Stanley Hart White, Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign from 1922 to 1959, was granted US Patent 2,113,523 on 5th April 1938 for the Vegetation-Bearing Architectonic Structure and System in which he describes the method for creating an ‘architectonic structure of any buildable size, shape or height, whose visible or exposed surfaces may present a permanently growing covering of vegetation’. In six beautifully illustrated pages, Professor White reveals the new art of growing plants within/on a vertical, architectonic, substrate-holding frame, and in the process describes a new vertical garden type not fully realized till after his death in 1979. All that remains of White’s invention are his careful diaries, a series of patents, and his brother E. B. White’s correspondences about Stan’s new invention. Stanley Hart White is best known as an educator who modernized landscape pedagogy at the University of Illinois, influencing the work of Hideo Sasaki, Peter Walker, Richard Haag, and others, through his innovative teaching style and creativity. With the discovery of his patent for the first known green wall, or Botanical Bricks, he may also be credited as an inventor and technological innovator, conceptualizing the vertical garden and pioneering green modernism . White’s thoughts on vegetation-bearing architecture crystallize in his patent of 1938, 4×4 grow tray yet notions of a green wall emerge as early as 1931 in his lectures and writings on the modern garden.
Although the intended audiences for White’s early writings on vertical greenery are not yet apparent, the idea of a vegetation bearing garden enclosure preoccupies him for several years as documented in his personal journals, or Commonplace Books, in the University of Illinois Library Archives. Technical aspects of White’s green wall find their clearest articulation in US Patent 2,113,523, filed on 18th August 1937, yet the theoretical dimensions developed as a treatise on modernism and garden design, in which the vertical surfaces of the garden create a backdrop for modern living. In an essay titled ‘What is Modern’, White discusses the green wall as a design solution for the modern garden, allowing for the preservation of a free plan and composition of a garden in the vertical dimension. His references to Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Sullivan, Walt Whitman, Charlie Chaplin, Norman Bel Geddes, Adolph Appia, Sheldon Cheney, Walt Disney, and others, situates the work among a group of ‘moderns’ concerned with changing lives through art and architecture.6 The Vegetation-Bearing Architectonic Structure and System evolved as a response to the problem of modernism in garden design, and is a unique contribution of landscape architecture to this effort, representing a clear translation of garden theory into garden form and legalese. The prescience of this work is astounding, predicting not only the emergence of the vertical garden in the contemporary built environment, but a method of scholarship in patent development not widely accepted by US universities until the 1970s. White’s inchoate drawings and description of a green wall in 1931–32 mature until his application for the Vegetation-Bearing Architectonic Structure and System on 18th August 1937, where he artfully translates garden theory into United States Patent and Trademark Office legalese with the help of his attorney, Elmer Hovenden Gates of Arlington, Virginia.
The new art of vegetation bearing architecture was entirely novel at the time of application, and no citations of prior art are associated with White’s invention. Currently, thirty four international patents cite US Patent 2,113,523 as prior art, encoding an array of inventions from grass cube chairs, to vegetation-bearing gabion walls. Interestingly, White’s lawyer, Elmer Hovenden Gates, and proposed business partner, William M. McPherson, patented related vegetation-bearing technologies within weeks of his submission. More than 50 patents cite the Vegetation Bearing Cellular Structure and System, Vegetation-Bearing Display Surface, and the Vegetation-Bearing Architectonic Structure and System, collectively encoding a diverse ensemble of environmental technologies. The legalese defining this new field offers valuable insights into the founding principles of vegetation-bearing architecture as a chimera of architectonic structure and vegetated system. According to White, architectonics relates to ‘the art of landscaping structure as well as to buildings, but distinguished from the art of plant culture’. Within this architectonic structure, plant growth is supported through a layering of horticultural substrates and reticular materials. In this configuration, the ‘vegetation in its final positions has its roots within the compost while the tops of the vegetation would extend through the reticular surfaces of the units or compounds into the open air where their normal development occurs’. The patents legalese describes not only the technical specifications of White’s new invention, but also the proposed scope of vegetation-bearing architecture as a new art. This scope is of particular interest with the emergence of the vertical garden and green wall in the contemporary built environment, as the language that defines the new art also encodes innovations in related technologies today.
Specifically, corporate control refers to control of political and economic systems by corporations in order to influence trade regulations, tax rates, and wealth distribution, among other measures, and to produce favorable environments for further corporate growth. Structural racialization refers to the set of practices, cultural norms, and institutional arrangements that are reflective of, and help to create and maintain, racialized outcomes in society, with communities of color faring worse than others in most situations. In this light, the production of racial/ethnic, gender, and economic inequity in the United States is more so a product of cumulative and structural forces than of individual actions or malicious intent on behalf of private or public actors. In order to challenge and eliminate corporate control and structural racialization in the United States, therefore, it is necessary to analyze the ways that public and private institutions are structured. It is also necessary to analyze how government programs are administered and operate in ways that reproduce outcomes that marginalize low-income communities, women, and communities of color in terms of health, wealth, land access, power, and degree of democratic influence. Additionally, as this report aims to do, it is crucial to analyze the genesis and formation of critical institutions and structures themselves. Therefore, the US Farm Bill—the flagship piece of food and agricultural legislation since its inception in 1933, which informs the heart of public and private policies that make up much of the US food system—is the subject of this report. This report is of particular importance now for two reasons. First, the Farm Bill will be under consideration again in 2019, yet there is no comprehensive critique of the Farm Bill that addresses its underlying contradictions, particularly with regard to racial/ethnic, gender, and economic inequity. Second, it is imperative that campaigns by grassroots, community, and advocacy organizations—generally most active during the period of Farm Bill negotiations in Congress—have enough time to gather adequate information and conduct in-depth analysis for targeted yet comprehensive policy change. As such, the timing of this report is also imperative for coalition-building efforts and the growth of an effective broad-based food sovereignty movement.Corporate consolidation and control have become central features of the US food system, and of the Farm Bill in particular. As of 2014, large-scale family-owned and non-family-owned operations account for 49.7% of the total value of production despite making up only 4.7% of all US farms. As of 2013, only 12 companies now account for almost 53% of ethanol production capacity and own 38% of all ethanol production plants. As of 2007, four corporations own 85% of the soybean processing industry, 82% of the beef packing industry, 63% of the pork packing industry, and manufacture about 50% of the milk. Only four corporations control 53% of US grocery retail, and roughly 500 companies control 70% of food choice globally. At every level of the food chain, from food production to food service, workers of color typically earn less than white workers. For example, a majority of farm workers who receive “piecerate” earnings , and many of whom are migrants from Mexico, frequently earn far less than minimum wage—an exploitative practice deeply tied to immigration policy, as elaborated upon below. On average, white food workers earn $25,024 a year while workers of color make $19,349 a year, greenhouse racking with women of color, in particular, suffering the most. Furthermore, few people of color hold management positions in the food system, while white people hold almost three out of every four managerial positions. One result of this racial disparity in food system labor is that non-white workers experience a far greater degree of food insecurity than their white counterparts.Food insecurity in the US disproportionately affects low-income communities and communities of color, and these communities are over represented in the lowest-paying sectors of the labor market.
For example, as of 2013, 14.3% of US households—17.5 million households, roughly 50 million persons—were food insecure. The report also found that the rates of food insecurity were substantially higher than the national average among Black and Latino/a households, households with incomes near or below the federal poverty line, and single parent households. Racial/ethnic inequity with regard to land access is a defining feature not only of the corporate-controlled food system, but also of the US government itself, which, even years after emancipation, has made it nearly impossible for Blacks and other communities of color to acquire and keep land in substantial numbers. For example, in 1920, 926,000 US farmers were Black and they owned over 16 million acres of land, and by 1997, fewer than 20,000 US farmers were Black and owned approximately 2 million acres of land. While white farmers were losing their farms during these decades as well, the rate that Black farmers lost their land has been estimated at more than twice the rate of white-owned farm loss.Though the Farm Bill itself does not deal directly with immigration, the impact of the Bill on farmworkers cannot go unnoticed. The combination of an immigration system easily exploited by employers, and workers’ low income, limited formal education, limited command of the English language, and undocumented status, greatly hinders farmworkers from seeking any retribution or recognition of their rights. With limited legal aid, many agricultural workers fear that challenging the illegal and unfair practices of their employers will result in further abuses, jobs losses, and, ultimately, deportation. Given the fact that the Farm Bill supports many of those companies that employ farmworkers, connections must be drawn to highlight how the Farm Bill upholds and perpetuates structural injustice among farmworkers. In the US, exposures to environmental hazards have disproportionately impacted low-income communities and communities of color. As a major contributor to global climate change and the racialized distribution of its impacts, conventional agricultural production practices, in particular, have been instrumental in maintaining and upholding these disparities. Furthermore, low-income communities and communities of color in the United States bear the burden of the impacts caused by climate change. For example, these populations breathe more polluted air than other Americans, suffer more during extreme weather events, have fewer means to escape such extreme weather events, and disproportionately experience greater hardship due to rising energy, food, and water costs.This report found a number of structural barriers to addressing these racial/ethnic, gender, and economic inequities. First, the Farm Bill itself is increasingly imbricated in, and ultimately functions as a pillar of, neoliberalism. The long term shift from the subsidization of production and consumption to the subsidization of agribusiness has structurally positioned low-income communities and communities of color on the losing side of such shifts. This population has also been given fewer options for recourse, given the ways in which the Farm Bill has been designed to be insulated from democratic influence, particularly by way of countless layers of congressional committees. Second, under the current Farm Bill, supporting public nutrition assistance programs and fighting poverty and racial/ethnic inequality, are antithetical to one another, despite the evidence that suggests otherwise. Specifically, while such public assistance programs do provide support to some of the most marginalized communities, they ultimately maintain structural inequity, particularly in terms of wealth, by channeling profits to corporations such as Walmart and other large retailers, which benefit greatly from distributing benefits such as SNAP. Many of these corporations are then able to funnel profits back to their corporate headquarters outside their respective retail sites, while still paying workers low wages and granting few benefits at every level of the food system. Finally, this report found that supporting the inclusion of producers of color into current payment schemes, and fighting poverty and racial/ethnic [ii] Neoliberalism is a new period of capitalism, particularly since 1970s and 1980s, characterized by unparalleled global reach of economic liberalization, open markets, free trade, and deregulation.