Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can read.

-Mark Twain

The vacant homes and lots on Jennette Place near Walker Avenue and Mississippi Boulevard in South Memphis began germinating like an urban form of kudzu. They appeared like an invasive species in this proud neighborhood, spreading quickly, choking the life from viable properties and growing into a scourge that at one point seemed impossible to eradicate.

But hope is now growing on a nearly acre-sized urban farm at590 Jennette Place and is spreading as quickly as "the vine that ate the South."

"We're growing what was a 3/4-of-an-acre farm and we're tripling that," said Marlon Foster, founder of Green Leaf Learning Farm and executive director of Knowledge Quest, a South Memphis nonprofit.

"Where people see it as blight or land with no value, we see it as green assets."

Foster is part of a growing urban agriculture movement in Memphis, a system that could one day produce a sustainable supply of healthy, local food, provide jobs and help transform blighted urban areas.

Ramping up urban agriculture infrastructure and efforts to produce a truly sustainable industry - economically and in terms of food supply - will be the topic of discussion Friday, March 7, at an Urban Land Institute of Memphis conference. The conference, which runs from 8:30 a.m. to 10 a.m. at the Community Foundation of Greater Memphis, features Steve Luoni, director of the University of Arkansas Community Design Center.

For Foster and others, an interest in agriculture has turned into an avenue for creating viable businesses and fighting the city's staggering blight problem, including the tens of thousands of vacant or tax-sale properties that sprouted like weeds in many inner-city neighborhoods.

"We spent a long time talking about some of the issues Memphis had in terms of vacant parcels, access to food and jobs," said Mary Phillips, who founded Roots Memphis Farm Academy with Wes Riddle in 2012. "We put our heads together to see what would make sense to arrest these overarching needs."

On a half-acre farm on Brooks Road near Smith & Nephew, Roots Memphis Farm Academy provides business management and sustainable agriculture classes. Students take part in an eight-month academic program, which includes small-farm business entrepreneurship, planning and management. Next, students move on to an incubation phase, during which they manage a quarter-acre farm plot and demonstrate the capacity to commercially produce the crops reflected in their business plans.

The goal is to produce commercially viable farms smaller than commercial farms but larger than personal farms.

"There's not a lot of production or supply to meet the demand for local, chemical-free produce," said Phillips. "We are trying to develop a robust farm business community. Once we see the development of multiple regional farms, that's when we're really moving toward sustainability."

Luoni said producing a sustainable urban agriculture system requires thinking about it like an ecological municipal utility, one that includes green infrastructure and public spaces for growing, processing, distribution and consumption.