New Roots Farmers Benefit from Cultivate KC Get Farming Mini Grants

Posted on February 18, 2025 by Alicia Alferman

Somali Bantu Garden

The Somali Bantu Garden is small, even for an urban farm. Occupying a corner lot near the river in KCK, the site is run by five women who arrived in the United States as refugees from Somalia in the early 2000’s. Living in a new country where few spoke their language, and missing food from home, they would become some of the first graduates from the New Roots program.

After graduating in 2008, the women, along with other members of Somali Bantu Foundation of Kansas City, purchased property near Juniper Gardens Training Farm. They scraped and saved and found funding to install water for irrigation, improve the soil, and build a washstand— everything one needs to start growing. Since those early years, the farmers at Somali Bantu Garden have built a close-nit community and succeed each year in growing corn, beans, greens, sweet potatoes and more to sell at market and feed their families.

But recently, Somali Bantu Garden has experienced some challenges.

two farmers showing off their new t-shirts in 2010.

Physical and Financial Barriers

Working by hand to till the soil and hoe their crops, old age has brought physical limitations that make the heavy lifting on their farm difficult for the women. Come spring, they will need a tiller. A tiller that will help turn the soil and save their backs. Unfortunately, tillers like that cost money.

Farming is expensive. Costs for infrastructure can pile up high and represent a significant barrier to new and established farmers alike. This is where Cultivate KC comes in.

Working with the New Roots Graduate Support Specialist, the women from Somali Bantu Garden applied for, and were awarded the much needed tiller funding. The dollars came through Cultivate KC’s Get Farming Mini Grant program.

Mini Grants are awards of up to $3,500 for farmers in the Kansas City area. They are offered annually by Cultivate KC. Their purpose is to help small farmers grow their capacity to produce food locally and increase food access throughout the metro. If it helps a farmer grow more and fresher food, a Mini Grant can pay for it.

Each year Get Farming Mini Grants help farmers throughout the Kansas City food system, and the women from Somali Bantu Garden aren’t the only New Roots farmers to benefit in 2025. One recent graduate will use her funding to install a frost-free hydrant and sinks for her washstand at the family’s new farm. Another will get her first BCS walk-behind tractor. Such equipment isn’t just useful for growers, it’s critical to getting a new farm off the ground, plants in the ground, and food on kitchen tables.

a volunteer day cleaning up the fence line at the Somali Bantu Community Garden in 2021.

Nature’s First Green is Gold

Come spring, Somali Bantu Garden will be green with new crops in freshly tilled soil. Though small, the little farm is an important and often forgotten piece of not just the local food system, but Kansas City’s rich social fabric. Though money can get tight, urban farms like this one are worth a mountain of gold to the growers, their families, and friends. As many of us do, the women await the first shoots of spring eagerly, for taste of home and a sense of belonging.