Growing New Growers
March 12, 2025
Nicole Ryane Johnson used an LSU AgCenter program to start a small farming revolution in Lafayette.
Nicole Ryane Johnson helps community members in Lafayette, Louisiana, build raised garden beds.
The north side of Lafayette is a low-income urban food desert, but newly installed garden beds are starting to sprout in backyards and on front lawns. This spring, beginner farmers all around the area will be putting fresh vegetables on their own tables and selling some of their excess harvest at Fightingville Fresh, a twice-a-week neighborhood farmers market.
Behind this effort is Nicole Ryane Johnson from New Iberia. She and her partner Trey Lively first went through LSU AgCenter’s Louisiana Master Gardener program and then its Grow Louisiana program for beginner farmers. With the knowledge they gained, they were able to launch their own farm. Johnson also co-founded Fightingville Fresh and was recently awarded a grant from the United Way of Acadiana to fund 22 other beginner growers, whom they’re now helping to build raised garden beds, outfit with seeds and tools, and support with workshops, mentoring, and sales.
“Basically, we’re walking them through one full year of growing,” Johnson said. “The grant will pay for us to install communal cold storage for crops and create a producers’ courtyard where we’ll turn a shipping container into a wash-and-pack station. A lot of these new neighborhood growers may not have access to a proper wash station to clean and prepare their harvests, so they can bring their produce here. Also, for the growers who can’t commit to selling in-person at the farmers market twice a week, we have a consignment table.”
While the grant supports 22 growers, Johnson had as many as 86 applicants, many of whom still attend the workshops and turn to her and Kim Culotta, her partner in Fightingville Fresh, for advice.
“We’ve identified people who also want to grow at scale and contribute to the local food system. That’s huge,” Johnson said. “When Trey and I began the Master Gardener program, we did not intend to be farmers, but life is a journey. Now, what we grow feeds our family, our extended family, and much of our community.”
Black turmeric fresh from the field.
In addition, Fightingville Fresh will soon be hosting a cohort of Louisiana Central’s Farmer Training Program, which is similar to LSU AgCenter’s Grow Louisiana program and supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Registration for the program is open until March 11.
In teaching others and growing new growers, Johnson continues to use notes and lessons from Grow Louisiana.
“The Grow Louisiana program allowed me to consider farming as a career and understand the business side of farming,” Johnson said. “Without that program, I probably wouldn't be farming at scale, and I probably wouldn’t have the farmers market or be helping others grow. The connections we made in that program are invaluable. Honestly, I give it all to Grow Louisiana.”
Johnson now serves on the board of the Acadiana Food Alliance and on the steering committee for the Louisiana Small-Scale Agricultural Coalition.
“At the beginning of Fightingville Fresh, Kim and I started talking about the idea of ‘growing the grower,’” Johnson said. “Nurturing people who want to grow their own food became very important to us, not only as a way for our neighborhood to sustain itself, but also because there aren’t enough growers in our community.”
Growing up, Johnson remembers sitting in her grandfather’s garden and eating figs and tomatoes off the vine. She also remembers a neighborhood that sustained itself through a barter system.
“Farming has connected me closer with my family and my health.”
Nicole Ryane Johnson
“We grow in our backyard, we grow at Earthshare Gardens, and we grow at my mother’s house in New Iberia,” Johnson said. “We just purchased two acres in New Iberia to eventually transition our whole farm operation there.”
For their own L4S Farms, Lively and Johnson primarily grow turmeric, ginger, and medicinal herbs.
“Trey loves growing other root crops like beets and carrots, too,” Johnson said. “He loves cucumbers, potatoes, onions, peppers, garlic, and we make value-added products that people really love, like turmeric dill pickles from the turmeric we grow and the cucumbers we grow. Cucumbers will last for about a week, but our pickles are good for over a year.”
“We also sell pecans, figs, and citrus, and eventually, with our new land, we’ll add more fruit and possibly chickens,” Johnson continued. “Egg layers for the market, but also some meat chickens. Just for our family at first because that’s how we work. We prospect something, and then we scale it into a business. We also grow a lot of blackberries. And for everything we grow, we sell the nursery plants of those crops. We’ll have a greenhouse on our land to help scale up our nursery operation.”
Johnson’s journey demonstrates how LSU AgCenter educational programs are helping to launch new businesses and strengthen families and communities who indirectly reap the benefits of LSU research.
“All you need is good seed,” Johnson said.
Grow Louisiana provides whole-farm planning, horticulture and business training, online resources, support, networking, and mentoring for beginning farmers. The training program is offered for free through the LSU AgCenter: https://www.lsuagcenter.com/articles/page1737136637825
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