The History of the Arcadia Center for Sustainable Food & Agriculture
Washington, D.C. restaurateur Michael Babin founded Arcadia to fix a problem he first came into contact with when trying to source local, responsibly well-grown fruits and vegetables for his restaurants. The supply was small and the price was high.
He asked himself: if this is so difficult for me, what does that mean for the rest of Washington? That question quickly led him to the public health crisis engendered by our food system: exceptionally effective at producing nutrition-free calories that are cheap at the point of sale but devastatingly expensive for public health. With few nutritious choices, constrained resources, and limited transportation, low-income communities suffer disproportionate rates of chronic disease that result from our industrial food system – diabetes, hypertension, heart disease and obesity. The health care cost to the United States annually is staggering – nearly half a trillion dollars.
Babin created Arcadia, a 501©3, in 2010 to innovate solutions to the gaps he saw in the local food system with the mission of improving public health through food.
He established Arcadia on the Woodlawn-Pope-Leighey site in Alexandria, Va., just 14 miles from the nation’s capital. The historic land was once part of George Washington’s Mount Vernon, which sits three miles due east. But its significance for the local food movement goes well beyond the first president.
In 1846, two decades before the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation, timber merchants bought the then-2,000 acre-property from Washington’s family. These merchants were, not insignificantly, Quakers and abolitionists, and they had a plan for the property: Woodlawn would be a slavery-free farming community that would prove to the rest of the South that slavery was not necessary for a farm to thrive. They sold plots to free African-Americans, Irish and German immigrants, and other Quakers. They established the mansion as an integrated school for the town’s children and created an integrated militia to protect the citizens. As a “free labor zone,” for the first time in the Woodlawn’s history, it was a profitable farming operation.
Arcadia, like the Quakers before us, is using food and agriculture to advance social justice. Arcadia continues the legacy through its three mission areas.
Sustainable Agriculture
Veteran Farmer Program
Since 2015, Arcadia has trained 32 military veterans to be farmers on our farm, land that George Washington once cultivated. These beginning farmers learn the art, science and business of agriculture in a one-year program.
Arcadia has two training tracks.
Arcadia’s Veteran Fellowship is a one-year, salaried on-farm apprenticeship for military veterans to learn and practice and sustainable agricultural methods.
The Veteran Farmer Reserve program meets one weekend a month for 12 months for intensive cultivation, business, botany and farming skills training, along with field visits to successful farms to explore the full range of agricultural businesses. The Reservists also work two weeks a year on Arcadia Farm to experience the challenges, rewards, and day-to-day rhythms of agriculture.
Production Farm & Demonstration Farm
Arcadia cultivates a three-acre sustainable vegetable farm with 15 more arable acres to plant in coming years. Arcadia also cultivates a one-acre demonstration farm which is the campus for field trips and farm camp and the site of many volunteer experiences. Arcadia grows using methods rooted in the organic program that build soil fertility and protect pollinators, wildlife, the watershed, and the staff, trainees schoolchildren, and many volunteers who work on and visit the farm.
Farm and Nutrition Education
Field Trips
Arcadia offers field trips to our sustainable farm for children pre-K through 5th grade. The field trips meet DC and Virginia standards of learning. The visits introduce children to food at its source, and the tenets of sustainable agriculture. The children harvest eggs from our flock of laying hens; dig in the compost pile; interact with worms, harvest fresh vegetables and use it to prepare delicious, healthy snacks. 40 percent of the students tried beets for the first time on an Arcadia field trip. Arcadia hosted nearly 1450 students on 29 field trips from 24 different schools.
Farm-in-the-Classroom
Arcadia offers an optional follow-up visit to classrooms after their field trips to reinforce the lessons learned on the farm. The classroom visit can focus on worms, chickens, or healthy cooking. Arcadia taught 210 students during 3 visits at three schools.
Farm Camp
Arcadia offers five weeks of day camp on our farm. The children tend the chickens and compost pile; plant, weed, harvest; interact with visiting goats; create farm-based art; learn about pests and insects; make cheese; cook with professional chefs, and follow their own curiosity through independent farm exploration. Approximately 25 percent of farm campers attend on full, needs-based scholarships funded by Arcadia donors. Arcadia hosted 170 campers in 2016.
Mobile Market School Visits
Arcadia’s bright green rolling farm stand brings the field trip to the school yard. The Mobile Market conducts a convenient on-site visit to teach pre-K through 8th graders about food systems, nutrition, botany, and making healthy food choices. Arcadia taught 887 students during 8 visits to 7 schools.
Fair Food Access
Mobile Market
Arcadia launched its Mobile Market in 2012, as a rolling farm stand stocked with locally, sustainably grown foods including fruits and vegetables, herbs, pastured eggs, grass-fed and pastured beef, pork, organic milk, cheese, handmade bread and honey.
The Mobile Market makes regularly weekly stops in low-food access neighborhoods and accepts and doubles the face value of food stamps (SNAP, WIC, and Senior FMNP). The neighborhoods we serve typically have high SNAP usage, low car ownership, and are at least a mile from a grocery store that can support a healthy diet.
While many nonprofits working in food access distribute healthy food for free, Arcadia’s market model charges customers for the food it sells. This enlists our customers as partners in their health and the health of their families. Because they pay for it, the food has inherent value and they choose what they most want -- and therefore are highly likely to consume it.
In testament to the success of the model, SNAP customers have increased the amount they spend from an average of $8 per transaction in 2012 to more than $19 per transaction in 2016. Our sales have increased by more than 400 percent over five seasons – from $44,000 to $182,000 -- with almost no marketing budget – just customer word of mouth. The Arcadia Mobile Market represents less than 2 percent of all farmers market revenue in Washington DC but accounts for almost 30 percent of all SNAP sales at DC farmers markets.
The Mobile Market is not just about food access. It also supports the local farm economy. Arcadia grows much of the food on the Mobile Market but we also purchase food at wholesale prices from other farmers to resell. This diversifies their businesses and gives them new customers in a market at no risk that they would not otherwise reach.
Arcadia also stokes demand for the food we sell and increases our customers’ culinary skills through the Arcadia Mobile Market Seasonal Cookbook. Launched by a donation from the Bon Appetit Management Company and continued through sponsorship by Organic Valley, Arcadia gives this book free to customers who use any form of nutrition benefits to inspire them to cook from scratch at home. The 92-page cookbook with all original photography by Molly M. Peterson has been praised by The Washington Post, Essence magazine, NPR, Food Tank and many other food advocates. More than 6,800 copies of the book have been distributed around the world and locally to low-income customers.
The remarkable effectiveness of the Mobile Market is attributable to our high-quality food, excellent customer service, affordable prices, and locations that are convenient to people with limited incomes.
Leveraging Data
Good data provides unparalleled insight. It exposes trends, problems, opportunities. And it points to solutions.
For-profit companies invest hard in data. But small nonprofits, schools, businesses, and farmers lack the resources to exercise the same tools.
At Arcadia, we believe in the power of data to trigger transformation, improvement, and innovation. We leverage data for good – wellness, health, equity, access, and efficiency. And we want to help other farmers, farm educators, and healthy food retailers do the same.
In 2016 Arcadia partnered with engineer Justin Smith to use data and information technology to solve some of the unique challenges our staff faces, allowing them to collect and leverage data that helps us accomplish our mission.
Tracking the Harvest
Our farmers want to know, in real time, how their harvest stacks up against their projections, down to the row and plant – without sitting at a desk long into the night inputting numbers into a tiny spreadsheet. We track the harvest on our phones.
Tracking our Food
Our farmers want an easy way to analyze distribution and invoice customers for the food they work so hard to grow. Where does each bean, tomato, and head of lettuce end up? How much makes it into low-income communities? We track the food on a mobile device.
Tracking our Impact
Our farm-to-school staff want an easy way to measure how much the children in our programs learn during field trips. Pre- and post-tests are standard fare in farm-to-school programs, but capturing the data and leveraging it for impact is a challenge. We measure student learning
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