Located on a seven-acre site in New Orleans' City Park we operate a two-and-a-half acre sustainable farm. Each year, we grow and harvest an average of 50,000 pounds of fresh produce. Eighty percent is sold via our CSA program. Twenty percent is distributed through our Shared Harvest program and to our youth participants and families.
The Farm
There are no fences on our land as there are at most farms. Just as egrets and herons wander through our fields, on a given day you can see people fishing, birding, and walking dogs. You may spot a group of first graders picking carrots out of the ground for the first time, or adults on one of our History of the Land tours. We host over 2,000 visitors every year, including many from around the country who look to our work as a model for their own projects. Our location in City Park makes this a true community space: a place for nature, for education, and for reimagining how we relate to our food and to our planet.
A Farm Without Fences
At Grow Dat, we look to nature as a guide for how to grow food - asking ourselves, how can we replicate the processes that a forest or prairie would do naturally? How are we stewarding not just our fields, but the waterways and forests? Whenever possible, we aim to follow principles of biodiversity, repurposing waste, and intervening in ecological processes as little as possible. In this way, we think of ourselves as both a farm and an agro-ecological project.
Farming Ecologically
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On our farm we grow more than 50 different crops throughout the year. This diversity is insurance against pest damage (since we use no toxic herbicides or pesticides). If one crop is damaged, many other varieties are available to harvest. Practicing crop rotation also wards off pests and reduces pressure on the soil’s nutrient bank. Diversity within each field and over time mimics the biodiversity of a resilient natural system.
Much of our seven acre site, such as our Birding Corridor, is uncultivated land - groves of cypress and willow surround our fields. As stewards of these spaces, we remove invasives like ragweed and tallow and plant natives like cypress, iris, and many more. A healthy habitat invites a diversity of organisms, including insects like parasitic wasps, aphids, and assassin bugs that also keep unwanted pests in check. Contrast this well-functioning food web on our farm with a monocropped industrial landscape that relies on chemical pesticides to manage pest pressure.
As sustainable farmers, we see ourselves as stewards of a living soil community. After 12 years of intensive cover cropping, organic amendments, and minimizing invasive tilling, we have built soil organic matter at Grow Dat to an average of 7% in our fields (above 5% is considered high). Organic matter is food for plants and also a key for climate resilience. High organic matter means more carbon underground and out of the atmosphere. Soil high in organic matter absorbs water during heavy rainfall events, and holds water during droughts. Thriving soil means a bountiful harvest and an investment in our future.
Soil Building
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We practice intensive cover cropping on our farm: for two to three months of the year, we cover the fields with plants like cowpeas, sorghum sudan grass, and sunn hemp that naturally put carbon and nitrogen back into the soil. In preparation for a new season, we cut these plants and integrate them into the field, where they serve as food for microorganisms, fungi, insects, and other decomposers.
We minimize disruption to the soil structure and living community underground by running a tractor over the fields only twice a year. We use a spader in place of heavier industrial implements, and have transitioned one field to No Till, meaning we never disturb the soil, and are experimenting that approach in a second field.
In place of fossil-fuel based nitrogen fertilizer, which disrupts soil life and has reverberating ecological impacts, especially as runoff, we use organic amendments to build soil carbon and nitrogen. We create our own compost from locally sourced bagasse (a byproduct of the sugarcane) and horse manure from local stables. In a sustainable system, waste is repurposed.
Last, we manage weeds by hand and by keeping the soil covered with landscape fabric or mulch. Covered soil reduces the weed seed bank over time, and using a natural mulch like bagasse also builds soil carbon over time.
Growing food locally allows us to reconnect with the planet, and it is a powerful antidote to the highly unequal access to fresh healthy food that is characteristic of New Orleans and our country - known as food deserts or more aptly, food apartheid. In our Community Supported Agriculture shares (CSA), we strive to follow the example of cooperative Black farmers like Booker T Whatley. We aim to make our farm shares accessible by using a sliding scale and accepting SNAP, and our Grow Dat on the Geaux project is working collaboratively with residents to pilot new ways of distributing food in neighborhoods where fresh food is scarce.
Our farm is the seed of the future we want to see. In our farming practices, we are taking important steps toward returning to right relationship with our planet, and in our food distribution, we are working toward a more equitable system for all. As we look toward the future in this moment of climate emergency, we are excited to work more on saving seeds, growing and distributing native plants, rewilding portions of our site, and potentially taking that work to other sites around the city.