Trevecca Urban Farm
Organization
Products
Markets
About
The Trevecca Urban Farm was inspired as a teaching tool to equip students to help food-insecure neighborhoods around the world. In the heart of Nashville, livestock guardian dogs oversee our heritage goats, pigs, and chickens as they graze Trevecca’s campus and lots nearby. A worm farm, an aquaponics fish farm, campus composting, beekeeping, urban orchard, greenhouse, vegetable garden, and two additional community gardens produce abundantly within view of Nashville’s skyscrapers. The Trevecca Urban Farm is a program of the J.V. Morsch Center for Social Justice.
Programs and Partners
Production Practices
Antibiotic And Hormone Free Permaculture Design Crop Rotation No Till
We use no chemicals pesticides or herbicides to grow our produce and use organic ingredients in the products we make.
Location
Nashville, TN
Manager
Jason Adkins
Jason Adkins is the Director of the Trevecca Urban Farm and teaches environmental justice at Trevecca Nazarene University. The farm at Trevecca started as a response to Trevecca being situated in a food desert--a neighborhood where good food is out of reach. At the inception of the J. V. Morsch Center for Social Justice at Trevecca, a handful of faculty and students began building a food oasis inside a food desert. The farm operates as a constellation of growing works that includes goats, pigs, chickens, guardian dogs, worms, tilapia, fruit and nut orchards, vegetable and herb gardens, mushrooms, and compost. These growing spaces are located on the Trevecca University campus and in the surrounding neighborhood—an area that faces food access challenges. As it works with neighbors to cultivate food and environmental justice in South Nashville, the Trevecca Urban Farm trains college students in Trevecca’s Environmental Justice program in assisting communities who face food and environmental challenges.
Jason started farming in 2002 and earned his Permaculture Design Certificate through Spiral Ridge Permaculture in 2012. In Davidson County, TN, he started three farms: Grace Farm, Son Farm, and Trevecca Urban Farm. These farms served, respectively, recovering addicts, teenage boys, and a variety of participants in downtown Nashville. Through the Social Justice degree program at Trevecca University and with neighboring K-12 schools, young people learn the particulars of growing all kinds of food and the big picture of how good farming sustains the people and the planet. Jason is the president and a founding member of the TN Organic Growers Association and has traveled to Asia, West and South Africa to learn and to share practices of sustainable agriculture with communities facing hunger and environmental challenges.
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