Campus Garden awarded $12,000 to enhance regional food system

The UA Little Rock Campus Garden, led by Dr. Stephen Grace, has been awarded $12,000 through the University of Arkansas Department of Agriculture’s (UADA) Building an Arkansas Agricultural Network Development (BAAND) Project. The BAAND Project, led by Dr. Amanda Philyaw Perez at UADA and funded by the United States Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Marketing Service, aims to create a network of small-scale and micro agriculture producers to coordinate efforts and grow Arkansas’s local and regional food system.

“On behalf of everyone involved with the Campus Garden, I am grateful for this award and excited for the opportunity to work with Dr. Perez and her team at UADA to showcase the positive impact that urban and small-scale agriculture can have on the community,” Grace said. The award will fund the hiring of a Campus Garden assistant, who will oversee operations at the garden and assist with outreach and programming activities. These activities will include weekly volunteer sessions, training and public workshops, and distributing garden produce through activities such as farm stands.

The Campus Garden was established in 2013 to bring together members of the university and the neighboring community to build a vibrant local food system and promote training in urban agriculture. Grace, the garden’s director, is an associate professor of biology and a plant physiologist. He has also served as a technical advisor for the BAAND Project, in addition to leading educational outreach such as workshops on urban agriculture.

Funding for the Building an Arkansas Agricultural Network Development (BAAND) Project was made possible by a grant/cooperative agreement from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agricultural Marketing Service. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the USDA.