Fulfilling the Promise of the Land Grant University

[Music]

[Music]

you might not know

this but land grants can change lives

i want to tell you about my friend walt

bonn when i first met

walt three years ago he was looking for

an opportunity

he was working for a small juice bar

startup in downtown mansfield ohio his

hometown

but that was no place for a man with

walt’s skill and abilities

this guy has a business degree and he’s

managed more than a dozen employees at a

time in his life

he was hustling for this tiny little

startup for what amounted to less than

minimum wage

because he had been served a terrible

injustice

few years ago he was finishing up a

business meeting

when all of the sudden out of the blue

four men started to harass

the sister of the man that he was

meeting with who was waiting for them in

a car outside of the bar

walt rushed out to their defense to hurt

her defense

and he found himself suddenly being

faced down by two very large

very drunk very angry white men who

backed him up across the parking lot

and then pounced on him they started

kicking and punching

now walt warned them off and he was

scared

for his life and two things you need to

know about this night

first even though walt was at a bar

he had not been drinking because second

he was carrying a gun something he’d

done

legally for the previous nine years and

walt feared for his life

and the men were punching and kicking

and so he pulled his gun

and he started to fire and even though

he hit

one of the men twice the assault

continued

and they overpowered walt and they took

his gun from him

and they turned it on him now walt knew

he’d emptied all five chambers before

they got the gun from him but the men

did not and then the police arrived

and things went from bad to worse for

walt because

even though he was so injured from this

assault that he spent several days in

the hospital

he was the only one arrested that night

and he was charged with a second-degree

felony

long story short walt didn’t have the

resources to mount the kind of defense

that this case required and the lawyer

he

hired didn’t tell him as much and he

showed up on the day of the trial

to learn that his lawyer wasn’t calling

any witnesses

and had allowed a jury of all white

non-gun owners to be seated

so walt told me he knew if he let the

trial go forward that day

he was not walking out of that courtroom

a free man

so he was essentially coerced into

pleading to a lesser fourth degree

violent felony charge

a charge that wouldn’t come with any

jail time but a charge that would

prevent him

from ever getting a job again and when

walt realized that he was unemployable

he returned to his hometown of mansfield

and he started looking for an

opportunity and that’s when i met him in

the sandwich shop

he was just looking for an opportunity

and i’ve been thinking a lot about

the value of opportunity in those days

about opportunity

is a kind of social justice because i’ve

been thinking a lot about

justice and what it means to bring

justice

and i noticed a couple of things the

first

is that we often conclude that simply

removing that injustice is sufficient to

deal with the harm that it’s done

so you might think about slavery

terrible injustice

we ended slavery or jim crow segregation

also terrible injustice and we made it

illegal

but i’m not sure that’s ever enough

because

second the most egregious injustices

keep happening

to the same groups of people in the

united states over time and i’m speaking

now as a u.s historian

these things keep happening to african

americans

and native americans and so i was

wondering whether removing the injustice

was ever sufficient

in itself and i was thinking about where

opportunity might

fit in the matrix of social justice and

human improvement

as a u.s historian i knew that

land-grant universities like the ohio

state

university where i worked had been

critical

social justice institutions in the 19th

century

they prepared a nation of 18th century

farmers

for the opportunities of the 20th

century world

i mean if you think about it opportunity

of social justice is

kind of the land-grant dna and so

i’ve been thinking about how i might

enlist urban food systems

as precisely this kind of economic

opportunity

and i’d already been working with deanna

west torrance

another mansfield native and the founder

and executive director of the north end

community improvement collaborative

deanna had already led her community

through a planning process

in which they had identified food

systems

as a viable asset based economic

development solution

something that they wanted to do and

deanna had already started building

community gardens

and she’d already started training urban

farmers

deanna and i were both interested in

food systems

because we were interested in finding a

more just

solution to the problem of food

insecurity

we both knew that the delivery of that

free box of tomatoes

was insufficient to address the real

cause there

which was in fact household wealth or

income enter the microfarm project

an urban farming project created by a

land grant to deliver social justice

by capturing food dollars to grow

individual and household wealth in food

insecure communities

it starts with the microfarm a

right-sized urban production site

small enough for an individual or a

household to operate

large enough to bring a profit the right

size is about a third of an acre

5500 square feet of growing area

half of which is under two high tunnels

for extended season grow

the microfarm is successful because it

focuses on growing the very

most popular crops so the things on your

everybody’s grocery list tomatoes

cucumbers carrots

greens there’s about a dozen crops in

all

but a single microfarm is too small by

itself to be successful and we knew this

the microfarm only becomes successful

when it’s part of a

system of microfarms which can aggregate

production from multiple

sites and this is accomplished through

an old school farmer cooperative

a microfarmer cooperative the

the cooperative can then buy

aggregate brand and market the produce

ideally before a plant even goes in the

ground

and the cooperative marketer can in this

way coordinate

crop plans with buyer needs creating a

whole lot more certainty for our farmers

and for our buyers and the whole system

is designed to simplify farming so our

microfarm producers can focus on growing

the very

best quality produce that they can

when the whole system is in full

operation

a microfarm has the potential of

delivering up to

35 000 of supplemental household income

those are real dollars in places where

dollars are needed

microfarming in opportunity poor

households

to deliver wealth in food insecure

neighborhoods and this isn’t just an

abstract idea

since 2019 deanna and i have been

building this system

into the landscape of mansfield ohio

with a million dollar matching grant

that ohio state university received

from the foundation for food and

agricultural research

we wanted to see if the idea had legs

and what a ride it’s been since 2019

we’ve trained a dozen new microfarm

producers to grow market quality crops

we have built 10 new microfarms in

mansfield and the surrounding

countryside for these farmers to work in

and my microfarm producers have already

served up

hundreds of pounds of fresh local

organic produce

to households and cafeterias and

restaurants from mansfield

to columbus and they’ve provided an

additional hundreds of pounds of surplus

for the food insecure households that

surround these microfarms

in the community we prepare for 2021

with the whole system for the very first

time

fully in place ready to see what it can

do

ten new microfarm businesses

owning one new farmer cooperative the

richland grow up

as part of a community university vision

of urban agriculture for economic

development

the ohio state university will continue

to provide and leverage its research

expertise

and its commitment to social justice to

ensure this project is a success

and we hope to provide a new model of

urban farming

that can deliver wealth in the places in

the united states where wealth

is needed and hopefully to model the

kinds of community engagements

that land grant universities should be

participating in

and my friend walt bonham he formed a

business

called the food lab and he trained to be

one of our microfarm producers

when the ohio state university needed a

contractor to source

and assemble our microfarms walt

bonham’s food lab

bid for and won that contract

so when i put in my first microform on

the ohio state mansfield campus back in

2017

it took me about three months to put

that thing in walt bonham’s food lab put

those things up now in three

days when deanna west torrance was

gifted 12 acres of industrial brownfield

she needed a manager to prepare that

site for her to put in electricity

and water and to build assemble and

manage four microfarms

she hired the food lab and walt bottom

got the necic

urban farm built

necic was happy over the last few years

when its farmers market would bring in

two thousand dollars in sales

last summer they brought in over

seventeen thousand dollars in sales and

we’re

just getting started

walt bonham’s food lab is one of the 10

microfarm producers in the richland

grow-op and so he provides his share of

the needed aggregate for the market

and the food lab is about to go under

contract with the rich and grow up

to provide a strategic operations and

marketing plan

to ensure their success in 2021 and

beyond

so my friend walt bonham is no longer

looking for an opportunity

ohio state university provided an

opportunity

and walt bonham seized it and now

he’s creating opportunity for his own

neighborhood

and he’s building wealth wealth for

himself

for his family and for his community

now walt has not resolved

the legal injustice to set him back a

few years ago

but guess what he’s soon gonna have the

means to try

and he’s just one of several inspiring

microfarm stories that are blooming

right now in mansfield ohio

and proof that land grants can change

lives

so stay tuned and

while it’s pretty obvious i’m really

excited about the microphone project

and about my friend walt and about his

successes

the real story here is about land grants

and social justice when the moral land

grant act was

passed in 1862 it delivered social

justice

by providing opportunity it prepared a

nation of

18th century farmers for the

opportunities

of the industrial world we stand at a

similar inflection

point today and if land-grant

universities looked around their

communities

and they identified geographies where

people were most at

risk and they worked with those

communities

to develop sustainable systems to

mitigate those risks like the microfarm

system

and bring opportunity and deliver social

justice they will have

ample work to fulfill the promise of the

land grant university

in the 21st century thank you

you