Prospects for an Enduring Agriculture in the Rustbelt: A Tale of Two Cities

Abstract

Detroit and Cleveland both have a vibrant agriculture that is supported by municipal policies and philanthropic resources; both also have abundant vacant land in public ownership. Despite these shared traits, the two cities differ in important ways in the ways in which agriculture is organized—whether it takes the form of community gardens managed by neighborhood groups or larger farms run by nonprofits or market operations—and raises questions about why this is the case and if these differences have implications for agriculture’s long term prospects. The chapter discusses specific governance arrangements in recent history in each city, approaches to vacant land and land use, and the relationships between growers and neighborhood and public institutions, and traces their implications for agriculture’s organization, purposes, and long term prospects there. It also outlines possible lessons from each city to the other.

Detroit and Cleveland both are home to a thriving agriculture, supportive policy frameworks and capable organizations. Due to decades of disinvestment and abandonment, and the recent foreclosure crisis, they also contain significant amounts of vacant land with few immediate prospects for development. Thus, at least from the perspective of potential availability of land, the cities hold promise for an agriculture that endures into the future.

In 2016, pushed by land-related questions emerging from the urban agriculture community in Detroit, I examined the challenges growers faced in obtaining secure, long-term access to land, and their related frustrations and successes (Pothukuchi 2017). This study discussed the many ways in which the Detroit Land Bank Authority’s (DLBA) practices—and those of previous land agencies—frustrated growers’ attempts to obtain land through purchase or long-term leases. It also uncovered anxieties that DLBA officials, city staff and elected officials had about urban agriculture and its appropriateness and durability as an urban land use despite significant, chronic vacancy. Detroit’s land governance was confirmed by this study to serve growth interests even if prospects for development are bleak into the foreseeable future (Hackworth 2014).

These findings prompted a pivot to Cleveland (Pothukuchi 2018). If Detroit’s vacant land governance is all about growth, Cleveland’s avowedly embraces both growth and equity agendas (Hackworth 2014). Perhaps there are lessons from Cleveland’s land disposition for agriculture for Detroit. Cleveland’s community development governance built over the last few decades in ways that recognize neighborhood equity and social welfare is well-known. The Re-imagining a More Sustainable Cleveland framework to productively reuse vacant land in the wake of the foreclosure crisis, adopted in 2008, also augured well for agriculture and raised expectations for the movement of land to urban farming interests.

The Cleveland study found that, indeed, publicly owned vacant land does host agriculture in important ways. Many small-plot community gardens sponsored by the Summer Sprout garden program are located on properties owned by the Cleveland Land Bank (CLB), and supported for the use by one-year license agreements with neighborhood groups. Several nonprofit human and social service organizations also lease parcels from the CLB to operate farms whose harvests are sold in neighborhood markets. Notwithstanding the sale of properties to a handful of farming operations during and after the Re-imagining era (2008–14), by and large, land bank properties are available only on a short term and qualified basis for agriculture. Nonprofit-led agricultural operations are also dependent on outside grants, and, around the period of the study, several had closed or were threatened with closure.

Thus, it turns out that vacant land policies in Cleveland too support agriculture in limited and tenuous ways. Agriculture in the city, in turn, responds to this and other realities to be organized around such uses as land stabilization and social service provision—besides the food self-provisioning and informal sharing enabled by community gardens, that is—rather than the incremental development of a complex urban food system as a primary goal. Despite invoking sustainability, Re-imagining was never envisioned as a strategy to build permanence in agriculture or other open space uses. As is the case elsewhere, agriculture in Cleveland too is viewed only as an interim use of vacant land, to be held while awaiting development.

From the perspective of vacant land policies to support agriculture over the long term, therefore, both cities fall short, at least as of this writing. Both cities display a reluctance to support with secure land tenure, an enduring agriculture that has multifunctional relationships to households, neighborhoods, local economies, and the natural environment. Given the paragraph that started this chapter, this two-city review, then, brings us back to some basic questions, with preliminary responses in this chapter that merit deeper investigation.

• What is the nature of access to vacant land for agriculture in the two cities?

• What role, if any, does vacant land governance play in the organization of agriculture in each city?

• What other factors affect agriculture in each?

• What are possible implications for an enduring agriculture in the two cities? What can each city learn from the other?

The chapter uses data from phone and in-person interviews, content analysis of documents available from public sources, map data, and windshield surveys to answer these questions. The sources are described in Pothukuchi (2017), Pothukuchi (2018) with updates, as available, for this chapter. The following sections take up each question. Below, highlights are offered of the agriculture in the two cities, to set the context for the above questions.

1 Agriculture in Cleveland and Detroit

Both cities are host to a storied and vibrant agriculture with some common and some divergent elements to their history and present-day organization. For example, both cities hosted gardens during the Great Wars and the Great Depression. Both cities also experienced a boost during the great migration of African Americans from farming backgrounds who fled the Jim Crow South (Fiskio et al. 2016; White 2011a, b). The two also have adopted a permissive ordinance that legitimates agriculture as an acceptable land use and defines related standards. Finally, in both cities, community, backyard, and school gardens are ubiquitous; market gardeners sell at local markets and to area outlets; and nonprofits link agriculture to social service programs.

There are also significant divergences, including Cleveland’s Re-imagining initiative, mentioned previously, which embraced agriculture among other vacant land reuse concepts. While the city lacks independent membership organizations or those with specific goals for the city’s food system, Detroit has at least two—Keep Growing Detroit and the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network. Extension plays a much greater role in convening and organizing agriculture in Cleveland. Municipal funding for agriculture is also nonexistent in Detroit, while several city departments support agriculture in Cleveland (see Pothukuchi 2018). Following paragraphs highlight significant elements of each city’s agriculture, starting with Cleveland.

Cleveland

Summer Sprout is Cleveland’s gardening resource program since 1976, managed by Ohio State University Extension (OSUE), with partial funding from the city. In 2017, the program supported 187 gardens (Ohio State University Extension 2018). A majority of these gardens—129 out of 148 for which data are available—were established in the 2000s. Engaging nearly 3400 gardeners on 50 acres, these sites donated just under 15,000 lbs. of produce to area food charities (Ohio State University Extension 2016). Seventy out of 100 gardens that are located on publicly-owned land are on CLB properties (Summer Sprout, private communication). Sale of harvests from these gardens is forbidden.

OSUE’s 10-week Market Gardener Training Program helps build capacity in entrepreneurial agriculture and small business development. Since the program’s start in 2006, its 215 graduates have gone on to start 57 market gardens and 35 individuals have started other urban agriculture enterprises, according to the City of Cleveland (2015). In 2008, the city’s economic development department started providing “Greenbacks for Gardens” grants¹ to entrepreneurial growers (City of Cleveland 2014, 2015, 2018). Participants who complete the Program become eligible to lease a quarter-acre plot in the Kinsman Farm—a 6-acre market garden incubator in the city’s 28-acre Urban Agriculture Innovation Zone (UAIZ)—and to apply for a Gardening for Greenbacks grant. Too, since 2012, nearly $450,000 in United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) grants underwrote the installation of 95 seasonal high tunnels—also called hoop houses—in the city’s neighborhoods.

Harvests from larger farms are sold at area markets, other outlets, or through CSA shares. Typically operated by nonprofit organizations, these farms embrace such social goals as training, employment, and social inclusion of vulnerable groups such as people with disabilities, refugees, veterans, formerly incarcerated individuals, and those who are homeless or housing-insecure. For example, Cleveland Crops partners with the Cuyahoga County Board of Developmental Disabilities and OSUE to train and employ individuals with disabilities. Other examples include farms sponsored by the Lutheran Metropolitan Ministry and the Fairfax Renaissance Development Corporation (Keating 2013, pp. 19 and 24), and the Rising Harvest Farm that, until recently, was a wholly-owned subsidiary of Koinonia Homes, Inc.² The six-acre Ohio City Farm (OCF) similarly is operated in partnership with Refugee Response’s Refugee Empowerment Agricultural Program (REAP). OCF and REAP offer training and employment to 15 refugees from six countries (The Refugee Response n.d.).

Unless they are led by individual entrepreneurs or represent registered businesses, thus, agricultural operations in the city involve complex partnerships between neighborhood groups, public agencies, CDCs, nonprofit providers of social and human services, and local philanthropies. This has implications for the shape and future of agriculture in the city, as discussed in a later section.

Detroit

Several vibrant food and agricultural programs exist in Detroit, sponsored by a wide variety of neighborhood-based as well as citywide nonprofits, Detroit Public Schools, and local universities. One citywide organization, Keep Growing Detroit (KGD), identifies 1603 gardens in its network, which involved 24,362 members who grew approximately 385,750 pounds of produce (Keep Growing Detroit 2018). They include 913 families, 143 schools, and 426 community gardens.

Harvests from 55 gardens are sold through KGD’s Grown in Detroit Cooperative at Eastern Market and other venues; in 2018, they earned more than $50,000. A portion of KGD’s membership—34 gardens and farms—sold a share of their harvests to local restaurants and businesses, collectively earning more than $20,000 in 2018 (Keep Growing Detroit 2018). Several growers earn significant portions, a few, all, of their income from sales at markets and to other outlets. About a dozen city-based CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) farms additionally supply produce throughout an extended season to area residents. Founded in 2006 as a garden on a vacant east side lot, the Detroit Black Community Food Security’s (DBCFSN) D-Town Farm has obtained a long-term lease on seven acres in Rouge Park, a city park on the west side, and also operates a seasonal farm stand on site and, as well, sells at neighborhood markets.

In 2012, the city sold 1500 vacant parcels (about 140 acres) to Hantz Woodlands.³Initiated about that time, but culminating in 2015 with more stringent terms, RecoveryPark Farm also obtained a lease for 35 acres on the city’s east side.⁴ Produce from the latter is sold to high-end restaurants and supermarkets and also distributed through a produce wholesaler in Eastern Market.

To conclude this section, Detroit’s agriculture operates autonomously from city agencies and Cooperative Extension, with a large number of individual growers—both subsistence as well as entrepreneurial—supported by citywide networks operated by a nonprofit, in addition to nonprofits operating larger-scale farms. Finally, entrepreneurial operations that are operated as private businesses also supply neighborhood farmers markets, CSAs, restaurants, and other outlets.

2 Access to Vacant Land for Agriculture in Cleveland and Detroit

Land banks in both cities were developed to return tax-delinquent land to productive use. Formed in 1976 as a program in the city’s Department of Community Development, the Cleveland Land Bank (CLB) transferred properties to non-profit developers and neighbors for nominal sums throughout the 1980s and 1990s (Keating and Lind 2012). However, by 2007, it was ill-equipped to handle the impacts of the mortgage foreclosure crisis. The Cuyahoga County Land Bank⁵ was formed in 2009 to provide a more expansive response. Organized as an independent non-profit, it possesses a wider range of powers than the CLB, and derives revenue from more diverse sources (Keating and Lind 2012).

The Detroit Land Bank Authority (DLBA) is a public entity created under state law to tackle vacant, abandoned, and foreclosed properties in the city and return them to productive use.⁶ In 2014, Mayor Mike Duggan empowered the DLBA, previously a small and mostly ineffective agency, to lead his blight fight with 93 full- and part-time employees (Dolan et al. 2015). As of July 2018, 95,252 properties were in DLBA’s control; 65,202 of these were vacant (Detroit Land Bank Authority 2018). The DLBA is the largest landowner in the City of Detroit; holding title to approximately 25 percent of all parcels in the City of Detroit.

2.1 Cleveland Programs for Vacant Land

The CLB sells side-lots and offers parcels for one-year renewable licenses or one-to-three-year renewable lease. Side-lot buyers need to establish basic bona fides with the city, specify plans for the site, and have the financial wherewithal to enter into related agreements which include claw back provisions for failure to improve or maintain the property as proposed. Keating (2013) reports that, between 2009 and 2013, many of the 1350 vacant lots transferred from the Cuyahoga County Land Bank to the City of Cleveland were sold under the Side Yard Program. How many of these were acquired for agricultural cultivation is unknown.

Neighborhood groups sponsoring community gardens may secure CLB properties through a one-year renewable license agreement with a $1 payment, with conditions of eligibility similar to those for the side yard. As mentioned earlier, food grown on land bank property licensed for gardening may not be sold. Thus, such harvests tend to be used for subsistence, informal sharing, and donation to food programs. Nonprofits that operate market gardens may lease properties for terms of up to three years for a negotiated fee.⁷ For these, the lessee is also required to carry insurance.

Applicants for both license and lease are urged to seek support from the CDC serving their neighborhood and their local council member, as well as seek resources from programs such as Summer Sprout⁸ and the Market Garden Training Program. Guidance on eligibility, requirements, and procedures for filing is available on the CLB’s website. Land is very seldom sold for agriculture, as noted on the land bank’s website (City of Cleveland n.d.-a). A couple of nonprofits engaged in ag-related operations in the city—such as Chateau Hough Vineyards and Rid- All Green Partnership—have been able to purchase land from the CLB in depressed neighborhoods; these, however, are clear exceptions. A small network also exists of market growers who sell in area markets, but respondents from this group either reported negative experiences or no dealings with the CLB.

The existing lease and license programs release growers from tax obligations and other liabilities of ownership. How many growers—especially would-be market growers who have to make significant upfront investments—are dissuaded from pursuing agriculture or pursuing it more robustly due to the city’s well-known reluctance to sell land for anything other than development is unknown. Thus, Cleveland’s vacant land disposition policies are accessible, transparent, and predictable for their implementation. They seek to reserve land for development and prevent speculation, and allow only temporary, short-term transfers for urban agriculture.

A note about Re-imagining is warranted here (see Pothukuchi 2018 for details). Re-imagining was adopted as a sustainability framework in 2008 for agriculture and other open space use to link vacant land, policy, planning, and resources in ways that Detroit lacks altogether. A 28-acre Urban Agriculture Innovation Zone was designated along with the 6-acre Kinsman Farm in the Forgotten Triangle area of Cleveland, in which entrepreneurial growers could access land, funding, and technical assistance through OSUE. However, by 2016, when I launched my Cleveland study, not only did the UAIZ perform well below expectations, many farms that received Re-imagining funding had failed or under-performed. Several nonprofit led farms either lost funding, or were threatened with such loss (French et al. 2015; Snook 2015). Although it was never designed to secure land for open space uses into perpetuity, Re-imagining raised tantalizing possibilities for other cities, but ultimately is paradoxical given the reality of short term and contingent land transfers within a sustainability rubric.

2.2 Detroit Programs for Vacant Land

Two main programs exist for residents to acquire vacant land from the DLBA: the Side Lot Program and the Nonprofit, Faith, and Community Organization Program, commonly known as the Community Partner (or CP) Program. Vacant side lots can be purchased for $100 each by owner-occupants on either side or in front of property with a maximum of two side lots per property (Detroit Land Bank Authority 2016). Purchasing a side lot is relatively easy and can be done online. A total of 9654 side lots were sold between December 6, 2014, when the program started, and July 2018 (Detroit Land Bank Authority 2018). How many were sold or are being used for the purpose of agriculture is unknown.

The CP Program requires designated community-based nonprofits to meet the following standards: Detroit location, 501 (c) (3) tax exempt status, to be current on property taxes, to be free of blight violations or fines, and to serve a geographic area no larger than 5 square miles. At $100 per parcel, CPs may purchase up to 9 parcels per year without City Council approval. As of October 2018, 938 properties were sold under this program; in 2018, they included 23 lots. Several nonprofit organizations have purchased properties under the CP program for the explicit purpose of supporting agricultural operations; some host farm stands or markets in their neighborhoods or at external locations. No data exists on how many such lots are being used for agriculture.

Besides these programs, few avenues exist for growers to purchase land from the DLBA at other than the price of 20–24 cents per square foot set by the DLBA, a price that most farmers can ill-afford especially if they are also beginners.⁹ Entrepreneur-growers who produce for sale—nominally designated “for-profit” operations—are prohibited from using the CP program as a “pass through.” According to an informant, about a dozen market growers have been able to purchase parcels from the DLBA over the last two years in transactions that were tailored for their specific cases. No such sale was anywhere near the scale of the sale to Hantz Farms (about 140 acres) or even RecoveryPark Farm (about 35 acres), both discussed previously.

Although no lease or license programs of the kind that exist in Cleveland support agriculture in Detroit,¹⁰ a majority (77 percent) of growers who participate in the Keep Growing Detroit network own the property on which they farm (Keep Growing Detroit 2018). While it is possible that a portion of these parcels under production was purchased from the DLBA including through the side lot program, the frustrations growers have experienced with securing land or tenure from land-holding agencies over the last decade are well documented (Pothukuchi 2017). Inured to red tape, lost files, and delays and non-response from especially the city’s Planning and Development Department—which dealt with foreclosed properties prior to the DLBA—many growers likely obtained the land from other owners.

DLBA policy implicitly, therefore, is to sell vacant parcels in only limited and restricted ways to current residents and community-based organizations in the city, which many observers read as reluctance (Benedetti 2016; Gallagher 2015b; Guzman 2016). Some feel that with its piecemeal land disposition approach, the city is giving up on a transformational vision for large scale blue-green uses (Gallagher 2015a). While these constraints apply to any open space use, the practical effect is that growers who cannot use the Side Lot or CP programs face an uphill battle to secure land in the quantity and location desired.

To conclude this section, Cleveland’s vacant land approach for agriculture predominantly focuses on short term licenses and leases with significant amounts of cultivation occurring on such parcels, while this approach is nonexistent in Detroit. On the other hand, more recently the DLBA has started to sell parcels on a smaller scale to individual growers and nonprofit organizations that sponsor agriculture. Such sales, while important, nonetheless represent a miniscule number relative to the scale of vacancy. Land accessibility thus has implications for the shape of the agricultural landscape in each city, and its connection to the broader community, as discussed in the next section. In neither city, however, is there currently a policy that links vacant land transfer (either via sale or lease) in a systematic, long-term strategy to grow urban agriculture and food systems.

3 Vacant Land Governance, Planning and Politics: Implications for Agriculture

Invariably, politics, policies and regulations related to land and land use, resources, and other forms of support have implications for the organization of agriculture in the city, and for its linkages to other community sectors. This section reviews these influences in each city to trace the outlines of agriculture there, and derives strengths and weaknesses in each case.

Cleveland’s

agriculture has the benefit of many of the aforementioned institutional supports in the form of a competent community development industry that sought to stabilize neighborhoods by repurposing vacant land in the wake of the foreclosure crisis; several ordinances and other regulations supportive of agricultural activities; positive city leadership; generous grants from local foundations; and technical assistance by OSU Extension professionals. The city also has individuals with expertise in developing and sustaining agricultural programs. All these factors came together in 2008 with Re-imagining, even if the initiative stopped short of delivering for agriculture all that advocates might have hoped (Pothukuchi 2018). Following paragraphs discuss how these features create both strengths for agriculture as well as specific limitations.

A central feature of Cleveland’s governance is its well-developed neighborhood focus and capacity, with community development corporations (CDCs) evolving over the last four decades as familiar and trusted vehicles to deliver neighborhood welfare. Combining citizen participation with fiscal and development expertise, CDCs make and implement plans within neighborhoods for housing, economic development, and physical redevelopment, all in sophisticated deals combining resources from a variety of sectors (Lowe 2008; McQuarrie 2010; Yin 1998). Neighborhood Progress, Inc. (NPI) was created to be the primary engine to help redevelop Cleveland’s neighborhoods; it serves as an intermediary to municipal agencies and philanthropies while also providing technical assistance to CDCs (Yin 1998).

Thus, Cleveland’s governance offers a departure from purely market-oriented policies and incorporates redistributionist goals such as affordable housing, neighborhood services, and with the adoption of Re-imagining, sustainability. Re-imagining engendered a recognition of agriculture, among other open-space uses, as an important reuse of vacant land in neighborhoods, with the potential of delivering multiple benefits. Thus, embracing urban agriculture within the frame of community development, it integrated land, land use, strategic mapping, funding, and policies, in ways that have supported community gardening and nonprofit-led market agriculture.

Re-imagining also gave a boost to urban agriculture policies (City of Cleveland n.d.-b). Although an Urban Agriculture and Green Space Zoning Ordinance was adopted by the city in 2005; its agricultural element began to gain traction in 2007 (Hughes 2014). Adopted in 2007, the Urban Garden Zoning District reserves land exclusively for garden use. It also allows production for sale and on-site sale of produce. The Chicken and Bee Zoning (adopted 2009) allows residents to keep fowl, and specifies standards for setbacks, lot size, and location of coops and cages. Finally, the city permits agriculture as a principal use on all vacant residentially zoned lots and permits sale of produce from farm stands as a conditional use (adopted, 2010). The city also offers reduced-rate water hydrant permits to urban growers between May and October (Hughes 2014).

These policies were championed by leaders such as then councilmember Joe Cimperman, then planning director Robert Brown, and agriculture advocates such as Morgan Taggart and Lilah Zautner, among many others. The process of creating and adopting these policies, in turn, helped engender even more positive attitudes towards agriculture among community leaders, according to Walsh et al. (2015).

Re-imagining set aside funds for “signature” projects that were expected to serve as models. Thirty-two of 125 projects funded by Re-imagining between 2009 and 2014 were ag-related, that is, community or market gardens, orchards, or vineyards (Pothukuchi 2017). Together, they received nearly $400,000 out of nearly $1.4 million distributed under Re-imagining, an impressive level of funding over and above ongoing city support mentioned earlier, and in addition to grants offered by Neighborhood Connections and other sources.

Finally, OSU Extension plays significant roles in organizing, convening and training the city’s gardeners and farmers, and providing technical assistance to them. Summer Sprout, for example, provides assistance to new and returning garden groups with securing access to CLB parcels, obtaining basic resources such as seeds and transplants, and developing gardens; it also manages gardener networks. Other services include training and business assistance for market growers, farm-to-school initiatives, bee-keeping, and other activities organized on a county-wide basis. For an example of the activities, see the three issues of the newsletter for 2018 (Ohio State University Extension n.d.).

All these features contribute to an agriculture that has both rhetorical and practical support within city government and neighborhood and community development institutions, and from local philanthropy. Small-plot growing is encouraged in community gardens that may occupy publicly owned land, and nonprofit organizations similarly grow food on a larger scale for market while also providing human and social services to disadvantaged populations. Such social service nonprofits are preferred by the CLB for signing leases for agricultural use because they are familiar entities in community development networks that can be trusted to use vacant land productively. At the same time, they also can be trusted to get behind the redevelopment priorities of the industry should the investment climate shift, and release the leased properties (Pothukuchi 2018).

Thus, agriculture in Cleveland faces a future that is arguably less than secure due to the short-term and contingent nature of land access and evidence of retrenchment in funding to social service nonprofits that engage in agriculture. Already disadvantaged when they have to compete with nonprofits that charge lower prices for produce at markets, entrepreneurial growers and agriculture-oriented businesses experience significant challenges obtaining land from the CLB. The predominantly neighborhood-level organization of planning and politics reinforces these challenges given the inherent bias towards land redevelopment within neighborhoods and by CDCs. Many elected officials—council members as well as Mayor Frank G. Jackson—also are openly skeptical about agriculture as more than an interim use of urban land.¹¹

Finally, several growers interviewed believe that OSUE convenes gardeners and provides services according to its own institutional and geographic logics rather than necessarily to satisfy bottom-up needs bubbling up from growers or to develop a layered food system through evolving market networks involving city growers, local businesses and institutions, and value-added activities. While not universally held, this view nonetheless was expressed in different ways. For example, one entrepreneurial grower recounted his experience soon after the Urban Agriculture Innovation Zone was constituted with OSUE designated as the convenor for the farm incubator program:

Ohio State University Extension put together about six acres there that was one continuous area (Kinsman Farm). They wanted to develop into a co-op, a farmer-run co-op. Then when we first started self-managing, a lot of us had a vision—that (emerged from) a kind of strife between the for-profit farmer and non-profit farmer. Non-profits are generally organizations that can grant-write. They can also get thirty to forty volunteers on a weekend and stuff like that. So a bunch of us didn’t want the non-profit sector in this farm. OSU Extension completely overruled that even though that was kind of our first order of business. So it was sort of like this one thing, they tell you something, then they do another. They want you to self-govern and then as soon as you self-govern they’re like, “Uh, except now...” … So I got out of what was called Kinsman Farm because it just … (was) not moving forward. The soil was poor. The discontinuity between the farmers, (it) was very poor.

He complained about the requirements OSUE imposed which he found onerous given the relatively poor quality of resources obtained in return, and contrasted his Cleveland experience with that in a neighboring community that sold him two lots at a reasonable price to develop an orchard.

They sold me the properties and now I have two small orchards with about eighty pawpaw trees total.

(KP: Wow, pawpaw trees, nice!)

Yeah, so instead of like some (expletive) trying to make me quantify stuff that they’ll never understand on paper anyways, like how many thousands of pounds of tomatoes did you grow? How much did you sell them for, by the pound? Instead of this annoying Excel spreadsheet quantification stuff that … farmers generally aren’t going to know. Eventually we get ok at that but that is not where we want to put our time or energy or thought process, especially after we’ve already been promised this property. The (neighboring) city folks sold me this land based on them actually seeing that I’m a pretty good grower and kind of an asset.

In contrast to interviews with Detroit growers, discussed below, few growers or organizational representatives I interviewed in Cleveland expressed visions for a future of urban agriculture that is integrated into the fabric of neighborhoods as they undergo redevelopment. Few growers also communicated goals for agriculture for the city as a whole.

Detroit

lacks many of the specific public or integrated community development supports discussed above for Cleveland, or experiences them on a much smaller scale. Just as Cleveland’s agriculture is influenced by the city’s community development industry, so is Detroit’s history peculiar for its agriculture. This history has created opportunities for both, a citywide, grassroots-led organization of agriculture, as well as one that is motivated by ideals of community self-reliance and food justice and sovereignty. DLBA lacks frameworks for vacant land for agriculture, is opaque for disposition beyond the side lot and CP programs, and quotes prices per square foot that defy comprehension in many locations. However, despite this seeming resistance and the ambivalence communicated by elected leaders and agency officials, agricultural networks are incrementally forging food system linkages in creative and resilient ways. Nonetheless, agriculture here also confronts specific limitations. These and other elements are discussed below.

In contrast to the neighborhood focus of the community development movement in Cleveland, redevelopment efforts in Detroit for the last few decades were blamed for privileging downtown and riverfront areas, serving outsiders rather than residents, and ignoring neighborhoods (Eisinger 2003). These efforts also gave business elites disproportionate influence (Hall and Hall 1993; Surgue 1996). Thus, Detroit’s history of redevelopment is one of tensions between city hall and CDCs, and between downtown and neighborhood interests.

However, the city is also witness to political contradictions with positive implications for agriculture. This is, in part, a legacy of the Black Power movement of the 1960s that pushed for greater political and economic strength for African American communities (Brown and Hartfield 2001). Related organizing helped elect Detroit’s first Black mayor—Coleman A. Young—and several city council members (Brown and Hartfield 2001). Significantly, food and agriculture were embraced as key elements of the movement’s overall strategy for survival, self-determination, and empowerment with the development of home-grown institutions organized around co-operative rather than capitalist principles.¹² Led by Pastor Albert Cleage, founder of the Shrines of the Black Madonna of the Pan-African Orthodox Christian Church (POACC)—the movement offered both a vision and a program for a self-reliant community food system that continues to inspire grassroots efforts today.

Responding to the growing land vacancy within neighborhoods, but also drawing from his Black Power connections, Mayor Young (1974–93) created the Farm-A-Lot program. Developed in 1975, Farm-A-Lot provided gardeners with seeds, fertilizer, and tilling assistance, and even loaned pressure canning equipment to residents from neighborhood city halls. In 1974, 34 lots were leased.¹³ In 1975, the number grew to 525 and several gardeners were able to purchase the lots they farmed; five even won blue ribbons for their produce at the state fair (Bearre 1976). Farm-A-Lot was integral to Young’s narrative of survival and self-reliance for the city’s increasingly African-American population. The program lasted nearly a quarter century, when budget cuts led to its demise (Guyette 2001).

Farm-A-Lot made two important contributions to agriculture’s future in Detroit. First, it fostered the idea of urban agriculture as a formal city response to land vacancy stemming from neighborhood abandonment. Second, the program offered a framework for later conceptualizing support for urban agriculture as a citywide project. Farm-A-Lot therefore offered a model first in 1997 for the Detroit Agriculture Network and then again in 2004 for the Garden Resource Program (later a program of Keep Growing Detroit), as the groups sought to replicate the program’s services as it faded away.

Yet another conceptualization of agriculture as a neighborhood resource is offered by the late Grace Lee and James (Jimmy) Boggs, union and community organizers.¹⁴ Opposing Mayor Young’s casino proposals, Jimmy Boggs argued in 1988, “We have to begin thinking of creating small enterprises which produce food, goods and services for the local market, that is, for our communities … In order to create these new enterprises, we need a view of our city which takes into consideration both the natural resources of our area and the existing and potential skills and talents of Detroiters” (Guyette 2001).^.They founded in 1992, Detroit Summer, a program that sought to reenergize neighborhoods with community gardens and art murals built by young people.

Thus, responses related to agriculture were motivated by goals: (a) to develop Black community solutions to meet food needs while building wealth and power for the community (Pastor Cleage); (b) to minimize the impact of exodus on neighborhoods by encouraging the farming of vacant lots in neighborhoods, which also offered subsistence in a context of increasing unemployment and price inflation (Mayor Young); and (c) to harness neighborhood resources—young people included—to meet residents’ needs while also offering a more relevant education and cultivating leadership for change (the Boggs). Within all these collective responses is a strand of thought and practice associated with the civil rights and Black Power movements that provided the seedbeds for much contemporary agriculture food justice organizing.

Detroit adopted an urban agriculture ordinance in 2013 following four years of research, community input, and negotiation with the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (Pothukuchi 2015a, b). The ordinance received widespread support from local growers who welcomed its legitimation of their activities, and it is, in turn, broadly permissive of operations smaller than one acre. It reduces uncertainty about urban agriculture as a land use in the city, defines standards for various elements, and paves the way for growers to make longer term investments, including purchasing land from the city. Despite this, and as is the case in Cleveland, Detroit’s political and public agency leadership also expresses ambivalence about agriculture’s appropriateness as an urban land use and anxiety about its potential to last. Lacking an equivalent strategy to Re-imagining, the DLBA has muddled along in selling land on a case-by-case basis to a few entrepreneurial growers.

Finally, the role of Extension in Detroit’s agriculture is of a much smaller scope than OSUE’s is in Cleveland. It also was framed and guided over the last fifteen years within grassroots collaborations. For example, MSUE was identified as a key partner in the Garden Resource Program Collaborative, formed in 2004 with a USDA Community Food Projects grant, along with Greening of Detroit, Earthworks Urban Farm, and Detroit Agriculture Network. Primarily offering education and training and technical assistance for horticultural activities, today, Extension faculty also help with hoop house installation. MSUE leads no agriculture-related activity in Detroit.¹⁵

Thus, large numbers of Detroit’s gardeners are organized in citywide, grassroots networks, but with “regional centers” and smaller geographies to serve them in diverse ways such as for tool lending and resource distribution, celebration, or political advocacy. Agriculture is mostly supported by foundation and private philanthropy and receives no funding from the city. Nor is it supported with a discrete policy for vacant land access, temporary or permanent. Much ag-related education and training involves peers; a cooperative helps growers optimize resources for selling at neighborhood markets and to other outlets. Detroit’s history thus points to a community-driven, networked form of agriculture that was created to replace a city service, Farm-A-Lot—as with KGD and its predecessor forms—or is imbued with Black Power ideals—as with DBCFSN—and is autonomous of municipal government, Extension, or community development institutions. Agricultural organizations articulate goals of food justice and sovereignty¹⁶; advocates also convey the notion that agriculture belongs in every neighborhood—rich or poor, with low-vacancy or high. In this way, Detroit’s agriculture stands in contrast to that of Cleveland.

4 Conclusion: Lessons from Agriculture in Cleveland and Detroit

The previous sections showed how each city’s specific historical responses to questions of governance and neighborhood abandonment, contemporary politics and planning of land and land use, and the presence or absence of other forms of support shape the agriculture there, and outline its potential future. Both cities experience strengths and specific limitations in how municipal, nonprofit, business, philanthropic, and Extension support for agriculture is organized and for food system capacities that are built or stunted as a result. The ability to access vacant land and funding is crucial, but specific arrangements need to be assessed for if and what capacities they build and if they enable an enduring agriculture.

While Re-imagining effectuated a repurposing of land for agriculture in only short-term and contingent ways, for example, it also fostered an environment of support for community gardening and nonprofit farms with access to public land, resources, and technical assistance, in ways that render urban agriculture an apparently inevitable fixture on the city’s landscape. Similarly, efforts in Detroit to replace Farm-A-Lot at the turn of the century, and absent Extension and community development institutions, have created resilient citywide networks of growers and inspired a connection with ideals of Black empowerment and neighborhood self-reliance. Although both cities’ agriculture has more or less secure access to land, neither city’s experience suggests that agriculture is on the cusp of extinction.

Contextually specific historical and contemporary developments, particular governance actors and resources, and locally resonant ideals are interwoven in ways that create specific outcomes for agriculture in each place at this time. As such, there can be no simple importation of practices or elements from one context to another. Each city’s agriculture, nonetheless, might benefit from the experiences of the other, if nothing else than in the expansion of horizons that the experiences can offer.

Specifically, Cleveland’s professionally capable, well-resourced networks that bridge city hall—neighborhood agendas on the one hand and agriculture—social service activities on the other, could inform many Detroit-based efforts for their operational particularities. Cleveland’s transparent and well-developed policies related to vacant land governance could also be replicated but with greater accommodation of agriculture given the significant capacity and experience of related organizations in Detroit, the large scale of vacancy in the city, and the presence of strategic frameworks such as Detroit Future City.¹⁷ Programs for agriculture in Detroit might also learn from the powerful analysis in Cleveland that mapped agricultural soils, vacancy, and development potential, but they might also do so with a view to specifying types of agriculture that each neighborhood would best accommodate, rather than a zero-one grading.

Given the recent transformation of Detroit’s city council structure to include district-based representation, Cleveland’s strong neighborhood-based ties between elected officials and CDCs could be closely studied for their possible translation for agricultural support. The significant role that Extension plays in Cleveland’s agriculture could also be assessed for possible translations to Detroit, though with grassroots networks continuing to set the agenda for Extension’s involvement.

In turn, nonprofit organizations’ efforts to organize citywide frameworks for agriculture in Detroit might be explored for lessons for Cleveland. Because this organizing was motivated by the need to replace the resources and services provided by Farm-A-Lot, there is hope for similar organizing to make up for Re-imagining’s more disappointing results. Too, much planning and resource allocation in Cleveland is organized by neighborhood politics which can constrain entrepreneurial growers in some neighborhoods, alternative geographies that are smaller (or larger), as dictated by growers’ needs, also might be usefully borrowed from Detroit.

Another lesson from Detroit involves the peer-based approach to education and training in most horticultural topics, including market gardening, season extension, seed-saving, and others. Such training is organized according to goals and needs expressed by growers themselves in annual planning that reviews the season’s successes and failures. Thus, growers’ networks can build significant capacity which expands incrementally as it develops a complex and increasingly layered food system.

Finally, Cleveland’s agriculture might gain from networks that identify goals—such as a percentage of all produce sold within the city derived from city-based farms—and activities related to the food system in ways are autonomous from, even if supported by, Extension agencies, and public and community development institutions. A strong network can advocate for better policies related to land and other local government supports.

In both cities, nonprofit-led farms offer important human and social services. However, both sets are vulnerable to fluctuations in external funding, which tends to be capricious. Because profit margins in produce sales tend to be small, both cities could develop policies that are sympathetic to agricultural entrepreneurship rather than dismissing profit-making in the field as inherently antithetical to community interests. In both cities organizations that support agriculture could also work to build support among the general public for an urban agriculture that improves access to healthy food, builds a variety of capacities among individuals and organizations, and contributes to the development of both, the place and its food economy. This would go a long way to developing an integrated approach that includes vacant land, supportive policy, resources of different kinds, and linkages to city and neighborhood institutions.