Why I Started Cultivation Station

The City Harvest Journal | Post 1 By Patrick O'Briant, Founder and Executive Director

I'm from Arkansas. After high school, I enlisted in the Air Force. I spent six years as a technician maintaining electrical, HVAC, and power systems on Minuteman 3 nuclear launch facilities. It was demanding, precise work, and it taught me how to build and maintain systems that have to function reliably under pressure. I was honorably discharged as a Staff Sergeant.

When I left the military, I started my college journey at UALR. Soon after, I made the trip to Ithaca, NY that would change my life. Gradually, as I continued my education, my focus shifted from a Mechanical Engineering pathway to land on major issues that we are experiencing around food security and water usage across the globe. After attaining my Associate’s in Environmental Studies, I transferred to Cornell University to study Plant Sciences with a focus on sustainable crop production.

I earned a bachelor's in Plant Sciences, then stayed for a master's in Agronomy. Along the way I was awarded a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, one of the more competitive research grants available to graduate students. My research focused on weed science and agroecology in the DiTommaso Lab, where I studied how invasive grasses establish and compete with crops across New York's growing regions. I've presented that work at national conferences and co-authored peer-reviewed publications. Even now, we’re pushing to publish some of my research within a few weeks.

But it was the work I did in the Poveda Lab that shaped what I'm doing now. I collaborated with researchers at Cornell, ICIPE (the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology), and rural Kenyan farmers to study push-pull agroecosystems: intercropping strategies that manage pests and improve yields without relying on synthetic inputs. I was in the field with smallholder farmers working on real food production challenges, studying how ecological approaches could make their operations more resilient. The difference between the standard growing methods and the push-pull system was remarkable.

That experience is what pointed me toward international development. I wanted to do food security consulting, helping communities in the developing world build agricultural systems that actually work for the people farming them. I built every part of my education and research career toward that goal.

Then two things happened at once. The job market for international development work contracted sharply. And I started looking more carefully at what was happening at home.

Arkansas has a food access problem that doesn't get nearly enough attention. Across the state, and especially in parts of Central Arkansas, there are communities where families travel unreasonable distances to reach a full-service grocery store. The USDA classifies many of these areas as food deserts. The produce that is available is often limited in variety, quality, and nutritional value. And the practical knowledge of how to grow food, which was once common here, has eroded over generations.

I realized I didn't need to go overseas to do the work I'd been training for. The need was right here, in the state I grew up in.

That's how Cultivation Station started. Not with a grand unveiling or a big grant, but with a straightforward observation: Central Arkansas has underutilized land, communities that need better food access, and people who want to learn. What it's missing is the infrastructure to connect those things.

Cultivation Station is a nonprofit training and demonstration farm hub. We select underutilized properties and transform them into what we call Harvest Hubs: working growing sites where we produce nutritious, high-quality food and teach practical methods to anyone willing to learn.

We grow primarily heirloom vegetables chosen for flavor, nutrition, and resilience in our climate, along with seasonal fruits, culinary herbs, and nursery plants. We follow science informed and known best practices for production methods. We will teach through hands-on apprenticeship and mentorship embedded in the growing spaces themselves. We will also offer workshops and short courses on focused topics like composting, agroecology, food preservation, and cooking.

The food we grow moves into the community through direct sales and structured donations to food-insecure Arkansans. The training we provide builds capacity that stays in the community permanently. A person who learns to grow food doesn't need us to grow it for them next year.

We're a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Our first Harvest Hub is a 10-acre site called Stone Links Park, on the eastern edge of North Little Rock. Right now it's raw land. By the end of this summer, we intend to have raised beds in the ground, irrigation running, and the first crops going in. I'll be writing about every step of that process here in The City Harvest Journal.

If you're reading this, you're early. We're building Cultivation Station from the ground up, and that means the people who show up now are the ones who shape what it becomes. Whether you want to donate, volunteer, learn to grow, or just follow along and see what happens, I'm glad you're here.

There's a lot of work ahead. Let's get to it.

Patrick O'Briant

Founder and Executive Director, Cultivation Station

patrick@cultivationstation.farm