Business Black Box

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 // Business Black Box
71
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