The Oakland Avenue Farmers’ Market in the North End of Detroit sells fresh-grown food every Saturday “in a historically low-income and black neighborhood where such options aren’t readily available,” says the Detroit Metro Times. The market and its affiliated urban farm face competition from the Michigan Urban Farm Initiative, which gives away produce for free each Saturday.
“Oakland Farm executive director Jerry Hebron and other leaders in the urban farming community say MUFI’s approach and practices — intentionally or not — are undermining the city’s entire urban farming movement.” MUFI is run by Tyson Gersh, who taps volunteers and corporate donors, and whose mission “doesn’t appear to be about food security as much as development. Instead of just a farm, Gersh is trying to engineer an ‘agrihood,’ ” says Metro Times, using the shorthand for a real estate development built around a farm.
Shane Bernardo, a racial equity consultant, says MUFI is a “neo-colonial project” that despite good intentions will not address the causes of poverty and hunger.
Metro Times says the project is “leading to discussion about whether urban farms should be a development tool that’s wielded in struggling neighborhoods. If Gersh is successful, will other developers replicate the model and ultimately cheapen an important grassroots industry? Is Gersh — as one gardener put it — ‘gentrifying the urban farming movement’ while getting and taking an outsize portion of credit for it?”