Columbia’s Agriculture Park has a striking new addition this week: the Columbia Center for Urban Agriculture (CCUA) has opened its new Welcome Center, a $6 million building the nonprofit says is meant to put its resources within easier reach of both farmers and neighbors having a hard week.
The building’s centerpiece is an industrial-grade kitchen that CCUA co-founder Adam Saunders calls the “heart and soul” of the place. Every morning, volunteers are in that kitchen packaging meals for Meals on Wheels — more than 200 a day, with over 3,100 delivered in less than a month since the doors opened.
The same kitchen doubles as a value-added production space for local farmers, letting them turn a glut of raw produce — a heavy tomato crop, say — into shelf-stable canned goods instead of watching it go to waste.
Beyond the kitchen, the Welcome Center houses a resource center where anyone can sign up to volunteer for one of CCUA’s programs, a school library, a seed library, and garden mentoring aimed at helping low-income families grow their own food.
“In the resource center, you can sign up to be a volunteer; there are a bunch of different programs,” Saunders said.
For anyone who wants to see it firsthand — or pitch in — the Welcome Center is open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Saturdays from 8 a.m. to noon during the Columbia Farmers Market.