Duval County Soil and Water with Trey Ford

Today's guest is Trey Ford, Supervisor for the Duval County Soil and Water Conservation District. He covers the many programs that they have going on to encourage farming, uban argiculture and communtiy engagement. He also discusses his work with Eartha's Farm and Market.

RELATED LINKS:
https://www.duvalsoilandwater.com/
https://www.clarawhitemission.org/earthas-farm-market
https://www.instagram.com/treysolo7/?hl=en

Jacksonville Climate Coalition

Transcript

Sustainable Agriculture and Environmental Advocacy

Speaker 1 0:01

Welcome to Sustainable North Florida . I'm your host , Laurieann Santamaria .

Speaker 2 0:07

Whatever resources that you know you got to grind to get to Capricorn if you're not somebody who's just well-resourced , rich and stuff like that . If they're serious about farming , we want to be able to take them to a start-up farming program and then have a start-up farm that very next year .

Speaker 1 0:22

Welcome to Sustainable North Florida . I'm Laurieann Santamaria , the host of the show , as well as the chair of the Jacksonville Climate Coalition . Our guest today is Trey Ford . Trey serves on the board of the Duval County Soil and Water Conservation District , which is why we originally asked him to join us . However , as you'll see , Trey's roots in Jacksonville go way deeper than that . He's a strong advocate for multiple important issues , and today we're going to focus on the intersection of sustainability , access to healthy food , environmental justice and agricultural practices . Seems like many different topics , I know , but they're actually all intertwined and Trey is a great example of how all of those things come together . Trey , welcome to the show .

Speaker 2 1:01

Well , thank you , it's an honor to be on here .

Speaker 1 1:05

And I just want to let everybody know that you're definitely a hands-on kind of person . You're talking to us right now from the greenhouse that you have right .

Speaker 2 1:12

I am . I'm here on site at Eartha's Farm and Market over here on Moncrieff . I grow some stuff too . So I've got a fish pepper business and a African basil business that I'm showing my daughters how to grow and propagate with African basil .

Speaker 1 1:30

But first , maybe if we could start with a little bit about your background , like what's your origin story ? How did you come to be in your current role ?

Speaker 2 1:37

So I'm going to . I'm going to make a long story , medium size , hopefully . Hopefully , this is so . When you say origin story , I have to go all the way back to fourth grade . I was living in Miami and I was going to a school called Miami Country Day School . The thing about education is that it all stems around the individual educators and they don't all come in the same . Quality is what I'll say , quality is what I'll say . And I just had such an outstanding fourth grade instructor in science that he had us in a group of kids , a group of those fourth graders , doing hydroponics , and our group won a trip to New York to compete as far as the things that we found in our hydroponics and what we grew and stuff like that . So through that opportunity , it was actually my first time going to New York City as well . So I'll say that from a very early age I learned that agriculture can open up some doors .

Speaker 1 2:32

It's nice when you have somebody that impactful in your life . You know at that age that's really cool yeah .

Speaker 2 2:41

And I'm an educator's child . My mom taught at Raines High School . Down the street from or down the street from Earth is Farming Mark and I'm on Crete and I'll fast forward education wiseinker School of Construction and I went to the University of Florida when we were winning everything . Tim Tebow was there and it wasn't just the football team but the basketball team , the track team . We were just winning everything . Olympic medals at University of Florida was a great place to be .

Speaker 1 3:16

And I had a lot .

Speaker 2 3:17

Yes , go Gators and I had a lack of discipline there at the time . It's hard to be there with all that going on and not have discipline . So my GPA was negatively affected by all the fun I was having , and when it was time for me to go up to the junior year in Rinker , I did not have the GPA to move on and so I had to switch to the College of Agricultural Life Science . And I'll say , even though it was my knucklehead mistakes that caused that transition , I believe that it was definitely a God move . Because I'll fast forward again to campaigning for Ashante Green when she was running for Duval Soil and Water . She was successful in her attempt to be elected and then she turned around and recruited me to also join the board of Duval Soil and Water , and so that's how I got into Duval Soil and Water .

Speaker 1 4:06

It definitely seems that the path that you had , although it kind of might seem securitous , it seems like it was definitely the right path for you , right ?

Speaker 2 4:12

I always hear hindsight is 20-20 . So , when you like you have to get there , and then you look back and you realize why certain things had to happen for you to be where you are . Yeah , in the right place at the right time .

Speaker 1 4:23

So Trey , I think , the Duval County Soil and Water Conservation District , so that's the official name .

Speaker 2 4:30

What do you call it in short , duval , soil and Water . I think we leave off the conservation district part .

Speaker 1 4:34

Okay , so Duval Soil and Water , I think that a lot of our listeners aren't familiar with , so can you tell us about the history of these kind of conservation districts and what you guys are currently doing ?

Speaker 2 4:44

Yes , so I don't know how old all of the conservation districts are . In Florida there are about 50 or so . Specifically , the Duval Soil and Water Conservation District just turned 70 last year . It's a special district of government that was started for the people , by the people , to have people in politics that were advocating for land owners and users , which is pretty much everybody . I'll say this , I'm going to talk about it in technical terms , but I'm also going to talk about what I've observed , to just make it more layman terms . So in technical terms , we have relationships with the USDA , with the city council . We run very similar to a nonprofit , so we're able to apply for grants and get sponsorships and things like that that are more attractive to some of those larger organizations or writers and things like that , and the way that that money is applied really depends on the supervisor that are currently on the board in my perspective . And so a lot of times when people run for Duval Soil and Water or for any soil and water conservation district , they have some connection to farming or conservation , cleaning they and so with a board of five , there's naturally going to be different skill sets and different , different talents and different interests , and what the board does is as a collective we work on things and then also as an individual we champion things . But we're really facilitators of resources , whether that resource is information or whether that resource is fun . And I don't like to use too much alphabet soup .

Speaker 2 6:17

I think a lot of people know what USDA is , but NRCS is National Resource Conservation Service . They're kind of like a part of USDA . It's kind of one organization that functions different things separately . No-transcript . A lot of people don't know that there's help out there that is allocated for you because they don't have access . So a lot of what we do is we try to get people access to the information but also to the funding .

Speaker 2 6:59

So what the funding looks like is the previous board was able to secure some grant money to do some regeneration on a basically some infertile soil . That's on the S line , which is a very important thing in Jacksonville . That's going to kind of tie the city together from a transportation perspective and kind of everything in Jacksonville is elevated right now and so as part of that S line there's a park that they regenerated with the soil , called Regeneration Park . It's on Moncrieff and 13th and so in that instance we got to get that land managed to get the bad soil excavated and the good soil put in , and so that's what it looks like when we're getting resources .

Speaker 2 7:40

Another thing that I know that we're going to champion in Jacksonville , because there's a big thrust on food security . Uh , not just in impoverished areas , but just in general . Food costs are going up . So there's a thrust , I think societally , of people trying to grow their own food , and no , we can support that through , you know , maybe a community garden grant , partnering with farms to get education out there and , uh , connecting uh farmers with other farmers . We're like a galvanizing , centralizing unit of people , bringing the people out of the silos and into collaboration so that everybody benefits .

Speaker 1 8:13

So you're a supervisor for Soil and Water right .

Speaker 2 8:17

Correct , the positions are five supervisors and each of the supervisors has a role on the board , which would be anything from secretary to chair or treasurer .

Speaker 1 8:25

And you're a treasurer .

Speaker 2 8:27

I'm currently the treasurer .

Speaker 1 8:28

Yes , Okay , and so what was the process ? How did you come to be a supervisor ?

Speaker 2 8:32

We had to run , so we had to go to the supervisor of elections and fill out paperwork and , to be honest , I was walked through every single process . It's a good amount of paperwork .

Speaker 1 8:43

So how is Duval Soy on Water ? How are you guys funded ?

Speaker 2 8:47

A hundred percent through donations , grants . We we have certain we have certain stakeholders that consistently like fund projects . That are collaborations , like an example of that would be the St John's Riverkeepers . They they host certain events and co-host things with us , but they're also able to support financially when we're galvanizing on a project , maybe about river cleanup and things like that . And then the city I would say city council and the mayor does participate well with us .

Speaker 1 9:17

And you mentioned helping people that have different projects in the community , helping them to get access to grants . Do you guys have a grant writer on staff right now ?

Speaker 2 9:25

No , we don't . So the opportunity right now with Waterboard , is to restructure in a way where we have five committees and one of those committees will be a fundraising committee , and so what that looks like is the fundraising committee will then be facilitating the work of gaining sponsors . Gaining donors , they'll be recruiting grant writers and recruiting even other nonprofits that have similarity , to co-write grants . Okay , go ahead .

Speaker 1 9:53

All right . So in preparation for this call , I did a little bit of digging and I was really impressed with so many different programs that you guys have . So I thought we'd do a little speed round and I'll pick a topic and you give me the elevator pitch for what each one is . Okay , perfect , all right . Envirothon .

Speaker 2 10:12

So Envirothon is a team brain brawl competition . It is available to 9th through 12th graders and it's a team of students and one teacher as well , and they go through different stations and they're used in the brain to solve problems or to answer questions , and again , those questions are about the environment , so it'll range from water to soil to plants . Questions are about the environment , so it'll range from water to soil to plants and I think usually 4-H comes out , which is another organization that does educational programs for students . And you know , the more teams the better , because ideally , you know , we want Jacksonville to represent on a national level and the best way to do that is to have the best of the best competing against each other .

Speaker 1 10:51

That's great , okay , cool , all right . Next one speech and poster contest .

Speaker 2 10:56

So the speech and poster contest this last year I love the theme because it was made the forest be with you . The speech and poster contest Well , I'll say the poster contest first is available for through 12 , and they're awarded cash prize for placing and they're separated into you , you know , age group divisions or whatnot . So , with speak , what I love about poster is that everybody gets to be involved , and I just love art and I feel like , uh , culture is translated through art , and history is translated through art , and education is translated through art . And who doesn't like star wars ? Probably a lot of people .

Speaker 2 11:33

I like star wars and uh , so , may the force Be With you is good , and each theme is something different , and so each year we find out the theme and then students have usually about three or four months to come up with their poster Speech is available for six through 12 . And similar concept , though they're going to compete against their age group and they're going to deliver a speech about the forest , and really the idea is to allow the student to really imagine what it is that they think should be talked about , because I think it's a lot that we can learn as adults from children , just in how they're seeing the world

Agricultural Assistance and Community Engagement

Speaker 2 12:06

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Speaker 1 12:06

Okay . So there's one thing that I saw on there . I did see something that was a request for technical assistance and that seemed actually pretty interesting . So is that still something that you guys provide ? It was basically a form that a landowner could fill out saying you know , I have this issue .

Speaker 2 12:21

Yes , that's one of the most important things about soil and water because people need to know who that is and sometimes we don't have the direct answer but we always know who has the direct answer .

Speaker 2 12:34

So I think the top question that we get is usually about well water and irrigating their you know , their homestead or their land , and typically we pass that those questions . Our office is located in the University of Florida IFAS Extension Office on McDuff and some of those questions it's good that we get them because you know that's one of our stakeholders and partners as well . So a lot of those questions end up going to Dr Genevieve over at UF IPAS . Some of the questions end up going to the master . We have the master gardener UF master gardener garden over there on that property as well , the University of Florida IPAS Extension Office . They do a free soil test . It's mostly pH , but there's a more robust soil test that's under a hundred dollars and it you know you're only going to spend that if you're you're serious about what you're doing with your land . So , um , I think that's the most important component because a lot of people just don't know who to ask .

Speaker 1 13:23

Yeah , all right . Last question , the speed round . What is hug a farmer day ?

Speaker 2 13:30

Oh , I love hug a farmer day . Farmer Day is a partnership with the Murray Hill Farmers Market . The Murray Hill Farmers Market is run by a young lady named MJ who is focused on community regeneration , and Hug a Farmer Day usually kicks off our Start Farming program . That's one of our strongest programs in potential and we're trying to take it to the next level . So hug a farmer day is where people can come out to the Murray Hill farmers market and actually meet the actual farmers , because farmers work hard and sometimes they they have to send a staff member out to vend , and so this is a day where we make sure that the actual farmers and the leaders at the farm are out and people get to meet them and hug them .

Speaker 2 14:11

Because most of the food that we eat comes from local farmers and small farmers and you know they they're very underpaid and sometimes underappreciated because you know the reality is a lot of people just don't have like a real awareness of where their food comes from . You kind of know , but you know in talking to adults and children I can tell that there's just a gap in understanding . So hug a farmer day is a way to give exposure to people on what farming really is and who the farmers really are , and when's the next one ?

Speaker 2 14:45

Next year . So each year usually in May , april , the spring , and again it kicks off the Start Farming Program and I'll articulate the Start Farming Program . The start farming program and I'll articulate the start farming program . It started kind of like a more of like a cohort workshop based , um , you know , maybe 10 weeks or 14 weeks where they get to go learn different things and what I would , and so some of those people end up turning into maybe community gardeners and and things like that , start growing stuff at their home . Some of those people already have land if they get in the program program why they're interested .

Speaker 2 15:15

What I would like to see in the next year of start farming is to start calculating how many farms are we starting this program , making it a little bit more exclusive and making the qualifications a little bit stronger so that if 10 people go through the start farming program we can start to get data as to how many farms start from that program in that very next year . And what I would really like to see is , at the end of the program , being able to get that start farming graduate some type of stipend to get them started , whether that's even if it's just a thousand dollars to get their farm number . They can just whatever resources that you know you got to grind to get the capital for if you're not somebody who's just well-resourced and rich and stuff like that . If they're serious about farming , we want to be able to take them to a start farming program and then have a start a farm that very next year .

Speaker 1 16:01

Yeah , that makes a lot of sense to put some rigor on that . I mean , that's a great way to make sure that you are focusing your dollars on where you're going to have the most amount of impact .

Speaker 2 16:10

We are going to need food sources bad in the next few years . We got to shake the table so that we can get some new results . Yeah , do the same thing over and over , uh , and expecting different results is what they call it insanity .

Speaker 1 16:22

Yeah , yeah , Um . Okay . So , Trey , you've got a background um in film . Can you tell us about how you use that to advance some of these agricultural issues that we've discussed ?

Speaker 2 16:32

Absolutely so . My background in film starts at an early age . Me and my aunt would my kids read books , but not everybody is just going to receive the information and act on the information in that way , and so my thought process on film is I just remember when I was born in 87 . So the cartoon that I grew up with that I love was Captain Planet , and I feel like that was kind of the seed that made me care about glittering and made me curious about how things grow and maybe not want pollution , things like that .

Speaker 2 17:24

There's a film I recently saw in Detroit . I had a film go to the Detroit Black Film Festival called Art of Flow . It was an art film . It didn't have anything to do with agriculture , but while I was at that film festival I saw a movie called Gaining Ground and it was a documentary about really about two things .

Speaker 2 17:41

It was about the predatory practices of the USDA government entities and just the people in power as it relates to black landowners and them losing their farms and losing their land on a just crazy cliff , very intentionally , and but part of it was a lack of knowledge in how to uh pass down legacy , so they're called heirs properties and what happens is grandma owned farm , seven siblings and they're not on the same page now that family farm is gone because , you know , some tax building or this or that or third , or they decided to sell it and so there is this dramatic reduction of black farm ownership land which is and people don't know this .

Speaker 2 18:22

You don't know until somebody tells you you know . That's basically why the USDA turned around and gave two billion dollars , or allocated two billion dollars , to try and alleviate that . They confessed to not giving the black farmers loans . They needed certain things to stay afloat . Farmers get bailed out all the time by the government , but it's only the big boy . So that film was very inspiring and enlightening to me , because the film is called Gaining Ground .

Speaker 1 18:46

Because we're trying to get that . So is that sound ? Maybe this is too simplistic , but is that kind of like the agricultural equivalent of redlining ?

Speaker 2 18:54

Absolutely . That's a great comparison .

Speaker 1 18:59

And isn't locally . Doesn't LISC have a program that's associated with theirs property ?

Speaker 2 19:06

I don't know if they have a program associated with LISC with heirs property , they may . But I'm glad you highlighted LISC , and I want to highlight Wealth Watchers as well . Those are two close friends and partners of the Earth , this Farm and Market , as well as Duval Soil and Water , and I'm going to bring up LISC specifically . Lisc was able to help Earth , this Farm and Market , hire a marketing person , and so I almost think that LISC functions in similar ways to Duval Soil and Water from the standpoint of being a resource for other resources , so that people get you know what they need . Wealth Watch is the same way .

Speaker 1 19:40

So you mentioned , earth is Farmer Market and that's definitely something important that we wanted to cover here . So we are going to be having a separate episode focused solely on that , but can you give us a little bit of a background ?

Speaker 2 19:50

Yes , so Earthers Farm and Market is a department of the Clara White Mission . The Clara White Mission was established as a nonprofit or as a business , so it's 120 years old on paper . But the work started before then with Clara White , when she was a slave and feeding initially I think she was feeding soldiers , feeding the homeless . Claire White adopted Eartha White because her family didn't want her . She was a mixed race and so Claire was willing to adopt her , you know , because she was partly Black and so Eartha , because you know the Emancipation Proclamation and also because she was very fair-skinned , eartha was . Because you know the Emancipation Proclamation and also because she was very fair skinned , eartha was able to maneuver in a dynamic way . And just when she had such a great heart I think they called her the Angel of Mercy or something like that and what happened was while she was a secretary for AL Lewis , who started American Beach , started a huge insurance company , abraham Lincoln Lewis . He started a huge insurance company , abraham Lincoln Lewis . She was able to salvage some papers that would have been damaged in a fire and they in turn , you know , either sold the property for near nothing or gifted it to the property . And the property initially was very vibrant . It had a natural spring where people were . You know , this is where black people could swim . Because , again , this is , this is the , this is the late 1800s , going into the early 1900s , you know , into the 1930s . So , uh , the , the status of the world was different at that time . So this was I would almost consider Moncrief Springs similar to black , black wall street in Tulsa from the standpoint of a vibrant , black , thriving community that was , um , uh , basically dismantled through some way or another , and we have there's a ton of examples like that .

Speaker 2 21:41

What happened , specifically with eartha's farming market around the 60s ? So she got into the 30s and she had it as a co-op farm for black farmers to be able to farm the land . Uh , she started multiple other businesses and and by the 60s , jea , for some reason , had decided to start dumping ash in the site and in multiple areas , and so it made the land infertile and possibly toxic and if anything were to grow from it , maybe harmful to people , and so , from my understanding , the site was inactive from like the 60s to the early 2000s . And our CEO at that time , jacoby Pittman she basically reactivated the vision of Earth to White as far as having this farmland and the farmland is now lesser than it was . It's about 10 acres . It's a regenerative farm . We've got about 240 blueberry bushes , We've got bananas out here , a mixture of vegetables and produce and fruit .

Speaker 2 22:29

But the 2019 to 2024 story is they got the soil regenerated , they hired the right staff to get the farm looking a certain way and kind of structured in the way that it could thrive and be long term , and then , once it got to that point , we were able to scale pretty quickly .

Speaker 2 22:49

It's actually just a very big interest of the city because it's a proof of concept that in a 3229 is the poorest zip code in all of Florida , according to a report that was submitted by the news , and so we're going to be proof . The proof is going to be in the pudding as we transform this area and it's not , it's not an overnight thing , but it feels like it and seeing , you know even where the farm was in 2019 in comparison to now . There wasn't even a good building on the farm in 2019 . Now we have a I don't know how many square foot Quonset hut . We have another building coming in that's going to be more of like a outdoor classroom with some office space and again . Like I said , we have another five acres that we haven't activated . It already has a building on it , but it just lands .

Speaker 1 23:34

Yeah . So I have to tell you I have this really big smile on my face . The energy and enthusiasm that you have is just infectious .

Speaker 2 23:42

No , I'm good .

Speaker 1 23:44

Well , I've been out to the farm a few times and , yeah , you definitely feel it out there too . So for other people that are listening to us , that kind of feel that way as well and want to get involved , how can they ?

Speaker 2 23:56

get involved with what you're doing . I would say for Earthless Farm and Market , the best resource is the Instagram page , because it's just the most active . We push a lot of our stuff out on Instagram . If you don't have Instagram , we do have a Facebook page , and then the best website to go to is wwwclarowhitemissionorg , because , again , we're a department of the Clara White Mission and , as far as Duval Soil and Water goes , I would like . All of our meetings are public and they're publicly noticed . So if you're really interested , I would like to invite you to our next meeting , and I don't know when this will air , so I'll just . Our meetings are typically on first and third Wednesdays from 3.30 to about 4.30 or 5 , wednesdays from 3.30 to about 4.30 or 5 , depending on the level of content we're going to cover , and they're held at the University of Florida Extension Office on St St Macduff . And the beautiful thing about that is , if that's not feasible for you to attend in person , we do it on Zoom as well .

Speaker 1 24:45

Awesome , that's great . Well , thank you so much , trey . This has been a great conversation .

Speaker 2 24:51

Thank you . Like I said I ,