Shakara Tyler is a returning-generation farmer, educator, and organizer who engages in Black agrarianism, agroecology, food sovereignty, and environmental justice as commitments of abolition and decolonization. She obtained her Ph.D. at Michigan State University in Community Sustainability (CSUS) and worked with Black farming communities in Michigan and the Mid-Atlantic. Shakara is a Lecturer at the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS). She also serves as board president of the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network (DBCFSN), board member of the Detroit People’s Food Co-op (DPFC), and co-founder of the Detroit Black Farmer Land Fund (DBFLF), and a member of the Black Dirt Farm Collective (BDFC). Shakara’s fellow’s project, Building a Black Food and Farm Cooperative Pedagogy, aims to generate dialogue on what developing Black agrarian cooperative pedagogy means to our liberation struggles and how to cross-pollinate the food and farm pedagogical processes to other social movement spaces and vice versa. It also aims to Increase Black growers’ capacity to work together cooperatively. And lastly, its aims to build more robust Black-led and Black-founded farm and food co-ops in Detroit through place-based, creative, and collaborative pedagogies.

To watch Shakara’s Final Presentation click HERE.
To visit the Black Co-Op Curriculum website click HERE.