.png)
A Chicago Farmer Goes To Springfield
- Bob Benenson
- 2 days ago
- 7 min read
Youth Had Its Say on 2025 Black Farmers & Growers Lobby Day
Bob Heuer is a longtime advocate of a better, more local food system. His HNA Networks, based in Evanston just outside Chicago, helps agri-food, nutrition & conservation organizations find success in America's regional economies. The HNA consulting team delivers products and services to accelerate organizational success in the transformation of local and regional food systems into self-sustaining complements to global food supply chains.
Bob has ridden the Grow Greater Englewood bus to Springfield for each of the three Illinois Black Farmers & Growers Lobby Days. Below is his report on the latest of these events, which took place on May 14.
———————————————
By Bob Heuer/HNA Networks
Thirty-two-year-old Devonjah Wallace was an eighth grader when the City of Chicago shut down the public housing complex where he’d grown up. He moved into a nearby row house with his mother, stepfather and five siblings. He looks back with gratitude at an after-school program at Wells High School that kept him out of trouble.
It’s Wednesday, May 14. 4:45 a.m. Devonjah boards a bus chartered by South Side Chicago’s Grow Greater Englewood. This non-profit organization seeks to create sustainable local food economies, green businesses and land sovereignty for the benefit of community residents.
Devonjah happens to sit down next to me for the three-hour drive to Springfield. He introduces himself as a farmer. A farmer from Cabrini-Green, the controversial housing project that the city of Chicago demolished in stages from 2000 to 2011.
As a teenager, Devonjah got started putting hands in the soil through an After School Matters project run by Growing Power, the non-profit urban farming predecessor to today's Urban Growers Collective. For three hours a day and $200 a month, he helped turn an abandoned basketball court into a vegetable garden.
“I didn’t think it was possible to build raised beds there,” he recalls. “When tomatoes appeared on the vines, I thought, ‘Great, we can throw these at cars.’ I’d never seen food come from the ground. I just thought it came from grocery stores.”
That garden work, he said, was “a neighborhood thing. There were about 15 of us. It was a safe space. A no-fighting, no-arguing zone. But pulling weeds is such hard work. I almost thought of it like slavery until I got older. Now I realize it was good to be doing something positive. Many people I grew up with had nothing to do but be on the street selling.”
Devonjah himself was in and out of prison before turning 19, and found he had limited options. He worked at a warehouse loading boxes on trucks, then moved to Indiana for a time to live with his sister. Not having a car made it hard to find and keep a job. He returned to Chicago and, for a couple years, he was a restaurant dishwasher.
Hope from Out of the Blue
Eighteen months ago, Malcolm Evans — director of farming for Urban Growers Collective — called to offer him a job. They’d grown up together in Cabrini-Green and worked together on the vegetable garden.
Urban Growers Collective provides education, training and leadership development for Chicago youth on eight parcels of farmland. The 11 acres are mainly located on the city’s South Side. The produce is sold and donated through various channels.
Devonjah now works full-time year-round for Urban Growers Collective. “I’m a jack-of-all trades, doing a little of everything. I’m a driver. I build beds. I transplant. I teach. I train. I take notes.”
He feels like he’s found his path in life: “Malcolm was the motivation for me. It took me a while to see that if you stick with a thing, hard work does pay off.”
Another confidence boost comes from Erika Allen, Urban Growers co-founder/CEO and a major force in the region's urban farming and food equity communities. The organization emerged from the 2017 closure of Growing Power—a Milwaukee-based urban agriculture pioneer founded in 1993 by her father, Will Allen.
A visual artist, Erika strives to address the root causes of poverty by integrating creative and therapeutic techniques alongside food security and community development.
“Erika has helped me find a passion to literally help other people,” Devonjah says. “We feed people.”
This impact wasn’t clear to him during his high school gardening days with the old Growing Power. “Erika used to really push me," Devonjah says. "I thought she was picking on me. But she saw I was a good worker. She thought I had potential to do great stuff if I take myself seriously and put my heart on it.”
Riding Through the Land of Lincoln
As the bus exits Interstate 55 en route to downtown Springfield, Devonjah is talking about farming as his future.
Urban Growers Collective is expanding its footprint into suburban south Cook County. He’s been working in Chicago Heights and Glenwood and he says one of the properties is something like 30 acres. “Forty-two,” says a voice in the row behind us. One of Devonjah’s Urban Growers co-workers is standing in the aisle smiling.
The bus has stopped on 2nd Street in front of the state Capitol.
People young and old are on their feet. Many wear yellow T-shirts that had been distributed before the bus left Englewood. The t-shirts feature a black and green design with the words “Save Black Farms.”
Lobby Day
State Rep. Sonya Marie Harper is the Illinois General Assembly’s leading advocate for Black farmers and growers, and for those seeking a better food system in general. A former television reporter, Harper rode a passion for community organizing to the Illinois House of Representatives and has served South Side Chicago’s 6th District since 2015.
The first Black person to chair the Illinois House Agriculture and Conservation Committee, Harper started Black Farmer and Grower Lobby Day in 2023. Lobby Day is organized by the Illinois Stewardship Alliance with help from local, statewide and national groups.
“You are the definition of resilience,” she tells 100 people gathered in the State Library Building.
There’s a breakfast buffet, with greetings by Illinois Lt. Gov. Julianna Stratton and Illinois Director of Agriculture Jerry Costello. Seven Illinois House Black Caucus members then join Harper on the podium. Also on hand are a South Carolina state representative, a Mississippi state senator, and a delegation from Central Africa's Democratic Republic of the Congo.
“You keep doing the great work you are doing,” Harper says. “I put my best foot forward to help you.”
We attendees then broke up into small groups to go to the Capitol complex and talk up Harper’s agenda with lawmakers and staff.
This year, Illinois’ Black farmers and growers are asking for little, money-wise.
Harper has sponsored bills for three meager grant programs. Another would continue a task force’s advocacy for state institutions to use their buying power to create opportunities for Illinois farmers. (“Good food purchasing” policies exist in Cook County and Chicago.) Another bill would establish a commission to figure out how the state can help urban, suburban, exurban and rural communities eliminate food deserts. A proposed resolution would recognize Black Farmers & Growers Lobby Day as an official annual event.
Illinois’ Black farmer/grower initiatives are breathing life into the state’s multi-cultural world of small-scale, community-centered farming. What’s obvious to all is that governmental farm policy favors not them, but rather commercial-scale agriculture.
This disparity was spelled out in an Investigate Midwest news report disseminated that morning in this edition of POLITICO’s Illinois Playbook. Here reporter Jennifer Bamberg chronicles how “state government resistance and Trump’s rollback of food infrastructure funding” are hurting Illinois’ small business farming sector.
Back on the Bus
Devonjah’s four-hour Springfield experience left him feeling like he has much to learn. He’d attended the 2024 Lobby Day, but a year later is clearer about the need to get involved in advocacy.
In the Capitol hallways he saw crowds of people trying to get in a word with lawmakers and staff. “Sonya Harper was the only one I saw take a real interest in our issues," he said. "She wanted to hear us out. She understands that growing food is a way to feed yourself and your community. Food brings different communities together."
Devonjah says he’d like to see more emphasis on young people growing food: “First of all, they’re the future. Kids are the most innocent thing we’ve got. Plant that seed in kids. Give them the vision and it can grow like trees."
He concluded, "Growing food can be a way to help children find their passion."