Annaleigh WetzelIn farming, one seed can make all the difference. The conditions have to be perfect; you need the right soil, weather, grower, plus some luck, but that one seed has the potential to reap a beautiful harvest. Ideas often blossom the same way. One can percolate for years, and when the conditions are right, greatness sprouts.
So is the case with a new program intended to teach formerly incarcerated people how to farm. The program, unnamed while still in its nascent stages, grew from the mind of Robert Pierce, market manager of the South Madison Farmers’ Market and coordinator of Growing Power Madison. The program will address several problematic challenges facing poor, urban communities, such as limited accessibility to fresh, affordable food, high incarceration rates and little opportunity for mobility out of poverty.
“I don’t get it. Why do you have to be rich to be able to eat right?” Pierce says. “We have the right to be able to eat right.”
South Madison is far removed from the rest of the city despite its proximity to downtown and the UW-Madison campus. Having been a resident of south Madison for most of his life, Pierce knows the area and its inhabitants well. He thinks that for many formerly incarcerated people in the area, a patch of warm, rich soil will trump a cinderblock cell when post-prison reentry into mainstream society comes in the form of a garden plot. He hopes the 6-by-8-foot locked room prisoners are all too familiar with can be supplanted by 6-by-8 rows of kale, tomatoes and carrots.
“Growing your own food is as free as you can be,” Pierce says.
The sun shines over a south Madison hoop house.
Photo by Annaleigh Wetzel.
The historically rigid schism between city and rural life is one that has recently begun to shrink. With the rise of commercial urban agriculture in the United States’ biggest cities, a national conversation focusing on food and social justice was introduced as well. That conversation made its way to Madison, where Pierce says he has been tackling the topic for more than 30 years.
With only one grocery store, Copps Food Center in the heart of south Madison, many consider the area a food desert. This means that access to unprocessed, natural and healthy foods is tough to come by for those who live there. Without adequate transportation, time and, most of all, money, south Madison residents are confined to buying food from the area’s convenience stores and fast-food chains.
“Thirty to 40 years ago, people were growing their own food … Then up pops McDonald’s, and that’s when the health of south Madison started to deteriorate,” Pierce says.
The Hunger Prevention Council of Dane County and UW-Extension recognized this, prompting the establishment of the South Madison Farmers’ Market in 2002 as a way to break down the barrier to local and organic produce for those who live there. Only a year after its inception, UW-Extension approached Pierce about taking over as the market’s manager, a position he reluctantly accepted.
“I really didn’t want to take it on, but they said, ‘If you don’t, then south Madison will not have access to fresh, safe food,’” he says. “South Madison is the poorest community in Madison … I grew up here, and so therefore it was easy for me to identify with most of the people here … So for me … if I’m going to help bring a change, I’d like to see it happen here in south Madison.”
Now, more than three decades after his first foray into food justice work, Pierce is at it again.
“My dad sees a vision, and once he sees a vision, he goes with it,” says Shellie Pierce, one of Pierce’s daughters.
In his vision, the program aims to provide a chance for two participants to smoothly transition back into life outside of prison via farming education, as well as a $13,000 yearlong stipend, personal support and entrepreneurial guidance. By offering this post-prison pathway as a means for sustainable career stability, Pierce wants to help both the participants and the south Madison community thrive.
“It seemed for me that it was a Catch-22 for [people coming out of prison],” Pierce says. “Every time that they get out of prison, they’re hit with all these different variables: They need to pay probation parole, they have child support, they want to be able to be responsible and take care of their families, and there is just nothing out here for them.”
To succeed, the program expects to rely heavily on support from partners that also want to see development in south Madison. A Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies capstone class at UW-Madison and the Nehemiah Center for Urban Leadership Development’s Man-Up Project, a support group for men who are trying to avoid or escape criminal lifestyles, are both crucial contributors helping the program come to fruition. The two participants were selected from the pool of Man-Up members.
Associate Professor Alfonso Morales in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at UW-Madison says the partnership between Pierce, Anthony Cooper, Sr., director of reentry services at the Nehemiah Center, and the capstone class was a natural fit.
“[The program] came about through the weaving together of our ongoing activities,” Morales says. “Robert is an urban farmer trying to support himself through farming and marketing his produce. Anthony works with formerly incarcerated individuals. And I do a lot of research and applied work around community regional food systems.”
South Madison Farmers’ Market manager and Growing Power Madison coordinator Robert Pierce.
Photo by Thomas Yonash.
The Ira and Ineva Reilly Baldwin Wisconsin Idea Endowment grant also makes this program possible. In 2015, Pierce’s program was one of 13 that were awarded full grants, receiving $85,000 in funding over two years. A two-year Plan4Health grant from the Capital Area Regional Planning Commission is also to thank for $13,000 going toward South Madison Farmers’ Market promotion, as well as supplies like boots, gloves and small farm equipment for the program.
Morales and Dadit Hidayat, a doctoral student and one of the teaching assistants for the capstone course, applied for the grant in an effort to continue to support south Madison through their research and classwork. Hidayat acts as a principal investigator of the project, overseeing the work of the undergraduate students enrolled in the course. He says the course is designed to train the students to collect data, formulate a strategic plan and appropriately interact with the participants. The class is also working on gaining nonprofit status and forming a Board of Directors for the South Madison Farmers’ Market.
Abe Lenoch, a fifth-year senior in the capstone course, says he and his classmates are there to serve the needs of those living in south Madison, not the other way around.
“We interact with the community,” he says. “We do our best to make whatever influence we have on them a sustainable one so once the grant money is gone, once the students aren’t around, they can still continue what we’ve tried to facilitate. And that’s all we are … facilitators.”
As facilitators, the students in the capstone course and Pierce interviewed applicants interested in learning how to farm and pursuing participation in the program. The process was mutually selective: the applicant, Pierce and the students came to the decision together. Informal “eat-and-greets” between the capstone students, Pierce and potential participants served as information sessions until participants were officially selected in mid-November. These sessions convened during Thursday night Man-Up meetings, allowing for an open dialogue about what being an urban farmer would look like for these men.
Out of 26 men present at the second eat-and-greet Man-Up meeting, 23 were black. Out of those same 26 men, 11 signed up to interview for a participant position with Pierce and the capstone students. Pierce is focused on helping underprivileged communities, and racial and ethnic minorities in particular, develop tools and skills to grow their own food.
“At the turn of the century, there were over 100,000 black farmers,” Pierce says. “Today there is less than 15,000 black farmers in the United States. They have been cut out of farming.”
Wisconsin, and Madison in particular, aren’t usually regarded as positive places to live and work for people of color. According to a UW-Milwaukee study in 2013, 12.8 percent of working-age black men in Wisconsin are in prison, a rate that is almost two times the national average. The 2013 Race to Equity report found that in Dane County in 2011, 54 percent of black people were living in poverty. And in 2012, African American men represented more than 43 percent of all adult prison placements during the year, while they only made up 4.8 percent of the county’s adult male population.
Pierce says he understands this type of injustice because he, too, has experienced discrimination based on his criminal record and skin color. Before the South Madison Farmers’ Market, Pierce had a stand on the Capitol Square at the Dane County Farmers’ Market.
“I quit going to the Square because I wasn’t making any money. Everyone else was making money but me,” he says. He remembers himself as one of only two minority farmers who sold goods there and believes racism was the reason some market-goers never purchased from his stand. “So I would always come home,” to south Madison, Pierce says.
Pierce’s roots in south Madison run deep, so it is home where he does his work. Pierce thinks he and his colleagues are working to dismantle the revolving door of the United States prison system by combating the joblessness and instability some incarcerated people face when they return home. He says he wants the program to empower the participants to grow food for their families, sell produce to restaurants or at the South Madison Farmers’ Market, start a CSA and more, with ultimate self-sufficiency as its core mission.
The program organizers are optimistic that participation will progress from just two farmers in year one up to 25 in the future. Although the implementation of this program may still be germinating, its promise is budding.
“The possibilities are endless,” Pierce says. “You just got to think about it. And minorities have not been in that position that they could be able to even think like this … they can’t even get a chance to even explore any of these ideas. So now here’s a chance for that. And there’s no telling what might happen.”
This story was updated on December 10th to clarify Pierce’s incarceration record.