When she became executive director of Growing Home, Janelle St. John was surprised to learn that 80% of the food grown at the organization’s Wood Street Urban Farm in Englewood was not going back into the community. Instead, the produce was being sent from the food insecure South Side neighborhood to markets in Lincoln Park and Logan Square on the North Side, where grocery stores are more plentiful.
The effort to keep food in their own community has led to a $5 million grant from the city to expand the Englewood farm at 5814 S. Wood St. to include a cafe, retail store and teaching and commercial kitchens.
Growing Home is the nonprofit that runs Wood Street Urban Farm, the city’s only USDA-Certified Organic farm. “The last few years were really us responding to the demand for food as more and more grocery stores in Englewood began to close,” she said. Growing Home already provides agricultural job training for community members, with a goal of hiring 80 workers per growing season from February to November.
But to supply the community with more food and opportunities, Wood Street Urban Farm would need to expand to allow for space for more growing and processing. “We thought how can we find creative ways to get food back into the community? How can we better serve our community with food access while growing our workforce development program? How can we better continue to serve and meet the demand within our community for food access? So this project is part of that so.
