WILBERFORCE, Ohio – Pigeon peas, tamarind, akee apple, kola nuts – not the types of foods you’d find at your local retailers. These are just a few of many crops that are native to Africa.

Two women at Central State University (CSU) in Wilberforce aim to supervise the growing of American heritage crops on farms across Ohio. Clare Thorn, extension associate of agriculture and natural resources at CSU, and Nellie Rowland, the agricultural natural resource educator for the southern region of CSU Extension, worked together to get seeds from African plants in Ohio and made plans to cultivate those native African seeds in the state.

One evening, Thorn was watching a PBS documentary on Percy Lavon Julian, an African American chemist who was able to synthesize medicinal drugs from plants. The documentary inspired Thorn to research other African Americans who have influenced modern agriculture.

“Watching that documentary inspired me to dig deeper into a lot of other inventors, scientists and botanists who have been pushed under the rug or their information wasn’t well known, at least in my case,” Thorn said.

Thorn felt compelled to use what she had learned to try to boost her students’ interest in the Seed to Bloom Botanical Garden on CSU’s campus, so they plan to create a designated Black heritage area filled solely with African crops. 

Shortly after conducting research on which African crops might grow best, Thorn heard about the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) Partnership Grant.

The SARE program was created in 1988 to implement sustainable agriculture practices across the U.S. through grants and education opportunities. Its mission is “to advance – to the whole of American agriculture – innovations that improve profitability, stewardship and quality of life by investing in groundbreaking research and education.”

SARE awards partnership grants to programs that build strong relationships between agriculture professionals and small-time farmers that advance on-farm research and education activities. CSU is an 1890 land-grant institution. This means the university primarily works to strengthen food and agricultural sciences among urban areas, minorities and underserved populations.

Thorn elicited the help of Rowland to write the grant. The two were able to obtain $49,999 in SARE grant money to test the viability of African crops at farms in Columbus and Cincinnati. The two-year program began April 1 and will continue through March 2026. The program is being conducted by four African American urban farmers. Each farm site will grow between two and 10 crops to see how compatible the crops are with Ohio’s climate and soil.

Farmers will send in monthly reports to test if the crops can properly grow in Ohio. The data will focus on germination, viability and the yield of crops produced. 

Some of these crops flourish well in Africa and the hope is they perform well in Ohio. Such heritage greens to be tested are okra, southern peas, waterleaf, eggplant, basil, peppers and others.

Should the crops perform well, other African crops in the future could include balsam apple, millets, tamarind, oil palm, akee apple, bottle gourd, African sesame, Kola, jelly melon and Guinea squash. Thorn hopes to see future opportunities to expand the cultivation of African heritage crops across the nation.

“The environment is going to be the key factor,” Thorn said. “Some of these crops may be getting grown more in the southern regions, for sure, but this could be a more northern climate thing if we can be successful with it.”

Rowland echoed Thorn’s assessment.

“The environment in Africa is totally different than the state of Ohio,” Rowland said. “We’re going to look at viability of the plant and see if they germinate. Once they germinate, we’ll see how well they grow. And after that, if they yield, we’ll see how much (the farms) are producing in the vegetables that they are growing.”

According to Rowland, the program is especially meaningful to African American communities in Ohio because it connects them to their heritage.

“They became excited about the possibility of easy access to the foods they grew up eating,” Rowland said. “We all have this type of memory of the food we loved when we grew up, and so it’s having the accessibility to fresh produce, not shipped over, I think is what really kind of sparked a lot of interest.”

Thorn said they hope to make enough not just to study the plants but to get them into farmers markets.

“There are so many cultures and particularly immigrants and refugees, who don’t have their home foods,” Thorn said. “They can’t locate the grains that they’re accustomed to eating. So, the goal, too, is to have our farmers able to take those crops to market so that it could be available to anyone.”