DETROIT — The Motor City has been most famous for its past industrial endeavors. That’s why it’s still a bit surprising to some that within the city limits, there are more than 700 urban farms that yield more than 120 tons of produce each year. When harvest season comes around, the social aspect of urban farming shines through, with farmers coming together to celebrate the season at parties brimming with locally grown food and drink.

But to those paying attention, harvest time also highlights a less attractive facet of Detroit’s agricultural social scene: social divisions between black and white urban farming groups.

That’s not surprising, according to Monica White, a sociology professor at Wayne State University who studies African-American involvement in Detroit agriculture. “Given the historical context of race relations in Detroit, any kind of movement is racially segregated,” White told Michigan Messenger in an interview. White said one of the ways Detroit’s history of racial tension manifests itself is in activism because grassroots movements like urban farming are “driven deeply by community.” According to White, the overall racial divide can be seen more clearly in smaller, focused groups where the general population is not involved. “Urban farming is not mainstream,” she said.

Perception v. intention

A recent influx of predominantly white residents into the city to start agricultural projects has hit a sore spot for some lifelong Detroiters. Tumultuous race relations from years past — which came to a head with the 1967 riots and white flight to the suburbs — left many native Detroiters wary of outsiders. That broad distrust of incoming people, especially as it relates to race, leaves the intentions of who come in and start gardens in the city misinterpreted. Additionally, farming is often associated with white culture while more than 80 percent of the city’s current population is black.

“Urban farming is often represented or seen as a mostly white phenomena,” White said. “The primary agent for any social network is group dynamics — if it’s a white group then white people are attracted. It’s racially contextual.” Language and perception are two major barriers that keep the movement from being more integrated, White said. “It has to do with race and class.”

Many black Detroiters have a negative perception of white people who come into the city and start projects in neighborhoods regardless of these groups’ good intentions. “What matters is how do their intentions come across?” White asked. “A common perception is that this is a pet project to make them look and feel socially responsible,” she said of how some native Detroiters look at incoming whites who jump into the urban farming movement.

White emphasized that the judgments some Detroiters make about outsiders joining the movement can stunt the overall effort to have a greener, sustainable food source in Detroit. And the productive efforts of those coming in to help forward the urban agriculture movement are thwarted by a social disconnect rooted in race and culture. That’s why White suggests that more attention be paid to communication across racial and socio-economic barriers in order to fuel the movement. “We have to find a way to articulate these issues to broader audiences,” White said.

Separate by default

One obvious example of the urban farming movement’s racial dynamics can be seen at Eastern Market on Saturdays at the Grown in Detroit farm stand. There, youngsters who are mostly black and Latino, work for a stipend under the supervision of community educators and farmers and sell produce that is grown organically on city land. The youth who work the Saturday market are part of the Garden Resource Program’s Youth Farm Stand Initiative, a collaborative effort between Wayne State University’s extension program, The Greening of Detroit and Earthworks Urban Farm. The initiative aims to educate youth to understand the work and benefits tied to urban agriculture.

While the city’s population is mostly black, the majority of adults who lead the Greening of Detroit — the non-profit that houses the Garden Resource Program — are white, which lends to the fact that there are usually white mentors and supervisors who work at the Grown in Detroit stand to help youth involvement in the program’s initiative.

One educator and urban farmer heavily involved with the Garden Resource Program’s Grown in Detroit efforts at Eastern Market is Greg Willerer.

Willerer, who is white, has noticed the racial divide between the program’s leadership and youth in involved but said in an interview that it’s not intentional. “It’s not like we make an effort to include Latino and black kids, but they have to be from Detroit,” Willerer said. He noted that the program requires youth involved to live in city limits, but the same requirements are not made of those leading the program. “Teachers interested in this usually are white,” he said.

Aside from the majority white-lead greening of Detroit, there is a lesser known black-lead group in the city that is growing each year. The Detroit Black Food Security Network, a non-profit, grassroots, community organization, seeks to educate and sustain black communities in Detroit where fresh healthy produce is scarce. While the DBFSN, which runs a two-acre urban farm, welcomes anyone to get involved in the network, the group mainly attracts black volunteers and activists.

The DBFSN, like the Greening of Detroit, also has a youth outreach program that targets predominantly black schools that focus on Africa and African heritage. White calls the DBFSN’s Food Warriors youth initiative a “gallant effort” that assists in developing school farms and educates young students on food security.

Education and profit

One reason educating youth is crucial to the urban farming movement in Detroit is to make the idea of growing food locally a more universal concept in a city where many shun the idea of working with soil.

Part of the goal is also to teach youth how farming in the city leads to a secure community and can make money. Today with the total acreage of vacant land in the city growing each year, the commercial potential for urban farms is growing. “What happened three years ago is the entrepreneurial arena of urban farming,” said Willerer, who owns and operates his own urban farm. “Beyond efficiencies we’re starting to see it as a viable business.”

Corporate investors are starting to see it as a viable business as well. In fact one investor, John Hanz, wants to use 80 acres of land in the city to create a commercial farm, a plan that is unpopular among those active in the grassroots farming movement. Many in the movement fear that an industrial farm will not be community focused and will use unsustainable growing methods used in mainstream agriculture.

Although there is a social and racial rift in urban farming efforts overall, that’s not to say that people of all races aren’t working together to improve the movement day by day. In fact, the urban farming movement that exists today stems from the late 1980s and early 1990s when the late Gerald Hairston, a black southerner who moved to Detroit to work in the auto industry, began organizing urban farming efforts, enlisting elders in his neighborhood to a group known now as the Gardening Angels. Hairston is remembered for bringing people of all backgrounds together and his efforts helped pave the way for the groups that lead the movement today such as the Detroit Agriculture Network, the Greening of Detroit and the DBFSN.

Many urban farmers today are inspired by the fact that the city’s history is closely tied to farming. One famous early farming effort in Detroit was in the 18th and 19th centuries when French settlers created ribbon farms — narrow strips of cultivated farmland land that stretched up from the Detroit River inland. Even Detroit streets such as Chene and Joseph Campau are still named after ribbon farm owners.

Collective effort

Although Detroit has come far in developing urban agriculture, the movement still has a long way to go before it can sustain a significant portion if the city’s population. In order to get there, White said, a more collaborative effort among those who struggle for food security in the city needs to be made in addition to educating youth to understand where their food comes from.

“These are issues within the movement that we have to address,” she said. According to White there are “overwhelming barriers” keeping people accustomed to an urban setting from becoming involved and willing to “go out and get dirty” on a farm.

These barriers include myriad issues including a socio-economic stigma that is tied to farmers and working with soil, the wide availability of cheap, unhealthy fast food and a disconnect in the language between micro-cultures within the subculture of urban farming.

But the underlying issue that powers the urban farming movement is a human issue that is not based on race or culture. It is the need for a sustainable food source.

On a local level, the city of Detroit has been called a food desert, a place where fresh produce is scarce and the food that is available comes from gas stations, liquor stores and fast food chains which contribute to health problems.

On a broader level, as Fred Carter, executive director of the Chicago-based Black Oaks Center for Sustainable Renewable Living, told Detroiters at a DBFSN meeting this month, is American dependence on fossil fuels and how the current food system would shut down if access to oil were to be cut off. “Detroit is a vanguard of transition to a post-carbon world,” Carter told the audience. “Supermarkets are part of the broken food system.”

It is for these reasons that White thinks it’s important that groups of all backgrounds congregate around and work toward a more sustainable food source.

“There are farmers who are so deeply dedicated to this, they have overcome insurmountable odds and they’re so resilient,” White said of her experience researching and working with dedicated urban farmers. “These people get up early and work their hands literally to the bone … until they bleed, over these issues. People ask ‘Why don’t you go to the store and buy a bell pepper?’ It’s the larger issues — the autonomy of doing for self — that drives this movement.”

Because the urban farming movement is not mainstream, many of those who have gardens are making a political statement.

Urban farming, or the choice not to rely on the larger food system is an act of defiance, according to Willerer. “It’s a quiet renaissance after the problems industrialism created. Everything tracks back to food choices people make,” Willerer said. “The act of growing stuff is an act of rebellion, sustainability and independence.”