Switching to the Sweet Potato: Growing Our Own Currency
An Urban Agriculture Policy & Local Food Economy Development Proposal by Kwabena “Cubby” Nkromo, Citizen Farmer
My horticultural and research relationship with the sweet potato (technically “sweetpotato” Ipomoea batatas) began during my first years in college at Tuskegee University in Alabama. Through a federally funded work study program, I was assigned to work on a laboratory research project utilizing genetic engineering techniques to enable improvement of crop plants. Most of the research focused on sweetpotatoes, the sixth largest crop in the world. I actually grew sweetpotatoes and other botanical varieties in tissue culture conditions, which is a collection of techniques used to maintain or grow plant cells, tissues or organs under sterile conditions on a nutrient culture medium. It is widely used to produce clones of plants in a method known as micropropagation. Fun fact! After a Google search for information to write this post, I learned that my supervising professor Dr. Channapatna S. Prakash, from over 30 years ago, is still working at the university! Dr. Prakash had just begun his career at my alma mater the summer I arrived.
Sweet potato crops have been a big deal at Tuskegee since the late 19th century due to pioneering research done with the plant by the famous Dr. George Washington Carver, despite him being more commonly known for work with the peanut as a crop. Carver’s publications on the sweet potato include information on the history and varieties of sweetpotatoes, their cultivation, insect and fungal problems, and their treatment, harvesting, storing, canning, and preparation for human consumption and animal feed. Carver developed more than 200 products from the sweetpotato! This incredible institutional legacy left by Dr. Carver has led to establishment of The National Sweetpotato Information Center at Tuskegee University in 1993, with funding from USDA as a cooperative effort of Tuskegee University, the National Agricultural Library, and the University of Illinois. That seems important to me.
If there is one crop more than another, that Macon County can produce year by year and with almost unerring certainty, it is the sweet potato crop. Now what is true of Macon County is true of the adjoining counties, and is more or less true of the entire South. — Carver, George Washington (1910). Possibilities of the Sweet Potato in Macon County, Alabama. Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute. Tuskegee Institute. Agricultural Experiment Station Bulletin Number 17, p. 3.
As an urban farmer currently based in Atlanta, Georgia, I have found Dr. Washington’s advice, quoted above from 1910, to still be true today. I have found no better or consistent overall success with a crop than that of the sweetpotato. Among many attributes it is relatively easy to grow, tolerant of most environmental conditions except cool temperatures, has multiple harvest uses including leaves and roots, high nutrient content, and stores well up to a year in the right conditions (see list HERE). As a Community Builder and Local Food System Planner, I am even more intrigued by the possibilities of the sweetpotato. From Black Lives Matter to COVID-19, the rapid disruptions in society which are occurring at what can seem like lightening speed and ferocious intensity demand more dramatic responses than conventional reforms and remediation. At all levels and in all sectors of life, we need innovations which are aggressive in nature and of revolutionary impact. In the critical areas of food sovereignty and development of local economies to insulate communities from the ravages of macro national or even global economic gyrations, I believe there is a kernel of a solution within the root of the sweetpotato.
In economics, a local currency is a tool of exchange for goods and services which can be spent in a particular geographical locality at participating organisations. A regional currency is a form of local currency encompassing a larger geographical area. A local currency acts as a complementary currency to a national currency, rather than replacing it, and aims to encourage spending within a local community, especially with locally owned businesses. Many people may not be aware that while counterfeiting U.S. dollars for instance, is illegal, it is perfectly allowable in the law to establish a separate currency (not even getting into cryptocurrency). There are about 300 complementary currencies, including local currencies, listed in the Complementary Currency Resource Center worldwide database.
I believe strongly that in order for citizens to gain real local control of their lives and foment true resiliency to external societal shocks, we must begin by both providing basic human needs for ourselves (first among them food) as well as taking responsibility for community-based monetary and fiscal policy. For years now, I have been a student of local currency scrips and the science of building local economies under the tutelage of the Shumacher Center for a New Economics. Communities printing their own money is a powerful and proven strategy for self-determination and empowerment, known most proudly by me in the form of the Berksharelocal currency program in the Great Barrington region of my native Massachusetts. While this effort and many others like it are inspiring and successful, they are still missing the mark, in my opinion, due to being pegged, in some fashion, to the U.S. dollar, which as a fiat currency is itself backed only by the “full faith and credit” of the U.S. government. Since the recent regimes of the U.S. have led the country into national insolvency, it seems perilous to leave our economic vitality in the hands of the likes of President Donald Trump or even Congress for that matter.
A Better Way for Neighborhoods & Towns: Sweet Potato Sovereignty
Although I did study Agricultural Economics at Clemson University in South Carolina for a full year, I am in no way presenting myself as academy based expert. What I know for certain has mostly been learned in the grassroots pedagogical context of community activism, volunteer civic leadership, low level non-profit employment, and most significantly bootstrapped entrepreneurship. I am the visionary of a consultant firm named North America Food & Farm PBC Inc(NAF2), which specializes in local food system planning and urban agriculture project development. This humble enterprise launched by myself and several co-founders in 2011 is approaching its 10 year anniversary of existence as a business model. After many seasons of growing food for and with residents in neighborhoods all around the Atlanta region, as well as attending or facilitating what seems like countless community meetings, I can say with confidence that the best idea in my mind for this moment in time is a cousin thought to that held by Dr. Carver in 1910.
I see the possibility of a continent-wide North American plan of growing sweet potatoes in both rural and urban contexts as a strategic crop choice by historically marginalized farmers, for the coordinated and explicit purpose of backing a network of local currencies with a unified commodity of resilient value. Based on my experience and identification of the need, I am calling for a uniform bushel of sweet potatoes (50 lbs) to be the monetary standard that backs the local currencies which could and should be established by every community that sees itself as vulnerable and willing to work for greater sovereignty. This kind of project would not only address food insecurity that is rampant in too many places, but it would also imbue our currencies with essentially and existentially more real value than that of the U.S. dollar. Wouldn’t that be something?
Kwabena “Cubby” Nkromo is a self taught Community Food System Planner as well as a knowledgeable commentator on local and national food policies. He has made presentations at both Georgia Planning Association and American Planning Association conferences, featuring his food based local economy development work for the Atlanta Housing Authority’s H.U.D. funded Choice Atlanta initiative and implementation of The Food Commons regional food economy development strategy for the metro Atlanta area. He also currently serves as Chair of the Georgia Food Policy Council and is a national voice for better agriculture and food policies.
