United States and Canada (Extension Master Gardener National Committee, 2015).

2. Vacant Lots to Vibrant Plots: A Review of the Benefits and Limitations of Urban Agriculture. Published by John Hopkins University, Bloomberg School of Public Health. The Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future. (Download pdf document).

3. ‘I wanted to do more for people than just pray’: Pastor blends faith, farms to end food insecurity in black churches.

4. 25 Indoor Urban Farming Examples. From Accelerated Growth Farming Systems to DIY Produce Kits.

5. CUNY Urban Food Policy. The CUNY Urban Food Policy Institute is an academic research and action center at the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy located in Harlem, NYC. We provide evidence to inform municipal policies that promote equitable access to healthy, affordable food.

6. Hunger in America: US Hunger and Poverty Facts

7. Obesity is a national epidemic affecting over one-third of all adults causing serious health conditions such as Diabetes which now affects over 30,000,00 Americans.

8. Vertical farming takes off in aging Japan

9. 10 Facts To Know About Hunger In America.

10. No dirt? No farm? No problem. The potential for soil-less agriculture is huge.