Agricultural Research Center Comes to Detroit
"We need to put time, energy, care, and love into this space, and create something that is beautiful. I want the DPFLI to be something people want to be a part of—something that challenges the paradigm of institutions engaging and serving marginalized communities. "Spartans work for the common good with uncommon will": This new center will serve people who have been written off, bringing healing, mindfulness, joy, and innovation to places that were once written off."
Naim Edwards
From Partnerships and Peninsulas podcast, April 1, 2019
MSU College of Agriculture and Natural Resources
- Naim Edwards
- Director, MSU Detroit Partnership for Food, Learning, and Innovation
Michigan State University has its first urban agriculture research center in the works, the MSU Detroit Partnership for Food, Learning, and Innovation (DPFLI). Extension Specialist Naim Edwards is its director.
As an active member of Detroit's food system, Edwards provides vital connections between the Detroit urban agricultural community, neighborhood organizations, and MSU research opportunities. He has spent several years working in and advocating for the city's burgeoning urban agriculture community. He will coordinate programming and conduct public outreach to address economic and nutrition challenges in urban communities, as well as forge community partnerships in and around the city.
Edwards will be joined by fellow Extension educators and researchers in Southeast Michigan to provide education, soil sampling and pollution cleanup, pest and crop disease management, forestry, innovative growing systems, and community food systems development.
- Photograph courtesy of MSU Extension
