Downtown Indy Urban Farm Gets Visit From USDA

Representatives from the U.S. Department of Agriculture toured an urban farm Wednesday in Indianapolis. One official says there’s a growing interest at the federal level to improve food access issues with urban farming.

South Circle Farm, located a couple miles south of downtown Indianapolis, sells produce to a handful of markets and grocery stores in the city. Wednesday afternoon owner Amy Matthews took a small group, including two visitors from Washington D.C., on a tour of the 1.5 acre farm.

“This scale is just unusual. I feel like we’ve mined a lot of ideas, but there’s nothing like…I can’t go to a farm close by,” Matthews says. “I mean, we’re looking at guys in Quebec, and New York, and on the west coast.”

U.S. Agriculture Deputy Under Secretary Ann Bartuska traveled from Washington D.C. for a conference on forestry, but wanted to see the farm before heading to the airport.

Bartuska spoke to Matthews and representatives from Purdue Extension about sustaining the farm and others like it. She says federal officials are taking an interest in urban farms, as evidenced by a speech given at the USDA earlier this year.

“Our secretary came out and talked about the importance of urban agriculture, in part to address the food deserts that we have in many urban areas. And that was a very exciting statement and I think validated the direction that we wanted to build our capability in urban ag, even as we support rural agriculture, Bartuska says.”

Matthews says despite their relatively small size she isn’t sure they’ll be able to sell their whole yield.

She attributes that to a number of challenges: a lack of demand for fresh produce, finding and keeping good land downtown, and not being able to produce enough, even with partners, to make deals with mainstream groceries like Wal-Mart.