Three high school friends turned an empty and forgotten lot in the Kinsman neighborhood into an 18-acre urban farm where they grow produce to bring healthy, local food to area institutions, engage the community, and maintain diverse revenue streams.
An exhaustive look at Cleveland’s housing and building inventory, done by the city in 2023, revealed 20% of structures in Cleveland are vacant, including 1,400 that are deemed an immediate safety hazard. Rid-All started in 2010 with a 1.3-acre lot in what was previously known as the “forgotten triangle,” the poorest neighborhood in Ohio, home to rampant illegal dumping and a food desert.
Learning from and participating in a five-month commercial agriculture training program from Will Allen of Growing Power, these three high school friends who wanted to make a difference began to make moves in the area to develop a community-based organization striving to make a greater impact through serving the community, youth and veterans.
The Growing Power training taught them about the power of compost in agriculture, which is where they started, utilizing wood chips repurposed from the City of Cleveland’s forestry department. Rid-All is now a Level II EPA facility, accepting only fruits and vegetables, and is able to sell its compost for $35-55 per cubic yard under the Soil Brothers label.
Rid-All has continued to expand to become a sprawling green oasis packed with two greenhouses and six large hoop houses for growing vegetables such as kale, lettuce and collards. Rid-All also builds professional capacity for others, by teaching commercial farming techniques and building hoop houses for others. Rid-All developed a 5-month Community Urban Agriculture training program, which includes a focus on entrepreneurship. There’s an aquaponics tilapia farm housed on the campus that sells and supplies fish to local minority chefs and restaurants. Over two years in one of the green houses, they’ve grown over 10,000 fish. With their 7,200 square foot Urban Fish Farm LLC, they have now grown 70,000 fish, selling to restaurants and finalizing deals with major supermarkets.
Through their community kitchen, they teach classes, offer cooking demonstrations and host events. The Rid All Community Kitchen also serves as a restaurant 2 days a week offering a variety of healthy foods and offers catering.
A treehouse and teepee provide youth, residents, volunteers and visitors a quiet space. The compost operation turns thousands of pounds of food waste from the city into Rid-All’s signature, black gold compost soil. Rid All hosts a variety of community events, including Fresh Fest which closes off three streets and features vendors, food trucks, and up to 9,000 festival goers in 2023 alone.
To reach different populations, Rid-All also features a wide array of programming including youth and veteran training programs. To connect with youth, they’ve developed a comic book which was also turned into a stage play and a puppet show. Their partnership with veterans includes an agricultural training program that 22 veterans completed as a result of funding from the Ohio Farm Bureau. Expanding into the housing needs of veterans, they’re in the midst of assisting with a project that will build a veterans housing facility that will include 22 beds. Their campus includes a veterans hoop house, where veterans meet every week.
Rid All also has a tree nursery and is contracted to source trees for the Cleveland Tree Coalition. They’re currently growing 1,800-2,000 trees from seed to sapling.
In 2022, Rid-All’s urban farm expanded its campus to 18 acres to grow the farm across 18 different revenue streams. The neighborhood around the farm is improving also, creating opportunities for economic development, housing, agriculture and social connection. The three childhood friends are seeing the impacts they had hoped for including transforming communities, repurposing blighted, vacant land and improving the overall health and quality of life for its residents. Rid-All has spent its time educating residents about the benefits of eating fresh, healthy foods, creating opportunities for employment and training, and empowering residents to grow their own food. Of their 16 staff, 8 work at the farmers market and 8 work at the farm.
One key lesson from Rid All’s experience is to be open to new opportunities and new relationships. The Mayor of Maple Heights, Ohio (an inner-ring suburb of Cleveland) contacted Rid All in 2020 because the Farmer Jones Market (a 60 year-old neighborhood produce market) was closing. Without this market, half of the city of Maple Heights would immediately become a food desert. It was purchased by another entity, who then asked Rid-All to operate the market and donated the 8,000 square feet of space to them for three months rent-free as a trial period. After three months of selling their produce there, on Labor Day 2020, it became a market officially known as Farmer Jones Market by Rid-All, selling a variety of products, including greens and kale, seeded watermelons, etc. On select Saturdays, a chef is there preparing dishes and showing customers how to prepare a variety of vegetables. Rid All was interested in purchasing the farmers market, but the price tag was steep. Then in the summer 2022, Rage Against the Machine played a show at the Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse in Cleveland, and the next day announced via Twitter that they were donating a percentage of their concert’s purse ($114,050) to the Rid All Green Partnership, which allowed them to become the sole owners of the market, selling and sourcing produce.
