COCD Announces Cooperative Agreement with USDA and Project Director

COCD is pleased to announce the award of funds and new project director for a Resilient Urban Farming initiative that is the result of a United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) cooperative agreement. The Resilient Urban Farming project, focused on risk management education, will train bilingual peer facilitators in good agricultural practice, soil and water conservation, risk management approaches, and the availability of institutional support, such as crop insurance. These facilitators will share their knowledge by training other participants in their communities. Dr. Emily Holmes has been selected to serve as Project Director. 

Catherine Bitwayiki, COCD Executive Director, shared that “I am thrilled that Dr. Emily Holmes will be leading a new urban farming project focused on the needs of refugee, immigrant, and other underserved farmers.”

Dr. Holmes recently relocated to Dayton from Memphis, TN, where she was an educator in the field of religious studies and worked with community organizations focused on urban agriculture and food justice. She brings extensive experience working with growers in the mid-south and Mississippi Delta region. She served on the board of organizations such as Grow Memphis, an association of urban growers, and Memphis Tilth, which advocated for sustainable farming and organized the Bring it Food Hub, offering a weekly community supported agriculture (CSA) subscription that was aggregated from local farms.

As Dr. Holmes shared,

“I believe that growing and sharing food can help people connect across cultures, and that the way we take care of our land, whether urban or rural, matters for how we build peaceful and just communities.”

She continues, “As we start the resilient urban farming project in Dayton, we will be focused on the unique needs of refugees and immigrants, so that they can continue farming traditions, grow the foods they want to eat, and exercise food sovereignty…In this way, we also hope to contribute to the broader local food movement in the greater Miami Valley, to help build a food and agriculture system that is resilient, sustainable, just, and equitable.”


–Photo attribution: Adapted from photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash. —