Nearly 1 in 5 adults in Tarrant County’s 76105 zip code has diabetes. Fewer than half have health insurance, and few elderly residents receive recommended preventive care. Life expectancy is 70.3 years, far fewer than Tarrant County’s overall average of 78.7 years.
Supermarkets in the area often close or avoid opening in the first place. That contributes to food deserts, which in turn affects health and basic quality of life.
Texas Christian University alumna Linda Fulmer, ’89 MEd, is a longtime east Fort Worth resident who, a decade ago, convened Fort Worth civic leaders for a conversation about health disparities among neighborhoods. Back then, “people were coming over here [to east Fort Worth] and talking to us about what to eat and how to cook it. But they didn’t seem to notice that we don’t have access to those ingredients here,” she said.
That meeting led to a search for ways to improve residents’ access to healthy foods. One idea caught on: grow the food in the area.
In 2022, three TCU professors helped land a three-year, nearly $400,000 Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The collaboration unites nonprofit organizations and farmers with Omar Harvey, associate professor of geological sciences, Esayas Gebremichael, assistant professor of geological sciences, and Stacy Grau, professor of entrepreneurship and innovation practice at the Neeley School of Business. The effort aims to help the farms thrive and improve food security for city residents.
Partner farms include Opal’s Farm, Tabor Farms and Mind Your Garden Urban Farm, all in the city’s southeast side. Nonprofit community partners include the social-impact organization CoAct, the Healthy Tarrant County Collaboration (Fulmer is its executive director) and the office of County Commissioner Roy Charles Brooks. The organizations will run outreach and training events with community members, network with food banks and help farmers navigate regulations and obstacles.
“These three farms are just a pilot,” Harvey said. “We want to look at the full capacity of urban agriculture in the city.”
The geology experts on the grant team will use drones to explore land elevation, soil drainage and sun exposure, while farmers will learn to deploy the drones to monitor plant growth. Harvey and his students will study how adding compost affects an experimental tomato crop.
They’ll analyze soil health as they go, testing its acidity and levels of nitrate, phosphorus and carbon content.
Drone and soil test data will allow farmers to apply the right amount of water or enrich with compost only where it’s needed.
Meanwhile, Grau and her students will gather data at farmers markets and work with farmers to better understand customers and business models.
“The people who are living in an under-resourced community, living in a food desert, what do they need? What are the main issues that they are struggling with?” Grau said. “It’s not as simple as, ‘Hey, we need more tomatoes.’ We want to use design thinking to understand what their needs are, what their pain points are, what their challenges are, what they like.”
Early on, this process can turn up key information. For example, any vegetable grown in the city may seem like a win. But Grau has learned urban farms often grow produce that isn’t much use to community members. They either don’t know how to eat it or cook with it, or it isn’t culturally relevant.
“Instead of going in with a very prescribed methodology, we want to just try some things and see where it leads us,” she said. “That’s the point of design thinking: You let things take shape based on what people are telling you.”
Efforts to address food insecurity, Herrera said, mean being intentional about understanding the community: “You have to understand who they are and what their day-to-day experiences look like.”
Take a community member with a two-hour bus commute to work, Herrera said. Stores may not be open, or the bus route may not have a direct route to that grocery store, once that person gets off work.
Urban farming has powerful potential, and not merely to feed residents. Farming creates jobs and can help strengthen social ties among neighbors. Crops, orchards and greenhouses put vacant lots to use. Adding compost to soils can keep food waste out of the landfill, conserve water and pull carbon from the atmosphere.
“Our long-term goal is to really change the food system here in Fort Worth,” said Gregory Joel, manager of Opal’s Farm, “and be less reliant on these big grocery stores that most of the time move out of the neighborhoods that we serve.
“I tell people all the time: Building a garden is probably the most revolutionary thing you can do.”