At the same time, in exploring the radical democratic politics of groups like Food-Not-Bombs, Heynen describes the kind of anarchist philosophy of mutual aid and cooperativism through food sharing that we see in the East Bay agroecosystem. Farms are not just distributing food to the hungry in hidden basements or exploiting free labor, but engaging in highly visible work, inviting those who visit or consume farm outputs to work, cook, learn, teach, share and get political. The reality is that growing food in cities has particular challenges, increasing the costs of farming on top of issues already outlined regarding the cost of land and labor . We find that the importance of donated money and time to further the anti-hunger and advocacy efforts of farms is not counter to the transformational goals of AE broadly or UAE in particular. In this way, we seek to nuance the premise that volunteer labor is universally problematic and counter-productive to radical food system reform efforts, aligning instead with some urban agroecological scholarship that argues for improved work-life balance through living wage jobs that afford more people opportunities to pursue hobbies and interests and volunteer their time supporting community efforts that align with their values . Pimbert outlines three dimensions of urban agroecological transformation that are needed, including economic, indoor vertical garden system with new forms of organization and relocalized wealth production as well as “creation of free time for citizens to shape and re-govern urban spaces” . Volunteerism has a place in a transformed, equitable, environmentally sustainable local food system, although reliance on it as the primary source of labor is undesirable.
Our findings around labor in particular stand in contrast to the often-referenced benefit of urban agriculture as a job creation tool . At least in the current political economic landscape of the East Bay, urban farms do not generate enough economic revenue or city investment in order to hire many full time positions; this remains a goal of many operations and opportunity for policy intervention, especially with respect to enhancing the resilience of urban agroecosystems to economic disturbance.Farms in our case study display a strong focus on reducing hunger and promoting food equity, namely through culturally appropriate diets, and the emphasis on human and social values. Due to the plethora of produce going home with volunteers, circulating at neighborhood crop swaps, and gleaned or harvested by community members that is not weighed and tracked before it is consumed, it is understandably difficult to quantify the “food security” impacts of urban agriculture . While food security may be difficult to quantify, it is nevertheless being addressed by urban farms in unique ways . In school gardens, for example, produce that is not used for classroom cooking demonstrations sometimes goes home with students or families excited to find culturally relevant crops growing in their neighborhood. Supporting healthy, diversified and culturally appropriate diets are an important element of agroecology. The diversity and quality of produce grown, especially when it is an item that might not otherwise be available to a family in a “food desert,” contribute greatly to the value produced on urban farms. One farmer interviewed described how one school garden site serves students from Hispanic, African American, Middle Eastern, Asian, and Eastern European families. The garden teacher spoke about the diversity of crops relevant to various cultural food traditions; for example, the chayote plants were of particular interest to Latinx students excited to bring them home to their mothers, while African American students eagerly collected bunches of collards, and Middle Eastern mothers came to the garden in person to collect fava beans and figs. In this way, urban agroecology contributes to food security and nutrition as well as biodiversity.
It also serves to reaffirm cultural identity and a sense of place for immigrant and refugee families. Agroecology places a strong emphasis on human and social values, such as dignity, equity, inclusion and justice contributing to improved livelihoods of [urban] communities . Our study demonstrated that the majority of farm respondents placed food security, education, and environmental sustainability above profit, sales and yield. Forty percent of respondents self-identified as “Educational” farms, and most others offer educational workshops and demonstrations as part of their focus on horizontal knowledge-sharing. The majority of our study respondents were also women. As a grassroots movement, urban agroecology can empower women to become their own agents of change.Our results suggest the opportunity to reconceptualize and refocus the urban food policy discussion in U.S. cities around urban agriculture in a way that includes and values their social, educational, and cultural services. Urban farms are recreational and cultural heritage sites bearing comparison to public parks and museums, while also producing invaluable healthy food in areas that most need it. They provide important respite, social connection, and stress reduction to urban residents, often particularly in need of peaceful spaces. In the words of one farmer, “Urban farms can be havens of peace, health, and community, but it requires heavy involvement and advocacy from those communities for the long term in order to be successful” . Agroecology calls for responsible and effective governance to support the transition to just, equitable and sustainable food and farming systems. In an urban environment, this requires the creation of enabling policies that ensure equitable land access and producer control over access to land, especially among the more vulnerable and historically marginalized populations.
Land access is expressed most frequently as an obstacle to scaling urban food production by survey respondents, and it is certainly more of a challenge for lower-income and minority groups interested in cultivating their own “commons” . There are examples among our East Bay survey respondents of collective governance at the farm and community level, such as one farm site which is owned cooperatively by three non-profit organizations that collectively serve minority and formerly incarcerated populations, aspiring beginning farmers, and the local community through a cooperative goat dairy, fruit tree nursery, and annual vegetable production plots. City and county governance bodies have an opportunity to strengthen the resilience of urban agriculture operations and opportunities for farmer collaboration by providing subsidies and incentives for social and ecosystem services. City-level efforts to compensate or recognize farmers for ecosystem services such as soil remediation and carbon sequestration, for example, are not yet realized. Further examples of responsible governance from our data include recommendations for public procurement programs to source food from aggregated urban produce . Our respondents are engaged in circular and solidarity economies, key features of agroecology, including bartering, sharing, and exchanging resources and produce with those in their social networks. They are also interested in collaborating in a localized effort to strengthen the link between producers and consumers by aggregating produce and sharing distribution . As cities work to fulfill their role in providing basic services to citizens, farmers are pointing out an important opportunity to provide refrigerated transportation, storage, and organizational infrastructure to transfer all possible produce grown on urban farms to the best distribution sites. Communication platforms, transport systems, and streamlined procurement in this arena following from other regional “food hub” models could improve the landscape for urban food distribution dramatically . All urban farm respondents are also engaged in closed-loop waste cycles: through composting all farm waste onsite and collecting food scraps from local businesses, farms are involved in a process of regeneration, clone rack from food debris to soil. The activities of urban farms fall naturally under definitions and descriptions of agroecology. Through extending the UAE framework from farms to urban policy and planning conversations, more efficient pathways for addressing food insecurity in part through strategic centers of urban production and distribution can emerge in cities of the East Bay and elsewhere in the United States. Finally, agroecology relies on the co-creation and sharing of knowledge. Top-down models of food system transformation have had little success. Urban planners have an opportunity to address food insecurity and other urban food system challenges including production, consumption, waste management and recycling by co-creating solutions with urban farmers through participatory processes and investing in community-led solutions. In our systematic review of the literature on whether urban agriculture improves urban food security, we found three key factors mediating the effect of UA on food security: the economic realities of achieving an economically viable urban farm, the role of city policy and planning, and the importance of civic engagement in the urban food system . A radical transformation toward a more equitable, sustainable and just urban food system will require more responsible governance and investment in UA as a public good, that is driven by active community engagement and advocacy.
We believe that urban agroecology principles provide an effective framework to capture the multiple ecological, social, economic and political dimensions of urban farming, beyond yield and profits, enabling those seeking transformative food systems change in the U.S. in the U.S. a common language and opportunity to measure and communicate more clearly the multiple benefits worthy of public investment. Framing this work as urban agroecology values the knowledge creation, community building, and human well-being that are also products of urban food initiatives. Our data illustrates how urban food sites are spaces of vibrant civic engagement and food literacy development yet remain undervalued by city planners and under constant threat of conversion as well as pressures of gentrification. With the majority of operations in our study functioning as non-profits, it is questionable whether many urban farms would actually be considered a true “agricultural” operation per the USDA definition as a majority of farms earn less than $1,000 in sales annually. As such, they are largely ineligible to apply for funding or loans from many of the federal and state agencies or granting programs such as the Farm Service Agency or NRCS. The idea that the UAE framework can illuminate multiple and often hidden sociopolitical dimensions of urban food production sites is powerful. For example, over 75% of urban farming sites in our study came into being for a multitude of reasons: including re-establishing justice and dignity into historically neglected and marginalized urban communities, fighting poverty, resisting the environmentally extractive, exploitative, racist, and obesity-inducing industrial farming system, reclaiming the ability to be self-sufficient and work with your hands, and re-educating society about the physical and emotional value of cultivating the Earth. Urban farmers aspire to many things: affirming a human right to healthy food, a food literate civil society, land tenure arrangements that favor socially beneficial rather than profit-maximizing land uses, and alternative forms of exchange and value creation outside the capitalist political economy. The term “agroecology” locates these values in a historical network of similar efforts to transform the global food system along socially just and ecologically resilient lines.Reframing UA through the lens of UAE can ultimately help U.S. policy makers and city planners better understand and support urban agroecological endeavors, and provide researchers, urban citizens and urban food producers a more inclusive mode of inquiry that can lead to transformative food system change, taking care not to dismantle, invalidate, or eliminate the revolutionary, anti-oppression elements through overly prescriptive “policy solutions.” When it comes to researching, documenting, and advancing transitions to sustainable food systems through agroecology, the urban context is an important one to consider, given the growing percentage of the global population living in cities. We acknowledge Gliessman’s call for applications of his “5 levels of food systems change,” showing in our data how East Bay urban farmers are endeavoring to scale up to Level 5: “build a new global food system, based on equity, participation, democracy, and justice, that is not only sustainable but helps restore and protect earth’s life support systems upon which we all depend” . We encourage future engaged scholarship in the U.S. that employs a UAE framework to ask and answer important remaining questions about the transition to sustainable food systems, in partnership with urban farmers, around valuation, preservation, and connectivity of diversified food production sites in the modern city.As a whole, the Lowell middle school demonstrated much higher levels of knowledge and engagement around climate change than the average American teenager or adult. Based on a 2010 nationally representative survey of American teenagers, knowledge of climate science basicfacts was found to be very low . 59% of American adults fall into the “Alarmed” or “Concerned” categories of the YPCCC Six Americas spectrum as of December 2018 compared to 82% of Lowell middle school students.