Growing Pains

NRG plows new ground with arcadia center

By Warren Rojas

Arcadia Center for Sustainable Food and Agriculture: 9000 Richmond Highway, Alexandria; www.arcadiafood.org.

Neighborhood Restaurant Group co-founder Michael Babin has no illusions about how hard it’s going to be to return the roughly 128 acres surrounding Woodlawn Plantation to their full, farming glory.

But that’s exactly what he aims to do with the forthcoming Arcadia Center for Sustainable Food & Agriculture.

“As restaurateurs, we are part of the system … [and] we struggle to get food from the farms we use,” Babin says of the real world tribulations that birthed his dream of a working farm cum educational facility.

The plan is to concentrate on cultivating heirloom and legacy varieties indigenous to the Mid-Atlantic on the farming side.

But the real test will come from attempting to establish a food redistribution network designed to circulate crops from independent local farms (100-150 mile radius, to start) to local consumers—be they restaurants, schools or even sustainably minded individuals—seven days a week.

“We’re going to have food to distribute every day,” Babin says of his ultimate goal.

(December 2010)