Singer Taja Sevelle fights hunger with Urban Farming initiative

Urban Farming founder Taja Sevelle, in a garden at Linwood and Gladstone in Detroit, estimates that there are 1,000 similar plots in the metro area.

In 2005 Sevelle created Urban Farming, a movement to plant vegetable gardens as a step toward ending hunger.

By Cassandra Spratling
Detroit Free Press
June 11, 2011

Excerpt:

“This is more than a gardening organization,” Sevelle says. “I want people to see farming as a way of life, a way we really can end hunger in this generation. If we want that to happen, we can make it happen.

“Look at recycling. Recycling is pretty much a way of life. A few years ago, few people were recycling.”

Music brought Sevelle to Detroit in the late 1990s. She came to record her third CD, “Toys of Vanity,” with producer R.J. Rice. While here she took a liking to the city, but was struck by the vacant land and poverty.

She envisioned a way to help with both, relying on her first love — gardening.

Growing up in Minneapolis as well as a nearby farm, Sevelle thought she was destined for a career as a botanist. Even as a young child, she adored plants, and she had a knack for making them grow. At 12, she had 150 plants in her bedroom.

Read the complete article here.