Halfway through its 2026 Community Engagement Grant year, the Rock Rose Food Justice Project, sponsored by Brown Memorial Park Avenue Presbyterian Church, is reporting significant growth, even as the project has had to adapt to a changing landscape of community partners.

Located at Rock Rose City Farm in Baltimore’s Jones Falls/Woodberry neighborhood, the project grows sustainable produce and delivers it free of charge to nonprofit kitchens and food distribution sites across the city. It is administered by Baltimore resident McKay Jenkins, an environmental journalist and longtime professor of Environmental Humanities at the University of Delaware, alongside fellow volunteers David Kalb, a retired plant pathologist from Cornell University, Bill Glass, a veteran public health professional with Johns Hopkins University, and Kathryn Underwood, a professional farmer at Gorman Farm in Howard County. The 2026 grant was awarded to support the farm’s continued growth, from infrastructure upgrades to a summer internship program that trains young people in urban farming and food justice.

According to their interim report, weekly vegetable production has climbed from 100 pounds to more than 250 pounds, a jump of over 50 percent from the project’s original goals. Much of that growth has been made possible by the addition of 12 paid college-aged interns from the University of Delaware and the University of Maryland, who join volunteers ranging from middle schoolers to Johns Hopkins post-docs in learning the practices of urban farming and food justice.

“We have greatly improved, and expanded, the work we are doing at the Rock Rose Food Justice Project. While we cannot control the workings of our distribution partners, we have remained flexible and resilient enough to change when change is required.”

The project has also had to navigate an unexpected shift among its distribution partners. Soul Kitchen, the nonprofit connected to Govans Presbyterian Church that the farm had long supplied, was forced to close for reasons beyond the project’s control. In response, Rock Rose redirected its expanded harvest to Chase Brexton Health Center, a Medicaid-only hospital whose in-house food pantry now serves more than 165 people a day. Many of those clients live with diabetes, high blood pressure, and other diet-related conditions that can be improved through access to nutritious food. The farm continues to supply smaller distribution partners as well, including sites in the Irvington neighborhood.

The partnership with Chase Brexton has proven especially strong. Project leaders describe the health center as enthusiastic about the collaboration, which has added thousands of pounds of fresh, locally grown organic produce to its pantry shelves.

Through the project, student interns and volunteers continue to learn about food justice, urban agriculture, and the structural roots of poverty in Baltimore City, work that amplifies the Presbytery of Baltimore’s core values of Promoting Justice and Practicing Inclusivity.

Brown Memorial Park Avenue Presbyterian 2026 Community Engagement Grant runs through the remainder of the year,. In the meantime, project leaders say their focus remains on training the next generation of young people while strengthening ties with distribution partners working to feed a city where 165,000 residents face food insecurity.

Learn more about the Presbytery’s Community Engagement Grants