A new vision: Our model for urban land use can help solve our global climate crisis and provide food security and sovereignty for our residents.
Over half the world’s population now lives in cities, and has forgotten how to grow their own food; we believe this knowledge is a human birthright, and we must restore it to where most people live.
As the IPCC 6th Assessment Report explains, climate change is widespread, rapid, and intensifying. It is caused – and can be mitigated – by human behavior. Nothing is more urgent than our mission to transform land use to a more sustainable model.
Building a network of Eat Grow Learn centers in Santa Clara County is a vision to create urban ecovillages with teaching gardens and farms. These sites will transform land use in our region, and serve as a model for sustainable urban land use everywhere that people live, eat, learn, and grow.
When I founded The California Native Garden Foundation in 2004, it began as a parking lot. Our San Jose community began converting the land for sustainable use. We learned how to transform urban blight into a living garden that educates people about native plants. Now, 25 years later, we are driven to prepare youth for managing this kind of urban transformation in times of climate change.
At the center of each Eat Grow Learn site is an ROA (Regenerative Organic Agriculture) farm. This method of no-till farming uses native plants as hedgerows; compost to renew soil; a biodiversity of fruits and vegetables appropriate to our climate; renewable energy; aquaponics, and re-use of water and waste to create self-sustaining farms that are far more productive than conventional agriculture.
Rather than depleting soil, destroying native ecosystems, relying on monoculture, and bolstering the global economy, ROA works to sequester carbon, to regenerate native soils, ecosystems, and biodiversity, and to wean us from our reliance on synthetic chemicals and excessive transportation to meet our basic needs.
These ecovillages serve as community hubs for education, business, recreation, and housing. We offer fairs, farmer’s markets, workshops, and classes for community members of all ages. Theses sites train interns in food preparation, local ecology, and outdoor education.
When I was Executive Director, CNGF developed four certification programs in conjunction with San Jose Evergreen Community College District – Workforce Institute. By earning these certificates, students are trained in ecological careers. Program participants develop their skills while helping to create, maintain, and use the Eat Grow Learn centers.
Silicon Valley is home to some of the wealthiest companies, most innovative minds, and most fertile agricultural lands on the planet. Our model relies on these resources to provide land and funding; in return, Eat Grow Learn centers provide an innovative model of land use, and a workforce-in-training who can develop and maintain these sites, and use them for the benefit of our communities by providing freshly grown produce and helping to restore our local ecosystems.
To learn more about the development of the Eat Grow Learn Network, read: A Sustainable Urban Village Model – A Biomimic Design.
“Soil, not oil, offers a framework for converting the ecological catastrophe and human brutalization we face into an opportunity to reclaim our humanity and our future.” ―Dr. Vandana Shiva
“A mere 2 percent increase in the carbon content of the planet’s soils could offset 100 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions going into the atmosphere.” ―Dr. Rattan Lal
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality to change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” ―Buckminster Fuller
“The soil is the great connector of lives, the source and destination of all. It is the healer and restorer and resurrector, by which disease passes into health, age into youth, death into life. Without proper care for it we can have no community, because without proper care for it we can have no life.” ―Wendell Berry
“Did you know in one teaspoon of soil there are more living things than there are people in the world.” ―David Suzuki, Canadian scientist and environmental activist
“Unless we are willing to encourage our children to reconnect with and appreciate the natural world, we can’t expect them to help protect and care for it.” ―David Suzuki
Final Design for Santa Clara Agrihood
Each farm is designed to meet the life cycle needs of the local people who are creating it. At the beginning of this process to transform the land, we engage with local indigenous tribes to participate as partners in the development and long-term resilient transformation of the community that is participating.
Without making this vital connection to tribal members’ contribution of their indigenous ecological knowledge, no Eat Grow Learn center is able to grasp the historic relevance of what it means to have occupied this land, while continuously meeting their life cycle needs within 16 miles of where they have lived for the last 12,000 – 20,000 years according to the fossil record. To respect the integrity of this human connection allows us to embrace a future that is grounded on the intelligent survivability of our local tribes over the millennia.
As we create circular economic business models for income generation, our ecocenters can function as laboratories for researchers, local students can measure soil organic content, carbon sequestration, and record health data, both for the soil and for the residents, including educational opportunities for adults and children. Some urban and periurban sites are being designed with ecotourism in mind.
Concept Plan for the Agrihood – Alrie Middlebrook, artist and designer
Hester Farm, an urban regenerative organic farm – part of an Eat Grow Learn center created by CNGF in 2018
Another view of Hester Farm
ELSEE Garden, an Eat Grow Learn center, founded in 2000
A fundraising dinner event at ELSEE Garden, an Eat Grow Learn center at CNGF’s corporate headquarters
Eat Grow Learn center graduation day for Nature Immersion + Food classes
I have been working with local communities, including Rotary Clubs in the Bay Area to influence educational and land owning partners to develop a network of ROA farms and Eat Grow Learn centers in Santa Clara County. Six have already been developed or established, and the rest have potential for development. As of 2025, these sites include:
ELSEE (Environmental Lab for Sustainability and Ecological Education)
Hester Farm located on the property of Hester School
Pre-K Teaching Garden at Santee Educare
Chaparral Garden at Cureton First 5 Pre-K Teaching Garden at Cureton Elementary School, Alum Rock Union School District
The Agrihood Project Core Companies – Senior Apartments and Patio Gardens
“Almost every community on this planet has the ecological potential to be transformed into a local Eat Grow Learn center. However, in today’s exacerbated climate reality, progress is not possible without the support of major local and regional institutions comprised of resilient-minded individuals who are not afraid to listen and lead. We are fortunate in Silicon Valley to have this kind of leadership. Therefore, it is necessary for our community to act so that others can survive.”
―Alrie Middlebrook