Farmacy fights food insecurity with produce grown by Black Philadelphians
Denizen of the Calendar week: Khalil Steward
Steward's Farmacy is a game-changing food delivery service offering fresh produce grown by local Black and brown farmers to Philadelphians at affordable prices
Aug. 16, 2021
If you ask him, Khalil Steward will say that his journeying to starting a produce commitment service began years earlier he was built-in. The produce shop his granddad owned in Philly's Somerville neighborhood during the 1950s was the first seed.
Though the shop airtight before Steward was born, he remembers his family talking virtually it as a place of pride. Neighbors would come in to buy fresh fruit and vegetables, often stopping to chat with ane another and the clerks in the aisles. "It did a lot for the community," Steward says.
Growing upwardly in Philly, Steward watched neighborhood produce stores like his grandfather's shut downward, leaving many communities without easy access to fruits and vegetables. At the same time, he saw community gardens and urban farms in many of those same neighborhoods flourishing.
More than ON CITIZENS FEEDING CITIZENS
-
- North Philly man distributes groceries to hundreds of families during Covid
- Locals grow their own produce to fight Covid-related food insecurity
- N Philly Peace Park provides costless food to families during Covid
- Philly woman sets up food pantry outside her domicile to help feed neighbors
In 2019, he started a food delivery service to bridge the gap. Farmacy sources fruits and vegetables mainly from local Black and dark-brown farmers and makes them available to Philadelphia residents at affordable prices. Steward delivers produce to an average of l families every other week and participates in pop-up farmers markets at Franny Lou'southward Porch and the Second Sundays market in Fishtown.
His customers are primarily elderly folks and parents who value cooking healthy meals for their kids—but who don't have user-friendly access to fresh produce, he says. "For a lot of my customers, there'due south no supermarkets about where they're living."
This year, Steward is working to enable customers to purchase food using SNAP/EBT benefits and plans to launch a food pantry programme at his alma mater, Delaware Valley Academy. "I remember this volition help Farmacy grow and fulfill our mission to endeavor to eliminate food insecurity," he says.
Roots in food justice
In 2020, 16.iii percent of Philly residents faced hunger and food insecurity. And even more Philadelphians lack access to fresh fruit and vegetables. A 2022 report found that over 80 per centum of retail food stores in the urban center accept a low supply of fruits and vegetables. Grocery stores that do offer ample fresh produce are disproportionately concentrated in only five neighborhoods: Center Urban center, University Metropolis, West Mountain Airy, Anecdote Hill, and Upper Roxborough.
In college, Steward volunteered equally a marketer with Delaware Valley's Hope of the Harvest, a charitable garden that provides fresh fruit and vegetables to low income Philadelphians. Later, he interned with the Carversville Farm Foundation, a not profit that grows produce for people without access to fresh produce.
Only information technology was a marketing class consignment that spurred the idea for his business. He proposed using a former ambulance as a marketing component for a mobile food delivery service. The proper noun of the business organization, he said, would be Farmacy, a play on words meant to suggest that nutrient tin be the best medicine.
After college, Steward put the idea on the back burner and spent several months working with a customs-supported agronomics system in Cape Town, S Africa. Closer to habitation, he worked every bit a farm manager for Urban Creators, an agricultural cooperative in Northeast Philadelphia. Eventually, he got a job as a warehouse manager with Share Food Plan, 1 of the largest hunger relief organizations in Philly. Since the pandemic started, Share Food Programme has served more than 1 meg people each month, and Steward remembers working with them to feed over five,000 people one weekend in March 2020.
"I had been taught that produce is grown by white people, and if you want to eat healthy you have to go to markets in predominantly white areas. Farmacy flips that myth on its head and offers the nigh astonishing way to buy local produce."
As he worked on farms and distributed food to those in need, Steward interacted with Black and brown farmers and those growing nutrient in urban spaces, and it gave him a different picture of what farming could look like as an industry.
The most contempo USDA Census of Agriculture found that only roughly 1.3 percent of all U.S. farmers are Black. Simply as Steward worked on farms he realized how creative Blackness urban growers were making the well-nigh apply of express growing space and growing high quality fruits and vegetables through natural and chemical-free farming methods. He knew he wanted to support them equally he built his business organisation.
To connect with the farmers he wanted to support, Steward joined Soil Generation, a Black and brown led coalition of urban growers in Philadelphia. "That's how I got the trust of the farmers, and how I got to build friendships with them," Steward says. "It's not just a concern thing, I actually phone call some of these farmers my brothers."
After all, they share a common purpose: providing loftier-quality, locally-grown produce to their communities. The Sankofa Customs Farm at Bartram'due south Garden, for instance, hosts weekly farm stands to provide user-friendly access to the residents of the surrounding Kingsessing and Elmwood Park neighborhoods. Just of course at that place are folks who can't make it down to the farm (or the Clark Park farmers' market on Saturdays)—Steward's delivery service helps these farmers reach more people with their produce.
Along with Sankofa, Farmacy works with Factory Creek Farm in West Philly, D&D Subcontract in Berks County and Breah Banks, farm and state managing director for Share Food Plan. Each calendar week, Steward picks up the produce from the farms, including collard greens, curly kale, cherry tomatoes, blueberries and apples. He also works with Black farmers in other parts of the country to source items like avocados and oranges, in gild to offer a wider multifariousness of produce to his customers.
Building community
One matter that makes Farmacy special is Steward'south relationship with his customers. During each stop, he takes the time to talk—he asks what types of fruits and vegetables they'd like to exist able to order; finds out if they have access to produce at local grocery stores and occasionally offers free food to customers experiencing hard times.
Nunera Amun started ordering produce through Farmacy in summer 2022 afterwards seeing an Instagram post promoting the business organisation. She appreciates that Steward has taken the time to text her personally with an offer of free food when he noticed she hadn't purchased in awhile.
"Ordinarily, when I go to farmers markets and grocery stores information technology feels very transactional, merely when I shop at Farmacy I feel like I'yard visiting family," Amun says. "I pray that Farmacy is the future for all produce markets in this country because it is truly special."
RELATED: Read about more incredible locals in our Citizen of the Week athenaeum 👈
The business has too transformed how Amun thinks about farmers and farming in the city. "The idea of getting local produce from Black and brown farmers really excited me," she says. "I had been taught that produce is grown by white people, and if you want to eat healthy you have to go to markets in predominantly white areas. Farmacy flips that myth on its head and offers the nigh astonishing way to buy local produce."
Commitment customers tin order harvest bags online, which cost $30 and contain three unlike types of fruits, three different types of vegetables and two different types of leafy greens. Farmacy besides sells produce at farmers markets, including popular-ups at Frannie Lou'southward Porch every other week and Second Sunday markets in Fishtown.
Mission over money
Steward's goal is to brand certain Farmacy tin continue to offer affordable prices. For now, he says the visitor's delivery schedule takes into account pay schedules and when people receive their public assist benefits by making deliveries at the get-go of the month. He's also applying to be able to accept SNAP and EBT benefits through the USDA's Food and Diet Services Department, which would let the business to reach more customers. In 2019, 459,000 Philadelphians received SNAP benefits.
"It'south not just a business thing, I really phone call some of these farmers my brothers."
Meanwhile, Steward is working to expand past partnering with Delaware Valley University to run a food pantry on campus. He notes that food insecurity can be specially challenging for students who may not be able to beget campus meal plans. In 2016, the study Hunger on Campus noted that 48 percent of college students in the U.Southward. faced food insecurity.
"Food insecurity is even crazier in college," Steward says, recalling times when students he knew would sneak food from the dining hall in social club to have enough to eat later in the week.
Steward recently left his work at Share Food Program to make Farmacy his full time job—he earns enough in sales to support himself—and brought on an unpaid intern, Lindsay Troyer, a graduate student at Delaware Valley University. His goal is to i twenty-four hours be able to support a small staff while providing equally many people as possible access to fresh, locally sourced produce.
"I really am non trying to be a millionaire off of selling produce," he says. "I'm just trying to make certain my neighborhood is good."
RELATED
How to Starting time a Community Fridge
How to Starting time a Garden in the City
The Citizen Updates: Farm to Families
A Safe Identify to Grow
Header photo of Khalil Steward, founder of Farmacy, courtesy of @bxadigitalDesert Fare
Source: https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/farmacy-khalil-steward/