How does a traditional family farm couple in northeast Kansas respond to urban advice they didn’t request? Advice about taking action on their rural local food desert—unlikely advice from a BIPOC urban farmer working on his food desert five hundred miles away.
Jim and Freda Dobbins respond quite graciously. They compare notes on the suggestions from James Grevious, who has worked with his kids and their peers building the Rebel Marketplace in Aurora, Colorado, for nine years. Many adults are joining in with them, neighbors who learn to grow and market more and more of their fresh food within a six-mile radius of Del Mar Park, their food desert neighborhood in Aurora, Colorado. (See my last MRA op-ed, “Taking a Bite of the Elephant,” 3/18/24)
Advantages and disadvantages come to the fore quickly (please bear with my tennis metaphor). “Ad-ins” and “ad-outs” appear rapidly on each side of the rural/urban food tennis net: a northeast Kansas family farm on one side, a center-city Aurora grassroots alternative food system on the other.
The first serve, delivered urban-to-rural, is “store location.” It should result in an “ad-out rural.” James and Freda have just two grocery stores remaining in their half of Nemaha County: one twelve miles away and the other fifteen. Both seem to be endangered economic species. Neither carries locally produced or processed fresh foods or meats. If they close, the stores nearest the Dobbins farm are Walmarts in three directions, each thirty to forty miles away.
A Kroger supermarket sits beside Del Mar Park, where James Grevious’ Rebel Marketplace will open now each week this growing season. “Add-in, center city? Or that Kroger shot catches in the net mesh. The store’s limited organic produce and meats section has contributed to Kroger’s recent 25% price rise, with the Federal Trade Commission investigating it and other big retail grocers for monopoly COVID supply access and pricing practices. Shopping in that high-price section makes no budget sense to James’ neighbors.
Is that a food system elephant sitting at one end of the net, calling out: “Deuce!”?
James Grevious delivers his next serve, a crucial suggestion launching his Rebel Marketplace. The suggestion is to locate an eighteen- or nineteen-year-old with passion who might find a future in a new local food system. As James puts it, “Take the first bite of the elephant.” His first two recruits were his sons, in 2015, who, in 2024, help lead the Rebel Gardeners.
Jim Dobbins groans as the serve bounces past him. Not only do I live in a food desert. I also live in a people desert.”
Nemaha County’s population has dropped from about 12,000 in the 1970s to 10,000 today. Dozens of young home-grown talents, including Jim himself, have stepped-stoned from college into urban life. He’d still be out there if his Dad hadn’t allowed him to return to farm the home place. Three-quarters of the on-farm population, replaced by massive machinery, extensive confined animal feeding operations, and capitalized debt, have left the land since Jim and I grew up on our neighboring farms in the 1950s.
Through three interviews, he and Freda, in their upper seventies, didn’t come up with a local young candidate’s name, one who’d want to learn food entrepreneurship while creating a new local growing and marketing network for fresh food — Someone young enough with the energy to form a broad outreach for client members in a Community Supported Agriculture network or a local Rebel-style marketplace. Or envisioning an even bigger food hub, something James’ Rebel Gardeners might be gradually birthing.
Add-in center-city urban.” At least for the moment, with youth leader prospects.
Urban farmer Fatima Oné, a fan of Mr. Grevious’ work, quickly lobs a fat one over onto the rural side of the net. Rural growers have the advantage of land ownership. We’re never going to have that here in the city. Here, one acre of land can cost a million dollars.” The land ownership hit comes back like an automatic tennis ball machine shot.
“Point, rural.”
“Deuce.”
Are Kansas State Extension services readily available to help keep rural family gardening and food processing skills up to date and expanding? r grew up with those and has taken advantage of them her whole life, while her professional career as a credentialed county librarian provided critical off-the-farm income. However, she sees those domestic farm skills dwindling rapidly over the next two generations. At the same time, urban farmers like Mr. Grevious begin to establish helpful Colorado State Extension links that didn’t previously exist. SDA Extension Service help appears available on both sides of the net, with no severe food desert breakthrough strategies in sight.
“Deuce. The “elephant” at the sideline sure grunts in a contented tone. Maybe.
Three talented young ones, my two nieces, and a nephew are growing up three miles from Jim, and his wife. They moved back from Kansas City, with my high-achieving niece and her rural-raised husband deciding to raise their kids on her small town’s familiar turf. I am sure they’re not the only young ones here, ambitious and restless in their intelligence, creativity, and competitiveness. Possible recruits for new types of visioning and training. Rural-urban players — ones who would be serious enough to enjoy creating new “ad-ins.”