1 in 4 Philly kids are food insecure. This urban farm is tackling it from the grassroots

On a given weekend in the Allegheny West section of the city, you may find neighbors working together to harvest persimmons, apples, okra, berries, kale, or any number of fruit and vegetables from the Nice Roots Farm.

“A lot of people don’t realize that you can have a space like this in a city,” said Ellie Kaplan, the senior farm manager of Nice Roots.

“It’s like a little oasis.”

Nice Roots is operated by the food insecurity nonprofit Share Food Program on a quarter-acre lot next to Share’s distribution warehouse. Everything grown on the farm is donated to local communities through Share’s warehouse and community partners or used in cooking demonstrations on the farm.

“Our goal on the farm is to serve as a demonstration space, an educational space for youth primarily, but also [the] community as a whole,” Kaplan said.

Throughout the year, Nice Roots hosts field trip groups from Philadelphia schools, summer camps, and other youth-focused organizations to teach about urban agriculture and nutrition through a food justice lens, as well as introducing them to foods they haven’t experienced before.

Food justice is a grassroots movement that advocates and educates in the face of food insecurity. It argues that equal and equitable access to fresh, healthy, and culturally relevant foods is a human right, making food justice particularly relevant in Philadelphia. According to the Greater Philadelphia Coalition Against Hunger’s annual report, 14% of Philadelphians are food insecure, including 1 in 4 children.

» READ MORE: Greater Philadelphia Coalition Against Hunger is closing its doors after 28 years

“We talk about food apartheid, about the different areas in Philadelphia that deliberately were set up by the food system. ... A lot of what we do is ask questions to encourage students to think about the way things are,” Kaplan said.

“Maybe we won’t always get to the answer ... but hopefully students walk away knowing that food is a human right and that not everybody has access to food in the same ways.”

The farm also hosts monthly Community Farming Days, where volunteers are welcomed to Nice Roots for harvesting, weeding, and any other task needed to keep the produce thriving.

Yukiko Kato, a volunteer leader from Germantown, has been working with Nice Roots since 2021. The farm is less than a mile from her home, and she usually spends her time there weeding and “hardening” new plants and seedlings, or gradually exposing them to their new environment before planting them in the ground.

Kato said that she volunteers because she sees the disparities in food access in her area, and food justice is important to her. Frequently meeting new people and learning more about gardening and farming brings her back, too.

“Food is medicine. I really believe that,” she said.

“A lot of people don’t think about actually how much it takes to grow [their] vegetables and where they come from and then who’s growing [it] and how it is grown. ... We can share that that knowledge to [our] neighbor or just make sure that those people who are underserved ... can access to those fresh [foods].”

Katherine Nichols, a volunteer from the Chestnut Hill and Mount Airy area, knew when she retired that she wanted to work on alleviating food insecurity, but wasn’t sure where to start. Then one morning on a walk, she ran into a woman in her neighborhood who told her about Share and Nice Roots.

“It seems like such a crime to have those basic human needs and not be fulfilled,” she said.

She’s an unusual volunteer — she actually loves weeding.

“It’s very gratifying to me. I feel like you see progress, accomplishment over a couple of hours,” she said.

“It seems like such a crime to have those basic human needs and not be fulfilled.”

Nichols said it makes her feel better about the future, and like food insecurity is a problem that can be chipped away with collective action.

“Whether there’s schools that are coming to do a day of service [or] people in the community bringing their kids, it always feels very hopeful to me,” she said.

“Change can really come from ... grassroots organizations like Share Food or Nice Roots Farm. It may not be the big grandiose gesture that you see, but it’s so valuable.”