The Giving Grove is fighting hunger with urban orchards

The Giving Grove in action // Photo courtesy The Giving Grove

The Giving Grove, a Kansas City-based nonprofit, is equipping partner nonprofits around the country with the necessary skills and techniques to help food-insecure neighborhoods grow their own food.

This week, The Giving Grove will be hosting its first national conference to achieve this goal. Organizations from Cincinnati, OH, Louisville, KY, Omaha, NE, and Memphis, TN have arrived today and will spend three days collaborating on orcharding techniques in several of Kansas City’s 200 urban orchards.

“Each organization brings to the table its own expertise in urban agriculture,” says Rob Reiman, Giving Grove CEO. “This conference allows us to exchange information and best practices.”

Training includes “Community and Site Outreach, “Fruit Tree Grafting”, “Experimental Small Berry Growing,” and “Urban Orcharding Basics: Potting, Prepping, and Planting Fruit Trees”. Attendees will be taking knowledge from these events back to their cities and share it with their community urban orchard growers.

The Giving Grove programs across the U.S. have planted over 4,000 fruit and nut trees and nearly 2,000 berry bushes that provide an estimated 2.8 million annual servings of fresh and free fruit, nuts, and berries.

“Giving Grove little orchards provide free, nutritious servings of fruit, nuts, and berries while combatting the consequences of climate change that many of these cities are currently battling,” Reiman says. “We believe that the training our affiliates receive this week will help their communities grow and distribute food in their neighborhoods for generations to come.”