Urban Farm

About the Program

Category: Community and Economic Development (Best in Category)

Year: 2022

In 2017 a unique relationship between Dallas County and Texas A&M AgriLife Extension started when District 1 Commissioner Dr. Theresa Daniel met with the Dallas County AgriLife team to develop a plan for her soon to be vacant Road and Bridge maintenance facility. Commissioner Daniel was looking for ways the facility might serve her constituency and county residents. To that end, she consulted with AgriLife Extension and constructed a public health project, installing features such as a working kitchen with cameras and a projection screen to allow program specialists to conduct healthy cooking training programs. She also provided spaces for AgriLife Extension personnel to have satellite offices in the facility alongside other county departments. Through Dr. Daniel's direction the building was converted from a Dallas County auto service center into a multi-purpose learning center called the Urban County Farm. AgriLife was tasked to develop the 12-acre site (mostly asphalt parking lots) into an Urban Agricultural research, education and demonstration center. Now the center has seven landscape gardens, a research vineyard, a fruit orchard, a demonstration community garden and the research farm that are maintained by the volunteer Master Gardeners and under the banner of the Urban County Farm. The Farm’s mission is to research high intensity growing practices in restrictive Urban environments while developing a county coalition of growers focused on addressing the food insecurity issues we face in some areas of our county. The Farm partnered with two other local farms and now grows and donates as a co-op by organized planting and coordinated distribution. Our first seeds were planted the summer of 2019 and up to date through pandemic and abnormally cold winters, we have donated or processed over 12,000 pounds of food grown on less than an acre of land. The fresh food goes to homeless shelters, community center food distribution sites and food distribution ministries in some of the most impoverished areas in our county.