NEXT GEN
By Josh Overstreet Mill Village Farms is more than just a few gardens sprinkled across the Upstate— it’s a chance for young men to find a cause and for food deserts to become a wealth of local produce. And Dan Weidenbenner knows:it takes a village. A generation’s success, or lack thereof, is vitally dependent on those who come before it. Many use the word stewardship— however stewardship is just as important when we realize that we are responsible for the next generation. “To be able to take a kid that hasn’t had a job before and teach them a work ethic, to teach them to think entrepreneurially, to get them to see a part of a business and to have the responsibility of showing up to work on time and doing your job with excellence,” says Dan Weidenbenner, “that’s what gets me going every day.” Weidenbenner is the director of Mill Village Farms, an organization whose goal is to plant small, urban farms in communities where fresh produce is hard to come by. Born and raised in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Weidenbenner attended Furman University and graduated with a degree in psychology in 2011. While at Furman, he participated in farming outreach and its various benefits for senior citizens. “We did a bunch of different things—what were the cognitive benefits, what were the social benefits, what were the environmental benefits of seniors involved in gardening and farming.” During the outreach, he found that the use of gardening helped improve quality of life, built stronger communities, and also increased the attention rates of aging people. After graduating he began working with Grace Church and Masha Lending, building contacts and getting involved with the community that would lay the foundations for his future career. His work with Grace Church took him to Allendale, S.C., and while there, Weidenbenner’s eyes were opened to the needs of the community. Soon, he realized that there are communities in Greenville who have the same needs. “I was exposed to all kinds of needs and issues that opened my eyes to a whole different world,” says Weidenbenner, “I knew the same needs and issues were in our community as they were there.” So, he returned to Greenville to the Greater Sullivan neighborhood and joined Long Branch Baptist Church. Weidenbenner quickly saw that the church had a vision for not only meeting the spiritual needs in the community, but also the physical. “The immediate need for our neighborhood is that people need jobs; they just don’t come easily anymore,” he says. “A job has a transformative quality, it teaches the value of hard work.” With this vision, Mill Village Farms was created to start impacting the community’s youth and through them transform neighborhoods. By reaching the kids and giving them jobs, Mill Village Farms can then have those teens impact their own homes. “We take vacant properties in our neighborhood that are either condemned houses or property that was never built on, then turn them into small, dense farms where we can grow a lot of food in a small area,” Weidenbenner says. Since their start in 2012, they now currently employ 10 kids with two farms in the Mill’s Mill community as well as another 50 acres off of Saluda Dam Road in Easley. They drive the kids to the farm in Easley where they work on the farm, then take the produce back to their communities. Other partnerships have been built along the way— one with Clemson to help entrepreneurial education for the youth and another with Loaves and Fishes to begin using one of their refrigerated trucks to begin a mobile market. “A lot of kids start seeing the farm as a stepping stone to better jobs, colleges and starting their own businesses,” he says, noting that when the kids move on to their next step, other kids see that step and decide to begin working as well, changing their neighborhoods from the ground up. “The kids are able to shape their culture. The kids give back to the neighborhood and the neighborhood wants to give back to the kids,” says Weidenbenner. And as an added bonus, “They are now eating healthier because the kids are the ones changing the culture.” In addition to renewing these older communities through their teens, other benefits have appeared with the urban farms. According to Weidenbenner, the farms have increased biodiversity, beautified vacant properties, increased storm water management and created community relationships. In the short term, Mill Village Farm’s next goal is to create a central hub for themselves. “Short term we want to create a system to process our produce. We would love to create a hub—a space for Mill Village farms to have a classroom, office and work space,” he says, “then within five years we would like to develop for-profit businesses that help fund our non-profit, with more opportunities for our kids and others to come alongside and help our business sustain itself.” But even at its most basic, the economic impact of Mill Village Farms is impressive. After all, if just one of the kids creates a new business through Mill Village, then South Carolina will have five to 10 more jobs that didn’t exist before. “The success of our farms is the success of our youth. If they are not successful, than our farms are not going to be that successful,” says Weidenbenner. Q4 2013 // <strong>Business</strong> <strong>Black</strong> <strong>Box</strong> 71 For more from <strong>Business</strong> <strong>Black</strong> <strong>Box</strong> visit insideblackbox.com