Faith Farm and Orchard marked a milestone in its urban farming journey by unveiling a new flash-frozen kitchen facility in Gary’s Emerson neighborhood.
The ceremony on Thursday began with a group prayer in the freezer and kettle-filled kitchen. A lineup of city and county officials, health professionals, and food justice advocates then talked about the importance of having a flash-frozen facility in a food desert.
“This is a blessing,” Gary Mayor Eddie Melton said. “This means access to a population in dire need of healthy food options.”
Echoing the mayor’s sentiments, local leaders expressed their support for the initiative’s impact on the community.
“This is one of the best things that can happen in the city of Gary,” Lake County Councilman Charlie Brown, D-Gary, added, underscoring the widespread optimism about the facility’s potential to expand local access to healthy foods.
Faith Farms CDC launched the Faith Fresh Frozen program with the help of $425,000 from the Food Bank of Northwest Indiana. Pastor Curtis Whittaker founded Faith Farms CDC in 2013, starting as a 1½-acre urban farm next to a community church. It has blossomed into a local business that now produces, preserves, and distributes healthy food across the city.
Whittaker said he started this program because it’s important for Black communities like Gary to have secure access to food.
“We sit in the middle of food insecure communities, and we don’t think that there’s anything we can do to move out of that space, but there is,” he said. “Most urban centers have blight, but they have land. And what we’ve done is repurpose the land so that we can grow our own food and teach others how to grow.”
Their “food is medicine” initiative, aimed at promoting a healthier lifestyle while fostering community well-being within the city, represents a creative solution to the challenges Gary has faced with food deserts.
According to the Northwest Indiana Food Council, nearly one-fourth of Gary and East Chicago is designated as a U.S. Department of Agriculture food desert.
Communities lacking access to affordable, healthy, and fresh food options, often found in low-income Black and Brown neighborhoods, are described as food deserts. However, farmers and food justice advocates have critiqued the term “food desert,” which frames the lack of access as a natural occurrence, and prefer “food apartheid” as a more appropriate term because of racialized systems like redlining, segregation, and other systemic measures that have intentionally created obstacles to fresh food for Black communities.
Faith Farm and Orchard partnered with Food Bank of Northwest Indiana and Food Bank of Feeding America to provide meals across Northwest Indiana, and partnered with local producers to keep that produce in the community.
According to Whittaker, the kitchen, located at 576 Carolina St., will sell 80% of its flash-frozen produce in collaboration with other mass distributor partners, and the remaining 20% will be donated to the Food Bank of Northwest Indiana to avoid food waste.
“The mission of the Food Bank of Northwest Indiana is to feed people today, and end hunger tomorrow by inspiring and collaborating with our community,” said Victor Garcia, president and CEO of Food Bank of Northwest Indiana.
Whittaker, a Gary native, said that it’s important to have Black and brown representation in tackling issues like food justice and food deserts.
“Every person who had a hand in this project were Black and brown people,” he said. “Everyone who had a hand in doing what we did looked like me, looked like Victor, and that is important.”
Chef Lucero Martinez-Donato, director of the Fresh Frozen program, personally tested the flash-frozen foods. Proud of her menu, she said the method is ideal because it allows it to be ready to use once received.
“The beauty of flash freezing is when you open it, and oxygen gets to it, it comes back to temperature pretty quickly, and you can start cooking with it right away,” Martinez-Donato said.
Whittaker emphasized the importance of Black, local businesses based in Gary that supported the facility — from the local Gary-certified electric company FAMCO, which energizes the facility, to the project leadership team, which owns a business in Gary.
“We wanted all this money and all this business to stay here,” he said. “If we want to see change happen, we have to do it. We gotta hire folks that look like us, and live in our community.”
Whittaker, who started Faith Farms 12 years ago, said the plan is to work with hospitals, schools, and restaurants to have the most reach for their food programs. They currently have a partnership with Community HealthNet CEO Dr. Janet Seabrook to send food boxes that offer dry pantry items, and now with the help of the Faith Farms kitchen, fresh produce.
“Before, we couldn’t put in anything fresh,” Seabrook said. “We had to put in pantry staple items, like rice, beans, stuff that won’t spoil. Now, with the flash frozen program, you will be able to get fresh fruits and vegetables in the boxes as well.”
In the summer, Whittaker plans to host a training program of 100 youth on how to foster an urban agriculture generation program.
“The land provides Black people with the potential to have economic security,” Whittaker said. “We have the ability to repurpose and change our community and our neighborhood, and help some of our folks.”