Interview: Malik Yakini Is Changing the Face of the Food Landscape in Detroit
by Hannah Wallace
When he was seven-years-old,
Malik Yakini, inspired
by his grandfather, planted his own backyard garden in Detroit, seeding
it with carrots and other vegetables. Should it come as any surprise
that today, Yakini has made urban farming his vocation? The Executive
director of
the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network (DBCFSN), which he co-founded in 2006, he is also chair of the
Detroit Food Policy Council, which advocates for a sustainable, localized food system and a food-secure Detroit.
It’s well known that Detroit has been hard hit by the economic
crisis—it’s unemployment rate is a staggering 28 percent—but it also has
one of the most well-developed urban agriculture scenes in the country.
Over the past decade, resourceful Detroiters and organizations such as
DBCFSN have been converting the city’s vacant lots and fallow land into
lush farms and community gardens. According to
the Greening of Detroit, there are now over 1,351 gardens in the city.
I
spoke to Yakini (left), one of the leaders of Detroit’s vibrant food
justice movement, about the problem with the term “food desert,” how
Detroit vegans survive the winter, and what the DBCFSN is doing to
change the food landscape in Detroit. “We’re really making an effort to
reach beyond the foodies—to get to the common folk who are not really
involved in food system reform,” says Yakini.
A2Politico: Tell me about the origins of the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network.
Malik Yakini: It grew out of some earlier work. I was principal of an African-centered charter school in the Detroit area called
Nsoroma Institute Public School Academy.
In 2000 we started doing organic gardening on a serious level and
developed a food security curriculum. That initial garden evolved into
something we called the Shamba Organic Garden Collective, where we had
parents and teachers planting gardens in their backyards and in vacant
lots next to their houses.
We had a team called the groundbreakers who would go out and till
peoples’ gardens for them—because that was the most labor-intensive
part. We had about 20 gardens spread out over the city as part of this
collective. And as the work continued to grow, we were looking for a way
to expand it and involve more people. Informally, the Detroit Black
Community Food Security Network grew out of this work.
In February of 2006, I called together a group of 40 people who I
knew were either gardeners, chefs, raw foodists—people who had some
connection to food—for the purposes of starting the DBCFSN.
A2Politico: One of the main activities of
the organization is to influence public policy. Is there a political
leader in Detroit who has become a powerful advocate for the food
justice movement and has helped push through laws that protect community
gardeners and promote food security?
Malik Yakini:
The one who has been most supportive has been councilwoman
JoAnn Watson. And councilman
Kwame Kenyatta has been supportive as well. In fact, it’s through JoAnn Watson that we were able to have the City Council approve the
Food Security Policy
that our organization wrote. She was able to give us the traction we
needed to get the City Council to appoint members of the Detroit Food
Policy Council.
A2Politico: What policy goals are the DBCFSN working on right now?
Malik Yakini: The big issue right now in Detroit is creating
ordinances to regulate urban agriculture. There’s a big impediment and
that’s a state law called
“the Right to Farm Act.” Essentially
it says no municipality has the authority to create ordinances that
regulate agriculture within their jurisdiction, because of this state
law that supersedes it. Just last week there
was a bill introduced
to the Michigan house to exempt Detroit from the Michigan Right to Farm
Act, which was passed in the early 1980s. It was passed to protect
rural farmers from suburban sprawl and from complaints from people who
were moving into rural areas where farming was taking place, who wanted
it to be like a city. So the law was to protect the farmers, but it
didn’t anticipate the urban agriculture movement we have now.
At this point, our policy work is primarily done through our
involvement in the Detroit Food Policy Council. Our farm manager is a
member of the
Michigan Food Policy Council. So we are trying to move policy forward through our involvement in those two organizations.
A2Politico: Do you think there’s a chance the Michigan legislature will pass this bill?
Malik Yakini: It’s a question of building the proper coalition on a
statewide level. We have to find a way to get enough Michigan state
legislators to vote for that exemption. But that’s challenging because
Michigan is a very large agricultural state. In fact, it has the
greatest diversity of crops outside of California. But most of what is
grown in Michigan, like every other state in the United States, is corn
and soybeans. And so these corn and soy farmers are not the natural
allies of the sustainable ag folks in Detroit. It’s gonna take some
networking across traditional interests in order to build the kind of
support politically that we’d need to get an exemption.
Flint and Grand Rapids have very large urban ag movements, too, and
they’re handcuffed in the same way. So there are some natural allies out
there. But in order to move this thing forward we have to have some
allies in rural Michigan—the traditional farmers.
A2Politico: Does that mean that urban farmers in Detroit are technically defying the law right now?
Malik Yakini: There’s a woman on the Food Policy Council who is an
employee of the City Planning Commission. She says there are some things
that are illegal and some things that are unlawful. It’s illegal to
have farm animals like cows in the city of Detroit—there’s a law
prohibiting that. But there are other things like bees that the law
doesn’t speak to specifically. So there’s no law that permits it and
there’s also not a law that prohibits it. It’s not lawful but it’s not
illegal. So we’re kind of caught in this grey area right now.
It’s been estimated that Detroit has about 6,000-10,000 acres that
are vacant—that’s about a third of the city. So you have a lot of
commercial interests beginning to look at Detroit as a place to do
agriculture. Because the city doesn’t have the ability to regulate it
right now, we don’t have the ability to say to these large commercial
interests that we don’t feel that this scale of agriculture is
appropriate for Detroit. Getting the exemption from the Right to Farm
Act would allow Detroit to define what is appropriate in terms of scale
and in terms of things like composting.
A2Politico: What about policy on the national level. Does the DBCFSN have any position on the farm bill?
Malik Yakini: Several of us have been involved in webinars and
meetings to bring us up to speed on the farm bill. But we haven’t
actively taken a position as a group.
We’re more focused on local policy. After studying the farm bill over
the last several months, I have a concern about what it takes to build
the type of support nationally, across various interests, to get
anything passed in the farm bill. It’s much easier to build that level
of consensus on a local or state-wide basis.
I think big ag will continue to get billion dollar subsidies. Some of
the things that were added in the last farm bill were good: Our
organization got a
hoop house
from the USDA as a result. But when you look at a hoop house that cost
$8,000 and maybe there are 5-10 of ‘em in Detroit, that’s $40,000 to
$80,000. But then you’re looking at billions of dollars that are going
to these folks who are growing corn and soybeans.
So really, if we want to have a major impact on the food system in
the United States, the paradigm has to be shifted. So that sustainable
agriculture is incentivized and this unsustainable model of industrial
farming is dis-incentivized. The best way to do that is through money.
Of course, that is a big fight because the food lobby is one of the most
powerful lobbies that exists. And I really haven’t heard answer of how
you build the level of power, how you galvanize that level of support,
on a national level.
A2Politico: The DBCFSN has a “What’s for Dinner?” lecture series. What speakers have you had and what are they about?
Malik Yakini: This year we had four lectures. The first was called
“Is my garden legal?” by Kathryn Underwood, the woman who is on the
Detroit Food Policy Council. She spoke about the laws or lack of laws
regulating agriculture in Detroit. The second lecture was a guy named
Kilindi Iyi and he’s a mycologist. His was on adding mushrooms to your
garden and the technologies of growing mushrooms. The third lecture was
the board president of our organization, Ife Kilimanjaro, and it dealt
with the global food shortage and how that is a man-made phenomenon how
it has been manipulated through these multinational companies that are
are controlling much of the food supply. The final lecture was one I
did on the impact of global warming on agriculture.
So this lecture series—as well as some of the other things we do—is
geared towards raising public consciousness. Because we realize that
it’s not just a question of greater access to food. But people have to
have knowledge about the food, and have to have some understanding about
why sustainable growing is better than the industrial food system that
provides most of the food. They have to have some understanding about
food culture. Because much of our traditional food culture has been lost
over the past generation, due to the rush towards convenience in the
post World War II period, and then the fast food proliferation which
occurred in Detroit and other places throughout the country. Our
families today rarely sit down and eat a meal that’s prepared from
scratch. So there’s a lot of education that has to go on in order to
support the growing of fresh produce. And creating markets in which to
sell it. We have to increase demand at the same time as we’re increasing
access.
A2Politico: Is D-Town Farm the DBCFSN’s only garden? Or do you have others?
Malik Yakini: We just have one location. We started out initially
with two acres and we currently have seven acres—so it’s a pretty large
project. We’re trying to stay focused and not have various locations
around the city. Frankly we don’t have the capacity to manage that. Even
managing the seven acres we have now is challenging!
We consider ourselves to be a model. Rather than trying to start
gardens all around the city, what we’re doing is creating a learning
institution where people who are interested in doing this work can come
and learn various techniques and strategies that they can take back to
their neighborhoods. So we see ourselves as a catalyst.
A2Politico: So the produce that’s grown at D-Town Farm—is it sold there at a farm stand or at Eastern Market?
Malik Yakini: We sell it at Eastern Market and also at a few farmers’
markets. We also sell to a few restaurants. We’re working on a project
called “Take it to the Marketplace” that will put some of our products
in grocery stores. It’ll be a producers’ co-op that we’ll be part of and
we’ll invite other local food entrepreneurs to be part of. But it will
sold under the D-Town brand. And we’ll collectively market and promote
those products, and collectively distribute those products. So that’s
our next move: to have locally grown options available at stores that
people normally shop at.
A2Politico: Speaking of grocery stores, you said something
interesting at the Community Food Security Coalition conference in
Oakland: that implicit in researcher Mari Gallagher’s definition
for “food desert” is the notion that grocery stores are the only
solution to food deserts. In fact, what she and others including you
stress is that multiple solutions are needed—farmers’ markets, food
co-ops, urban farms. But don’t Detroit residents—even those who buy
their food from D-town Farm—rely on grocery stores in the winter? Even
with hoop house technology, you can’t possibly grow enough produce in
the winter months for people to be food secure—can you?
Malik Yakini: Not at all. We don’t even grow enough in the ground in
the summer to be self-sufficient. We’re producing a very small amount of
the produce consumed in Detroit—probably less than 1 percent. We are at
the embryonic stages. We think we have much greater capacity. But we’re
nowhere near that point right now.
People are accustomed to going to grocery stores to buy food and
they’re used to these large, pretty pieces of produce. Often, organic
food is not as large and sometimes it has flaws. So we have to
re-educate people about the aesthetics of food and the nutritional value
of food, at the same time as we educate people about the value of
eating whole foods.
We’re not self-sufficient even in the summer time—less so in the
winter. We are producing food in the winter using hoop house technology,
but of course you can only grow limited crops in the winter using hoop
houses unless you have some external heating source. People are
primarily growing salad greens, collards, kale, and things like that.
They clearly aren’t growing peppers, tomatoes, and squash in the winter
in hoop houses.
A2Politico: Without a full-service grocery store, where do
you find sustainable dairy, meat, or bread? Does Detroit have any meat
CSAs?
Malik Yakini: Because I’m a vegan, I haven’t done a lot of
investigation about sources for eating meat and dairy. Although that’s
my personal dietary preference, that’s clearly not the dietary
preference of the majority of the people in Detroit. So since the
majority of people do eat meat, we need to find ways of finding high
quality meat at affordable prices. I’m very ignorant about what those
options are, but that’s an area I intend to educate myself about in the
near future.
A2Politico: But even as a vegan, it must be a challenge to
find enough healthy food in Detroit in the winter. Do the locally-run
bodegas in town—the “party stores”—have any fresh produce?
Malik Yakini: Unfortunately, many of us, particularly those of us who
are trying to eat organic foods, have to leave the city to find those.
I’m privileged enough to have an automobile. [Note: 1/5
th of
all Detroit households are car-less.] I’m able to drive the couple of
miles from my house to get to Ferndale, where they have food outlets
that sell organic food. They do sell some local produce but of course
during the winter that selection is very limited. And so although I am
dedicated to eating local foods, I’m not able to do that to the extent
that I’d like to during the winter time.
A2Politico: I read an article that asserted that Detroit and
Cleveland have plenty of corner stores, many of which sell produce. The
USDA overlooks such stores when they designate a neighborhood a food
desert. (They define supermarkets as grocery stores with at least $2
million in annual sales.) But don’t these so-called “fringe stores” sell
mostly processed food, liquor and cigarettes?
Malik Yakini: There are small grocery stores in Detroit. Mari Gallagher’s 2007
study
said there were something like 1,075 food outlets in the city of
Detroit. The vast majority, though, are convenience stores or what we
call party stores. The problem is that far too many of them sell food
that is of an inferior quality, sometimes at inflated prices. And the
sanitary conditions in the stores often leave something to be desired. I
don’t want to paint with too broad a brush, because there are some very
good independently-owned grocery stores in Detroit. A few. So I don’t
want to leave the impression that they’re all terrible. Many of them are
terrible. But even the decent ones aren’t selling organic produce. And
for me, eating organically is very important.
A2Politico: Your friend Malik Shabazz of the Marcus Garvey
movement has been videotaping some of the blatant health violations at
“party stores” such as rat feces, and is reporting them to the
Department of Public Health.
Malik Yakini: He’s also finding meats that have another label placed
over the expiration label. He’s finding stores that are selling alcohol
to minors. He’s documenting all of these things. His organization
creates the kind of pressure and public scrutiny that’s needed to close
down drug houses, too. It’s part of an overall effort to create a higher
quality of life in Detroit’s African American community.
A2Politico: In Oakland, you cautioned that racism is
prevalent in the food movement—that some white food activists will come
into an African American community and tell them what to do. Can you
give an example of a white food justice organization in Detroit who is a
good ally of the DBCFSN, who works with you in a collaborative way?
Malik Yakini: The main ally we have is
Earthworks Urban Farm. The manger there is Patrick Crouch. We do quite a few things together including participating in the
“Undoing Racism in the Detroit Food System” initiative. They are probably our best predominantly white allies.
A2Politico: One of the goals of the DBCFSN is to promote
healthy eating habits amongst Detroit’s youth. Any tips on how to do
this? Kids can be tough critics.
Malik Yakini: When children are involved in growing food, they feel a
sense of ownership. Like, “I grew that carrot, I planted those seeds.”
That’s a big incentive right there. But also just bringing in fresh
greens and having the kids taste them. Typically they enjoy it—they like
it.
We have a youth program called Food Warriors youth development
program that functions at Nsoroma. Also, there is a food security
curriculum that’s woven into the fabric of the school. Every teacher
has to have one lesson per week that has a food security tie-in. We look
at food security in a very broad sense, not just in terms of providing
access to food but we look at all aspects of the food system. With some
of the younger children, rather than inundate them with a lot of theory,
their food security lessons are more hands on. Preparing things,
tasting them. Exposing them to foods that they don’t normally eat.
Healthy eating is part of the culture at the school—and it has been
for some time. Gum, candy, and soda pop are not allowed in the building
at all—either by students, staff, or parents. That’s been a
long-standing policy. There’s a catering company that provides lunch
every day. So we have whole grains—no white rice is served—it’s always
brown rice. There’s no red meat served. And so we’ve created a cultural
environment that is supportive of healthy eating. So the Food Warriors
are building on a culture that already exists in the school.
A2Politico: What about public schools in Detroit? Are there people putting pressure on them to improve their food?
Malik Yakini: The food service director of Detroit Public Schools,
Betti Wiggins, is very progressive. She was recently elected to the
Detroit Food Policy Council and she’s very active in the food movement.
She has reached out to local growers. Of course she’s working for a
bureaucracy that slows down what she’d like to do. But there couldn’t be
a better person in place pushing for this to happen.
She is involved in the farm-to-school movement and has piloted that
in several schools in Detroit, and has encouraged several schools to
start gardens. So she is a very strong ally in this movement.
A2Politico: What do you think of entrepreneur John Hantz, and this ambitious plan he has to create “the largest urban farm” in Detroit?
Malik Yakini: That is the inevitable question. All interviews lead to that question.
I find it to be problematic for several reasons. The first reason is
because the city is 77% African American (according to the latest
Census Data), and the key players in the Hantz project are white men.
That’s problematic.
Secondly, they are not committed to organic agriculture. They propose
some type of mixture of the traditional industrial farming model and
sustainable techniques.
Thirdly—and most alarmingly—they don’t have any sense of using urban
agriculture to empower communities. They are driven by the profit
motive. The current urban ag movement is clearly steeped within the
social justice movement and clearly is trying to empower people,
communities, and community organizations. And none of that is on the
radar of the Hantz project. So that is very troubling.
Although Mr. Hantz is proposing this very large farm, what a lot of
people don’t know is that he’s proposing that only ten percent of what
he grows is produce. The rest is Christmas trees! Most people think he’s
going to have thousands of acres of tomatoes and peppers and lettuce,
but that’s not the case.
Mr. Hantz has also said that really what he’s trying to do is create
scarcity, thereby driving up the value of the land. At a public forum,
someone said to him, “Well that sounds like a land grab.” And he said,
“Yes, it is a land grab.” That’s another problem. There are major
questions around use and ownership of land. And how land serves the
common good as opposed as trying to serve the interests of wealthy
individuals who are trying to make a profit.
A2Politico: Has he reached out to the black community in Detroit in any way?
Malik Yakini: After much criticism, there has been some reaching out
to community members. But it seems to be an afterthought, after he
received so much criticism. He’s also made overtures to me. I’ve been
involved in a couple discussions about trying to sit down with him to
understand more fully what he wants to do.
I have a good relationship with Mike Score, who is the president of
Hantz Farms. Mike is the person who is leading the farm effort right
now. He’s a legitimate farmer and an honorable human being with a very
high level integrity. He and I have talked about trying to set up a
meeting with Mr. Hantz and some of the key people in the urban ag
movement. But Hantz has been resistant to meeting with a group of
people.
A2Politico: You were awarded a two-year fellowship with the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. Do you mind my asking how you’re spending the $35,000 stipend? What project or projects are you working on?
Malik Yakini: I proposed a project called
Be Black & Green.
What I’m doing is video documentation of black farmers, gardeners and
food activists throughout the country. I just posted an interview with
David Hilliard (of the Black Panthers) that I shot in Oakland, and I
have five others in the can that I’ll be posting soon. What I’m doing is
creating a network of black farmers, gardeners and food activists so
they can know each other. I’m also raising the profile of black farmers,
gardeners, and food activists in the larger food movement.
We want to assert that black people have always been involved in
agriculture in this country and we’ve always been involved in
sustainable agriculture. And that we have as much claim to this movement
as anybody else does. And so by telling these stories and really
allowing others to tell their own stories, and raising the profile of of
black people doing this work, I hope to help people understand the role
that we play in this movement historically.
A2Politico: It’s out of the bag: kale is your favorite food. What’s your preferred way of preparing it?
Malik Yakini: Raw kale salad. I’m just addicted to it. I serve it
with a special dressing: toasted sesame seed oil, nutritional yeast,
cayenne pepper—those are three of the main ingredients. I can’t tell you
the rest of the ingredients, but I can say that people really seem to
like it.
A2Politico: What’s your definition of food justice?
Malik Yakini: Food justice is people being treated justly by all of
the venues that they interact with to obtain food. The other part of
food justice has to do with economic justice: that when people spend
money on food, they need to derive some benefits from the money that
they spend beside just trading food for money.
The money that they spend on food needs to enrich their community. In
too many cases, we have wealth extraction strategies—where people spend
money in their communities on food and money is taken out of their
communities and creates jobs and wealth in other communities. So part of
food justice is circulating the money that people spend on food in
their community for their own benefit. It also has to do with simple
things like people being spoken to respectfully at the places that they
go to purchase food, with their human dignity being upheld. Having equal
access to good food sources—that’s a big part of food justice. So I
would say, the access piece is key, upholding peoples‘ dignity is key,
and the economic justice part of it is key.
