Editor's note: This story is part of Southwest Michigan Second Wave's On the Ground Battle Creek series.
 
 
BATTLE CREEK, MI  — Devon Wilson’s vision for an urban farm in the city of Battle Creek took root during the pandemic in 2020 with two acres of land and a mission to provide healthy food options to the community.
 
With patience and careful tending, those roots spread in 2023 at Sunlight Gardens to produce a brick-and-mortar farmstand called Farmacy and an event space this year designed to strengthen the community’s relationship with food.
 
John GrapDevon Wilson, right, and Jerry Olds pose for photos inside a hoop house at Sunlight Gardens.his is a farm-to-table concept that Wilson and his team of four have been building out. During the Fall, the venue hosted its first event which was a fundraiser for Torti Taco, a local restaurant that temporarily closed and has since re-opened.
 
“We really just wanted to allow the community to support us and to show what we can do at a higher level,” Wilson says.
 
Wilson says the space was intentionally built to offer a comfortable area where people can have a good experience.
 
“The strategy is to do more as we have the capacity to build out the menu. We’ll also utilize the space for teaching and fun,” says Wilson, Founder and CEO of Sunlight Gardens. “We’re really wanting to make food fun and highlight the extraordinary things that happen when you can get a chef working with a farmer.”

Roots of farm-to-table restaurants
 
The roots of the farm-to-table trend stretch back to the 1960s and 70s when Americans became increasingly dissatisfied with processed foods that they found bland and untrustworthy. The movement gained momentum in the 1970s when Alice Waters opened the first farm-to-table restaurant, Chez Panisse, in California, according to the Agritecture website.
 
“It started as a small movement but is still gaining momentum with more restaurants, hospitality, architects, and developers trying to include it in their projects,” according to information on Agritecure.  “As consumer preferences pivot towards healthier, more sustainable dining options, the farm-to-table movement has emerged as a beacon of change within the hospitality industry. With an increased focus on sustainability and local sourcing, restaurants, and hotels are embracing this ethos, recognizing the benefits it brings not only to their bottom line but also to the planet. There are real opportunities here as surveys suggest that over 75% of consumers are willing to pay more for locally sourced food.”
 
The Pure Michigan website has a page dedicated to various farm-to-table eateries within the state.
 
The Sunlight Gardens venue space will be an additional source of revenue for the business which will enable Wilson to pay a livable wage with benefits to his employees. In addition, it provides opportunities for the community to build relationships with what they eat.
 
“This is a big barrier. A lot of people don’t have experience and education about eating healthy. It’s really about being smart about your ingredients and what you eat and how to make the food good to eat,” he says. “It’s almost like a lost art. We want to help people build that relationship with their food and really have fun. People build their own memories around food. This will bring us together to learn and talk about different foods.”
 
The Sunlight Gardens venue will highlight different chefs at different price points for diners.
 
“Farm-to-table food with Umami RamenWe want to do more of these events and work with other restaurants and other chefs, including those who work at Kitchen Proper and Umami Ramen. There are chefs who are passionate about this work,” Wilson says.

“It will be sustainable for our business and operations and will be available for people and will be affordable for people who may not be able to pay $100 for a dinner.”
 
Planting the future
 
Located at 245 N. Kendall Avenue, Sunlight Gardens includes organic production fields, a nursery, greenhouse growing space, composting, and a farmstand called Farmacy inside a building on the property which opened in 2023.
 
The crops planted adhere to the seasons. In November the farm was producing a lot of greens such as dinosaur and curly kale, purple top turnips, and watermelon radishes. Everything grown by Wilson and his team is available for sale to individual customers and local restaurants.
 
Wilson is among a small number of farmers operating urban farms, says Bob Thompson, President of the Michigan Farmers Union (MFU)/.
 
“We believe that this is a focus that needs to be strengthened. A gentleman on our board from Keep Growing Detroit helped us understand that there are significant food deserts in urban areas. We see a real connection with Devon’s activities and working on food deserts.”
 
The website, Frontiers for Young Minds says there are many benefits to urban agriculture besides providing social and environmental benefits.
 
“Urban agriculture can help to create new technologies. Due to the limited space for growing plants, urban farmers must think about innovative ways to produce food. Innovation includes trying out new techniques and methods. Some urban farmers use fish poop to fertilize their plants in a system called aquaponics, says an article on the website.
 
“Many city farms have also started to offer things in addition to food, such as gardening classes, places to host events and tours.” These are among the things Wilson is offering at Sunlight Gardens.
 
 Earlier this month he was appointed to the MFU Board of Directors.
 
“We’ve known Von now for three or four years and he’s been a very active member,” Thompson says. “He’s been inquisitive and wanting to participate and help with our organization's aims and goals.”
 
John GrapPlants grow inside a hoop house at Sunlight Gardens.That participation includes programs available for young farmers such as the Beginning Farmers Institute, an initiative started a few years ago by the National Farmers Union, and two different legislative fly-ins.
 
“We take upwards of 300 farmers from throughout the United States into Washington, D.C. on an annual basis,” Thompson says.  “We go and literally darken the door of every congressional office in the House and Senate. We always have three to five legislative initiatives we’re working on together.”
 
Thompson, 70, operates his family’s 600-acre Centennial Farm in central Michigan which was started by his great-grandfather. The farm had been a traditional dairy farm. As circumstances changed the focus pivoted to raising small-herd feeder calves and growing corn, oats, wheat, soybeans, and lots of hay which is sold to people who have dairy or beef operations.
 
“For a living, I worked for the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) Farm Services Agency. I was considered the County Executive Director for the Isabella County Farm Services Agency.”
 
In 2011, he retired from that job and became the MFU President one month later. The organization’s membership is concerned about the fact that as the average age of farmers continues to increase the institutional knowledge they have is going to be lost over the next 10 years.
 
“We think having younger folks on our State Board needs to happen,” Thompson says. “I turned 70 this year. We have a guy who’s 84 and a couple of women. We asked the fellow from Keep Growing Detroit to join the board because we want to become more inclusive in all aspects of agriculture.”
 
A minority within a minority
 
Of the 1.9 million farms operating in the United States in 2022, 32,653 were owned by Black farmers, according to the 2022 Census of Agriculture Highlights. In Michigan, there are 31,744 white-owned farms, compared to 172 Black-owned farms, according to USDA data. 
 
Black farmers make far less than their white counterparts, on average earning less than $40,000 annually while white farmers make more than $190,000 each year, the USDA reported.
 
Wilson says he was not aware of any Black farmers as a youth. When he was in the beginning stages of his farming career, he did not have any Black mentors.
 
“John GrapDevon Wilson points out some of the young plants growing in one of the hoop houses at Sunlight Gardens.I was just going off of the love I have for my family and community and feeling betrayed because a lot of the stuff we were eating was harming us instead of making us healthy,” he says.
 
Eventually, he did meet people who helped him to gain historical perspectives about Black farmers. One man told him, “We were not slaves, but people who were enslaved. He said we were essentially strategically slaved because of our agricultural knowledge of crops like rice and yams. It made me have more of a perspective.”
 
Wilson says he considers this a “superpower.”
 
“We were such good farmers. It’s in our heritage and our DNA,” he says.
“I’m excited and thankful for all of the opportunities that are upon us. It’s a crazy time, but I believe there’s a lot of opportunity in chaos and the food system landscape. I can see so many areas for improvement in our food system. I’m well-equipped and inspired to be a catalyst.”