L+M grant will go to plan for expanding urban farming projects

New London — An urban farming organization will use a $50,000 grant from Lawrence + Memorial Hospital to develop a plan for expanding agriculture in the city, including a year-round greenhouse that would affordable food for low-income city residents.

Speaking Tuesday at the FRESH New London community garden on Mercer Street, FRESH Executive Director Alicia McAvay said the money will allow the organization to pay people to collect feedback from city residents, cover transportation costs to Boston so FRESH staff can learn about urban agriculture programs there and help with compensation for a full-time urban farming manager.

FRESH has a year to take input from city residents and develop a plan mapping out places in the city where the organization’s staff and volunteers could install orchards, planters, gardens and a year-round greenhouse, McAvay said.

McAvay said the staff at FRESH, which run the garden on Mercer Street and a community-supported agriculture (CSA) program and has started community gardens at nine New London schools and parks, have been looking for opportunities to expand.

More than 30 New London residents already use plots at the Mercer Street garden.

“We are farming out every other inch possible with community volunteers ... to grow things like tomatoes and peppers and cherries, and strawberries and onions and garlic, and everything you can think of, produce-wise, that we can grow in this climate.”

“We’re excited to ... really think about how we can grow more food throughout the city of New London,” she said

Maegan Parrott, a New London organizer who has been active in the FRESH community garden at McDonald Park, will start by recruiting a group of New London residents who can provide input on where the organization could place new agriculture projects and how best to do that. With FRESH staff, they will then put together a five-year plan using comments gathered by the group at meetings and door-to-door campaigns over the next year.

The result, McAvay said, will be a local food system that “is run by, controlled by and benefits the residents of New London.” That could include large projects, such as the construction of a year-round greenhouse, and smaller ones, like orchards and more community gardens.

L+M President Patrick Green said the money is meant to make produce more affordable and accessible to the city’s poorer residents, whose inability to access fresh food could be contributing to high rates of obesity and diabetes, which was one focus of a 2016 multi-agency report on ways to improve the health of people living in southern New London County.

He said that the community health study found that 25 percent of people earning less than $30,000 a year reported not having enough money for food.

“We know there is a strong correlation between food insecurity and obesity rates,” he said.

New London Mayor Michael Passero said the funds would support action on the findings of the community health study that the city has been unable to provide.

“We’ve done these community needs assessments every three years on a cycle ... but the one thing we’ve always lacked in New London is the funding to have any impact in changing those outcomes,” he said. “Our partnership with FRESH is strong, but we’ve never been able to give them the funding that we need. That’s where L+M comes in, and Yale comes in.”

L+M donated $50,000 to New London last year, which city officials said they will soon give to FRESH for additional work at McDonald Park and spend the rest on renovations to the basketball court at the police department substation on Truman Street and police surveillance cameras in high-crime areas of the city.