In this article, I draw upon more than three years of research with black urban gardeners and farmers in Cleveland, Ohio to explore the contours of a specifically black agrarianism in the city, or what I am calling a black agrarian imaginary. I argue that this imaginary, enacted through an ongoing production of space that stakes a claim on the right to difference, emerges from and draws upon a diasporic and ancestral agrarianism (most proximally from the American South) to build a more self-determined urban food system while also contesting prevailing notions of what does and does not belong in the city and who gets to make those decisions. Black growers in Cleveland assert the right to difference—to produce the city as oeuvre—as a way to build and establish a more self-determined, just food system.
Many land-grant universities are examining approaches to community engagement to better align with the US land-grant mission of knowledge democratization. With a growing majority of the United States’ population living in urbanized spaces, it is a societal imperative for university engagement initiatives to devise strategies for engaging people on the complexity of urban issues central to individual and community wellbeing. Effective urban engagement demands collaboration and strong relationships with urban organizations and residents to co-create approaches to urban concerns. Through narrative-based inquiry, we explore urban engagements within Penn State Extension (PSE) across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (USA). PSE, located administratively in the College of Agricultural Sciences, is charged with carrying out Penn State’s land-grant commitment to serve Pennsylvania’s citizens through community engagement and nonformal education in the agricultural and food, human, and social sciences. We examine extension educator and faculty practices, program development, community engagements, and experiences, and those of community stakeholders. This work draws upon democratic methods to uncover the undergirding philosophies of engagement within PSE and how communities experience those engagements. This project offers an entry-point to longer-term applied research to develop a broadly applicable theory and praxis of translational research, engagement, and change privileging urban community resilience.
Black gardeners and farmers in Cleveland, Ohio see themselves as stewards not only of the land they work and live on, but of a culture and historical past rooted in an agrarian relationship to land that is conceived of as a path to social, economic, political, and spiritual liberation. While community gardens (and most urban farms) do not create significant revenue for residents, they produce something outside of the traditional economy. This chapter explores the effects of development in other areas of the city on alternative land reuse, or how ancillary impacts of gentrification touch down to impact the efforts of urban farmers and gardeners to access land in a disinvested neighborhood with a seemingly endless supply of vacant lots.
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