Mike Duggan appoints Detroit’s first director of urban agriculture

Mayor Mike Duggan appointed the city's first director of urban agriculture, he announced Monday at Keep Growing Detroit, a farm in Eastern Market.

Urban farming activist Tepfirah Rushdan, who began Sept. 5, will work directly out of Duggan's office to shape city policy on urban farming, and serve as a farming community liaison.

Duggan created the position after meeting with Detroit's agricultural community in developing the Land Tax proposal, which, if approved, will hike taxes on vacant lots. Activists pushed for an exemption on urban farm land. During the mayor's unveiling of the proposed law in August, Duggan announced his plan to hire a director for the new role.

"The urban farmers and the gardeners in this city have created such beauty and put the vacant land to such good use, and I didn't realize till the last month or so, when we proposed the Land Value Tax, I knew I wanted to keep the urban farm movement progressing," Duggan said.

Rushdan, whose salary is $112,000, served as co-director of Keep Growing Detroit, which supports urban farming through educational programs and grows and distributes starter crops to community gardens and households to promote using locally-grown fruits and vegetables.

"I'm just so excited that we have we have a foot in the door to really be able to meet with all of the top people that we need to meet with to get this work done, and so excited to have a strong community of folks behind me. I want to just say a shout out to all the community folks who I'm honored to know that are doing their best to take care of land in the city and have been doing it a lot of times without any credit," Rushdan said.

Councilman Fred Durhal III touched on urban farming being a plus for the city's food deserts, a term often used to describe areas with limited access to affordable and healthy food.

"When we talk about food deserts, particularly in African American communities, what our urban farmers have done here in the city of Detroit have connected our residents to resources right in the community. They provide beautification, obviously, to areas that may have been once blighted and vacant, and now we're starting to see our neighborhoods coming together," Durhal said.

Kathryn Underwood, former city planner who focused on establishing an urban agriculture ordinance, described Rushdan as one who worked "tirelessly" for the garden resource program, which supports urban gardening.

"(Tepfirah) will speak truth to power," Underwood said. "She doesn't necessarily rattle sabers when she does it. She does it because she's been very thoughtful about it."

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Duggan said the position was created amid Detroit Land Bank Authority's "evolution" on selling properties for urban agriculture. The mayor did not detail the structure of the department.

"Her job is to unify BSEED, Land Bank, city planning, city water, that'll all be behind her," Duggan said. "We work together for a goal. It's not who's on whose staff ... we're aligned around initiatives not around (organization) structure."

Rushdan's first priority is to engage Detroiters on the importance of urban farming, but to also create greater access to land for residents. The director said the city has a big inventory of land but plenty of Detroiters faced hurdles in purchasing properties, while outside buyers are scooping up plots.

"There's holds on property that there doesn't need to be, there's people who are getting rejected for no reason, there's people who are taking an abnormally long time through the process. Also, most gardeners don't really understand what it takes to get permitted. So there's some education on the gardener side and also on the city side and making those things to come together and I'm hoping I'm able to bridge that gap," Rushdan said.

Several cities created similar urban agricultural positions, including Atlanta, Philadelphia, Boston and Washington, D.C.

Rushdan served on the Detroit Food Policy Council and as director of Urban Agriculture for The Greening of Detroit. She currently serves as a board advisor to several community projects. Rushdan helped establish the Black Farmer Land Fund, which provides Black urban farmers with capital infusions for land and infrastructure, according to the city.

Dana Afana is the Detroit city hall reporter for the Free Press. Contact Dana: dafana@freepress.com or 313-635-3491. Follow her on Twitter: @DanaAfana.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Tepfirah Rushdan named Detroit's first director of urban agriculture