Can organic farming address America's homeless problem?

Santa Cruz's Homeless Garden Project says yes

With long flowing hair, Darrie Ganzhorn appeared to float through Natural Bridges Farm. She approached a man in overalls, a gentle smile written across her face. The man averted his eyes and made a show of jumping out of her way, accidentally stepping into a kale plant. He lifted his heavy boot off the vegetable, checking first to see if he’d damaged it, then, almost sheepishly, offering a gap-toothed grin back at the Executive Director of this organization that employed him.

Santa Cruz, California’s Homeless Garden Project is not your average NorCal hippie farm. This 30-year old nonprofit melds social and environmental action catapulting this important work to the next level.

The Homeless Garden Project ensures that everyone affiliated with the farm knows their true value. For three decades this organization has provided job training, transitional employment, and support services to people experiencing homelessness. Instead of demonizing people, or accepting that to be homeless is a noun, they are holding out a hand to help people up when they fall, giving them skills to get back into the workforce and find homes, and ultimately offering the ability to see that situations can change.

A mission with heart

Homeless Garden Project’s mission “builds a path out of homelessness, betters our local food system, and connects people through community service and environmental stewardship. Together we work to create a stronger, more sustainable home for everyone in our community.”

And the numbers prove their success. In 2019, 100% of their trainees got jobs, and 78% got housing!

Friends, let that sink in.

Each year, this organization actively enables Santa Cruz’s most vulnerable community members to find value, real value, in their work. Each flower they plant, each tomato they harvest, each head of lettuce they grow from seed teaches people who sleep on street the positive impact one person can have on this Earth.

Seeing action with new eyes

I’d brought my sons along during this interview. We’d regularly discussed Santa Cruz’s chronic homeless problems—made much worse in 2020 because of the CZU Lightning Complex Fire.

Anecdotally, I’d often tell them about my UCSC students sleeping in the forest. When we passed the homeless camps on the way to soccer, or work, or the beach, I’d urge them to witness the reality in our backyard. And, when I felt brave, I sometimes noted how we never did anything it.

A few weeks earlier, when the city “cleaned up” the largest camp Santa Cruz by bulldozing it, I told my sons about the first time I remember seeing a person sleeping on street. How I didn’t know what to do. How I watched the adults all walk around this person, giving him a wide berth. And just like that, I learned that it was socially acceptable to walk over a human in need.

This not something I’m proud to tell you, or my sons. That’s why I wanted to show them another way, a better way than what I’d surely taught them with my inaction.

And Darrie Ganzhorn seemed excited to have my sons on the farm. She led us past the lines of flowers to the area her team has their morning meeting, a meadow encircled by milkweed and monarch butterflies, the heart-center of the farm. As we walked, she made sure to introduce everyone we passed, showcasing how each human was important to the workings of this farm community.

Metamorphosis

When Nikko spotted a rabbit hopping behind Ms.. Ganzhorn during our interview, she paused, then guided us toward a milkweed plant. She pointed out that the butterflies swarming around the shrub have a symbiotic relationship with this plant, which was why they planted them here. She explained, “When the caterpillars cocoon, their entire insides liquify so they can morph into an entirely different being.”

My older son, Kai, whispered, “That’s so cool how this farm is giving people the chance to become…different than what we see from the side of the road.”

Ms. Ganzhorn and I exchanged a smile, evidence that she knew her metaphor had worked to plant a compassionate perspective rooted in biomimicry in these boys, and in the men and women her organization helped each day.

A social solution that helps the planet too

Surely the Homeless Garden Project is not perfect. They can only hire a small number of trainees—though on their new farm they are in the process of transitioning to they can multiple their impact by 3 times the number of trainees each year.

But the symbiotic relationship of taking a social issue and finding a way to address the root of the problem with climate action shows that innovative thinkers can implement major solutions for our climate crisis. Ganzhorn and the Homeless Garden Project team have long understood that teaching people to grow healthy food helps not only our bodies and minds but also the land itself.

The new Netflix documentary Kiss the Ground details how simple solutions like tending to the dirt under our feet might be one of the easiest fixes for our climate crisis. And add in our planet’s most vulnerable community members—the millions of jobless people due to COVID-19, people experiencing homelessness, kids who grow up in rough neighborhoods—and we can address social and climate issues in one swoop.

The Homeless Garden Project is one of many organizations educating vulnerable communities about how to grow their own food. Activists in central California are reforesting food deserts at Fresno’s Freedom School. Native Hawaiians are teaching youth how to use soil to their benefit at Ma’o Farms. The organizations that our planet needs right now both help people directly, and attend to the Earth. We have this golden chance. Now is the time to celebrate, and then follow, these change-makers leading us to a new way of building community.

This week’s action:

If you’re based in (or near) Santa Cruz: Homeless Garden Project provides healthy fruit and veggies to local CSA subscribers (you too can join the CSA!), or you can come pick produce yourself. They also give much of their produce to the Santa Cruz community’s most vulnerable populations, so you can donate to support the farm too. And you can stop by the farm, pick a bouquet of flowers and support the valuable work they’re doing.

Those of you outside of the community: Seek out a local farm actively empowering your community’s most vulnerable with the most powerful skill humans have—teaching them to grow healthy organic food. Support them. Spread the word about their efforts. Get involved.

Want to do more? Bring the young people in your life out to one of these organizations to volunteer. You don’t have to harvest veggies if it hurts your back, but I bet they could use at least one of the skills you have. Volunteer to organize files, or write a newsletter, offer up your social media or legal skills. Show your kids, nieces, nephews, students and grandkids that it takes many hands to do great work. And the healing of our social and environmental issues can begin.

Let us know what organizations you find doing great work in the comments below.