DETROIT, MICHIGAN
In the 1890s, Detroit mayor Hazen Pingree established the city’s first community vegetable gardens. The initiative, which he called the “Potato Patch Plan,” was a response to the growing number of urban poor left struggling and hungry in the wake of a depression that had hit the city. The potato patches were to occupy vacant lots covering more than four hundred acres throughout the city, divided into half-acre plots for the poor to cultivate. By 1896, nearly half of Detroiters who received public assistance were growing vegetables in the potato patches, producing today’s equivalent of more than $750,000 worth of food.
Earlier, in 1883, the Capuchin Franciscans, a Roman Catholic ministry, built a monastery in Detroit and began offering social services to needy citizens. In 1929 they established the Capuchin Soup Kitchen, which still exists today and, more than a century after Pingree’s Potato Patch Plan, operates one of Detroit’s largest urban farms.
Earthworks Urban Farm was established in 1997 by Capuchin Soup Kitchen staff as a small neighborhood vegetable garden on Detroit’s east side. The project quickly expanded into a cluster of sites around the neighborhood, all established on vacant lots. The monks at the monastery were concerned not only about their community members having enough food, but about that food being fresh and healthy. “When the Capuchins established the monastery in 1883, they intentionally located it on Mt. Elliott Street, which was then the edge of the city,” says Patrick Crouch, farm and program manager for Earthworks. “That way they could have gardens and livestock to provide food for the residents.” More than a century later, Earthworks still stands by their guiding mission of providing local food for the local community. Early on they partnered with the Wayne County Department of Health to plug farm-grown components into the public food program and open market stands at local health clinics to make it easier for residents to access and purchase fresh food.
“To us it’s very important that our work be viewed within a historical context,” Crouch explains. “There’s often an idea that what we’re doing is brand-new, but the movement—Detroit as an agricultural city—is long-standing, with the ribbon farms (long, narrow parcels of land running along the riverfront) that dominated the landscape and continue to create the texture of the city through the names of the streets, many of which are the names of the original ribbon farmers.”
The primary Earthworks site is three-quarters of an acre and includes a greenhouse and a large apiary. Each day, the five staff members and a rotating cast of community volunteers tend the vegetables, haul the harvest to the kitchen, and distribute it through the organization’s various outreach programs and through a cooperative buying association that sells produce to local restaurants and markets.
While the layout of the gardens looks fairly standard, Couch explains that he approaches his work with permaculture design principles in mind. “There are no herb spirals or anything like that,” he says, “but we are actively thinking about ways to close nutrient loops and turn the farm into a commons.” He thinks of it as a design challenge, inspired by the “cradle-to-cradle” concept pioneered by architect Bill McDonough and scientist Michael Braungart, asking how urban waste streams can be redirected to produce food—both literal and metaphorical—for the city.
Crouch came to Earthworks after working on rural farms, where he was troubled by the distance between the place where good food was grown and the communities that needed it most. In coming to Detroit, he sought to close that gap, in part by empowering the community members themselves to produce food where they live. As part of this goal, Earthworks runs a nine-month training program for a small group of individuals from the neighborhood who are interested in learning about and finding work in farming and food production. “The gardens serve as a laboratory and outdoor classroom,” says Crouch. “The trainees also visit small-scale processors, distributors, logistics facilities, and restaurants to see the entirety of the urban food system.”
During the high season, Earthworks operates a small market on-site, which is run by the members of the training program as a way to learn sales and community outreach skills. As the local food system flourishes and more jobs become available, Crouch wants to see Earthworks trainees taking those jobs and leading the development of their own community, not only through farming but also starting food-related businesses such as restaurants, distribution services, greenhouses, and equipment supply and repair shops. “The gardens are very much metaphors for enlivening the region,” he says. “If we can envision what a little piece of property could be, then we should be able to envision what an old factory could be—perhaps a community-run packing house or a lumber salvage operation from decommissioned buildings.”
In the future, Crouch hopes that Earthworks Farm’s education and training will have been effective enough that the program itself will be rendered unnecessary, or at least take a backseat to the work and leadership emerging from within the community. It’s a rare organization that roots for its own obsolescence, but at a deeply mission-driven place such as Earthworks, becoming redundant would be a sure sign of success.
