[SusDet Announce] Detroit Agriculture Snapshot

[Jacob Stevens Corvidae]

For those who missed the tour, I thought this was a nice snapshot of the 
great things happening in the Detroit Urban Ag. movement today.

Jacob

THE “QUIET REVOLUTION” IN DETROIT
By Grace Lee Boggs
Michigan Citizen, Aug. 12-18, 2007

It’s three years since I’ve been on the August Garden Tour. At that time 
we only needed two buses. This year there were so many participants and 
so many gardens that it took six buses, some visiting gardens on the 
west side of the city and others on the east side. It also included a 
bike tour.


The Westside garden tour , according to a young woman who has lived here 
only one year, included a lot of the city's newer gardens that really 
showcased the growing trend in community gardening, the different 
aspects of organizing that are incorporated into gardening, and the 
involvement of everyone across racial and ethnic lines and across age 
groups. It was amazing to see so many youth proudly explaining the work 
they had done on their garden and interacting with elders who are still 
excited about learning! The entire experience was truly inspiring and 
served to remind many of the tour participants why we love Detroit.

The first stop was the Brightmoor Community Garden, which was started 
just one year ago in the Northwest corner of the city. Tour participants 
were in awe of the gardener's own expansive personal garden, with 
everything from bees and melons to tomatoes and flowers, but even more 
impressed by the positive transformation of vacant land into a space 
where community members beautified abandoned houses adjacent to the 
garden and have successfully deterred criminal activity. The "D-Town 
Farm" garden is also new, just under two months old! The gardeners of 
this Black Community Food Security Network Garden seek to address food 
insecurity issues in Detroit's black community by providing fresh 
vegetables and fruit. It was here that I learned from another tour 
participant about unique ways to grow potatoes in stacks of tires!

Romanowski Farm Park is an amazing collaborative effort between the 
Greening of Detroit, MSU Extension, Capuchin Soup Kitchen, American 
Indian Health and Family Services, Latino Soccer League, and two 
neighboring public schools! An Americorps volunteer who coordinates the 
effort remarked that some youngsters recalled that just three years 
ago,there was nothing there. Now there are apple and pear trees, 
beautiful sunflowers, and vegetables and fruit ranging from okra to 
collards! One girl who lives in the neighborhood and attends the nearby 
school gave a few of us an informal mini-tour of some of her favorite 
parts of the community garden. She proudly informed us that anyone can 
help and eat from the garden! She remembers when she was just in third 
grade and, through her class, started to help out with the garden.

We drove by the garden at American Indian Health and Family 
Services,which features berries used in coming-of-age ceremonies and 
tobacco used to educate youth about health issues. Our final stop was 
the Birdtown Garden in Cass Corridor, where we were greeted by chickens, 
samples of honey, and yet another inspiring story of community members 
coming together.

A Detroiter who retired recently from her job in the City County 
Building was on an Eastside bus. “I got a sense,” she told me, “of how 
important community gardens are to our city and how we need to replicate 
them all over the city. They reduce neighborhood blight, build 
self-esteem among young people, provide them with structured activities 
from which they can see results, build leadership skills, provide 
healthy food and a community base for economic development, People, 
especially young people, not only learn where food comes from but how to 
prepare healthy food.

“We drove down one street where the residents had contacted the Detroit 
Agricultural Network about the vacant lots on the block. Now, after 
planting a community garden, the grass is cut on every lawn. There is no 
litter on the street. People have become more neighborly The garden 
brought the children together and the adults together. They had 
discovered a new use for the Land.

“One community garden, grown without pesticides, provides enough healthy 
food for 25.families. There were a lot of young people on our bus and I 
thought of the many young people who say they have nothing to do and who 
only eat fast food.”

“I see this as the ‘Quiet Revolution.’ It is a revolution for 
self-determination taking place quietly in Detroit.”

-- 
  Jacob Stevens Corvidae
  Green Programs Manager
  jacob at warmtraining.org

  WARM Training Center
  Promoting Affordable, Sustainable Communities Since 1981
  www.warmtraining.org

  4835 Michigan Ave.
  Detroit, MI 48210
  313.894.1030 x.119