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Chicago-based urban farmer Steve Archer in St. Vincent and the Grenadines earlier this month.
Chicago-based urban farmer Steve Archer in St. Vincent and the Grenadines earlier this month.
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A US Marine veteran who turned to urban farming as he recovered from a debilitating accident has found inspiration in St. Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG).

Steve Archer II spent a number of days in SVG this month, during which he visited some artisans and Richmond Vale Academy, where he witnessed how a “community” was being formed in pursuit of sustainable agriculture.

“The thing that I was most interested in seeing was how the community was being formed. Because for anything to be successful organically, from my experience, you need to have community,” he said.

Archer, 51, says that as a veteran, he can “yell at people and lead people and march them…

“But what I don’t know is how to find and connect with the disparate people from all over the world and all over the country; how to recreate what Richmond Vale Academy has done for decades, is what I’m understanding.”

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RVA’s climate and sustainable development programmes see local and international students coming to its campus, where the curriculum includes re-introducing households to sustainable home gardens.

“When I got there, I saw the community, all the things set up that needed to get done, and everybody had a responsibility to each other…

“So, the thing that I want to take back is building a system where we break bread together, and that’s not something that we do in America anymore.”

Archer says that the United States has gone from a country where children in the 1950s would wander up to six miles away from their homes to one where a child generally does not leave his or her block today.

“So how did we lose community?” he says, further recalling his RVA insights. “And then there were some little titbits things about different things that were growing. Some of those things, I would love to figure out if I could grow them in Chicago.”

Archer mentions sorrel, saying, “Sorrel is so good. I love it; I like it; I love it; I want some more of it.”

Unlike his father, Archer had very little experience with farming. However, he remembers growing a pumpkin when he was around 11 years old.

“I remember how proud I was of myself tending to that pumpkin and growing it, even though it’s one little pie pumpkin.”

However, in 2008, Archer was involved in a vehicular accident that left him with injuries to his back and legs and a prognosis that he would never walk again.

A doctor told Archer that for some people, caring for something outside of themselves helps them to heal. Archer reconnected with nature, which helped him through the harder times as he was experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder.

“And so, I started out with chickens and a couple of stalks of corn and plants in my backyard. And now I’m a certified beekeeper, certified urban farmer, certified permaculturist, and I keep adding more knowledge…”

Archer says knowledge is important since “that loss of connection to our ancestors is what is really bringing us into a world of monoculture and monocropping and those things are not sustainable for the human body or the human spirit”.

In Chicago, Archer is a member of the GAIA Movement Chicago Home Garden Club. GAIA sponsors several scholarships for US citizens to train at RVA and volunteer in St. Vincent and Africa.

Archer operates Archer Urban Farm Initiative, a quarter-acre farm on which he grows sunflowers, raises 21 laying hens, keeps bees and engages in permaculture.

There is an educational element to the urban farm, with visits by schools, libraries, neighbourhood programmes and other groups. He says that, interestingly, the children compare the scent of the plants at the farm to processed items.

This is an opportunity for Archer to explain, for example, that spearmint does not smell like chewing gum and that basil does not smell like Chinese food but that chewing gum smells like spearmint and Chinese food smells like basil.

“… you can explain to them that food is medicine and that if they put the right things in their bodies, then they won’t have to worry about diabetes or high blood pressure,” Archer says.

He also explains to visitors how chicken manure can be used instead of synthetic fertilisers on farms. Archer also cites the experience in European countries where households were offered two chickens, which consumed up to 150kg (330lb) of organic household waste per year while providing fresh eyes.

Archer Urban Farm Initiative sells its honey and organic eggs at Stein Learning Garden, which led him to RVA.

Since 2023, RVA has been networking with different organisations in the United States. In Chicago, efforts focused on students interested in enrolling in RVA’s programme but cannot afford to do so.

Students from Chicago have enrolled at RVA through a partnership between The GAIA Movement — an environmental organisation focused on recycling textiles and education – and Stein Learning Gardens, which is part of a social justice campus that is located on the grounds of a St. Sabina Catholic Church on the southside of Chicago.

In November 2023, Community Outreach and Operations Manager for Stein Learning Gardens, Richard Kirkpatrick and Eva Nielsen, President, CEO of The GAIA Movement as well as Marianne Thomsen, operations manager at The GAIA Movement, visited SVG to see the RVA campus as well as some of its programmes and projects.

St. Sabina found out that Archer was an urban farmer and put him in touch with Kirkpatrick, which led to him learning about GAIA Movement and RVA and their programmes.

Archer says that although family obligations prevent him from enrolling in one of the RVA’s six-month programmes, the visit to their campus in Richmond was inspiring.

“So, we decided to make an educational goal out of it. We were going to come here and learn what is going on in St Vincent’s so that how this paradise is maintaining itself in a world full of people who are like ‘A tree doesn’t have any value except for the wood that I can make something out of.’”

He recounts the other pleasant experiences in St. Vincent, including learning about Kalinago and Garifuna, visiting the oldest botanical gardens in the Western Hemisphere and his interactions with a herbalist Andrew Providence, Angela “Ideisha” Jackson and her artisanal ice-cream business and fishing with a local captain.

Archer was happy that two of the students from RVA were from Chicago.

Meanwhile, Stina Herberg, RVA’s Director Outreach and Public Diplomacy, says it is inspiring to see people like Archer and that part of Chicago see SVG as a training ground.

“St Vincent has a lot to offer but also to be a training ground for people, where they can experience an international environment then return home or go to another place and make a career.”

She states that the networks RVA builds make it possible for people to get scholarships to enroll in its programmes.

“It’s needed in many of these areas. They have much fewer opportunities. And I think that opportunities for studies in various ways, whether it’s a degree or like a volunteer training should be kind of equal opportunities for education.”

Herberg says she looks forward to returning to Chicago and arranging with GAIA the next Volunteer for Change events, which connect people in Chicago to volunteering at home and abroad, including in St. Vincent.

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