COMMUNITY GARDENING WITHOUT LAND ACCESS a toolkit for growing food resiliency with neighbors on your city block
"Without the milpa, there is not territory, no assembly, no family." - Maize in the Time of War
Table of Contents Introduction The role of the city in food sovereignty The role of land Our broken food system Facilitation Guides Reflections on food relationship Connecting with your neighbors Suggestions for a first meeting A decision making model Resources Skill Based Guides Container Gardens Neighborhood Compost Greywater Seed Saving
Introduction We all deserve delicious and nutritious food. What we eat affects the health of our gut. And the health of our gut really affects our mood and how we feel! It is very real that it is a struggle to eat well. Grocery stores can be far away and we lack transportation. We are overworked and underpaid. This affects how we eat. After working laborious and long hours, and probably with a commute, it’s easier to eat something that is quick. Groceries cost money. It can be hard to try a new recipe if all the ingredients cost more than our food budget allows.
Often the response to food access issues is to create a community garden. Studies show that there are indeed benefits to participating in community gardens in our neighborhood. It helps us eat more fruits and vegetables because it’s often free or low cost. We also have increased access to the food because the garden is often within walking distance. It truly is rewarding to eat something we’ve learned from by watching it grow. In cities, it's easy to be disconnected from the people who grow our food, how it grows, and how it comes to be at the grocery store. Watching something grow is a rewarding experience that brings us back closer to ourselves. However, many of us don’t have access to land to establish community gardens in our neighborhoods.
This toolkit was born from an idea of neighbors on a block pooling their available spaces, coordinating what to grow together in their own spaces, and sharing it back out. This is an experiment in working with what we have in often dense and underserved neighborhoods. Included in this toolkit are discussions about our food system, and two sections of guides. The first section contains facilitation guides on how to organize your neighbors and communities to make decisions and create a shared growing situation. The second type of guides are skills based knowledge and tips for setting up spaces to grow, building soil, and seed saving.
Food holds our cultures and stories. I grew up in a Chinese immigrant household and one of my fondest memories is from when I was about nine years old. It was a warm summer evening in the Sacramento Valley and my family was eating dinner in the backyard. In front of me was a heaping plate of tong choy. From what I remember about that night, I ate the whole plate of choy by myself. But surrounding us was a bubble of happiness, of my family together, healthy, and what felt peaceful as a child. Growing up, I often felt ashamed of being Chinese. In college, I started to learn more about my heritage and history, in large part because I saw Black, Latina, and Asian women who were proud to be women of color. As I learned more about assimilation, white supremacy, & institutional racism in the U.S., I also began to find pride in my Chinese upbringing. I think of the plate of tong choy, and how it’s familiarity connects me to a Chinese lineage.
The role of the city in food sovereignty
Growing supplemental fresh produce and herbs in our backyards likely isn’t going to fundamentally change our broken food system. However, I think there are benefits tending to something as it grows even if in a small pot on our window ledge. Caring for something outside of ourselves improves our mental health and helps us connect and appreciate what it takes to grow all the food that we eat. While I one day wish to have a plot of land to steward, that is not possible for the majority of people in this world. We have to imagine and plan for the role of the city in a just food system. Half of the global population lives in cities, and it is expected to increase to two-thirds of the population by 2050. Will those of us in cities continue to be fed on the labor and land exploitation outside cities, with food funneled to us by broken food chains that waste almost ⅓ of all food produced? This project can help us imagine how cities and those of us who live in them can be a part of food justice.
The role of land What is our relationship to land in urban settings? Urban cities are still built on Indigenous territories here in the U.S. Food justice is about land stewardship and valuing food as more than just a commodity. There is not food justice without Indigenous resurgence and restoration of Indigenous relationships to the lands we are on. Throughout the toolkit, there are questions and ideas for how we can be responsible to history, justice, and the Indigenous nations we occupy.
Recommended read!
“The land is everywhere or it is nowhere.� - Tommy Orange
Breaking down our broken food system “Food production is the greatest driver of Earth transformation (cultivable land expansion, greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity loss, freshwater use, exhaustion of phosphorus and nitrogen cycles)....This malfunctioning ‘low-cost’ food system is characterised by (a) extremely low food prices that do not reflect either food’s multiple values to humans or production costs and environmental externalities, (b) overemphasis on production of hyper-caloric, unhealthy and ultra-processed food, (c) food that is heavily advertised, easy to brand and addictive, (d) heavily subsidised by citizen’s taxes through governments, (e) wasted by tonnes in illogical and inefficient food chains and (e) unacceptably destructive of limited natural resources, contributing to climate change and biodiversity reduction. In this system that mostly values the economic dimensions of food, many eat inadequately (the hungry and malnourished of the Global South) to enable others to eat unhealthily and cheaply (the over-weighted of the North). Furthermore food production has become a major force in pushing the environment beyond its planetary boundaries. Increasing water and food needs due to population growth, climate change vagrancies, consumption shifts towards meat-based diets and increased production of biofuel will only exacerbate the already critical challenges to our global food system.” Vivero Pol, Jose. (2019). Food as a new old commons. World Nutrition. 10. 119-137. 10.26596/wn.2019101119-137.
Breaking down our broken food system (a) extremely low food prices that do not reflect either food’s multiple values to humans or production costs and environmental externalities Food is treated as something that can be traded on the stock market. When we buy food at the grocery store, the social and environmental costs are not reflected in what we pay. Rather, the land and farmworkers along the way face exploitation and the dollar amount we pay at the cash register disproportionately goes towards multitrillion dollar food distribution conglomerates. For many of us, food is more than just a commodity. We all need to eat to survive. Food takes care of us, and because of this many cultures have traditions and stories about food.
(b) overemphasis on production of hyper-caloric, unhealthy and ultraprocessed food, (c) food that is heavily advertised, easy to brand and addictive Corporations have spent millions of dollars trying to sell us unhealthy food we’d be addicted to. Fat, sugar, and salt are shown to be biologically and chemically addicting, which is a fact that processed food conglomerates use to keep us in a continual cycle of buying and consuming their products. Sugar has been manufactured by food scientists to be more alluring for our taste buds. Salt has been heavily used by food companies to mask the taste of the processed nature of their products. It is also used in industrial food processing to prevent dough from gumming up industrial food machines. Cargill is a multibillion dollar company owned by 100 descendants and manufactures the majority of the world’s consumption of salt. ecosystems need, and create diseased hectares of land for cash crops.
Breaking down our broken food system
(d) heavily subsidised by citizen’s taxes through governments The U.S. government highly subsidizes industrial farms. Farmers are paid more to plant GMO corn that depletes the local ecosystem rather than diverse vegetation. We should both create alternative food systems and lobby to change these government subsidies.
(e) unacceptably destructive of limited natural resources, contributing to climate change and biodiversity reduction Colonial farming practices have bastardized staple foods of many cultures: soy, corn, wheat. Through the commodification of food, seeds become genetically modified and patented. This devastates farmers all over the world who can no longer seed save and have to rely on GMO seeds. Monoculture farms are promoted that deplete the local soil, devastate diversity that ecosystems need, and create diseased hectares of land for cash crops.
FACILITATION GUIDES
Self reflection: my relationship with food These set of prompting questions are an invitation to research and journal. I encourage you to spend some time diving into each of these questions, or adding in some of your own! 1. What are some of your favorite foods/dishes to eat? 2. Are there ancestral or heritage foods you belong to that you have a connection with? (i.e. maiz, beans, herbs, roots) 3. What would make it easier for you to eat in a way that felt good for you? 4. If you are not Indigenous to the lands that you are on, whose land are you on? You can search for your city/address at https://native-land.ca/. Are there any efforts they are asking for support with? 5. What is your relationship with land? Are you from an immigrant or refugee family? A settler family? Did your family benefit from the Homestead Act of 1862 that took acres of land from Native stewardship and redistributed it as private allotments for settlers? Do you own or rent your home?
Connecting with neighbors This is to brainstorm how you want to grow relationships with your neighbors and prepare to ask if they want to come together to communally grow in each of your home spaces. 1. Assess your current relationship with your neighbors. Would you feel comfortable asking them today if they want to set up a neighborhood network for growing food? 2. How do you like building relationships? Do you prefer to give gifts like making food or baked goods and sharing it? Do you prefer quality time like hosting a bbq? Have you performed many acts of service helping out your neighbors when they’ve called on you? 3. Could you lean on one of these activities that you feel comfortable doing to reach out to your neighbors? 4. How can you start to learn more about your neighbor’s relationships to food? Do they wish they had more easy access to fresh produce or herbs? Have they grown things before or are they interested in trying it out? Do they have kids that would enjoy learning how to grow? 5. If you are in a place to bring up this idea with your neighbors to grow food together, be clear about the work it would entail. You all would need to communicate with one another and have at least one meeting to figure things out.
First meeting suggestions These are a set of important things you want to discuss with your neighbors as you are planning to grow together. You can ask each one and make sure each person gets a chance to answer, try to take notes or record what people say after you all talk about it. 1. What do you like to eat and cook with that we can grow? It can be herbs, vegetables, fruits, flowers, roots, etc. 2. Do you think you would have about 10 minutes/day on average to tend to your containers or part of the garden? 3. If someone doesn’t have space or time to grow, do you think we should still try to share the harvest with them? Are there other ways people can contribute like offering tools, materials, or access to a water spigot? 4. How much space do you have for containers or growing? 5. How much money can you contribute to supplies that might need to be purchased such as seeds and soil? 6. Do you all want to contact the local Indigenous tribe and ask if you can grow any medicines or plants that they need?
Making decisions together
These are different ways to try to reach decisions. You would have to assess which works best for what you’re trying to achieve. You want to make sure everyone’s input is shared and considered. This is an offering of one model for making decisions.
1. Be clear about what you’re trying to decide. For example, should everyone contribute the same amount of money of $15 to start, or should people decide how much they want to give? 2. Have everyone go around and share their opinion once. 3. Go around again for any responses. During this second round, people can pass if they don’t have a response. 4. After the second round take an initial poll about where the group stands. The options can be: “ I agree,” “I disagree,” or “I have hesitations but I won’t block the decision if it moves forward.” 5. With such small and intimate groups, consensus often leads to greater group harmony. Consensus is when everyone agrees to the same outcome.
SKILL BASED GUIDES
Container Gardens You don't need a big plot of land to grow edible foods. There are many varieties adapted to containers and many immigrant communities in urban cities grow food in whatever containers laying around: a soy sauce bucket, a recycling bin, or old tupperware. Source a container that you want to use. It can be a repurposed 5 gallon bucket, those large plastic storage containers, an old trash bin, whatever you might find at your reuse or thrift store. The container should be 8� deep or more. Drill lots of holes into the bottom of your container. Hopefully you or one of your neighbors has an electric drill. If not, you can see if there is a tool library in your city where you can rent tools. You can also do it the old fashioned way with a hammer and a nail to poke holes. You could also buy an electric drill from a big store like Home Depot, use it, then return it. Keep the receipt and box! At minimum, most vegetable plant roots grow in the top 6�, so you will want to fill your containers to about 8-12� with soil, if not more.
Neighborhood Compost Compost is the part of soil that is made from decomposed organic matter like leaves, grass clippings, food scraps, and other decomposable materials. Composting at home helps reduce the amount of waste that is going to landfills. It also keeps nutrient rich energy in our neighborhoods when we can turn food scraps into compost, and then use that to grow food in our backyards. However, compost can be challenging if you rent or don’t have a lot of space. If someone owns their home, are they willing to create a communal compost bin for the neighborhood?
Greywater Watering one’s garden can be an added utility cost. A great way to re-use water is to water one’s garden from a bucket in the kitchen sink. When you rinse produce or boil pasta, you can drain your water into the bucket and at the end of the day use it to water your garden. This is especially useful if the garden is small. All you need is a bucket and a colander that fits on top to filter out large particles.
Seed Saving Seed saving is the process of collecting seeds from your plants at the end of the season and saves money on buying seeds, ensures genetic diversity of your crop, and allows you to share seeds with others. When you grow plants that produce fruit with seeds, you can simply save the seeds from the fruits you harvest and eat. For beans, peas, and similar plants, you can leave a few to mature completely on the plant until they are dry. Leafy vegetables like lettuce and kale usually only produce flowers in certain conditions like heat or during the shortened days of winter, so you can leave a few plants to bolt and produce seeds. Seed saving is how we create abundance and security for the coming years.
Resources Tips for creating a budget Research your local garden stores to find the cost of soil. Seed packets are often $3-4/each. You can also see if there is a local seed sharing library, which is often free. Sometimes they are housed in local libraries. If you are going to container garden, you can often do this in 5 gallon buckets or large storage containers after drilling many holes into the bottom. You can find these at re-use and thrift stores.
Resources to learn from "Farming While Black" by Leah Penniman This book offers practical knowledge as well as rich histories and traditions of Black and African foodways and farming. "Practical Permaculture" by Dave Boehnlein and Jessi Bloom This book is geared more towards people that have larger plots of land, but there are lots of helpful ideas about planning your space. "Epic Gardening" channel on Youtube + Website The host of this platform lives in urban San Diego, so the content is really relevant. He does spend a lot of money on fancy materials, but outside of that shares really helpful grounding skills like “how to grow potatoes.�
Draft #1 of Community Gardening without Land Access by Monica Chan Submitted on 12/10/20 ENVMT 5 Oakland Food Culture Final Food Portfolio Merritt College