As the days start to get consistently warmer, farms across Michigan are already in full swing planting crops. The state’s millions of acres of farmland are hard to miss for anyone driving through rural areas, but farms exist even within cities like Detroit and Ypsilanti – even though you might walk right by them without noticing.
These urban farms maximize space by using greenhouses to start growing fruits and vegetables before the outdoor growing season. Once those plants get big enough, they give thousands of seedlings out to community members so that they can then plant them in their own home gardens. Together, these farms empower residents to grow their own food and help develop a more sustainable food system.
Operating right out of the Eastern Market district, Keep Growing Detroit (KGD) is a two-acre farm that serves more than 3,000 family, school, and community gardens in Detroit, Hamtramck, and Highland Park. Members of their Garden Resource Program receive educational support, compost, gardening tools, seeds, and ready-to-plant seedlings.
Three thousand gardens might seem like a lot, but Danielle Daguio, KGD’s engagement manager, said the organization’s ultimate goal is much bigger. They want to see the majority of fruits and vegetables consumed by Detroiters grown by their neighbors within city limits. Their mission revolves around the concept of food sovereignty.
“What that means is an autonomy over the food that we eat, how it's being grown, and what kinds of food that we might have access to,” Daguio said. “Everybody at this point has an experience — by way, unfortunately, of the pandemic — of what it's like to go to the grocery store and see an empty shelf. By being able to grow your own food or have access to fresh fruits and vegetables that are grown within the city, you are taking into your own hands this ability to say, ‘I don't have to depend on that.’”
For many Garden Resource Program members, learning to garden again reconnects them to memories of starting their first vegetable garden with parents or grandparents.
“A lot of times, people are really excited to garden and they just don't know where to start,” Daguio said. “For us, it's not just these seeds and the plants. It's a reconnection to something that they may have had in the past…. Because I don't care who you are, at some point, somewhere down the line in your family, somebody grew their own food. And so this is a reconnection to that or a deepening of that tradition.”
KGD hosts crop distributions at various points throughout the spring, summer, and fall for Detroit residents. Daguio said they start preparing for these distributions early in the winter, as they draw in thousands of residents. The next crop distributions are scheduled for May 12, 13, and 18.
About 45 minutes west in Ypsilanti, Growing Hope has also been busy getting their community ready for a summer garden. They offer residents free raised garden beds and seedlings, a community compost pile, and a shared produce garden that anyone can harvest food from. The nonprofit also runs the Ypsilanti Farmer’s Market during the summer.
“We have this basic belief that food is a human right,” said executive director at Growing Hope, Julius Buzzard. “We know that when people are growing food, they're not just growing food for themselves. They're growing food for their friends, for their families, for their neighbors, at some point, for anybody who will take whatever extra zucchini or collards that they have. So it's impacting their grocery bills, it's helping them build community.”
Esha Biswas is Growing Hope’s Youth Education Manager. She said the farm has a special focus on all-ages educational workshops through field trips to Growing Hope.
“We get to do an interactive tour of the farm where they touch and taste things as we go along, and then we always end with a cooking lesson,” Biswas said. “Especially with little kids, it's so magical to see them be like, ‘Wait, I can just eat this off of a plant? Like, my food comes from a plant?’ It's really special being part of that transformative discovery in young people.”
Nearly half of Growing Hope’s staff are under 18, tending to the farm or facilitating workshops through the Teen Leadership Program, a paid opportunity that operates year-round for high school students in the area.
“Our high schoolers help cultivate pretty large areas of our urban farm,” Biswas said. “So there's certain parts of the farm that are completely teen-led. So they decide what to grow, they do all the crop planning, they do all the seed starting.”
It’s a meaningful opportunity for a young person, said Tula Martinez, a graduate of their Teen Leadership Program. Especially because young people are often underutilized as community members.
“I think that over the time that I worked with them, they really tried to prioritize youth voices, and sort of how you can kind of change an organization to be more youth-driven,” Martinez said. “They've also given me a lot of confidence as a gardener. I didn't really know how to grow things before I started working here.”
Growing Hope will host a mini market on Saturday, May 2 at B-Cubed Bakery and can be found at their Ypsilanti Farmer’s Market starting in mid-May.
