Through Palm Beach County, the City has received a Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) award for several projects. One of the projects is for the development of an urban farm and associated Urban Agriculture Plan. In follow up to the award of CDBG funds, staff issued a solicitation for urban farm management services and to develop the respective Plan. As such, in response to the solicitation, E-Road Map (ERM) has been selected as the entity that will be responsible for the provision of the professional services needed to include introducing the Plan to the community.
E-Road Map began implementation of this Project in April of 2021 with the development of the farm area next to Barracuda Bay on the former Fire Station 88 property. This development included the planting of vegetables and fruit trees, volunteer recruitment, propagation of project partners such as the American Heart Association, Mounts Botanical Garden, Quantum Foundation and others. As well, nutritional cooking events and activities and the development of No Food Gap www.NoFoodGap.org, have taken place.
E-Road Map has been conducting volunteer workdays three days per week since the first planting in April 2021. Further, ERM and its volunteers have contributed over 1400 volunteer hours in weeding, harvesting and distributing produce since April.
At this time, staff seeks the approval of a professional services agreement with ERM so that it may continue to effectively develop the farm and associated programs. As part of the agreement with ERM, it will receive a total of $3,000 per month to perform project management and supervision services, development of an urban agriculture plan, infrastructure development of the farm, maintenance of produce, volunteer coordination and the establishment of a fully operational farmer’s market.
The deliverables for this agreement include:
· Organizing and managing a minimum of 3 volunteer work days per week.
· Completing the planting of the farm area and the raised bed/botanical education area.
· Organizing monthly nutrition and health related programs.
· Furthering the development and implementation of the No Food Gap sustainability and resiliency model for residents.
· Working with partners to develop the farmer’s market model of distribution and developing other means of distributing the produce from the farm.
· Developing educational programs for the urban farm and urban agriculture Plan that would be appropriate for elementary, middle and high school students.