Tag Archives: food justice

Cultivating Hope: Community-Owned Regenerative Agriculture as a Way Forward

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Birdsfoot Farm remains a sturdy, if subdued, tribute to an alternative way of living and farming.

Next to the slightly peeling Obama 2008 bumper sticker sits one with a small white and blue quotation: “Despite all our accomplishments, we owe our existence to a six-inch layer of topsoil and the fact it rains.” 

The quote dots the bumpers of the eight or so cars parked in front of the 150-year old barn of Birdsfoot Farm in Canton, NY. Founded in the 1970s as part of the Back to the Land movement, the farm now supports a small cohousing community, a K-12 school, and vegetable plot that supplies produce  to local families and businesses. They host Maypole Dances, an annual Garlic Festival, and weekly potlucks in the main kitchen. They live mostly self-sufficiently, with the occasional luxury bar of chocolate and movie night in town. It is, in many ways, an agrarian utopia. 

This image is not the reality for the vast majority of agriculture that occurs in the United States today. Instead, the food and agricultural landscape is dominated by farms that span millions acres, plant corporation-patented seed corn, and rely on massive center pivot irrigation systems.  Many pay starvation wages to largely undocumented migrant workers who lack the political power to advocate for better conditions. 

Additionally, the switch to industrial farming has dovetailed a shift to majority cash crops, animal feed, and ethanol production, leaving only 2% of American agriculture dedicated to fruits and vegetables, like Birdsfoot is. Of that 2%, the majority of it is in California, with produce then shipped to other states for distribution. 

Industrial agriculture, according to a 2022 special feature review article from the journal Sustainability Science, is a major contributor to “climate change, biodiversity loss, and severe impacts on soil and water quality”, all of which are increasing in intensity and human impact. Around 34% of all greenhouse gas emissions come from the food system, with the majority of that being from industrial agriculture. It also causes harmful algae blooms and ‘dead zones’, like the Gulf of Mexico dead zone which spans 6,705 miles. 

In addition, competition from imported fruits and vegetables is making farming financially unviable for many families. Dulli Tengeler, the primary farmer at Birdsfoot, is grappling with that reality. In 2019, her total income was $3,200, with two kids in college. “We had a great year working together in the gardens and I am happy, and the happy factor is not to be underestimated, but it is not sustainable.” 

Dulli (right) and Goldie (left), in a back field at Birdsfoot Farm.

 

The solution, according to the article’s authors, Cathy Day and Sarah Cramer, lies in what is called regenerative agriculture. 

Regenerative agriculture focuses on improving “the ecological conditions of a farm, while also producing food”, according to Day and Cramer. Regenerative agriculture is a departure from the massive industrial agriculture that has become the American standard of food, feed and ethanol production. Farms that practice regenerative agriculture use fewer external soil amendments, smaller fields, and more diverse crops and are more resilient in the face of climate change.

Regenerative farming is not a new concept.  Remember the six inches of topsoil and rain model of cultivation on those  bumper stickers? Farms like Birdsfoot demonstrate what a more regenerative  model of farming looked like.

The researchers  investigated how this model can be expanded upon and made more viable for struggling farms. Day and Cramer focus on unpacking regenerative agriculture policy, adoption and education. Given how powerful industrial agriculture is, policy that supports smaller farmers is a tough sell to many legislators.

Shifting laws, especially within the American Farm Bill, which outlines American agricultural policy, subsidizes industrial agriculture heavily, is key to making regenerative agriculture viable. Making no- or low-interest loans available to farmers who use regenerative practices or subsidizing labor costs are both policy changes that could have a real impact.

Outside of policy, modern approaches for community and support, like farm to table networks that help fund farmers making the switch and internet communities for sharing ideas. Encouraging farmers to explore new financial models and sharing approaches that work locally are also essential. 

At Birdsfoot farm, a CSA model has been the main reason they remain viable. Birdsfoot also hosts young farmers to come and learn regenerative agriculture techniques who will then continue to bring those principles and techniques to their own farms, highlighting the role of educational networks for farmers. 

While it is by no means a solution to all of our environmental problems, switching from an industrial agricultural model to a regenerative one would reduce the ways in which the current systems perpetuate harm and leave communities vulnerable to climate change and soil degradation. Still, Food produced organically and on a smaller scale through regenerative agriculture is often prohibitively expensive to consumers. The benefits of regenerative agriculture do not fundamentally address the problem of how to implement these changes in a way that doesn’t lead to the creation of food shortages or or more economic hardship, given that cost-saving is a real asset of industrial agriculture. 

So, what to do? Expanding welfare programs, like EBT benefits, to cover CSAs and other models of food distribution is key to reducing harm for those undergoing the shift from industrial to regenerative agriculture. Farmers themselves also play a role in accessibility, such as Birdsfoot’s “Buy a Share, Give a Share” program, that allows wealthier families to contribute to their community by sponsoring an anonymous CSA share. When moving forwards to regenerative agriculture, Birdsfoot Farm, and Dulli specifically, is an inspiration, modelling a path, rather than a destination.

 

Seeds of Justice: 4 Ways You Can Support Sustainable, Community-Driven Food Systems

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Five white men and women with tools tend a community garden.

U.S. industrial agriculture causes an estimated $34.7 billion worth of environmental damage each year, yet 49 million Americans still live in households that can’t count on having enough food. It’s clear that our food system is not meeting our social and environmental needs – solutions, on the other hand, aren’t quite so straightforward. When you think about better options for the food system, do you imagine buying local and organic? Do you picture urban farms and community gardens? Are you dreaming of artisan coffee and a stroll around the farmer’s market right now? (Yeah, me too.) Can you envision these actions making it harder for certain communities to access healthy, sustainable food? Hold up – what?

It’s true: many popular approaches to the “food problem” tend to push privileged and disadvantaged groups farther apart, which is especially troubling given the demographics of food access. Food insecurity intersects – perhaps obviously – with lower household income, but it also reflects significant racial disparities: while 11% of White households experienced food insecurity in 2013, a quarter of Black and Latin@ households faced barriers to food access in the same year. These patterns ring true in the long-term effects of food access, too, putting racially, culturally, and economically marginalized populations at greater risk of diet-related disease. Latin@ and African-American children are 1.7 times more likely than White children to be diagnosed with diabetes by the time they turn eighteen; Native American children are diagnosed at more than twice the rate of White children.

A graph showing the prevalence of diabetes among adults, by race/ethnicity. Graph shows Black non-Hispanic, Hispanic, and American Indian/Alaskan Native at a far higher prevalence than White non-Hispanic.

A graph showing the prevalence of diabetes among adults, by race/ethnicity. Source: http://www.commonwealthfund.org/usr_doc/mead_racialethnicdisparities_chartbook_1111.pdf

If you grew up thinking that farmers’ markets, urban gardens, and natural food stores offered the best options for your health and the planet’s, it can be hard to grapple with the unintended social consequences these resources can have. But the environmental movement needs people like you to engage in thoughtful action – in fact, our collective future depends on it.

If you are ready to make social equality a core part of your food ethic, read on:

  1. Examine your own place in the food system. Start by thinking about what kind of foods make you feel physically and mentally nourished, as opposed to just full – how often do you have these foods around? List the parts of your identity – such as class, culture, race, gender, age, geographic location – that you think have made it easier or harder for you to get the foods you need. Taking a moment to reflect – alone or with a friend – on your experience with food justice will help you identify your own unique position, and develop a more thoughtful approach to action.
  2. Understand food justice in your community. Who lives on your block, in your neighborhood, in your city? Talk to the people who live nearby to see how they feel about their food options. Then, take what you have learned and zoom out: try comparing your grocery stores with those of a friend in a different neighborhood or part of town. How might the resources you have align with resource gaps somewhere else? Talk about ways you and your community can leverage these resources to make healthy, sustainable food more accessible.
  3. Get schooled. Young people face some of the biggest risks that stem from food in Reach out to your local school board about your concerns – or better yet, see how you can support a student-driven movement for sustainable, nutritious, and culturally relevant meals in the cafeteria. If you need inspiration, look no further than the New Orleans-based Rethinkers, an organization that used youth participatory action research (Y-PAR) to transform the way cafeterias sourced food after Hurricane Katrina devastated local public schools.
  4. Sow your support. If your area already has community gardens, take a moment to learn about their history: find out how they were established, who tends to use them, and how they fit into the picture you’ve been developing of food justice in your area. Then pitch in a few volunteer hours! Many urban farms – especially those that lead youth and community programs on the side – could use the extra set of hands, whether you end up harvesting, weeding, or sorting papers in an office. Not exactly a green thumb? Ask if they could use your help with upcoming fundraisers or events. No community gardens? No problem! Talk with your neighbors to gauge interest, look for existing organizations that could sponsor you, and check out some potential sites.

Structural inequality and environmental problems often go hand in hand. Few examples show this more clearly than the American food system. Luckily, this connection is true of our potential solutions, too: one small step towards a more sustainable food system can often start a cycle of positive social impact that benefits everyone. And the best news? This cycle of growth starts with you.

 

 

Black, White, and Green: Personal Transformation and Courageous Imperfection at the Farmers Market

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A group of white customers sit on a patch of grass in front of farmers' market tents, with a black women walking in the foreground

On a sunny Saturday morning, sociologist and alternative food enthusiast Alison Hope Alkon hopped a train to West Oakland, California to begin a study on farmers’ markets in low-income communities of color. To Alkon, farmers’ markets represented an important tool in the pursuit of more sustainable food systems – but one she could not fully understand without reaching outside her native scene of predominantly White, and often middle class, environmental spaces. She would have no trouble fitting in with the crowd at the stereotypically “alternative” North Berkeley Farmers’ Market – but West Oakland, where 37% of residents live below the poverty rate and a mere 5% are White, was another story. Trying not to think about the fate of her academic career if this plan fell through, Alkon approached the manager of the West Oakland Farmers’ Market to ask for the market’s cooperation. Even her wealth of experiences with student cooperatives and organic farming could not have fully prepared Alkon for his response: “What are we going to get out of it?”

A street with a few streetlamps, a graffiti wall, and a railroad crossing sign in West Oakland

An intersection in West Oakland, where Alkon conducted much of her research; image courtesy Wikimedia commons

North Berkeley produce is priced at luxury levels, while the West Oakland Farmers Market traces its philosophical roots to the Black Panther Party’s free breakfast program of the 1960s and 70s. Yet despite these differences, both markets are living examples of a green economy, inviting customers to change the world by changing what they buy. This paradox – starkly different circumstances, but deeply shared goals – is at the heart of Alkon’s 2012 book, Black, White, and Green: Farmers Markets, Race, and the Green Economy. The book is as much a record of Alkon’s personal journey trying to situate herself within academia and environmentalism as it is a comparison between the two farmers’ markets.

Through the histories of each market, Alkon traces a common shift from an anti-capitalist framework to one that prioritizes creating a green economy within capitalist structures. Historically, White counterculture and national movements for Black liberation have shared certain touchstones for environmental and social justice. This common rhetoric is often built on critiques of capitalism as exploitative, violent, and precarious in the long term, but Alkon highlights a new, more flexible perspective emerging in both farmers’ markets. Many participants view business as key to environmental and social good, rather than identifying it as a root evil; in many ways, capitalism is the very medium of their activism. It would be a mistake, Alkon posits, to confuse present-day farmers’ markets with their ideological predecessors. These contemporary ventures build on previous social movements, to be sure, but present a more transitional worldview that is in many ways more palatable to the broader public. Her argument offers a refreshing realism, but many of the big-picture implications she alludes to are drowned out by the details of her place-specific comparison. At times, her argument feels like a sentence unfinished.

Still, Black, White, and Green treads on rare and important ground, offering careful analysis of practices and beliefs that are otherwise taken for granted. Alkon, a veteran food activist, turned her attention to questions of race and environment after spending years in a predominantly White sustainable food scene. She tracks the evolution of her questions and methods, pinpointing her realization that any study she conducted around people of color’s participation in local, organic food systems would be incomplete without also examining the movement that shaped her own life. Alkon attempts to explain and contextualize the West Oakland communities’ use of farmers markets, including its celebration of Black heritage holidays and the ubiquity of collards and natural hair products. She also brings this analysis to her own community, considering everything from environmental imagery to the unwritten uniform of long hair and Birkenstocks. To this end, Alkon’s work sheds as much light on the origins of Berkeley’s iconic counterculture as it does on the perennial significance of food within the Black freedom struggle.

With vivid prose that speaks to the sensory experience of each farmers market, Alkon brings her (admittedly complex) queries to life. Each locale has its own cast of characters, whose distinct personalities reveal – but never flatten – the messy sociological landscape Alkon strives to interpret. Readers not only get a humanizing glimpse into the people who create these spaces, but into Alkon, as well: as she “makes the familiar strange,” she casts an inquisitive eye on herself, interrogating her role as a researcher and activist. Perhaps the most important piece of Black, White, and Green is the thread of Alkon’s internal struggle that winds its way through each chapter, and the humility with which she revisits her work, four years later, in the epilogue.

On the surface, Alkon writes about the way local food systems have been raced, classed, and gendered, but she does not forget that she, too, is being shaped by these identities. Alkon’s experiences as a white woman heavily affects how she interacts with these people and spaces, which in turn dictates the data she collects, as much as it does her analysis. As she observes in the epilogue, “the building of relationships is inextricable from the gathering of data.” The book ends not with solutions, but a reflection on Alkon’s own contribution, which she openly admits feels inadequate to her now. Yet this lack of resolution is perhaps Alkon’s greatest gift to readers: through her ambivalence, she reminds us that the pursuit of just sustainability is a process of constant adaptation and courageous imperfection.