DETROIT, Mich. – Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan recntly introduced urban farming activist Tepfirah Rushdan as the city’s first ever director of urban agriculture, working directly out of the mayor’s office. In her new position, Rushdan will serve as a liaison to the urban farming community and will help shape city policy regarding urban farming.

In comments made at a press conference September 11, Duggan said that Rushdan was everyone’s choice to be the first urban agriculture director for the City of Detroit. Many people had been lobbying for years for the position, the mayor said.

“Today we open a new chapter as far as the City of Detroit is concerned,” Duggan said. “Ten years ago, when I started as mayor in the City of Detroit, we had 45,000 abandoned houses and we were concerned almost entirely with what do we do with those abandoned houses. We’ve gotten 25,000 knocked down and gotten 15,000 fixed up with families moved into them. We have 5,000 abandoned houses left; they’re going to be gone in 18 months. But while we were busy dealing with the houses, a lot of people were busy thinking, ‘what are we going to do with the land?’ And the urban gardeners and farmers in the city have created such beauty and put the vacant land to such good use.”

“I’m very excited about this position,” Rushdan said. “Urban farming is getting an increased eye now, even nationally.”

Rushdan said she is eager to pursue a number of policy goals and is looking forward to working with people in the mayor’s office and in the urban farming community to help achieve objectives that everyone agrees on, such as making it easier for urban farmers and gardeners to get the proper permits and to have city inspections that are both effective and timely.

Duggan said it’s been 100 to 150 years since Detroit government thought about land and farming, including various permitting and inspection issues and how they apply to farmers. He added there are tens of thousands of vacant lots in Detroit right now. “There is going to be a huge need for our urban gardeners and urban farmers to manage these properties to put them to good use for decades to come. So, I’ve decided we’re going to fully embrace this. We decided we would appoint someone as director of urban agriculture in the City of Detroit. Someone who makes the rules work for us.”

According to Duggan, Rushdan has been involved in urban agriculture for many years: she helped establish the Black Farmers Fund, was a founding member of Black to the Land, an organization devoted to helping African Americans get more comfortable with the outdoors; and was the education coordinator at Keep Growing Detroit, an urban farm in the city.

“She’s already given me several lectures on how to clean up the city bureaucracy,” Duggan said, laughing. He added an informal vote in his office as to who should be the first director of urban agriculture was unanimous. This new position was created in the wake of changes that were being made to the land use tax in Detroit. While homeowners in Detroit will see some property tax relief under the plan, the new formula will double the land use tax on vacant lots in order to discourage speculators. However, so that urban gardeners and farmers won’t be taxed out of business, they will be exempt from the higher rate.

Urban gardening and farming serve two objectives, according to city officials. One, they help to beautify land that was previously untended and often blighted; and two, they provide high quality food for people located in so-called food deserts, i.e., places that have no high-quality grocery stores nearby. “We are getting more and more and more growers every year in the City of Detroit,” said Malik Yakini, of Keep Growing Detroit. In a follow up comment at the news conference Duggan said, “we are now going to have a unified voice in this administration that says, ‘urban farming is valued.’”