THE WHAT

   Community Greenhouse Farms is a Non-Profit Organization located in rural Southwest Missouri. We began the idea of the farm with the sole purpose of providing the community with healthy foods grown in a sustainable manor. Many times in smaller communities, the access to healthy organic foods is either unattainable or very expensive. In a small town or rural area there can be an Impact of Poverty, Food Insecurity, and Poor Nutrition when it comes to the people in the community, and this can affect their Health and Well Being.

   At the farm we will be providing many different programs. Such as............

• A Greenhouse that grows organic produce and fish through an aquaponic system.
• A Farm that will provide fresh eggs, poultry, pork, and honey.
• A Bakery with breads, muffins, granolas, cakes, pastries and more all made with organic ingredients.
• The Classroom will have classes on cooking, nutrition, gardening, pickling, food storage and waste prevention.
• Free Community Programs. Our main goal is providing a free food assistance program. We also want to establish school food programs, food bank assistance and a children and seniors meal program.
• CSA (community supported agriculture) Program.  In return for subscribing to a harvest, subscribers receive either a weekly or bi-weekly box of produce or other farm goods. This includes in-season fruits and vegetables and can expand to bakery items, eggs, poultry, pork, honey, etc. The CSA sales will also help support the free programs.
• We will have a compost collection center to enable the community to bring their compostable materials to us so that we may utilize it and turn it into a rich, natural fertilizer for our outdoor crops.
• Rain water collection that will provide us will all our water needs for the greenhouse, outdoor crops and animals.
• Solar will power the greenhouse and part of the farm systems.
• In the future we would like to build tiny, off the grid homes on the property and provide them to people at no cost, just a work/education exchange deal in a program that trains them in aquaponics, gardening, cooking, etc. Tools they can then use for employment.

     The possibilities are endless to assure that no one person in our community goes hungry ever again! We just need your help to do it. Please visit the rest of the site and see how you can help make a difference in the community.

   We see that in order to make change, we must do it as a community. Our main goal at Community Greenhouse Farms is to address the nutritional health issues and the food insecurity in our community.

   The way we are going to go about this, is to tackle it from multiple directions.

First - We need to make natural and healthy foods more readily available to the community. Many times in smaller communities, there is a lack of availability due to the transportation costs and logistics of getting the products to the people.  By growing and producing the food in the community, we eliminate the need for transportation. We also need to provide free food assistance to those in the community who need it and avoid the stigma of being food insecure.

Second - The other major issue with healthy organic foods is the cost. Organic foods can cost the consumer and arm and a leg because of what goes into it.  Production costs for organic foods are typically higher because of greater labor input and because farmers don't produce enough of a single product to lower the overall cost. We will address this issue in 2 ways. We first need to look at the way that we grow the food. Traditional farming takes up a lot of space and on smaller organic farms, it actually takes more workers to tend to the farm. You have to worry about pests, weather, water needs and a whole slew of other things. In an aquaponic greenhouse, we eliminate all of those issues. We are growing in a controlled environment that we can operate year round. Our yields are 10x higher than that of traditional farming and we are using less water, less labor and we are doing it in an area that is 20x smaller. By doing all of this, we are able to grow more product at a lower cost making it more affordable to the consumer.

Third - We need to educate the consumer on the health and nutritional benefits that come from food. Also, how to make these foods taste great. A lot of times people don't buy certain foods because they don't know what to do with them. We are going to help them with this also by providing meal planning, recipes and even cooking classes. As a chef, I have heard this a million times....."Why does healthy food taste so bad"? It's all in how you prepare it! We also need to help people understand that many of the foods that they are buying have absolutely no nutritional value what so ever. 

   In our classroom we are going to have classes on nutrition, cooking, gardening, canning, pickling and so much more. There will also be videos on our YouTube Channel and in the future on this website. 

   At Community Greenhouse Farms we want to not only provide the community with healthy foods, but a healthier lifestyle through eating better. Just remember the old saying, "We are what we eat"!