The challenge facing Full Circle Farm is to triple our impact during the next year through dramatically increasing production as well as the ability to engage 14,000 students and community members; becoming the epicenter of urban agriculture in Silicon Valley. Full Circle Farm currently raises 37% of the farm budget and 19% from the total organizational budget from on-site produce sales at the weekly farm stand, events, sales to school cafeterias and the 100 members in our community supported agriculture family (CSA) where members purchase “shares” and receive produce weekly. With our current farm infrastructure limits our ability to produce more for the farm stand and to enroll new members to our CSA.  The capacity to increase production and raise more income will allow us to engage more schools and community members, and achieve financial stability.

With your help, we will be able to fully upgrade our conventional row cropping practice with a form of urban agriculture that is biologically and human intensive. This new system is being matched with a Master Urban Farmer program that will help us triple our output, keep the current acreage in production on a year round basis, and increase the total acreage planted to maximum levels. We need your support to deepen our farm capacity to dramatically increase production by 300% while reaching out to more communities and constituencies and providing more educational opportunities. Your support can help transform our farm into an epicenter of urban agriculture and community based food production in Silicon Valley.

Poverty and food insecurity are not isolated to pockets in Silicon Valley. Our primary service area encompasses the Santa Clara Unified School District students (14,000) wherein 41% of students are eligible for free or reduced lunches. The SCUSD encompasses Santa Clara, San Jose, Sunnyvale, Cupertino and Milpitas…communities that include over 300,000 people.  We also serve Sunnyvale School District students (6,716). Over 40% of SSD’s students qualify for free or reduced price meals. The farm is located next door to a middle school where 40% of the students are eligible for federal food assistance. In the nearby Columbia neighborhood of Sunnyvale, the numbers of students eligible for aid is in the 64 – 74% range. In this neighborhood, 58% are overweight and obesity is higher than the countywide rate.  Full Circle Farm is partnering with Kaiser Permanente (a Kaiser Pediatrician is on our Board) and more than a dozen other agencies to address the need there. We donate over 10% of our CSA memberships to low income consumers. One of our local partners, Sunnyvale Community Services, has experienced a dramatic increase of families participating in their food programs (which we support with donations of food from the farm). Four years ago, they provided food to 29,000 people; this last year, 72,000 people received food support.

Beyond Sunnyvale and surrounding communities, our audience includes all of Silicon Valley. The data show that there is a growing population in Silicon Valley that is slipping out of the middle class and into poverty. Working people in Silicon Valley are walking an economic tightrope; the loss of a job, an unexpected medical bill, rising food and gas prices, or even a car breakdown can push them over the edge. The erosion of self-sufficiency and food security in Silicon Valley provides startling indicators of this fragile state. In Santa Clara County, 25 percent of families do not meet the self-sufficiency standard, according to United Way of Silicon Valley. That jumps to 40% if you just look at single head of households. The number of adults in Silicon Valley experiencing food insecurity increased from 93,000 in 2005 to 126,000 in 2008.The economic situation has compounded theses issues which are deepening each year. We can no longer afford to address food security issues solely with hyper-local approaches. Full Circle Farm is advancing urban agriculture and food security in Silicon Valley by providing a regional solution that can be scaled and replicated on any school campus or vacant lot.

In recent years, U.S. food prices have risen faster than at any time since 1990. Prices for all food purchased in the U.S. increased 4.0% in 2007, up from the 2.4% gain in 2006. From 2000-2008, the cost of food in Silicon Valley increased 34%. While nearly 4% of Silicon Valley residents received food stamps in 2009, it is important to consider that food stamps are significantly underutilized in Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties. More than 14,500 Santa Clara County children suffer from chronic hunger and almost 22,000 children struggle to find enough food to eat (e.g., no food for breakfast). Over 105,000 Santa Clara County adults report that they regularly struggle to find enough nutritious food. There are several food assistance programs available to individuals and families with low incomes, but due to lack of awareness and barriers like fingerprint requirements, these programs are severely underutilized.

Unfortunately, we can’t afford to just look at the needs of low income consumers—all segments of society are being affected by limited access to nutritious food. There is growing scientific evidence that what people eat—and their likelihood of being obese—are influenced by the food environment in which they live. Current evidence shows a clear association between the obesity rate and the quality of food that is available.  An analysis of different retail food outlets in 2005 in Santa Clara County found far more opportunities to buy food from fast-food restaurants and convenience stores than the generally healthier food available from supermarkets and produce vendors. Santa Clara County has 4.32 times as any fast-food restaurants and convenience stores as supermarkets and produce vendors.

Agriculture in Silicon Valley is almost extinct. A current estimate indicates that less than 3% of the food consumed here is actually produced in Silicon Valley, and access to locally grown, sustainable produce is severely limited. Meanwhile, we suffer the plagues of childhood obesity, lack of access to healthy food, and a lack of understanding of how our food is produced.

The transformation of Full Circle Farm will provide a unique opportunity to demonstrate that urban agriculture can be a vital and permanent part of the urban landscape, and a resource for people of all incomes and backgrounds for generations to come. Creating a highly productive model for community based food production will enable similar projects in Silicon Valley to build upon our success, and use our facility as learning center.

We can’t return to our agricultural past, but at Full Circle Farm, we can preserve a minimum threshold of food production needed to support food security and community health, and provide a working model that can easily be replicated.