Ashley Webb was trying to tend to her shop, but her two young children were bickering over a pair of shoes. As she showed a customer her stock, the kids ran around her fresh produce shop — Barcelo Gardens Fresh Market — and Webb had to break up the quarrel, eventually allowing them some time on a smartphone.
It was late October, but Webb still had some summer fruit left in stock. One customer walked in and bought three yellow-seeded watermelons, some of the last available. The shop, on a mostly empty stretch of Piety Street in the Desire neighborhood, also boasted Italian cucuzza squash, various greens, and locally-made pepper jellies — otherwise hard-to-find items in the immediate area, which lacks full-service grocery stores.
One of Webb’s chief goals is making local produce available in places where it’s not easily accessible. “At least here in the 9th Ward, but a lot of other areas too, there’s no grocery stores, and then what there is, there’s just not a lot to choose from,” she said.
“We can’t grow enough for the amount of people we get,” Webb said. In order to keep up with the demands of the community, Webb and Barcelo-Sanchez buy wholesale from Mississippi and North Shore farmers.
Webb said she hopes to grow Barcelo Gardens even more, and make it “a connector” between rural farmers, urban farmers and people living in food deserts. And she wants legislation like the farm bill, a massive omnibus law that governs food and agriculture policy, to make this aim more feasible. A May estimate from the Congressional Budget Office predicted the 2023 farm bill could exceed $1 trillion — the most expensive in the law’s 90-year history.
In the next farm bill, Webb would like to see more grants and programs that connect urban and rural farmers together or to intermediaries, like Barcelo Gardens. This would give more opportunities for farmers to sell their produce while offering people in cities a healthier and more varied diet, Webb said.