Urban agriculture has been getting much attention in the past decade as a solution to overcome food insecurity and accessibility of food for urban residents and to have better green environments in cities. Urban agriculture is expected to provide better nutrients to residents, reduce transportation and environmental costs, and help urban dwellers access food efficiently. The present study is to build a collaborative ecosystem among urban growers/producers and create bridges from these farmers to underserved low-income neighborhoods in Kansas City. The study focuses on identifying stakeholders' needs and challenges from urban growers and food desert communities with limited access to healthy and affordable food. In addition to the involvement of these key stakeholder groups, the study involves multiple disciplines from the geosciences, computer sciences, social sciences, and the transportation and food engineering sciences. This multi-disciplinary, stakeholder-driven approach seeks to understand better the problems and issues of grower and underserved communities to develop science-based solutions to address food insecurity issues in urban environments. The study has at its foundation the development of a secure social/informational platform serving both urban growers (food producers) and residents in food deserts (consumers), integrating them into an urban community through data cultivation and dynamic integration of data on transportation, food processing, and food-insecure neighborhoods. The transformative platform is built on a form of multi-disciplinary data layering and processing consisting of: (1) an Internet of Things (IoT) Sensing Network Layer that builds a smart farm sensing system for cost-effective food production via automated real-time data collection and dissemination, (2) Socioeconomic Layer that assesses socioeconomic benefits to urban growers and low-income residents, (3) Transportation Layer that explores fledgling transportation solutions such as delivery sharing, micro transportation, and drones, and (4) Food and Nutrition Layer that builds knowledge platforms for urban farmers about food processing and preservation techniques to improve the shelf life and safety of fresh products to better meet the nutritional needs of vulnerable populations. The present study will have significant broader societal impacts beyond the Kansas City metro area because it creates a transferable model for other urban communities across the United States.