Urban Agriculture Impacts: Social, Health, and Economic: A Literature Review
This literature review seeks to identify current trends, efforts, and gaps in researching urban agriculture impacts in the United States. Using both peer-reviewed research and agency reports, it considers geography, rhetoric, and research methods in order to compile a snapshot of the state of urban agriculture. Although most of the literature is concentrated in the U.S., articles
from Canada, the UK, Cuba, and UN reports were included in order to provide international perspective. The review begins with a discussion on the methodology for finding and choosing this literature, followed by a summary of the scope of the literature. The main body of the review addresses various impacts that were identified in the literature and concludes with a review of
challenges and barriers, existing gaps, and further research needs.
Culture, Power, and Education: The Philosophies and Pedagogy of African Centered Educators
The low academic performance of African American children has become a staple of the American educational system. At this point, conversations about Black children and failure are merely good ‘coffee talk’ for many. Afrocentric (Africentric / African centered) education is the only culturally centered comprehensive approach to addressing problems of miseducation, but there are complications: often African centered efforts are given short shrift in school systems, ignored in educational research, and most interestingly those asked to discuss or lead Afro-centric efforts are often opponents of the theories. While all of the aforementioned complications still exist, a band of African centered teachers continue to make a difference for students. This article focuses on the philosophies and pedagogies of three African centered teachers who are well-known for their impact on African American students. Descriptive vignettes are used to provide thick, rich descriptions of these African centered teachers.
MOORNATURAL: Happily Natural Daze
#powertalk: How to Empower Black Girls: Angela Patton Visits Happily Natural Day
New Millennium Paradigm for Grassroots African Organizing:
New Millennium Paradigm for Grassroots African Organizing: bt Duron Chavis circa Feb. 2009
1. Clarity of Vision
2. Establishment of Cadre
3. Definition of Purpose
4. Strategic Considerations
5. Network Development
6. Fundraising
7. New Millennium Considerations
8. Suggested Reading
New Millennium Paradigm for Grassroots African Organizing:
The new millennium paradigm is a shift from traditional approaches to organizing amid the poor and oppressed masses. Essentially the concise statement that captures the essence of what this treatise presents is: The weapons of the masses must be constantly redefined in order to counter the Empires ever evolving technology and propaganda. This treatise is submitted humbly; with the understanding that the methodology of struggle implemented in the 1960’s and 70’s must provide a framework, however cannot successfully bring about relevant change amid a new millennium climate.
Clarity of Vision:
The grassroots organizer has to have clarity of vision. It is imperative to have a concise perception on one’s role and a strong grounding + affirmed position in one’s participation in the movement for social action. There is a difference between an internet activist and an in the streets activist. The first can start & be a catalyst to change by posting online and tweetinf hashtags however an in the streets activist has to be clear on his/her role in protracted struggle beyond that. A defined sense of identity revolving about the axis of ethnic/national/cultural/spiritual values that must be ascertained and claimed and uncompromising dedication to the people and the issues relevant to the people are of paramount importance for clarity of vision. Essentially clarity of vision is an understanding that one stands upon the backs of ancestors who struggled and for this reason; it is honorable and out of duty to the Creator & those yet to be created that we struggle to further liberate our people.
Establishment of Cadre:
Cadre essentially is a small unit of individuals with varying skill sets and capabilities that are cross-trained to a high degree of efficiency to undertake the duties and responsibilities of another in that person’s absence. Cadre is your core group of workers. It is not your organization. Cadre is static to a high degree however; cadre does change perhaps increasing however sustained efforts must be implemented to ensure the sustenance of your core group. These will be the individuals that surround you to ensure ills such as battle fatigue do not hinder one from protracted struggle.
In order to establish cadre:
1. Seek individuals with like minds who have the same sincerity regarding struggle. Organizing does not mean you have to have a formal structure, board of directors or 501 c 3 status
2. Seek individuals who solicit help out of altruistic and selfless motive.
3. Develop projects and activities that will employ cadre member’s skill sets. It is nothing worse than being a part of a group and not having any responsibility. This can lead to retention problems.
4. Share the victory (victory being a amorphous quality, best defined as completion of a goal however small) consider all ideas of equal importance.
Definition of Purpose:
Define for what reason you are organizing. What is your group’s purpose? While it is definitely positive to stay abreast and to have a position on many issues, it is not your responsibility to tackle every issue. By defining your groups purpose, you limit the over expenditure of your time & resources. Often organizations have broad purposes; however this leads to a scattered approach and limited measurable successes. By limiting the purpose of your group you can tackle your particular piece effectively and assist others in their attacking of their piece with your resources. Essentially by defining your purpose you have a framework in which to struggle effectively. Contradictions will arise, however experience is gained by handling each issue on a case by case basis. For example, if your group is organized to stop the war, when an issue of religious intolerance arises i.e. the unfair treatment of Muslim brothers and sisters in a predominantly intolerant Christian climate you will have to choose whether this is an issue that you are equipped to deal with. While it is not being said that issues must not be dealt with or that one issue is more important than the other; if your organization has no clear definition of purpose you will not be effective in organizing against anything; you will seem inconsistent in the people’s eyes, picking and choosing various unrelated issues. Definition of purpose is best achieved by creating a one word mission statement: i.e. the get conscious think collective is an collective of individuals sick of working as individuals to raise consciousness in the African community.
Strategic Considerations:
Five strategy Questions:
1. What is the particular problem confronting us?
2. Why does the problem exist?
3. What should we do about it?
4. How should we move to attain the goal?
5. What are the results going to be?
These questions do not have to go in this order but all of them must be addressed at some point in order for your organizing to be effective. No.3 & No. 4 are often confused as one and the same. What you are going to do is not the same as how you are going to do it. Special attention needs to be placed on both. It is easy to say what you are going to do but critical thought must be put into how you are going to do it. No. 5 must be noted as well because you can have action but if you have no way to measure your success your work can easily become wearisome and tiring seemingly unfruitful. Be honest with yourself and your capabilities but note that you can accomplish anything with a properly laid out plan. By asking No. 2 you identify the enemy and the obstacles to your goal; you also define allies in your struggle and possible avenues of quick and painless victory. I.E. you have a problem with your water in your apartment. Your hot water is not on anymore. Well you can protest the landlord but did you first check if the water heater was turned on? This is an obvious oversimplification however it is used to illustrate that sometime the solutions to problems are a lot easier than one may think.
Network Development:
Utilize the network. Seek allies in your city, state & region through any means possible. Attend events and represent yourself and what your group stands for, hold your own events as well, conduct not only struggle related action, but also provide popular education, and social service action to further develop ground-level support of your larger scale activities. Use the internet, telephone, mail to make contact with other groups with like minded views.By creating an inter-regional network your activities can cover much ground in a short amount of time. Pay close attention to what is going on in other places and seek ways that your group can support as well through your network and resources.
New Millennium Considerations:
The age of conventional protests, marches and rallies are dead. The people on a grassroots level especially among Africans in inner cities are ever-increasingly becoming disillusioned to these methodologies due to their over use and the often limited results elicited by them. Use the conventional methods sparingly; however employ innovative spins on these techniques as much as possible. Create new and engaging ways to bring attention to your cause. Create strategies that are relevant to the core audience that you intend to attract and do not fear the concept of guerilla marketing. In an ever increasingly competitive society driven by marketing and advertising; the Empire’s propaganda is honed to a science with focus groups, research & development; behavioral scientists and the like: Millions of dollars are invested on studying how people will react to various trends, events, and products. Everything down to the color of McDonalds new big mac wrapper is highly scrutinized before it reaches the common everyday John or Jane Doe. Therefore you as an organizer must not leave things to chance regarding your propaganda.
The Empire will attempt to crush you and your movement even if it does not know you specifically exist as an entity. The programming of the society is designed to purge you as an anomaly. Therefore it is important; to stay sharp and wise. Keep your affairs in order i.e family, finances, legal issues, etc. while undertaking grassroots organizing work.
Suggested Reading:
Ready for Revolution; Kwame Ture
Survival Strategies; Anthony Browder
Black Panther Party Speaks
Jay Conrad Levinson: Guerrilla Marketing
Jay Conrad Levinson, Rick Frishman, Jill Lubin: Guerrilla Publicity
Dietrick Hessel: Social Action Primer
What Happily Natural Day Looks Like
The Contradiction of Being African Centered While Not Supporting African Food Systems
The funny thing about many people who purport themselves to be Afrikan centered and/or call themselves conscious in the city of Richmond, Virginia – they all eat food but don’t purchase food from black farmers nor are they looking to sincerely build infrastructure to grow food. These are facts. Not just an opinion. I may lose supporters for saying this but truth is truth. I work with black farmers in our region. My work in urban agriculture was inspired, mentored and nurtured by black farmers. They want to know why the black folks who call themselves Afrikan don’t buy food from them.
Now Kwanzaa is upon us – (again) an african centered holiday that is based on the harvest – and African people are an agricultural people. Our ancestors were brought to the shores of the Americas specifically for our skills abilities related to food production. The West; (countries of European origin) built their fortunes on the backs of black labor that grew plants for food, stimulation and medicine. So the contradiction is – how are your ancestors agricultural and this is a harvest festival that deals with nation – building and self-determination – but you don’t grow food – which is the foundation of any nation you may build – NOR – do you support black farmers that grow food in your region? The elements of the nguzo saba are all manifested on the farm and through food systems. In every way. 365 days a year. Prove me wrong.
What is even more intriguing is that many of the folks who call themselves afrikan – would dare say that because others don’t do this or that dogma (be it hebrew israelite, be it moorish, be it nation of gods and earths, be it african traditional spiritual systems, be it kemetic sciences) – that those folks over there are asleep. I wonder what woke is – when the very thing you do everyday is controlled by somebody else – and you have access to the tools and resources to reverse that into being independent and self-determining but you don’t.
I find all of it interesting. What I have come to the conclusion is this – many of the folks who call themselves Afrikan – have plenty of energy for what they are against – but haven’t really identified what they are for. The folks who are really about it – I salute you – you aren’t running around yearning for likes on facebook or youtube – you doing the work. You dont feel no way about this post because you know you doing the work.
There becomes a moment where you may get so invested in the problem that you don’t see viable solutions. I think it is called paralysis of analysis. I am not saying that food is THE solution – but it is ONE solution that touches all of us regardless of gender, sexual orientation, religion, age, income level, education and/or level of awareness.
“There is no culture without agriculture” – Baba Tarik Oduno
BUILDING THE CASE FOR RACIAL EQUITY IN THE FOOD SYSTEM
The food system works for some, but fails too many of us. Yet, we already have a glimpse of the possibility of a just and healthy food system. To get there, we must use a critical race lens to diagnose what is wrong with our current system, assess entry points for change, and determine ways that we can work together to build a better system for all of us. This report shares an analysis of what it means to build a racially equitable food system – from field to farm to fork – and lays out steps toward achieving that goal.
In this report, we:
Describe how policies impact racial equity in the food system. Through the stories of two children, Brenna and Johnny, this report walks us through the structural race analysis along the food chain, highlighting how key policies shape opportunities for children, farmers, and laborers. We share how:
- Housing and school policies impact children’s opportunities to access healthy foods, especially urban children of color;
- Land policies and institutional discrimination have led to historically high rates of land loss for farmers, particularly Blacks and Native Americans, and people living in rural areas;
- Farm Bill policies and vertical integration in the food industry favor the production and distribution of unhealthy foods over healthy foods;
- Social Security and wage policies have set back advancement for laborers across the food chain, especially women, immigrants and people of color.
Identify potential policy solutions and strategic opportunities to create a more racially equitable food system. Building on our analysis, we identify policy and strategy entry points that can lead to a more sustainable and racially equitable food system from long-range efforts to immediate-term solutions. For example, we can:
- Surface opportunities to craft broad, intersectional policy solutions. The challenges we face are not singular and therefore require change on multiple levels across many different sectors. We must identify strategic entry points for multiple issues. Working simultaneously to address these is essential to longer term, transformational shifts;
- Forge partnerships across urban and rural communities. We mustbuild power for more transformative change, such as leveraging government and institutional food purchasing practices to support production and distribution of healthy foods and to create new job opportunities for residents of these areas;
- Support indigenous and community leadership through small business financing and community capacity building. We mustbuild on existing creative and innovative work happening in communities and ensure that work is sustained and led by those who are most impacted by our broken food system;
- Advocate for labor rights and a more balanced ownership of the food system. We must change wage policies to reflect true living costs, support community projects and participatory action research where the system fails to meet demand and need, and surface community land trust options;
- Invest in immediate solutions in our communities, schools, and farms. We mustpromote better land-use ordinances to support urban agriculture; improve access, affordability of, and transit to healthy foods; effectively implement the Affordable Care Act’s community benefit requirement; increase reimbursement rates and provide better kitchen infrastructure to cook and process healthy foods on-site; and shift agricultural investments away from unhealthy foods to local farmers producing the healthy foods we need like fruits and vegetables.
Offer tools and resources to guide the creation of racially equitable solutions. Lastly, this report includes appendices to help readers apply the structural racial equity analysis to their own work.
UNSHARED BOUNTY: How Structural Racism Contributes to the Creation and Persistence of Food Deserts
This study does not purport to be an exhaustive one. Although the problems associated with food deserts are not peculiar to urban areas, the relationship between food deserts and structural racism is clearest in cities. Accordingly,
the serious issue of food deserts in rural areas is not addressed here. Further, the purpose of this report is neither to reiterate the findings of prior studies nor to review their conclusions. Rather, the report aims to bring to the discussion three aspects of food deserts that so far have not been sufficiently examined. First, the report traces the evolution of food deserts and identifies
the impact they have on the day-to-day lives of residents in neighborhoods lacking a supermarket. Second, the report considers not just the correlation between food deserts and race and income, but also examines the government policies and private practices that have contributed to the problem. Lastly, the report outlines approaches communities have used to address the scarcity of nutritious foods. It proposes that to have a long term impact on food deserts, efforts must not just address the lack of healthy
food options within a community, but also the underlying causes for the food disparities.
Starting a Farm in Your City: Transforming Vacant Places
Over the last decade, urban agriculture has emerged as a powerful movement addressing a range of issues from food security to community revitalization to economic development. In broad terms, urban agriculture is the raising, cultivation, processing, marketing, and distribution of food and food products in a town, city, or metropolitan area.
Growing food in cities has numerous social, economic and environmental benefits. Though backyard plots and community gardens provide many benefits, this Guide is focused on the more entrepreneurial forms of urban agriculture. The defining characteristics of entrepreneurial urban farms are their scale and intensity of operations, as well as their unique role in ransformingt the urban landscape. Urban farms have proven to be an effective model for reusing vacant and underutilized spaces, including brownfields. Agricultural enterprises generally require less capital and time than many other commercial or industrial reuse options, and the benefits to the ommunityc are immediate. The pervasiveness of neglected properties in low-income communities around the region, especially following the economic downturn, coupled with the rise in demand for high-quality local food, presents an interesting and viable business opportunity for urban entrepreneurs.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that local food sales via
direct-to-consumer and intermediated channels totaled $4.8 billion from
over 107,000 farms in 2008, representing 1.9 percent of total U.S. farm sales
and 5.5 percent of all farms (Low & Vogel, 2011). Furthermore, small- and
medium-sized farms accounted for 95 percent of local food sales. While
efforts have been made to document the contribution of individual urban
farms to this movement, no comprehensive statistics have been gathered to
date. Nevertheless, the USDA expects local food production to continually
increase as demand from the consumer market steadily rises. Since most
of these markets are based in larger cities, entrepreneurs and nonprofit
organizations have begun to test various methods and models for urban food
production.
This Guide will you help understand the basic options and key considerations
in starting an urban agriculture enterprise, and provides resources for
further reading along the way.
A POPULAR EDUCATION HANDBOOK
‘Educacion Popular’ or Popular Education forms part of a current in adult education which has been described as ‘an option for the poor’ or ‘education for critical consciousness’. Most of the methodology and techniques of popular education are also those of adult education. But while many adult education programs are designed to maintain social systems, even when unjust and oppressive, popular education’s intent is to build an alternative educational approach that is more consistent with social justice.
Popular Education is called ‘popular’ be-ause its priority is to work among the many rural and urban poor who form the vast majority of people in most Third World countries. It is a collective or group process of education, where the teacher and students learn together, beginning with the concrete
experience of the participants, leading to reflection on that experience in order to effect positive change.
WHERE DOES IT COME FROM?
Brazil in the 1960’s
Popular education is barely twenty years old, tracing its roots back to Brazil in the 1960’s and the literacy training programs of an educator called Paulo Freire. In contrast to the traditional education system coming
from colonial times, which taught those Latin Americans with access to it, to accept the world view of a small elite, Freire’s students learned to read and write through discussion of basic problems they themselves were experiencing, such as no access to agricultural land. As the causes of their problems became clear, the students analyzed and discussed what joint action could be taken to change their situation. The term used by Freire for this process of action/reflection/action was ‘conscientization’- and it led participants not only to acquire new literacy skills, but also to understand their own reality. Brazil’s military coup in 1’964 put an end to Freire’s work there, but the seeds of a new concept of education had been sown.