What is an acre? For the more numbers-oriented among us, it’s 43,560 square feet. For others, it holds so little day-to-day relevance it’s not a question especially worth contemplating. Some see it as the future home of a concrete slab, supporting a Mattress Firm or a Bahama Mama or the next big quick moneymaker. And for those whose callings in life pull them toward the soil, an acre is the most basic essential when cultivating an ethos of nurturing the land in order to nurture the people.

In a city like Houston, where concrete and steel have subsumed prairies and bayous, finding and maintaining the necessary land offers urban farmers a challenging masterclass in patience, persistence, and faith.

Constant Ngouala became the first graduate of Plant It Forward’s Urban Farm Business Class in 2011, subsequently serving as the Houston organization’s first farm manager. He now splits his time between Chef Constant Sustainable Farm (his six-acre farm in Santa Fe), the farmers markets where he sells his vegetables, and teaching incoming farmers going through the program that he helped pioneer.

“Right now I’m training six farmers,” Ngouala says. “They’re going to Rice University, to [biosciences lecturer] Dr. Joe Novak, and they’re getting some business classes, too. Then when they finish, they can make a business plan. They can run their own businesses.”

Plant It Forward’s core mission involves helping resettled refugees—mainly from Africa and Southeast Asia—economically establish themselves via small farming businesses. In addition to the six apprentices, the nonprofit currently works with a network of more than 60 new American growers and leases land through its Land Access program, including at four sites in Houston that total six acres, and an additional one-acre pilot site at the Coastal Prairie Conservancy’s Indiangrass Prairie Preserve.

Ngouala’s passion for agriculture also encompasses a commitment to community building. “I have around 70 to 75 [customers] that come regularly [to farmers markets],” he says. He provides them with vegetables, and they provide him with word of mouth to keep business going—especially valuable considering the tight margins within which the farms operate.

It’s a mutually beneficial philosophy he shares with Finca Tres Robles cofounder and executive director Tommy Garcia-Prats. In 2017, the owners of the property hosting his 1.25-acre farm just off Navigation Boulevard sold the land to Harris
County. It’s expected to be developed into a county sheriff’s complex.

It wasn’t the victim of eminent domain. Rather, the decision came down to something more powerful than the law: money. Garcia-Prats and his brothers with whom he founded the farm, Dan and Mark, made an attempt to purchase the land themselves.

“We were trying to buy it and they were trying to buy it, and their stack of money is a lot bigger than mine,” Garcia-Prats says.

They closed the original farm in 2022 to focus on the transition. Work began this summer at the new farm, and all that remains of the old site, though likely not for long, are the three stalwart oak trees that gave Finca Tres Robles its name (Spanish for “three oaks farm”). Garcia-Prats plans to memorialize them by having their wood turned into benches after they get cut down to make room for the lot’s new life.

There’s also a walk-in freezer on the original property where they still store boxes of produce from the Common Market, rice, beans, eggs, meat, and vegetables for a subsidized delivery program for food-insecure households in the East End community. If nothing else, Garcia-Prats wants to keep people fed until the $3 million project to establish their new, 1.5-acre location just one block west is up and running.

It took the intervention and advocacy of Harris County Precinct 2 Commissioner Adrian Garcia, as well as neighborhood supporters, to clinch a 40-year lease from the county as a replacement. This victory is unprecedented in the Houston area, one that both surprised and pleased local agriculture advocates. It bolstered hope that the city considers urban farming a worthwhile investment after all. According to the 2022 USDA Census of Agriculture, farming land use allotment for Harris County went down by 11 percent between 2017 and 2022.

“Land use is the number one barrier to entry for anyone trying to get into farming. If you don’t come from a farming family and inherit land, getting land is next to impossible,” says Rachel Lockhart Folkerts, farm programs director at Plant It Forward. “Land in the US is valued for development.”

The crushing costs of farming

Land costs in Harris County fluctuate, and are at the mercy of bidding wars like the one between Finca Tres Robles and the county, but a quick search on Zillow reveals almost five empty acres near Pearland listed for $875,000. A 1,886-square-foot lot in Fifth Ward—hardly a fraction of an acre, not nearly enough to even dream about farming on—was up for $40,000.

Land is prohibitively expensive. Landowners who lease out their property want to earn the highest possible return on investment. That’s just not possible with farming.

Nationally, the median farm income for households with commercial farms grossing more than $350,000 was $178,692 in 2022. But for smaller farms, it’s more of a money-losing proposition: Median farm income at intermediate farms (those grossing less than $350,000) drops to -$125, according to USDA research. For residence farms (a farm where the owner has another occupation or is retired from farming), it plummets to -$2,370.

On a local level, Harris County farmers bring in an average net farm income of $4,385, factoring in farm expenses and other payments. These numbers add up to one unfortunate truism: growing fresh food, one of the most basic essentials for our survival, just isn’t profitable enough for many landowners and developers to even consider.

Former Briar Club chef and Plant It Forward farmer Guy Mouelet, one of the first to complete the program, used to tend a small half acre off Bellaire Boulevard and 59. A 2017 photo from the nonprofit’s archives (at right) shows him clad in faded camo pants and a baggy gray tee, proudly crouching behind planters bursting with lush viridian crops. Behind him stands another farmer, blurred out and posing with a long-handled tool, perhaps a shovel or a rake. It’s a triumphant image, one that shows a man in union with the foodstuffs he nurtured from seed to sow.

The land went up for sale later that year. It’s now a Popeye’s.

Lockhart Folkerts says Mouelet’s situation is “emblematic of what happens when the only value that we adhere to is economic value.” Farms provide wealth beyond the financial, in terms of community, nutrition and public health, and environmental stewardship. But the way bottom lines are calculated can’t reflect this.

While Ngouala’s farm occupies six acres, he says he plants only on two and a half to keep expenditures down. The lease costs him $1,000 per month, but he also faces water bills of $3,000 to $4,000. Ngouala can’t even grow the fruit he’d love to start selling because the upkeep is too demanding and expensive, so he has to stick with tried-and-true crops like cassava and arugula.

“In Houston, [water] is a big problem. During the summer, it is very hot, and we need to be putting [out] water morning, noon, and before night,” he says. “We cannot do fundraising every time [to pay for it].”

Water was also a concern at Finca Tres Robles, which used around 225,000 gallons per year at its peak at the old farm. Garcia-Prats says they did pay less than average for the hydration, though, owing in part to the utilization of a 5/8-inch irrigation-only water line: around $2,000 annually. He notes that this decision did “often limit our ability to water appropriately,” and points out that these are 2020 numbers; the cost of water has since increased.

Ngouala notes that tractor rentals and hiring additional personnel also significantly add to the overall cost of operations, which can reach upwards of $300,000 to $430,000 annually. He estimates that it could take an entire century for a farm like his to cut a profit, but he isn’t sure his children will necessarily follow in his footsteps. His land and legacy may be lost before it has a chance to assure a more stable financial future for his family.

Finding new land

At Finca Tres Robles, Garcia-Prats’s $3 million vision for the new lot entails not only the farm itself, but a small store to purchase fresh vegetables and other staples, an educational kitchen in partnership with H-E-B, a pavilion for community events, and picnic tables. He’s mapped out a clear path forward, and, like Mufasa explaining his expansive savanna kingdom to Simba in The Lion King, points to where he plans to set up all the different elements.

While Finca Tres Robles was lucky to secure this new plot, limited land and resources will still significantly impact future farmers. Yolande Sawadogo, a current Plant It Forward apprentice, hopes to have her own farm ready by the time she exits the program in March 2025. She’d prefer a five-acre location “not too far from the customers in the city,” and is currently working on her business plan to have an estimate of her startup costs.

According to Ngouala, it can take years for new farmers to secure the necessary tracts, though Plant It Forward has been actively soliciting land donations. After the plot has been officially leased, it can take between three and five years for the soil to hold enough nutrients to begin growing healthy crops on a regular basis, so Sawadogo won’t be able to immediately develop her farm to its fullest potential.

She’s already thinking about water costs, pointing to Plant It Forward’s location on Fondren. “It’s very expensive because you have to use city water,” Sawadogo says. “I would love to have a well on my farm, if I can have a well.”

The average cost to drill a well runs between $5,325 and $9,180, according to home-services platform Angi. Not a small line item in the budget, but the initial investment could help Sawadogo avoid some of the water bills her mentor Ngouala deals with.

With all of these challenges involved in the establishment and upkeep of even the smallest farms, one disconcerting question arises: Why, if humans need access to healthy food to survive, has farming become such an uphill battle, especially in the most populated areas?

Houston has at least 80 food deserts located within its two loops alone. The term is often applied to what the USDA calls “low-access census tracts,” defined as “low-income census tracts where a significant number (at least 500 people) or share (at least 33 percent) of the population is greater than one-half mile from the nearest supermarket, supercenter, or large grocery store for an urban area.” It estimates that, at a national level, 53.6 million people live in such areas.

Urban farming initiatives can help narrow these systemic gaps by making fresh produce available at low price points, but as with Plant It Forward, Finca Tres Robles, and others, they have to register as nonprofits and fundraise to ensure operational costs get met.

Fighting food insecurity

Chef Chris Williams, owner-operator of Southern cuisine mainstay Lucille’s/Lucille’s Hospitality Group, founded the farming program of his multipronged nonprofit Lucille’s 1913 in 2022. After researching the African American history of Fort Bend County and Kendleton, specifically during the Reconstruction era, he noticed a problematic present in this farming community of the past.

“Kendleton to this day is still [predominantly] African American. They’re not poor. But when it comes to food resources, they’re 15 miles away, round trip,” he says. “Fresh food is expensive, and then you add in a 30-mile commute…it’s almost cost-prohibitive for anybody.”

It took a little over a year of working with the City of Kendleton and Fort Bend County to access up to 54 acres for use as a farm, educational center, and kitchen to address food insecurity. Since its founding in 2020, Lucille’s 1913 has distributed more than a million meals to over 30,000 people, and the new land will allow the operation to scale up.

“We’re only growing what we know will be utilized by the community. We’re not trying to experiment and introduce new things,” Williams says. “The foods that my community knows and loves and celebrates are collard greens, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, okra, radishes, cucumbers, peas. We don’t need to worry about educating and introducing new things, we just need to provide access to the standards.”

Finca Tres Robles operated, and will continue to operate upon reopening, in an East End food desert. During the transition, 92 households are still receiving fully subsidized Neighborhood Produce Program boxes full of staples and produce from the Common Market, a national nonprofit that assists local farms with food distribution. The CSA (community-supported agriculture) boxes will resume once the new farm reopens.

“When our culture is saying [that] health is going to the clinic, visiting the doctor every year, and they tell you that you need to eat better, exercise better. It’s like, ‘Well, how the hell do I do that in my community?’” Garcia-Prats says. “I think as cities move forward, at some point they’re going to realize that this kind of system that we set up isn’t sustainable and doesn’t work. If these young people who are receiving these [Neighborhood Produce Program] boxes don’t become prediabetic or diabetic, we’re saving the system potentially half a million dollars over the course of that kid’s life. I see that as a solution.”

Commissioner Adrian Garcia believes that the lack of access to fresh produce contributes to many of the major health disparities in Precinct 2, though is not the only source. Sharpened carrot spears and sweet potatoes loaded onto trebuchets can’t storm the walls of Chevron’s Pasadena and LyondellBasell’s Houston refineries, which the Texas Tribune revealed to have exceeded the Environmental Protection Agency’s benzene emission guidelines in 2021 (exposure to the chemical is linked to higher cancer risks).

“Precinct 2 is mostly [occupied by] the oil and gas industry. That’s why this makes the conversation even more important,” Garcia says. “I have the highest number of children of families without health insurance. I have the highest rates of cancer in some areas in the county, and in other areas I have the highest rates in Texas. And then I also have the highest mortality rate by 20 years. So dealing with and understanding ways to… improve the quality of life and the life expectancy of people that live in my precinct is critical. Farming is one of those ways to do that.”

This belief led Garcia to rally for Finca Tres Robles to receive a 40-year lease from Harris County so the farm can continue servicing food-insecure families also grappling with health care access. It makes their lives just a little less stressful, but it also marks a turning point in agricultural land allotment in Harris County. Despite all the challenges involving profits (or lack thereof), county leaders agreed that what Garcia-Prats and his team are accomplishing transcends mere economics and formulas in a ledger.

Finca Tres Robles was “already committed to distributing their produce to Precinct 2 and inner-city elementary schools, inner-city senior groups. It just was ridiculous that they should do this incredible work, make this incredible investment, make this land farmable, then just to be told, ‘Thank you, but bye, Felicia,’” Garcia says. “We are an unzoned community, so it’s immensely difficult, but it’s also an opportunity. I think we ought to have legislation that is squarely tied to affordable housing credits. So let’s say that, when developers are seeking these tax credits to build affordable housing, they should also create some capacity to have an urban farm attached to that housing unit.”

His vision of a more farming-friendly city is already moving the needle at the lawmaker level, and Ngouala and Lockhart Folkerts are working at the grassroots level to encourage more landowners to donate or affordably lease their lots to expand Plant It Forward’s operations. It’s been difficult, but not insurmountable, though Lockhart Folkerts worries that the nonprofit’s commitment to the specific, localized benefits of urban farming may be compromised if the farmers ultimately get pushed out to rural areas.

“We would love to be urban. But overall, our experience has been that it’s so expensive to operate in an urban area. It’s so hard to get the land,” she says. “With the size we are and the funding that’s available to us and the need that is being expressed from the farmers we work with, we need to get the biggest bang for our buck in terms of land. We would be very interested in talking with the county or other institutional landowners.”

Seeking land donors

Linda and Peter Draper answered Plant It Forward’s call to action in 2018. As the owners of Blossom Heights Child Development Center in the Mahatma Gandhi District, they saw it as an opportunity to both give back to the community as well as teach preschool-age children about where their food comes from. The farm, at a little more than a half acre, stands out as a fresh patch of vibrant organic life among the stark steel of the body shops that surround the school. A faint, sweet mesquite smell perfumes the air, though it’s indiscernible whether it emanates from a nearby barbecue or a pile of woodchips awaiting important mulching duties. Elizabeth Nyuma (who declined to be interviewed for this piece) runs the Afri Harvest Farm on the Blossom Heights property, along with her daughters Oretha and Mabel.

“We have the ability to lift someone up as we’re growing, and to lift up this program because it lifts other people up into beauty and into health and into sustainability,” Linda Draper says. “It’s not really our land. It’s the land of the earth, and people can make a living off of it.”

Land doesn’t necessarily have to burst forth from terra firma to give us this day our daily bread (or at least the fruits and vegetables we eat alongside our daily bread), either. Blackwood Educational Land Institute instead took a note from the Wright Brothers and looked to the sky.

Nestled atop the roof of Post Houston, the decommissioned post office turned downtown hot spot, grows the one-acre Skyfarm. On a June afternoon, it was brimming with melons, strawberries, lemon balm, lemongrass, garlic chives, and sunflowers, among other earthly joys, and provides a dramatic view of the Houston skyline. Cath Conlon, Blackwood’s president and CEO, points out how tender asparagus stalks grow straight from the ground, offering a taste of the new shoots. She hands over a sprig of fennel flowers, which possess the same licorice tang as their roots, though less pronounced. A grasshopper clings lazily to a plastic tarp, and yellow and white butterflies flit about too quickly to properly identify on the Seek app.

To her, Skyfarm and its every-other-week farmers market events offer a way for Houstonians to push for a more farm-friendly city. “A family gets up in the morning on Saturday. They go to the farmers market, and they buy their food for the day, then they go to their football game, or their baseball game, or their basketball game. And then they all go back home to somebody’s house, and they all cook lunch together,” Conlon says, describing her ideal vision.

This dream dovetails with those of other urban farmers. All of them, in some way, yearn to fill hearts just as much as bellies. Farms, particularly those in dense industrial cities like Houston, hold the potential to serve as something of a third place between work and home. But to reach said full potential, it takes a willingness to perceive the world beyond dollar signs. The community has already shown its openness to supporting Plant It Forward, Finca Tres Robles, Lucille’s 1913, and Skyfarm. Now it needs more lawmakers to follow Garcia’s lead, and landowners to find inspiration in the Drapers.

“Every day, when we get people out here, we want them to have a good time, but I’m not a vegetable preacher. I’m not here to get people to eat organic vegetables, I want people to come to the space and be inspired. Find something that brings them value and curiosity because that’s what’s going to bring them back to the space,” Garcia-Prats says.

It connects Houstonians with each other and with the people who make their produce possible, putting a face to the dining experience that one doesn’t get when browsing a grocery store’s anonymous aisles.

“Many people don’t know where [their food] will come from,” Ngouala says. “When people come to your farm to see what you are planting, they are very happy to come buy from you.”

So...what really is an acre?

An acre, properly tended, is not panacea. But it is nourishment. It is education and social justice and sustainability. But most of all, it’s a promise. Of community, of interfacing with the natural world rather than attempting to fully tame it. Maybe urban agriculture won’t save the world—that was never the intent anyway, as starry-eyed as it sounds. With patience, care, accessibility, and generosity, however, it can serve as a facet of the overall solution to food insecurity, public health, and climate change. And a facet is all we truly need it to be.