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Shouldering Responsibility for the Delivery of Human Rights: A Case Study of the D-Town Farmers of Detroit
Abstract
:The literature on who is responsible for the delivery of human rights has produced two divergent perspectives. One view suggests that appropriate units for the delivery of human rights are entities external to individuals such as nation-states or non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Another is that individuals themselves are responsible. The issue of race complicates the delivery issue even further. Discourses that assign responsibility to governments typically fail to acknowledge that those governments often have constructed some races as subordinate. Discourses that assign responsibility to individuals, however, sometimes fail to acknowledge that racially marginalized groups often have been so colonized that they see themselves as inherently inferior and thus lacking the capacity to act. This case study of the D-Town farmers of the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network provides an examination of a group that responds to the issue of delivery of human rights by enacting an agentic perspective. D-Town farmers challenge the government's capacity to provide a safe and clean food supply and provide it themselves, challenge the government's capacity to provide culturally relevant information about healthy food, and offer that information to their community, assuming control of their food-security movement.
... The second tenet of critical food system education theory is food justice, the "grassroots movement that is predicated upon the critique of the racial and class-based inequalities in the food system" [45], p. 134). At the intersection of race, privilege, and access to food and food spaces, food justice addresses the critical question of how society can reduce the inequities within specific neighborhoods and incorporate them within our existing community norms [26,45,80,83]. ...
... The third tenet is agroecology, a growing theme within food system education [32,45]. While agroecology is both a science and a set of practices, utilizing innovative agricultural production methods to maximize outputs [40,45,53,79,80], the specific socioecological aspect of agroecology was formed to resist the power of corporate farms and lobbyists that dictate agricultural policy [16,30,35,45]. This diverse movement can allow more political momentum for change in agricultural policy (Jurow et al. 2016). ...
... Our findings help deepen understanding of how urban farmers perceive their experiences. As the urban farm is situated within the HBC, both the farm and the college are uniquely positioned at the intersection of race and food justice, demonstrating the transdisciplinary nature of this research [4,42,72,80]. ...
A sustainable transdisciplinary research network was established through a research practice partnership (RPP) between an urban farm, faculty and staff from a Historically Black College (HBC), and researchers at a medium-sized private university. We investigate student-worker resilience at this urban farm situated on the HBC campus, drawing on literature that explores tensions between informal learning environments and formal spaces, equitable food systems and farming systems, as well as the resilience of farm work, and which is grounded critical food systems education theory. Utilizing a participatory design approach, we conducted semi-structured interviews and deductively analyzed the data. The research questions guiding this paper are: (1) What topics of discussion are most important to the student-workers and staff working on an urban farm, (2) How do student-workers and college staff members perceive and experience resilience on an urban farm? We found that what participants on an urban farm discuss, relating to their experiences, include (1) how participants were eager to engage with the local community, (2) how participants demonstrated resilience while working on the urban farm, (3) how power dynamics played a pivotal role informing the direction of the urban farm, (4) how participants consider community access to healthy foods an important mission for the farm, (5) how the college acted as a power wielding entity, perpetuating its privilege over the farmers and the farm operations. These findings have the potential to enable community organizing spaces to promote resilience for their volunteers and workers, and for urban farms top partner with their community to promote the mission of increasing access to healthy and affordable food options.
... Unlike the top-down UC initiatives that fluctuated over time in the United States, communities across North America have been gardening for neighborhood beautification, community organizing, and personal leisure. These community-led gardens often emerge in communities of color and provide senses of homeland and ethnic or racial identities to the growers (Hondagneu-Sotelo 2014), or become a place of social mobilization and resistance (Sbicca and Myers 2017;White 2010). Community gardening could, thus, serve as prefigurative activism (Nettle 2014) that demonstrates an alternative to current food systems and urban inequalities by using gardens and farms as a space for educating and organizing the community. ...
... Studies of the grassroots, community-focused urban gardens underscore that UC's value does not simply lie in awakening the alternative use-value of the vacant lots, henceforth regenerating their exchange-value, but also in providing places for community engagement and empowerment. Urban gardens and farms provide a place for ethnic cultural celebration (Hondagneu-Sotelo 2014), cultivating social capital (Macias 2008), or practicing social resistance and activism (Gottlieb and Joshi 2010;Nettle 2014;Sbicca and Myers 2017;White 2010). Scholars have contemplated UC's potential and limitation in practicing "food justice" (Broad 2016;Reynolds and Cohen 2016) and bridging the food access disparity in the city (McClintock et al. 2013;Nost 2014;Sbicca 2014). ...
... Even though such plan was never seriously discussed or implemented the after the public outcry, the rhetoric of greening has come to be associated with the fear of displacement, especially among the city's Black residents. Possibility that their residential communities could be replaced by farmland did not symbolize hope to these residents, but quite the opposite (Draus et al. 2014;Pothukuchi 2017), especially given the history of racial exploitation and discrimination associated with agriculture in the American South (White 2017). ...
Expanding scholarship on urban farming has not systematically examined what spurs the proliferation of cultivation practices, especially when the city is undergoing economic and social transitions. This study examines the development of the urban cultivation (UC) scene in New Orleans over the decade following Hurricane Katrina with a particular focus on entrepreneurial UC projects. By contextualizing in‐depth interviews with the growers in the historical events in the city, the study finds that the dominant motives of cultivation projects shifted from social missions to economic interests over time, as the city transitioned from recovery to redevelopment. The study highlights the heterogeneity of UC practices, and questions the current scholarship's tendency to situate urban gardens in opposing theoretical frameworks: tools for neoliberal urbanism or food justice activism. The findings show that the distinction between socially motivated and economically motivated UC cannot be easily drawn. Most of the socially motivated UC projects began adopting market participation over time, while many of the economically motivated UC projects operated as social entrepreneurialism. While growers tended to view themselves as alternative to the dominant political‐economic system, they also undoubtedly benefitted from the market‐driven redevelopment of the city that expanded UC opportunities.
... Minority-led food justice and food sovereignty movements are often rooted in environmental justice principles. 2 Hence, they address inequalities in the food system by blending demands for human rights and sovereignty with the quest for social justice. Food sovereignty advocates believe that control of the means of food production, distribution, and consumption are critical elements to the empowerment and survival of Blacks and other disadvantaged groups (White 2010, Alkon and Agyeman 2011, Alkon and McCullen 2011, Passidomo 2013, Yakini 2013, Agyeman and McEntee 2014, Lindemann 2014, Taylor 2014, 2000, Ramírez 2015, Taylor and Ard 2015. ...
... Though Macias (2008) contends that community-based organisations can enhance equity and justice in the food system, food justice activists and critical geographers contend that urban agricultural initiatives can reinforce class and racial privileges, deepen social inequalities, and contribute to structural racism, settler colonialism, exclusion, and other kinds of oppression (White 2010, Yakini 2013, Lyson 2014, Safransky 2014, Tornaghi 2014, Ramírez 2015, Reynolds 2015, Taylor and Ard 2015, Horst et al. 2017. For example, Hoover (2013) found that Blacks in Philadelphia were alienated from urban gardens developed in their neighbourhoods; Ramírez (2015) made a similar finding in Seattle. ...
... This level of involvement is in accordance with the food justice model practiced in places like Detroit (White 2011, Taylor andArd 2015), Seattle (Ramírez 2015), and Syracuse (Lindemann 2014) wherein minority and low-income residents were intimately involved with food production and distribution, consume healthy foods grown in their gardens, and were taking steps to enhance community access to fresh, healthy produce. However, Toledo's garden programming and narratives stop short of the food sovereignty discourses evident in places like Chicago, and Detroit or espoused at events such as the Black Urban Growers conferences (White 2010, Michigan Public Radio 2012, Yakini 2013, Blount-Dorn 2014, Taylor and Ard 2015. This might be the case because of the strong ties to the Toledo Botanical Garden and MultiFaith GROWs; neither organisation articulate frames of black sovereignty and economic empowerment in the food system. ...
Urban gardens are important sources of sustenance for communities with limited access to food. Hence, this study focuses on food production in gardens in the Toledo metropolitan area in Northwest Ohio. We administered surveys to 150 garden managers from November 2014 to February 2015 in our attempt to better understand how neighbourhood racial composition and poverty levels are related to staffing and voluntarism, food production and distribution, the development of infrastructure, and the adoption of sustainability practices in urban gardens. The results from 30 gardens are presented in this paper. We used Geographic Information Systems to map the gardens and overlay the map with 2010 census data so that we could conduct demographic analyses of the neighbourhoods in which the gardens were located. Though the gardens were small-two acres or less-up to 46 varieties of food were grown in a single garden. Gardens also operated on small budgets. Food from the gardens was gifted or shared with friends, family, and neighbourhood residents. Gardens in predominantly minority neighbourhoods tended to have fewer institutional partners, less garden infrastructure, and had adopted fewer sustainable practices than gardens in predominantly White neighbourhoods. Nonetheless, residents of predominantly minority and high-poverty neighbourhoods participated in garden activities and influenced garden operations. Volunteering and staffing were racialised and gendered.
... Though all agree that parts of Detroit are underserved by food retailers purveying healthy and affordable foods, the depiction of the whole city as a food desert does not hold up under scrutiny. Ergo, some community activists (Yakini, 2010) and researchers are questioning the dominant food desert narrative as it pertains to the city (Devries and Linn, 2011;White, 2010White, , 2011aWhite, , 2011b. Researchers from Data Driven Detroit analyzed National Establishment Time Series data from 2010 and reported that they found 115 grocery stores in the city. ...
... Yet, in cities such as Detroit, these are vital components of the food system. Despite the robust body of research on Detroit's food environment, relatively few studies recognize and discuss the city's vibrant farming, gardening, and food production sector (see Colasanti and Hamm, 2010;Colasanti, Litjens, and Hamm, 2010;Pothukuchi, 2004;and White, 2010and White, , 2011aand White, , 2011b, for food production studies). Hence, food desert research often ignores the agency and resiliency that community residents show in defining their own food environment, identifying challenges, articulating their needs, and devising strategies and responses to ameliorate problems. ...
... Hence, it addresses inequalities in the food system by blending demands for human rights and sovereignty with the quest for social justice. Food sovereignty is an important element of this discourse that sees control of the means of food production, trade, and consumption as critical to the survival of Blacks and other disadvantaged groups (White 2010(White , 2011a(White , 2011bYakini, 2013Yakini, , 2010. ...
This article takes a new approach to studying food access. It combines environmental justice analysis with systems thinking in an examination of the food environment of Detroit. The article reviews food access literature and identifies how each body of scholarship’s underlying assumptions help or distort our understanding of urban food environments. The article argues for more comprehensive approaches to studying food access and demonstrates how such approaches can be implemented. We collected data from multiple sources, including ReferenceUSA, Orbis, and the Michigan Department of Agriculture, between 2011 and 2013 to build a database of food outlets in the city. We used SPSS 22 and ArcGIS 10.1 to analyze and map the data. The article analyzes the location of 3,499 food outlets in Detroit, comprising 34 categories food retailers, growers, supply chain, and food assistance programs. The study identified 96 supermarkets or full-line grocery stores; 1,110 small groceries, convenience stores, mini marts, and liquor stores; 279 specialty food stores; 306 pharmacies, dollar, and variety stores; 1,245 full-service and fast food restaurants and other food service outlets; 157 supply chain operations; 206 farms, community and school gardens, farmers’ markets, and produce markets; and 100 food assistance programs. The article finds that though Detroit has areas that lack food outlets, the portrayal of the entire city as a “food desert” is misleading. Moreover, the traditional approach of food desert research of using only or primarily the presence or absence of supermarkets and full-line grocery stores to study food access ignores many important venues from which people obtain food. It also ignores the strategies people use to cope with food insecurity and their responses to limited food access.
Environmental Practice 17: 102–133 (2015)
... Lower Woodward had the second-highest number of closed food stores and was a red-and yellow-lined neighborhood. Cerveny/Grandmont, the neighborhood with the third-highest number of closed stores (50), was mostly blue-and green-lined, but the neighborhood also had small yellow-and red-lined sections. A portion of the neighborhood was also uncolored. ...
... Hence, our findings do not provide support for studies that frame the city as a food desert [31,[38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45]. Instead, our findings are more aligned with those that refute the food desert thesis [5,7,[46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53]. ...
Despite the numerous food studies conducted in Detroit, none have assessed changes in the food landscape over a decade. No previous study has systematically analyzed food store closures in the city either. We will address these oversights by examining the distribution of food outlets in the city ten years apart. This paper probes the following questions: (1) How has the distribution of Detroit’s food outlets changed in the decade between 2013 and 2023? (2) Does Detroit fit the definition of a food desert in 2013 or 2023? (3) Does Detroit fit the definition of a food swamp in 2013 or 2023? (4) Has supermarket redlining occurred in Detroit in 2013 or 2023? (5) How is population decline related to food outlet distribution? (6) How do food store closures impact food store distribution? We conducted exhaustive searches to collect information on thousands of food outlets from Data Axle, Google, and Bing. The data were analyzed and mapped in SPSS 28 and ArcGIS 10.8. We compared 3499 food outlets identified in 2013 with 2884 identified in 2023. We expanded our search for food outlets in 2023 and found an additional 611 food outlets in categories not studied in 2013. The study’s findings are significant as they unearth evidence of extensive population decline—driven by Black flight—and a vanishing food infrastructure. Detroit lost more than 600 food outlets between 2013 and 2023, a staggering number that underscores the severity of the issue. Moreover, in 2023, we documented food store closures and found 1305 non-operational or closed food outlets in the city. Regardless of the neighborhood’s racial composition, the household median income, or the educational attainment of residents, food store closures were widespread in 2023; 27.3% of the food outlets identified that year were defunct. Despite the massive food store closures, Detroit did not fit the description of a food desert; each of the city’s 54 neighborhoods had between 7 and 300 food outlets. The food swamp thesis did not accurately describe the city either, as supermarkets/large grocery stores were intermingled with convenience and corner stores in both study periods. The data did not find evidence of supermarket redlining, as supermarkets/large grocery stores were found in formerly redlined neighborhoods alongside dollar stores and variety stores in both study periods.
... Although research suggests links between democratic competences and human rights (Donders, 2010;McFarland & Mathews, 2005;Saavedra, 2016;Skogly, 2009;White, 2010), most studies have been conducted with adult populations. Adults' democratic competences are linked to their human rights values. ...
... This finding was unexpected because there is a relationship between responsibility and promotion of human rights (Skogly 2009;White, 2010 (Ollendick et al., 1996). Individualism indices are low (30; Hofstede Insights, n.d.-c). ...
Support for children's rights is greater among children raised in democratic environments. The present two studies examined children's endorsements and predictors of children's rights. Five democratic competences taken from the Council of Europe's Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture served as predictors. We tested the models in a sample of children raised in five European countries and a sample raised in an African country, seeking to extend our model beyond the Global North. In Study 1, we found four of these five competences, namely, higher valuing of cultural diversity, civic‐mindedness, cultural openness and empathy significantly predicted higher endorsements of rights in children from Bulgaria, Italy, Norway, Romania and Spain (7–11‐year‐olds; N = 292). In Study 2, we found higher valuing of cultural diversity significantly predicted higher endorsements of rights in Nigerian children (7–14‐year‐olds; N = 84). Supporting Social Cognitive Domain Theory, children in both studies endorsed nurturance rights more than self‐determination rights. Inclusion of children from the Global North and South enabled us to determine whether patterns of rights endorsements were similar for children from both samples. Overall, this research presents novel findings on the salience of valuing cultural diversity in support for children's rights.
... Due largely to migration from the South, Detroit witnessed a boost in the African American population from 5,741 (1910) to 40,838 (1920) to 120,066 (1930). Overall, the city's population doubled between 1910 and 1920, from 465,766 to 993,678, and then doubled again to reach almost two million at its peak in 1950 (Martin 1992;White 2011a). The en masse movement of African Americans northward, later called the Great Migration, had an enormous influence on the future of northern cities like Detroit. ...
... In 2010, Detroit was recognized as the most segregated city in the United States and continues to reflect the trend of "chocolate city and vanilla suburbs" popularized in Parliament's 1975 hit song, "Chocolate City," about Washington, DC (White 2010). These trends signal the failed project of integration, but, more importantly, they directly link to conditions known as "food deserts." ...
... D-Town Farm demonstrates how urban farming builds agency to transform a community [30,45,46]. Due to the historical failures of working through governmental channels for change, farming is an approach to empower a community to take on responsibility and control of their food supply (i.e., food sovereignty), as well as to foster community development [46]. ...
... D-Town Farm demonstrates how urban farming builds agency to transform a community [30,45,46]. Due to the historical failures of working through governmental channels for change, farming is an approach to empower a community to take on responsibility and control of their food supply (i.e., food sovereignty), as well as to foster community development [46]. Empowerment that is focused inward on the community is contrasted with fighting for justice by, for example, petitioning for change in government policy. ...
Many cities are experiencing long-term declines in population and economic activity. As a result, frameworks for urban sustainability need to address the unique challenges and opportunities of such shrinking cities. Shrinking, particularly in the U.S., has led to extensive vacant land. The abundance of vacant land reflects a loss of traditional urban amenities, economic opportunity, neighbors, businesses, and even basic city services and often occurs in neighborhoods with socially and economically vulnerable or underserved populations. However, vacant land also provides opportunities, including the space to invest in green infrastructure that can provide ecosystem services and support urban sustainability. Achieving desirable amenities that provide ecosystem services from vacant land is the central tenet of a recent urban sustainability framework termed ecology for the shrinking city. An agroecological approach could operationalize ecology for the shrinking city to both manage vacancy and address ecosystem service goals. Developing an agroecology in shrinking cities not only secures provisioning services that use an active and participatory approach of vacant land management but also transforms and enhances regulating and supporting services. The human and cultural dimensions of agroecology create the potential for social-ecological innovations that can support sustainable transformations in shrinking cities. Overall, the strength of agroecological principles guiding a green infrastructure strategy stems from its explicit focus on how individuals and communities can shape their environment at multiple scales to produce outcomes that reflect their social and cultural context. Specifically, the shaping of the environment provides a pathway for communities to build agency and manage for resilience in urban social-ecological systems. Agroecology for the shrinking city can support desirable transformations, but to be meaningful, we recognize that it must be part of a greater strategy that addresses larger systemic issues facing shrinking cities and their residents.
... In particular, how food injustice intersects with other aspects of social injustice within a particular locale requires further investigation. For example, some successful food justice projects (e.g., Growing Power, Detroit Black Community Food Security Network) are embedded in communities [33,34], but there has not been extensive research on cases in which the food justice movement fails to effectively mobilize the community and, importantly, the factors that may account for this failure. ...
... However, once residents are mobilized to address social injustices that may be more readily understood as structural and community issues, such as postal services, road repair, or crime, food justice themes may resonate better as part of a "getting back the community" agenda. On the basis of our findings, we cast doubts on the food justice frame as the catalyst for such mobilization, and add that many of the existing successful food justice projects simultaneously tackle multiple dimensions of social justice, including food-related injustices [34]. Nevertheless, whether such rearticulations of food justice discourse could effectively mobilize social justice movements is an empirical question to be investigated in future research. ...
Food justice discourse has emerged partly in response to the critique of alternative food networks during the last decade, but its justice conceptualization tends to be too narrowly focused on food-related injustices rather than broader social injustices that shape food access and food sovereignty, a gap we address. Our analysis of a semi-experimental free local food program we administered in a New Orleans food desert demonstrates that several community context factors shape the residents’ access to a local food market in this neighborhood: fragmented social ties, digital and generational divides, perpetual infrastructural failure, and the location of the market within the neighborhood. We argue that food justice discourse needs to incorporate social and cultural community contexts in its operationalization of food access and sovereignty, especially regarding how the latter concept is defined and executed in practice.
... Such framing underestimates food availability and often ignores independent grocers, ethnic groceries, and small food stores that stock healthy and culturally desired food (Alkon et al., 2013;Bodor et al., 2007;Hale, 2004;Hill, 2017;Hubley, 2011;McKinnon et al., 2009;Raja et al., 2008;Sharkey et al., 2009;Short et al., 2007;Taylor & Ard, 2015;Taylor et al., 2023;Taylor, Farias et al., 2022;Taylor, Lusuegro et al., 2022). Moreover, the food desert framing ignores residents' initiatives to grow, produce, and sell healthy and affordable foods (Taylor & Ard, 2015;White, 2010White, , 2011aWhite, , 2011b. ...
Food insecurity is an issue that is commonplace in American cities but that impacts Blacks disproportionately. Unfortunately, most food access studies focus on large cities, leaving us with little knowledge of food access in small cities. This paper focuses on Saginaw, a small, racially segregated Michigan city. We examined the following questions: (1) How has the distribution of Saginaw’s food outlets changed between 2013 and 2023? (2) Does Saginaw fit the definition of a food desert in 2013 or 2023? (3) Does Saginaw fit the definition of a food swamp in 2013 or 2023? (4) Has supermarket redlining occurred in Saginaw in 2013 or 2023? (5) How is population decline related to food outlet distribution? (6) How do food store closures impact food store distribution? Food store data were collected and verified in 2013 and 2023 from Data Axle and other sources. We used ArcGIS 10.8.1 for spatial mapping and SPSS 28 for statistical analyses. We conducted regression analyses to determine how the distribution of food outlets changed over a decade, comparing the 577 food outlets identified in 2013 with the 452 found in 2023, a decline of 21.7%. There were 85 fewer food outlets in Saginaw in 2023 than in 2013. The study found evidence of a vanishing food infrastructure. Eighty-nine food outlets were shuttered in 2023; 43 were in Saginaw. Restaurants dominated the food landscape in both study periods. Though many food access studies focus on supermarkets and large grocery stores, these venues composed only 4.9% of the food outlets in 2013 and 3.8% in 2023. Though portions of Saginaw had limited access to supermarkets and large grocery stores, describing the whole city as a food desert is inaccurate, nor did the findings support the food swamp or supermarket redlining theses.
... This is of course easier said than done. However, examples such as the Detroit Black Community Food Sovereignty Network illustrate the potential benefits of community collaboration in this manner (White 2010(White , 2011. ...
Food sovereignty, a framework focused on systemic change in the food system that accounts for food access, food justice, and food security, is an important driver of community wellbeing. However, the complex determinants of food sovereignty are not fully understood. Interdisciplinary assessments of food systems are needed to establish the impact of socioeconomic status, race, gender, and other social identities on food access. Understanding the goals and lived experiences of diverse communities and community members is critically important to advancing research on the sociology of food and agriculture. Drawing from community interviews addressing local food systems in six different communities in Washington's Upper Yakima River Basin, a qualitative assessment of expert perspectives on local and regional food systems illuminates perceived connections between food sovereignty and wellbeing. Findings suggest that food access and dependence on local agriculture varies across and within communities. Additionally, we find that agriculture is undergoing social, economic, and political transitions that may have immense community impacts moving forward. Given the diverse array of both agricultural and recreational economies in the study site, qualitative data informs our understanding of stakeholder perceptions at multiple levels of the food system. The implications of these findings lead to a forward‐looking discussion of linkages between food dimensions and other variables that impact local and regional wellbeing.
... These social interactions can improve quality of life. Self-determination, self-reliance, and community activism are often needed to overcome barriers within urban agriculture, and advocacy and coalition building to foster urban agriculture enables communities to develop new generations of active and engaged citizens (Bradley and Galt 2014;White 2010). These types of food system projects provide marginalized, isolated communities with opportunities to network, interact, and create shared opportunities through growing and distributing food (Beckie and Bogdan 2010). ...
Urban agriculture planning encompasses ethical dimensions. In this paper, two cases of housing authority-led farming and gardening projects are presented. These cases, initiated by agencies in New York City, and Denver, Colorado, show that urban agriculture has multiple multidimensional benefits, including building skills, fostering community cohesion, educating residents, encouraging healthy eating and physical activity, and generally improving the day-to-day experiences of those living in public housing developments. Both cases illustrate various lessons about applied planning ethics and suggest necessary steps for the success of these projects. In these two cases, such situations unfold and produce new interactions. However, social problems persist, but so will opportunities. Attempts to harmonize competing claims is at the root of UA practices. The purpose of this paper is to show ethics-in-interaction in the two cases. We show how the ethics of UA requires consideration of the stated goal of urban agriculture projects and the implicit goals manifested in the process. Understanding the various impacts will shed light on the feasibility and sustainability of food system initiatives. If proven environmentally and economically sustainable, as well as successful in increasing the health, economic, and social outcomes of residents, public housing investment into sustainable development and food system initiatives similar to the two cases could act as a model for public housing redevelopment across the country.
... 2;Morrow & Martin, 2019;Schmelzkopf, 2002;Staeheli et al., 2002). Furthermore, scholars have documented urban garden projects that fostered greater participation and recognition by enabling grassroots political power, self-determination, and community empowerment (Irazábal & Punja, 2009;Saldivar-Tanaka & Krasny, 2004;Sbicca, 2019;Schmelzkopf, 1995;M. White, 2010M. White, , 2011. In terms of recognition, urban gardens serve as important sites of cultural reproduction, particularly for Indigenous, migrant, immigrant, and other communities for whom the gardens may have unique culinary, medicinal, and spiritual importance (Airriess & Clawson, 1994;Saldivar-Tanaka & Krasny, 2004). However, urban gar ...
Surging interest in urban agriculture has prompted cities across North America to adopt policies that give gardeners access to publicly owned land. However, if not carefully designed, these policies can exacerbate existing racial inequities. Drawing on theories of urban and environmental justice, we use a contextualized case comparison to explore the radical potential and practical constraints of garden land policies at two distinct institutions: the City of Minneapolis and the independently elected Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board. Based on participant observation, document review, and interviews with a range of policy actors, we argue that what appear to be minor, common-sense policy details systematically shape who benefits from the garden land policies, sometimes in surprising ways. Compared to the City, the Park Board goes substantially further in addressing racial equity. Furthermore, though both cases included public participation, we argue that the more intensive participation during the Park Board policy development process—particularly in determining the details—was pivotal in crafting a policy that reduced barriers to racial equity. The present study contributes to the growing scholarship on urban agriculture and environmental governance and offers concrete insights for actors working toward more just policies.
... Scholars working on food equity highlight the many ways in which diverse sectors come together to change food systems. For instance, Monica M. White has long worked on demonstrating how race, equity, and food justice can and do come together beginning with her work on urban agriculture, human rights, and food systems in Detroit (White 2010). In a recent study, Ashley B. Gripper and her coauthors (including White) demonstrate the value and impact of black and low-income communities claiming food production for themselves (Gripper et al. 2022). ...
Food systems are the sum of actors and interactions along the food chain. A growing number of public libraries are partnering in the food system, but little research has sought to understand what that looks like. To understand this topic, in Spring 2022 the researchers circulated a survey to members of the American public library profession. Survey results (n = 401) found a majority had displays related to food, and food programs offered through partnerships. Respondents showed an interest in learning more about this topic. After presenting and discussing results, the article concludes with a call to more deeply understand this topic.
... De ahí surge otra interrogante: ¿en qué medida el hecho de situar su lucha en el ámbito de los derechos humanos no obedece, por parte de los movimientos sociales, a una estrategia, más o menos asumida, de alcanzar visibilidad y legitimidad ante las instituciones en un contexto donde la protesta social (con enfoque clasista) está siendo vilipendiada -cuando no criminalizada-, o en todo caso, considerada como expresión de tiempos remotos? La investigadora Monica White (2010) señala que para las comunidades afroamericanas de Detroit (86 % de la población), invocar el acceso a la alimentación sana como derecho humano tiene por objetivo mejorar la capacidad de acción de los individuos, pero a la vez, el hecho de que el concepto sea definido desde el exterior, o sea, normado por las instituciones, reduce la capacidad de acción que estos mismos derechos suponen proteger (White 2010). Eso nos lleva a plantear la hipótesis de que uno de los efectos colaterales del desplazamiento de las demandas sociales hacia el terreno del reconocimiento (institucional) de derechos ha sido el de despolitizar y, con eso, restarle protagonismo a los actores sociales en las decisiones que les afectan. ...
El capítulo de libro presenta un análisis sobre la segregación urbana en Río de Janeiro, Brasil, y describe los mecanismos que dan lugar a la marginalización de la población de las favelas y cómo estas personas desarrollan estrategias para resistir su situación de subordinación. Explica que los procesos de urbanización en la América Latina neoliberal responden a la comodificación del espacio urbano y a la producción de plusvalía, la cual relega a un segundo plano las necesidades y derechos de sus habitantes.
... Persistent food insecurity is the second common issue that motivated the formation of all six programs, although the causes of food insecurity varied. EBUFFS activists and FW educators observed the concentrated food insecurity in communities of color and saw jobs in urban agriculture as a key to not only improving access to food but also to escaping poverty and increasing local control of the food system (White 2010;Sbicca 2012). In Cuba, after the collapse of the socialist bloc in Europe in 1989 and the United States trade embargo, the country was no longer able to import sufficient food, or the machinery, inputs and petroleum needed to maintain a conventional production model. ...
Social movements are using education to generate critical consciousness regarding the social and environmental unsustainability of the current food system, and advocate for agroecological production. In this article, we explore results from a cross-case analysis of six social movements that are using education as a strategy to advance food sovereignty. We conducted participatory research with diverse rural and urban social movements in the United States, Brazil, Cuba, Bolivia, and Mexico, which are each educating for food sovereignty. We synthesize insights from critical food systems education and the political ecology of education in analyzing these cases. We compare the thematic similarities and difference between these movements’ education initiatives in terms of their emergence, initial goals, expansion and institutionalization, relationship to the state, theoretical inspirations, pedagogical approach, educational topics, approach to student research, and outcomes. Among these thematic areas, we find that student-centered research on competing forms of production is an integral way to advance critical consciousness about the food system and the political potential of agroecological alternatives. However, what counts, as success in these programs, is highly case-dependent. For engaged scholars committed to advancing education for food sovereignty, it is essential to reflect upon the lessons learned and challenges faced by these movements.
... Along with civic participation, these learning outcomes enable residents to develop strong "strong civic virtues and critical perspectives" (Levkoe, 2006, p. 89). These, in return, empowered residents to have an effect on policymakers and to increase their level of political influence as well as advocacy to directly attenuate inequities and "anti-democratic forces of control" (Levkoe, 2006, p. 89;White, 2010). ...
Worldwide, the percentage of people living in urban areas will increase from 50% in 2010 to nearly 70% by 2050. While in many parts of the world, human development is expanding rapidly on the urban fringe and at the expense of rural hinterlands, some cities decided to focus on densifying the built environment.
Since densification leads to a quantitative reduction of open spaces, the pressure on the remaining ones is significantly increasing. On the one hand, open spaces should meet the requirements of its users, on the other hand, they have to fulfil expectations regarding climate adaptation and operating efficiency. Thus, to satisfy these claims, urban open spaces have to be endowed with multi-functionality.
Urban agriculture, in turn, offers indispensable opportunities to solve - or at least deal with - urban challenges regarding sustainability, health, economy, society, urban design and local food supply. Due to its cross-cutting and multi-dimensional nature, it has the potential to meet a good many of requirements on open spaces. Nonetheless, it still inherits a rather low visibility on the agenda of urban planners.
This situation could stem from various reasons, whereby a gap in the understanding of urban agriculture’s capability seems to be a major cause. To this day, there exists no comprehensive literature on the subject - neither a holistic view on urban agriculture’s multifaceted benefits nor its impacts on urban open spaces. Thus, the purpose of this study is to tap urban agriculture’s potential and to emphasise its raison d’être in sustainable urban planning.
... De ahí surge otra interrogante: ¿en qué medida el hecho de situar su lucha en el ámbito de los derechos humanos no obedece, por parte de los movimientos sociales, a una estrategia, más o menos asumida, de alcanzar visibilidad y legitimidad ante las instituciones en un contexto donde la protesta social (con enfoque clasista) está siendo vilipendiada -cuando no criminalizada-, o en todo caso, considerada como expresión de tiempos remotos? La investigadora Monica White (2010) señala que para las comunidades afroamericanas de Detroit (86 % de la población), invocar el acceso a la alimentación sana como derecho humano tiene por objetivo mejorar la capacidad de acción de los individuos, pero a la vez, el hecho de que el concepto sea definido desde el exterior, o sea, normado por las instituciones, reduce la capacidad de acción que estos mismos derechos suponen proteger (White 2010). Eso nos lleva a plantear la hipótesis de que uno de los efectos colaterales del desplazamiento de las demandas sociales hacia el terreno del reconocimiento (institucional) de derechos ha sido el de despolitizar y, con eso, restarle protagonismo a los actores sociales en las decisiones que les afectan. ...
... Food justice has become a social movement that is involved not only in the defi nition of food consumption, but also in the dynamics that control the food system Holt-Giménez, 2011). This approach considers race and social class as elements that, if not taken into account, can increase inequalities inside the food system (White, 2010;Gottlieb & Joshi, 2010;Alkon & Agyeman, 2011;Morales 2011). Agyeman and McEntee (2014) think that forms of institutional and structural racism are part of the market itself. ...
... Wisconsin women farmers also used local and regional networks to share new and useful sustainable practices (Hassanein 1999). Black women farmers in Detroit organized to revitalize vacant land into community farms, leading a movement to achieve food security in their local community (White 2011a ...
Although 97% of U.S. farms are “family-owned,” little research examines how gender and sexual relationships – inherent in familial dynamics – influence farmers’ practices and livelihoods. Gender and sexual dynamics – shaped by race and class – affect who is considered a farmer, land management decisions, and access to resources like land, subsidies, and knowledge. We use feminist and queer lenses to illuminate how today’s agricultural gender and sexual relations are not “natural,” but when left uninterrogated are constructed in ways that harm women and queer farmers while limiting potential to develop sustainable practices. Women and queer farmers also resist, “re-orienting” gender and sexual relations in ways that expand possibilities for achieving food justice and ecological sustainability. We offer “relational agriculture” as a tool for making visible and re-orienting gender and sexual relations on farms. Relational agriculture brings sexuality into food justice and demonstrates the centrality of gender and sexuality to agricultural sustainability.
... Neoliberalized ideological, political, and economic processes "together go to form highly uneven and deeply unjust urban landscapes" (Swyngedouw and Heynen 2003, 898). Race and class are central to the causes of inequality in the food system (Alkon and Agyeman 2011, Morales 2011, Gottlieb and Joshi 2011, White 2010. In particular, race is not reducible to or apart from economic structures, but rather "structural and institutional racisms are embedded in the market itself" (Agyeman and McEntee 2014, 216). ...
A food solidarity economy has been sprouting in Boston’s lower income neighborhoods and communities of color, rooted in struggles for control over the food system itself. Though not centrally coordinated, this movement encompasses a varied network of nonprofits, social enterprises, and cooperatives, operating in all parts of the food system, from stewarding land and growing to processing, consumption, and composting. They span a range of urban food sharing practices: sharing stuff, spaces, and skills via collecting, gifting, and selling. They have taken collective ownership of land, created shared growing spaces, developed shared facilities for food businesses, opened a community cafe, and launched a worker-owned food recycling cooperative. They are driven by desires for transformation and are decommodifying the food system and increasing the urban food commons.
This paper offers a critical, but hopeful, examination of the transformational potential of this growing food solidarity economy by viewing it as a local social movement. We draw on the theory and practice of solidarity economy and diverse community economies to highlight the possibilities for encouraging economies that go beyond the constraints of capitalism. But we also use an urban political ecology lens to foreground the challenges of neoliberalism to a food solidarity economy. We assess the trajectories of transformation in three dimensions: ideological, political, and economic. We conclude that transformation will likely require reforming neoliberalized policies and institutions, while at the same time building noncapitalist practices. A network approach to building scale seems promising, including building the movement’s own solidarity financing vehicles.
... The AFM has paid more attention to environmental harms than human inequities, despite their inextricability (Pellow 2007 (White 2010(White , 2011b, and Holyoke, Massachusetts (Slocum 2006), demonstrate how communities of color are using 8 Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is a model where consumers typically pay in advance of the growing season for a share of the weekly harvest. agriculture to organize around shared experiences of race and class, instantiating the concept of commons as praxis. ...
United States agricultural policies have systematically disadvantaged farmers of color throughout U.S. history and today. The Alternative Food Movement (AFM) is redesigning food systems to improve human and environmental health damaged by conventional industrial agriculture, but is simultaneously reproducing racial disparities. The Food Justice Movement (FJM) is fighting to hold the AFM accountable for building food systems that prioritize racial and social justice. However, contemporary conversations of food justice/sovereignty and race, as areas of study, are often missing the important discussions of the long and rich history of farmers of color who have used agriculture as a means of resistance to systemic racial oppression. This chapter uses White’s (Freedom farmers: Agricultural resistance and the Black Freedom Movement. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, NC, 2018) theoretical framework of Collective Agency and Community Resilience (CACR) to illuminate the resistance strategies of farmers of color in three key areas of racism in agriculture: (1) policies targeting U.S.-born Black farmers, (2) policies targeting immigrant Latinx farmers, and (3) AFM spaces and organizations. We argue that an understanding of race and agriculture, using the theoretical framework of CACR and its strategies of prefigurative politics, commons as praxis, and economic autonomy, provides a way to shift the discussion from one often seen through a lens of oppression to one that has the potential to move toward self-sufficiency, self-determination, and liberation.
... Black-operated farms such as D-Town Farm also train black youths and community members to farm. D-Town is a combination farm and food-buying cooperative operated by the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network (White 2010(White , 2011aYakini 2010Yakini , 2013Taylor 2000Taylor , 2014Taylor and Ard 2015). ...
Blacks have been farming in the USA for about four centuries and in Michigan since the 1830s. Yet, for blacks, owning and retaining farmland has been a continuous challenge. This historical analysis uses environmental justice and food sovereignty frameworks to examine the farming experiences of blacks in the USA generally, and more specifically in Michigan. It analyzes land loss, the precipitous decline in the number of black farmers, and the strategies that blacks have used to counteract these phenomena. The paper shows that the ability of blacks to own and operate farms has been negatively impacted by lack of access to credit, segregation, relegation to marginal and hazard-prone land, natural disasters, organized opposition to black land ownership, and systemic discrimination. The paper examines the use of cooperatives and other community-based organizations to help blacks respond to discrimination and environmental inequalities. The paper assesses how the farming experiences of blacks in Michigan compare to the experiences of black farmers elsewhere. It also explores the connections between Michigan’s black farmers, southern black farmer cooperatives, and Detroit’s black consumers.
... 52 Successful grassroots efforts that have been led by community members through a culturally directed approach may serve as models for other urban agriculture projects. 28,57 Environmental sustainability ...
Urban agriculture has become a popular topic for metropolitan areas to engage in on a program and policy level. It is touted as a means of promoting public health and economic development, building social capital, and repurposing unused land. Food policy councils and other groups that seek to position urban agriculture to policy makers often struggle with how to frame the benefits of and potential problems with urban agriculture. In some cases, the enthusiasm is ahead of the evidence. This review provides an overview of the documented sociocultural, health, environmental, and economic development outcomes of urban agriculture. Demonstrated and potential benefits, as well as risks and limitations, of this growing field will be discussed. We also offer recommendations for further research to strengthen the scholarship on urban agriculture.
... Persistent food insecurity is the second common issue that motivated the formation of all six programs, although the causes of food insecurity varied. EBUFFS activists and FW educators observed the concentrated food insecurity in communities of color and saw jobs in urban agriculture as a key to not only improving access to food but also to escaping poverty and increasing local control of the food system (White 2010;Sbicca 2012). In Cuba, after the collapse of the socialist bloc in Europe in 1989 and the United States trade embargo, the country was no longer able to import sufficient food, or the machinery, inputs and petroleum needed to maintain a conventional production model. ...
Social movements are using education to generate critical consciousness regarding the social and environmental unsustainability of the current food system, and advocate for agroecological production. In this article, we explore results from a cross-case analysis of six social movements that are using education as a strategy to advance food sovereignty. We conducted participatory research with diverse rural and urban social movements in the United States, Brazil, Cuba, Bolivia, and Mexico, which are each educating for food sovereignty. We synthesize insights from critical food systems education and the political ecology of education in analyzing these cases. We compare the thematic similarities and difference between these movements’ education initiatives in terms of their emergence, initial goals, expansion and institutionalization, relationship to the state, theoretical inspirations, pedagogical approach, educational topics, approach to student research, and outcomes. Among these thematic areas, we find that student-centered research on competing forms of production is an integral way to advance critical consciousness about the food system and the political potential of agroecological alternatives. However, what counts, as success in these programs, is highly case-dependent. For engaged scholars committed to advancing education for food sovereignty, it is essential to reflect upon the lessons learned and challenges faced by these movements.
... The ''original'' notion of food justice promotes activities that lead to community autonomy and self-empowerment-usually for communities of color and low-income communities that have been abandoned or neglected by governmental programs and divested by corporate capital (Alkon and Agyeman 2011). This type of food justice is generally respectful of the foodways of community members (Bradley and Galt 2014;White 2010White , 2011a. The moralist approach to food justice is characterized by ignorance of the barriers to participation for low-income consumers and of the motivations and attitudes about local food that transcend income groups. ...
In the U.S. there has been considerable interest in connecting low-income households to alternative food networks like Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). To learn more about this possibility we conducted a statewide survey of CSA members in California. A total of 1149 members from 41 CSAs responded. Here we answer the research question: How do CSA members’ (1) socioeconomic and demographic backgrounds, (2) household conditions potentially interfering with membership, and (3) CSA membership experiences vary between lower-income households (LIHHs) and higher-income households (HIHHs)? We divided members into LIHHs (making under 50,000 annually). We present comparisons of LIHHs’ and HIHHs’ (1) employment, race/ethnicity, household composition and education, use of food support, and enjoyment of food-related activities; (2) conditions interfering with membership and major life events; and (3) sources of information influencing decision to join, reasons for joining, ratings of importance of and satisfaction with various CSA attributes, gaps between importance of and satisfaction with various CSA attributes, valuing of the share and willingness to pay more, and impacts of membership. We find that LIHHs are committed CSA members, often more so than HIHHs, and that CSA members in California are disproportionately white, but that racial disproportionality decreases as incomes increase. We conclude by considering: (1) the economic risks that LIHHs face in CSA membership, (2) the intersection of economic risks with race/ethnicity and cultural coding in CSA; and (3) the possibilities of increasing participation of LIHH in CSA.
... While these cross-sectional observations allow us to contemplate the quantitative pervasiveness of UA in aggregate, they do not provide explanations for why UA projects may be prevalent in certain areas or how long these projects may sustain themselves. Similarly, more in-depth, longitudinal case studies of UA projects typically concern their operational aspects, such as mission-praxis alignment, community engagement, and project retention (e.g., Glover 2003;Hondagneu-Sotelo 2014;Martinez 2010;Nettle 2014;White 2010). As such, there has been a dearth of systematic research on how these projects come into existence on particular urban lots. ...
Based on interviews with 44 urban growers in New Orleans, this study examines their experiences of establishing urban agriculture (UA) projects on publicly and privately owned lots, either through purchase or lease. Publicly owned lots are easier to identify, but bureaucratic application processes and unpredictable policy changes made access less predictable and insecure, especially in terms of purchasing. Leasing privately owned lots is often a straightforward procedure, but these lots are difficult to identify without a comprehensive list, and were rarely available for purchase. Ultimately, neither type of vacant space produces significantly more security in land tenure for UA projects. The findings indicate that availability of vacancy does not equal initial or long-term access to the growers, and the current system of making vacant properties available for UA raises concerns about the long-term sustainability of UA projects.
... State sovereignty, support, and interventions may be necessary or may be rejected in the search for food security or food sovereignty. For example, the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network challenges the government's capacity to provide a safe and clean food supply (White, 2010). The network's goal is control of Detroit's urban food provisioning system to enhance the black community's self-reliance. ...
This chapter explores the political ecology of hunger discourses. Political ecology has a vital role to play in promoting critical understanding and critically informed praxis concerning hunger by way of four major contributions. First, it challenges neo-Malthusian and other mainstream approaches to defining world hunger. Second, political ecology constructs a history of the global development of food systems that increase poverty and ecological degradation in geographically and socially uneven ways. Third, it develops an urban political ecology addressing social inequality and racism around the emerging topics of urban agriculture and food. And finally, political ecology assesses the discursive relations of food, hunger, consumption and embodiment. Political ecology demonstrates that the eradication of hunger is a political and economic process tied to the counter-narratives of food sovereignty and food justice, which are dedicated to restructuring and transforming food systems across the geographic scale.
... Some scholars respond to this outcome by describing the complexity of racism in the food system and focusing on racialized experiences of eaters, cooks, food service workers, and farm workers (Abarca 2006;Harper 2011;Holmes 2013;Williams-Forson 2006) or highlighting food justice work carried out by people of color (Bradley and Galt 2014;Herrera et al. 2009;McCutcheon 2011;White 2010White , 2011aWhite , 2011b. These scholars and activists highlight colonizing forces within food justice and the strategies women and activists of color use to control their food and agriculture systems. ...
Over the past 15 years social movements for community food security, food sovereignty, and food justice have organized to address the failures of the multinational, industrial food system to fairly and equitably distribute healthy, affordable, culturally appropriate real food. At the same time, these social movements, and research about them, re-inscribe white, patriarchal systems of power and privilege. We argue that in order to correct this pattern we must relocate our social movement goals and practices within a decolonizing and feminist leadership framework. This framework challenges movement leadership and scholarship by white people who uncritically assume a natural order of leadership based on academic achievement. We analyze critical points in our collaboration over the last four years using these frameworks. Doing so highlights the challenges and possibilities for a more inclusive food justice movement and more just scholarship.
Access to fresh, healthy, affordable foods is a pressing concern in cities worldwide. American cities are no exception. Although many scholars study food access in large cities, small and mid-sized American cities can provide valuable information about inequities in the food system. This paper focuses on two adjoining, racially mixed Mid-Michigan cities—Lansing and East Lansing. It examines the extent to which different food outlets exist in the cities and surrounding townships. It probes the following questions: (1) How are food outlets distributed throughout the cities and suburbs? (2) What is the relationship between neighborhood demographic characteristics and the distribution of food outlet types? We collected data on food outlets from September 2020 to June 2022 using Data Axle as our primary source of information. We used ArcGIS 10.8.1 for the spatial mapping and SPSS 28 for statistical analyses. We conducted regression analyses to identify the difference in the likelihood of finding food retailers in census tracts where 0–20% of the residents were People of Color (VL-POC), 20.01–40% of the inhabitants were People of Color (L-POC), 40.1–60% of the residents were People of Color (H-POC), and more than 60% of residents were People of Color (VH-POC). There were 1647 food outlets in the study area: 579 were in Lansing, 220 were in East Lansing, and the remaining 848 were in the surrounding townships. Restaurants dominated the food landscape, while small groceries and convenience stores were the grocery sector’s most common food outlet types. Supermarkets and large grocery stores comprised only 5.6% of the study area’s food outlets. The study finds a nonlinear relationship between the racial composition of census tracts and the prevalence of food outlets. The VH-POC census tracts had very few food outlets. For instance, the tracts had no supermarkets, mass merchandisers or supercenters, small grocery or convenience stores, pharmacies or drug stores, or farmers’ markets. The findings illustrate the diversity and complexity of the Lansing–East Lansing metropolitan area’s food landscape.
Food justice refers to efforts to understand and combat the intersections between inequalities such as those of race, class, gender, national status, and the production, distribution, and consumption of food. Essential to the food justice movement is an analysis that problematizes the influence of race and class on the production, distribution, and consumption of food. Through food justice activism, low‐income communities and communities of color seek to create local food systems that meet their own food needs, as well as to dismantle racism and create opportunities for sustainable economic development in low‐income communities and communities of color.
Gardens and farms provide individuals and communities with access to affordable, nutritious, and culturally significant foods. There is a rich body of literature unpacking the connections between Black urban growing and agency, freedom, resistance, and care. However, spirituality remains one aspect of health and wellbeing that has not been studied extensively in relation to agriculture. The main goal of this study was to conduct focus groups with Philly-based growers to understand the self-determined impacts of urban agriculture on health, agency, and wellbeing. The secondary goal of this work was to determine if these impacts differ by race. I apply a collective agency and community resilience theoretical framework to this study. This framework offers a model to understand agriculture as a way for communities to become self-determined, self-reliant, and self-sustained. For this study exploring the impacts of urban agriculture on health, there were three eligibility criteria. Participants had to be at least 18 years old, identify as Black or White, and have grown food in a garden or farm in Philadelphia. I hosted six race-specific focus groups at Bartram’s Garden in Southwest Philadelphia. The audio recordings were transcribed, and the full transcripts were coded using open and axial coding methods and a “key concepts” framework. We also employed several methods of triangulation to help ensure the credibility and validity of the findings. Four major themes emerged from the data: growing as a demonstration of agency and power, growing as a facilitator of body–mind wellness, community care and relationship-building, and deepened spiritual connection and interdependence. There were both similarities and differences in the impacts of urban agriculture by race. Across the six focus groups, people talked about concepts related to community care and relationship-building as being major benefits of growing food. In both groups, people also brought up significant issues and barriers around land security. Mentions of spirituality appeared more frequently and more emphatically in the Black focus groups. Black focus groups were more likely to discuss the collective impacts of agriculture, while White participants were more likely to discuss the impacts on themselves as individuals. The findings of this focus group study point to some key domains through which agriculture impacts the health of farmers and growers in Philadelphia.
The primary objective of this study was to describe the food landscape of Flint, Michigan, and the surrounding townships. We investigated the relationship between the location of food outlets and the racial composition of census tracts. We collected data from multiple sources; however, Data Axle, a repository of information on the U.S. and Canadian businesses, was our primary data source. Data were collected and verified between September 2020 and December 2021. The final fact-checking was completed in June 2022. We used ArcGIS 10.8.1 and SPSS Version 28 to map and analyze the data. We conducted negative binomial regression analyses to identify the difference in the likelihood of finding food retailers in census tracts where the percentage of Black residents was low and those where the percentage of Blacks was high. The article examines 1,137 food retailers in the study area: 407 were in Flint, and the remainder in the surrounding townships. Restaurants—especially fast food and take-out establishments—dominated the food environment. In addition, small groceries and convenience stores proliferated in the grocery store category. The racial composition of the census tracts mattered. Census tracts in which more than 40% of the residents are Black have a mean of 7.6 food outlets. In comparison, census tracts in which 40% or less of the residents are Black have a mean of 11.3 food outlets; the difference is significant. Census tracts with a high percentage of Blacks also had significantly fewer restaurants. The results of this study show Flint’s food landscape to be more complex and robust than described in earlier studies. It underscores the point that researchers should not rely solely on documenting the presence of supermarkets or traditional grocery stores when addressing food insecurity and food access. In the case of Flint, such food outlets comprise only 2.2% of the food landscape. Focusing exclusively on these food retailers misses several important types of food venues that residents rely on to secure food. This siloed approach also ignores the resilience and ingenuity of residents to respond to limited access to traditional food retailers.
The disruption of social and food systems during the COVID-19 pandemic presented a unique set of opportunities and challenges for urban agriculture. Based on 79 in-depth interviews with the managers of community gardens, school gardens, and urban farms in the DC metropolitan area, this study explores the divergent responses of each type of urban agriculture to the social, economic, and personal disruptions that the pandemic wrought using the post-disaster “social recovery” theory. Findings show significant differences in the immediate impacts across types of urban agriculture, with community gardens being the least impacted and urban farms implementing the most variant adaptation strategies. The data also show notable differences within each type of urban agriculture, especially among urban farms. We attribute variant trajectories of their adaptations to pre-disaster conditions, including autonomy over cultivation space, access to resources, and connections with other facets of city life. We conclude by underscoring the importance of recognizing the heterogeneity of urban agriculture in assessing its transformational capacity and potential.
Black and low-income neighborhoods tend to have higher concentrations of fast-food restaurants and low produce supply stores. Limited access to and consumption of nutrient-rich foods is associated with poor health outcomes. Given the realities of food access, many members within the Black communities grow food as a strategy of resistance to food apartheid, and for the healing and self-determination that agriculture offers.
In this paper, we unpack the history of Black people, agriculture, and land in the United States. In addition to our brief historical review, we conduct a descriptive epidemiologic study of community food-growing spaces, food access, and neighborhood racial composition in present day Philadelphia. We leverage one of the few existing datasets that systematically documents all community food growing locations throughout a major US city. By applying spatial regression techniques, we use conditional autoregressive models to determine if there are spatial associations between Black neighborhoods, poverty, food access and urban agriculture in Philadelphia.
Fully adjusted spatial models showed significant associations between Black neighborhoods and urban agriculture (RR: 1.28, 95% CI = 1.03, 1.59) and poverty and urban agriculture (RR: 1.27, 95% CI = 1.1, 1.46). The association between low food access and the presence of urban agriculture was generally increased across neighborhoods with a higher proportion of Black residents.
These results show that Philadelphia neighborhoods with higher populations of Black people and neighborhoods with lower incomes, on average, tend to have more community gardens and urban farms. While the garden data is non-temporal and non-causal, one possible explanation for these findings, in alignment with what Philadelphia growers have claimed, is that urban agriculture may be a manifestation of collective agency and community resistance in Black and low-income communities, particularly in neighborhoods with low food access.
Like many neighborhoods in cities across the United States, Gifford Park—a neighborhood in Omaha, Nebraska—has been recreating itself through urban agriculture. Past research about urban agriculture reveals that it can operate as a material argument that resists negative characterizations and empowers residents, but this argument is incomplete. This case study extends the idea that places can function as spatial arguments and conceptualizes urban agriculture as a place ballet. Place ballets, which describe the interactions between places and bodies, offer a way of thinking about large-scale, slow-moving rhetorical action as well as demonstrating how economic and racial privilege manifest in the place and bodies—the material foundations of a place ballet. I argue that urban agriculture functions as a place ballet that reveals a complex, material argument about the positive impacts places and bodies can have on communities and community members while simultaneously overlooking the economic and racial privileges inherent in these efforts. Although the concept of a place ballet is a useful way to bring together two aspects of material rhetoric—place and bodies—it carries its own implications of economic and racial privilege.
Dans les villes du Nord, où dominent les régimes de propriété publics ou privés, des espaces vacants sont réappropriés par la société civile pour y mener des initiatives d’agriculture urbaine. À Detroit en particulier, ville en décroissance, la vacance foncière massive constitue une aubaine qui pourrait participer à résoudre la tragédie des non-communs dans les villes contemporaines. La mise en culture des espaces vacants par la société civile ne suffit pourtant pas à en faire des communs urbains, ces derniers nécessitant l’établissement de processus complexes d’usage et de gestion. À partir d’une enquête de terrain réalisée à Detroit dans le cadre d’un doctorat, et en mobilisant la littérature scientifique sur les espaces vacants, l’agriculture urbaine et la notion de commun(s), cet article montre que la construction de communs agricoles urbains réside dans trois dimensions constitutives : le territoire occupé des nouveaux communs fonciers ; le territoire cultivé via les communs socio-techniques ; et le territoire gouverné comme processus de création du commun. Si l’apparition de communs agricoles urbains à Detroit propose ainsi une série de réponses alternatives à une crise politique, économique, sociale et alimentaire, elle témoigne aussi d’une vulnérabilité face aux risques d’accaparement des territoires pour des usages non-communs.
The rapid urbanization creates an increased demand for food supply and security in urban system. The imminent risks stemmed from climate change appeal for a greater effort in an overhaul of the customary practices in the planning and management of the urban systems. Urban centers should accommodate the growing need for green infrastructure and edible landscape; options such as farming alternative has gained interest as a possible solution to the urban-scape and the food production stability for the urban inhabitants. This article presents the systemic approach to building integrated agriculture unit prototype's design thinking and proposed a prototype model allowing the locality and place to be incorporated into the design framework. The research concludes that: (1) in line with human-nature connection and raising its priority level within both design research and design practice should consider the environmental, social, economic and spatial criteria for the design thinking exploration; (2) the design results in a flexible system model of the micro building integrated agriculture unit, allowing the units to fit either indoor or outdoor, as a probable solution suited for the locality and the increasing demand for edible greens; (3) indoor units need further study in integration with the indoor climate control and automation as well as added indoor air purification and sensor functions. (4) Prototype units should be capable of providing locally available edible production and social well-being for the urban system.
This chapter sharpens the relevant notions of gardens and urban gardening. It conceptualizes urban gardens as elements of a city’s green infrastructure, and highlights their importance as site of food production and tools of climate adaptation. The chapter also collects and presents empirical research on real-life experiments in urban gardening in different cities, and considers several ecological and social benefits that have been proven or can be reasonably expected to be delivered by the practice.
This report covers one Master's student's research in examining how diverse community residents are included in the work of FPCs.
Recently, different expert actors have attempted to localize Detroit’s food system to bring about greater justice citywide. At first, ‘professional experts’ dominated these efforts, claiming authority in the food system due to their knowledge based in qualified training and applied work experience. Yet a rival group of ‘experiential experts’ soon rose up to assert their power, arguing they and their unique race and place-based know-how merited greater influence. Within just a few years, experiential experts successfully replaced professional ones in commanding much area food localization. I show that experiential experts achieved this power largely through strategic boundary-work, including expulsion, expansion, and protection of autonomy. Nonetheless, some Detroiters and professional experts themselves questioned experiential experts’ legitimacy in removing professional experts from the food system altogether. I thus introduce a fourth form of boundary-work that experiential experts deployed to maintain their clout, what I term ‘accommodation’. Accommodation connotes instances of strategic inclusion where an expert authority facilitates rivals in sharing some influence based on distinct conditions that leave dominant epistemic arrangements generally intact. This occurred in Detroit as experiential experts accommodated professional ones in exercising some food systems power provided they better deploy their own race and place-based knowledge. Such actions helped quell public concern while also protecting experiential experts’ rising authority. Accommodation is useful for understanding cases in which diverse types of experts work together despite that single knowledge-forms guide their activities overall. Further research into accommodation could aid in identifying whether or not diverse forms of knowledge are together influencing decision-making around a range of cases, or if single forms of expertise remain dominant despite the appearance that democratization is taking place.
In the context of recognizing and resisting an educational system that sorts young people into prisons, and the systemic violence of exposing youth to poisonous amounts of environmental pollution through toxic food, air, and water, I find Detroit—like so many other communities around the world for which modern economics has failed—to be rich with hope and promise despite the clearly visible economic abandonment and worldwide notoriety for bankruptcy, violence, and crime. While there is plenty of research that exist to tell stories that further pathologize poverty and criminalize youth, the work in this chapter resists such a fetish and turns attention to the resilience and political organizing of educator-activists as cultural workers recognizing that schools ought to focus learning around a fundamental student need—the need and right to nourishing and culturally appropriate food.
Caritas International Zimbabwe implemented a food security restoration project targeting 1,000 vulnerable
households in Mutare urban, eastern Zimbabwe. The objectives of the study were to determine whether targeted households were able to improve household income from sale of horticultural produce and to assess if these households were improving their household dietary diversity. Data were collected from a random sample of 100 household heads through interviews in December 2014. Desk reviews of Mutare urban food security project reports (baseline and end line surveys) were done. Results show that the urban horticulture project improved household income of about 70% (n = 70) of the targeted households by then. By December 2014 household food consumption score (FCS) among the project targeted households had improved beyond FCS > 35 as compared to baseline status.
Mutare urban farmers were coached to practice market oriented horticulture production to enjoy both a diversified diet themselves and to sell to the market, through which they were getting a net profit of at least US$80/month per household. We conclude that the Mutare urban horticulture project improved food and nutrition security and restore livelihoods for the targeted poor urban dwellers as at December 2014. Such market-led horticulture project formulation is a worthy feasibility studies for options for replication in related project area context which could be proposed.
In this article, we present the voices of African American urban gardeners in Cleveland, Ohio, a city in the Rust Belt. We draw attention to the history of a rich neighborhood life following the Great Migration that was grounded in political activism and mutual support. We focus on the gardener's visions of thriving, self-reliant African American communities and the desire to rebuild soil, neighborhoods, and economies. The central values articulated include hospitality, empowerment, and giving back, values that are grounded in the history and current practice of community organizing. We critique the mainstream tendency to label black bodies and African American communities as pathological, and instead argue for recognizing the skills and abilities of African American gardeners to cultivate community—that is, to build and strengthen the social, political, economic, and cultural fabric of neighborhoods.
The racial and cultural politics of land and property are central to urban struggle, but have received relatively little attention in geography. This paper analyzes land struggles in Detroit where over 100,000 parcels of land are classified as “vacant”. Since 2010, planners and government officials have been developing controversial plans to ruralize Detroit's “vacant” neighborhoods as part of a program of fiscal austerity, reigniting old questions of racialized dispossession, sovereignty, and struggles for liberation. This paper analyzes these contentious politics by examining disputes over a white businessman's proposal to build the world's largest urban forest in the center of a Black majority city. I focus on how residents, urban farmers, and community activists resisted the project by making counterclaims to vacant land as an urban commons. They argued that the land is inhabited not empty and that it belonged to those who labored upon and suffered for it. Combining community-based ethnography with insights from critical property theory, critical race studies, and postcolonial theory, I argue that land struggles in Detroit are more than distributional conflicts over resources. They are inextricable from debates over notions of race, property, and citizenship that undergird modern liberal democracies and ongoing struggles for decolonization.
Comprehension of food labels can be important for patients, including those with chronic illness, to help follow dietary recommendations. Patient comprehension of food labels was examined, along with the relationship of comprehension to their underlying literacy and numeracy skills.
From June 2004 to April 2005, a cross-sectional study of 200 primary care patients was performed. A 24-item measure of food label comprehension was administered. Literacy was measured with the Rapid Estimate of Adult Literacy in Medicine (REALM), and numeracy with the Wide Range Achievement Test, third edition (WRAT-3).
Most patients (89%) reported using food labels. While 75% of patients reported at least a high school education and 77% had 9th-grade literacy skills, only 37% had 9th-grade math skills. On average, patients answered 69% (standard deviation, 21%) of the food-label questions correctly. Common reasons for incorrect responses included misapplication of the serving size, confusion due to extraneous material on the food label, and incorrect calculations. For example, only 37% of patients could calculate the number of carbohydrates consumed from a 20-ounce bottle of soda that contained 2.5 servings. Higher comprehension of food labels was significantly correlated (all p values were less than 0.001) with higher income (rho=0.39), education (rho=0.49), literacy (rho=0.52), and numeracy (rho=0.67).
Patients demonstrated deficits in understanding nutrition labels. Poor label comprehension was highly correlated with low-level literacy and numeracy skills, but even patients with higher literacy could have difficulties interpreting labels. Providers need to consider patients' literacy and numeracy when providing dietary recommendations. Opportunities may exist for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to promote changes to make food labels more comprehensible.