Now, more educational efforts are aimed at recruiting Black farmers.
Central State University, a historically Black university, became a land-grant university ten years ago and now runs one of the two largest agriculture bureaus in the state. Jefferson Twp., a primarily Black school district in rural Montgomery County, started a agriculture education program at the beginning of this school year.
Many Black farmers are drawn to small-scale, urban farming. Several of the farmers who spoke to the Dayton Daily News for this story cited the long-term health consequences for the Black community as the reason they got involved with small-scale farming.
Multiple studies, including one from Cleveland Clinic in 2023, have found that people who live in historically marginalized communities have worse health outcomes. Boston University conducts research specifically on the health outcomes of Black women, finding Black women have worse health outcomes for cancer, heart disease and strokes than other groups.
Sharifa Tomlinson, owner of Arrowrock Farms and urban sanctuary in Riverside, is a registered nurse and still works one day a week. She came to farming later in life.
She said she kept seeing Black patients come in with diseases related to the food they were eating and knew they did not have good access to fresh foods.
“We’re trying to just make people a little bit healthier,” Tomlinson said.
In Dayton, the historically Black west side has not had the access to grocery stores the east side does. Homefull and Gem City Market have opened in the last five years attempting to close that gap.
Tomlinson’s farm is another way that people can learn and research farming practices. Her 12-acre farm in Riverside is aimed at helping people learn how to grow their own food.
She raised about 1,000 chickens last year for The Foodbank and grows vegetables for herself and her family on her farm. She works closely with Central State University, Ohio State University, University of Dayton and others to do research on the property. Last summer, she worked with recent immigrants from Rwanda who were growing beans. She also teaches people how to cook.
But she said it’s hard to get people who want to do this work.
“We’re trying to find young people who want to learn how to farm,” Tomlinson said. “That’s really difficult.”
History of Black farmers
When Black people were brought to the United States as slaves, it was to work as farmers against their will.
Omopé Carter Daboiku, member of the Edgemont Solar Garden and a community elder, said white people targeted communities who had a long history with growing rice and cotton in Africa.
Daboiku grew up in Ironton, in Appalachian Ohio, and said her family grew up growing food and canning it. It was a tradition she carried on with her own children.
Patricia Allen, executive director of the Black Indigenous People of Color Food and Farming Network based in Yellow Springs, also came from a background of farmers. While Allen grew up in Dayton, her family founded an Illinois farming collective in the 1860s for Black farmers called Stringtown. Some of her earliest memories are of gardening in the summer with her parents and brother.
“That used to be a part of our DNA and our culture...growing tomatoes, growing the collards in the backyard and whatnot,” Allen said. “And I really feel like that’s a lost art.”
Daboiku noted there’s a lot of land in Dayton and the surrounding communities that used to be farmland. Kettering, formerly Van Buren Twp., was almost all farming land. West Dayton used to be farmland before soldiers began to return from World War II and the city needed more housing.
Daboiku said eventually, Black people began to flock to northern cities seeking good-paying work.
“We don’t have to toil in nobody’s field, and we can afford to dry clean the clothes,” she said. “Priorities shift in social structures.”
Farming became distasteful, a sentiment that she still hears. She said young people tell her that they don’t want to be farmers because they don’t want to have a “dirty” job.
Allen and Daboiku both said they grew up growing food and began to realize, as they got further into careers in different fields, that not many people understood how to garden, especially people who looked like them. Teaching people to grow their own food was a way to help others.
“The more food you grow, the more accountable you can be for what you eat,” said Daboiku.
Central State part of the push
About 10 years ago, Central State became a land-grant university. That means the university was designated as an agricultural resource for the community. The only other land-grant institution in Ohio is Ohio State University.
Central State now has an extensive network of farmer educators, many of whom work with people of color, since the university is a historically Black university. The university supports farms like Tomlinson’s, but also the Edgemont Solar Collective, a community garden and greenhouse in West Dayton, and dozens of other farms.
Marc Amante, interim program leader in Agriculture and Natural Resources at Central State, said around 1% of farms in Ohio are owned by Black people, but that’s been increasing.
About half of those farms are under 50 acres, Amante said, which is considered a small farm.
Amante works with beginning farms and says there’s a lot of urban farming work, especially around specialty crops like vegetables.
Amante said one of the problems that urban farmers are now running into is access to water. Urban farmers often work on abandoned lots and when the houses were torn down, the water connections were ripped out too.
“Getting that reinstalled is very expensive and there’s very few grants that provide for building infrastructure,” he said.
Urban farmers also need help creating a business or nonprofit plan, Amante said.
But agriculture programs are not limited to farming.
Khydea Flannagan graduated from Central State in May 2024 with a degree in water resource management, which is under the agriculture umbrella. Originally from Flint, Michigan, Flannagan said she wasn’t interested in water management when she first went to college because she was sick of people talking about the water crisis in her hometown.
But a summer internship with a family friend testing water in Flint changed her mind. She recently got a job at a local environmental sampling business and previously interned for the city of Dayton and Montgomery County.
She said the lack of understanding of how important water is for people became the reason she was so passionate.
“We need it for farming, power plants,” she said. “Everywhere you go, it’s water.”
New Jefferson Twp. Farming program
Tomlinson, Allen and Daboiku all came to farming later in life, though all three said they had grown up gardening.
Now, new efforts are being made to inspire younger farmers.
Jefferson Twp., one of the smallest districts in Ohio, recently opened a new agriculture program.
The district has partnered with the Miami Valley Career Technology Center, which is paying the teacher’s salary. Jefferson Twp. provided the funds to build a greenhouse and a barn using federal COVID-19 dollars.
The district’s interim superintendent, Rusty Clifford, said there are plans for small gardens in the greenhouse, with goats, chickens and rabbits in the barn. Eventually, as the program grows, more could be added.
During a Dayton Daily News visit to the new agriculture center, Jalahn Crump, a freshman at Jefferson Twp. High School, said she’d learned a lot about soil science already but wanted to learn even more.
“I can’t wait for the greenhouse,” she said.
Farming as advocacy
Allen’s job now is advocating for farmers, especially urban farmers. She said people don’t seem to think of them as farmers.
Allen said she wants to change that mindset and gain recognition for those working on smaller plots of land.
“I wanted to be a part of changing that mindset,” she said. “That if you’re producing food and you’re feeding your community, that’s what it means to farm.”
Audra Sparks, one of the four co-owners of Guided by Mushrooms, a company that grows mushrooms and sells them to restaurants and grocery stores, said as a small business that has been successful — the company had half a million dollars in sales last year — it’s been important to give back to the community.
“You wanna know where your food is, and you want to feed your community,” Sparks said.
Sparks said the company works with The Foodbank, and the used blocks for mushrooms are donated to local community gardening centers to be used as fertilizer.
Sparks’ co-owners include her husband, David Sparks, brother Michael Goldstick and friend Amy Cox.
Sparks said the company is looking to expand and is looking for a location in West Dayton, because that would invest in the area. She said they also want to have classes and educate the community about growing and cooking food.
Both Sparks and Allen said one of the best ways to support local farmers is by buying food from local grocery stores who carry their stock.
Allen said she’s been able to source eggs from Irby’s Old School Farm in Trotwood, which sells at Gem City Market. Sparks sells mushrooms at Gem City Market, Second Street Market, Dorothy Lane Market and other stores throughout the area.
“I really do believe that the heart and intention of a lot of these growers are about improving health, improving outcomes, but also just developing a sense of community,” Allen said. “It’s really the undergirding. I mean, food brings us all together. It’s what we all need as humans.”
About the Author
