Fruits of Loyola teacher’s non-profit fill local need

Over the last several years, with little fanfare, staff and volunteers with the non-profit Recirculating Farms Coalition have assembled low-cost bags of fresh, locally grown produce for drop-off to dozens of pick-up points around the city, so the food-insecure can incorporate more fruits and vegetables into their daily diet.
    

Now, with COVID-19 forcing Recirculating Farms and its network of collaborators and small farmers to rethink how to get food into the hands of consumers, the non-profit and its food distribution partner, Top Box Foods Louisiana, are delivering the vitamin-packed “garden bags” door-to-door.
    

“People are just so happy to have access to healthy, fresh food, especially now, when so many people may fear grocery stores or are unable to go to them,” said Marianne Cufone, director of Loyola University’s Center for Environmental Law and founder of Recirculating Farms Coalition, which supports development of environmentally sustainable farms to help feed those living in “food deserts” nationwide.
 

Bountiful bags
    

The jam-packed bags of produce, which can be ordered online and are priced at $15, accept SNAP. They are filled with produce Recirculating Farms grows itself, purchases wholesale or buys from local growers, often at a discount – still-beautiful fruits and vegetables that were perhaps unsold at farmers’ markets, or which growers did not sell to commercial vendors.
    

Each bag typically includes generous amounts of five to six types of fruits, vegetables and other farmed items, with recent assortments featuring red potatoes, eggs, grapefruit, oranges, kale, mixed greens, carrots, onions, shallots, peppers, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, cauliflower, radishes and turnips.
    

The bags also include a recipe that uses at least two of the weekly foods, along with a surprise “lagniappe item.” Cufone, a professionally trained chef, often makes or purchases these extra goodies which have included fresh rosemary, packets of dried basil and dill, cucumber pickles, kale pesto, eucalyptus soap and herbal tea bags.
 

Four urban gardens created
    

Ever since the pandemic shut down traditional food distribution pipelines, Recirculating Farms’ and Top Box Foods’ healthy-food-bag effort has snowballed to include a other partners. Crescent City Farmers Market, using food supplied by its own network of small farmers, works alongside its fellow non-profits to assemble larger, $40 produce boxes (available to SNAP enrollees at a discounted price of $20).
     

“We’re talking about hundreds and hundreds of boxes and bags right now being delivered door to door each week,” said Cufone, noting how the pandemic has spotlighted the incredible benefits of keeping home gardens as small as a couple of pots to supplement fresh food.
    

Recirculating Farms has built and helped maintain produce gardens at four New Orleans locations, three of them in Central City, which has no affordable, full-service grocery store: Luke’s House Medical Clinic; Guste Senior Homes; and a new one at the Dryades YMCA.
    

Recirculating Farms also is working with musician Carl LeBlanc to develop a garden in the Seventh Ward, an endeavor that currently includes egg-laying chickens, muscadine grapes and a small orchard of cherry, Japanese plum, orange and fig trees.
    

“We have an amazing climate for agriculture in Louisiana. We have a very long and productive growing season,” said Cufone, reeling off current and upcoming local harvests of mustard greens, arugula, cucumbers, tomatoes, hot peppers, bell peppers, summer squashes, corn, basil, sage, peppermint and spearmint.
 

Community-building spaces
    

But the impact of Recirculating Farms’ gardens extends far beyond the literal food that they yield. For example, the non-profit helped the staff at Luke’s House to turn the clinic’s yard of cracked concrete into a place where clients and their children can relax and take yoga and nutrition classes. The garden there includes fig and papaya trees and raised beds containing herbs, kale, jalapeno peppers, green onions, tomatoes and healthy spices such as ginger and turmeric.
    

The garden at the Dryades YMCA, whose installation was interrupted by the pandemic, ultimately will be a “teaching garden” in which urban gardeners of all ages will learn about innovative farming methods such as aquaponics, hydroponics, aquaculture and the use of solar power. Students also will learn about farming as a hobby or career option; ways to optimize crop production during Louisiana’s sweltering summers; and natural methods to counter garden-eating pests.
    

“We do a lot of co-planting, for example, you can plant marigolds and peppermint,” Cufone said of the latter. “There are ways to plant your garden so that you can attract beneficial insects and minimize the amounts of damaging pests.”
 

A non-profit is born
    

The need for a national non-profit dedicated to connecting low-income communities to the harvests of local farmers came to Cufone’s attention in 2009, while she was national director of the “Fish and Oceans” program of the non-profit Food and Water Watch, a job that regularly took her to Louisiana to work on fisheries management and coastal protection.
    

As this idea was percolating, Cufone stumbled upon a press conference at New Orleans’ Hollygrove Market and Farm, in which local schoolchildren were passionately advocating for better access to affordable, fresh and healthy food at home and at school.
    

“I was so moved by the motivation of our kids here, and I thought recirculating urban farming was an opportunity (to increase accessibility to fresh food), because it can be done in small spaces that aren’t necessarily appropriate for traditional growing. We can have gardens on balconies and porches and in shipping containers,” notes Cufone, who founded Recirculating Farms in 2010 and currently works with a staff of five.
 

Fresh is best
    

Cufone, who is affiliated with St. Catherine of Siena Church, where her godson’s family are parishioners, and who is a frequent Mass attendee at St. Louis Cathedral, said she cannot recall a time when she couldn’t step into her home garden to pull something to cook or eat straight from the vine.
    

During her early childhood  her Italian-American family lived in Jersey City, New Jersey, across the Hudson River from New York City. They had an appreciation for the “farm-to-table” lifestyle out of economic necessity and always kept a garden that produced a steady stream of herbs, cucumbers, green beans, zucchini and tomatoes.
    

“My family had gardens in the city long before urban farming was fashionable. We grew food on fire escapes and in pots on the front stoop because we needed to,” said Cufone, chuckling at the memory of feeling perplexed when her family moved to the suburbs.
    

“I thought it was so strange to have grass in the front yard,” she said. “I thought, ‘What a waste of space where you could be growing food!’”
    

Cufone, whose backyard deck in New Orleans has large planters hosting nearly a dozen tomato plants, cucumbers, herbs and green and yellow peppers, said her favorite dish tells the tale of her experiences as an urban farmer: a cold salad of home-produced green beans, tomatoes, fresh basil and fresh oregano dressed with a drizzle of olive oil and a pinch of sea salt.
 

Supportive employer
    

Cufone said Loyola, where she has headed the law school’s Environmental Law and Policy Lab since 2013, has been an inspiring employer as she performs her non-profit work. She praised the university for allowing Recirculating Farms to publicize volunteer days and other events.
    

“I work at the law school, but I’ve had also had Loyola undergrads volunteer at the farms – and I think that speaks to the spirit at Loyola, that it’s really community focused as well as academically focused,” she said.
    

“They are so supportive of (staff and faculty’s) individual endeavors outside of the school,” she added. “Loyola is very committed to its Jesuit mission of social service. I love that about the university!”
    

The Recirculating Farms Coalition, whose efforts with Top Box Foods Louisiana and others is formally called the “Growing Local Collaborative,” also partners with Liberty’s Kitchen, which supplies cooler and office spaces for the produce bag-packing operation; SPROUT NOLA, a farming support organization that helps urban growers get their products to market; and the New Orleans Food Policy Advisory Committee, an advisory body to the New Orleans City Council on food and agricultural issues.
    

Recirculating Farms welcomes donations to help keep its produce bags affordable and its support to small farmers going during a time it cannot accept the help of volunteers. To learn more, visit www.recirculatingfarms.org. The Top Box Foods Louisiana website is www.topboxfoods.com.