Unearthing the entangled roots of urban agriculture

Jonathan K. London; Bethany B. Cutts; Kirsten Schwarz; Li Schmidt; Mary L. Cadenasso

doi:10.1007/s10460-020-10158-x

London, Jonathan K.; Cutts, Bethany B.; Schwarz, Kirsten; Schmidt, Li; Cadenasso, Mary L.

2020-11-24 00:00:00

This study examines urban agriculture (UA) in Sacramento, California (USA), the nation’s self-branded “Farm-to-Fork Capital,” in order to highlight UA’s distinct yet entangled roots. The study is based on 24 interviews with a diverse array of UA leaders, conducted as part of a five-year transdisciplinary study of UA in Sacramento. In it, we unearth three primary “taproots” of UA projects, each with its own historical legacies, normative visions, and racial dynamics. In particular, we examine UA projects with “justice taproots,” “health taproots,” and “market taproots.” We use this analysis to understand how different kinds of UA projects are embedded in racial capitalism in ways that transform relationships between people, the city, and food systems. Unearthing these entangled roots helps illuminate UA’s underlying politics, showing how these roots grow in both competitive and symbiotic ways within the soil matrix of racial capitalism. We argue that these roots interact differently with racial capitalism, creating disparities in their growth trajectories. In particular, UA projects associated with the justice taproot are historically underrepresented and undervalued. However, we argue that there are some prospects for building alliances between the UA movement’s three roots, and that these are both promising and problematic. Keywords Urban agriculture · Racial capitalism · Food justice · Sacramento · California Abbreviations SBF Soil Born Farms BHC Building Healthy Communities SUAC Sacr amento Urban Agriculture Coalition BLM Blac k Lives MatterUA Urban Agriculture UC Davis U niversity of California, Davis YFUF Y israel Family Urban Farm * Jonathan K. London jklondon@ucdavis.edu Bethany B. Cutts Introduction bbcutts@ncsu.edu Kirsten Schwarz In cities across the United States and the world, urban agri- kschwarz@luskin.ucla.edu culture (UA) movements are building sustainable and equi- Li Schmidt table urban agricultural systems that confront structural fac- lnschmidt@ucdavis.edu tors like structural racism, uneven capital accumulation, and Mary L. Cadenasso environmental injustice (Alkon and Agyeman 2011; Alkon mlcadenasso@ucdavis.edu and Mares 2012; Gottlieb and Joshi 2010). UA movements have been both commended and critiqued because of the Department of Human Ecology, UC Davis, One Shields ways they resist, transform or reproduce racial inequities Avenue, 2335 Hart Hall, Davis, CA 95616, USA observed in conventional food systems and urban devel- Department of Parks, Recreation, and Tourism Management, opment processes (Block et al. 2012; Bradley and Herrera Center for Geospatial Analytics, North Carolina State University, 2800 Faucette Drive, Raleigh, NC 27695, USA 2016; Cohen and Reynolds 2015; Galt et al. 2014; Reynolds 2015). UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, 5363 Public Affairs Building, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1656, USA A burgeoning field of scholarship on food justice has highlighted efforts by communities of color to promote self- Agriculture Sustainability Institute/Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program, UC Davis, Davis, USA empowerment through culturally resonant food ways, food sovereignty, and community development based on social Department of Plant Sciences, UC Davis, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616, USA Vol.:(0123456789) 1 3 206 J. K. London et al. equity. This research aims to develop and apply a framework provide a powerful substrate upon which to grow critical that critiques and decenters whiteness, and brings racial jus- new understandings of the racialized dimensions of UA tice into the core of the UA movement (Alkon and Mares movements. 2012; Anguelovski 2015; Billings and Cabbil 2011; Brad- ley and Galt 2014; Bradley and Herrera 2016; Dixon 2014; Hoover 2013; McCutcheon 2019; McClintock 2018; Slocum Theoretical framework: growing urban 2006, 2007; Ramirez 2015; Reese 2018; Sbicca and Myers agriculture in the soil of racial capitalism 2017; Slocum 2007; White 2017). Recent work has drawn on theories of racial capitalism (Johnson and Lubin 2017; To decode the variegated landscape of UA, we draw on the Pulido and De Lara 2018; Robinson 2000), and analyses overarching framework provided by theories of racial capi- of black geographies and plantation futures (McCutcheon talism (Johnson and Lubin 2017; Robinson 2000) to analyze 2019; McKittrick 2011, 2013; Ramirez 2015; Reese 2018), food justice, and its relationship to other elements of the which are seen as fertile settings for understanding and pur- UA movement. The concept of racial capitalism—credited suing food justice. to renowned scholar of Black radical tradition, Cedric Rob- This paper takes up this challenge, and explores the rela- inson (2000)—bridges two fundamental social critiques: tionship of racial capitalism to UA, using a case study of the materialism of Marx, and the myriad, mostly twentieth- Sacramento, California (USA). In it, we draw from stake- century analyses of racism. In brief, racial capitalism under- holder interviews, participant observation, and archival stands that capitalism is racial, and was never not racial; document analysis to unearth three distinct, yet intertwined and that racism enabled capitalism’s rise to dominance in kinds of UA projects, each with its own complex historical Europe via a globalized system of chattel slavery and settler legacy, normative vision and placement within the dynamics colonialism (Melamed 2011; 2015; Robinson 2000). of racial capitalism. We use the metaphor of the “taproot” to Grounding one’s analysis of UA in racial capitalism can characterize key elements of the UA movement, and the met- help identify the critical practices that shape the material and aphor of the “soil matrix” to refer to the underlying substrate discursive nature of the soil matrix in which it grows. The of racial capitalism where these roots grow. Accordingly, soil matrix of racial capitalism catalyzes, and is dependent a taproot represents the ways that UA projects are organ- on, the production of “empty, lifeless, Blackened spaces … ized around a central set of values, ideologies and political through capital disinvestment, white flight, gentrification, commitments. Using the taproot metaphor, we will refer to urban renewal, incarceration, and policing” (Bledsoe and projects as being either ‘justice-rooted,’ ‘health-rooted,’ or Wright 2019, p. 6). Gilmore (2017, p. 226) evokes “racial ‘market-rooted.’ The soil matrix represents certain struc- capitalism’s dramatically scaled cycles of place-making, tures and processes of racial capitalism ( Johnson and Lubin including all of chattel slavery, imperialism, settler coloni- 2017; Robinson 2000). Each type of taproot interacts in dis- alism, resource extraction, infrastructure coordination, urban tinct ways with the soil matrix, reproducing, resisting, and/ industrialization, regional development and the financializ- or transforming the structural conditions in which it grows. ing of everything.” While analyses like these do not address The soil matrix, in turn, produces different types of feed- UA per se, they set up critiques of the ways in which UA back to the different taproots, favoring some, and setting is bound up in processes of racial capitalism, which in turn off a struggle to survive for others. The taproots compete produce and reproduce structural inequities. with each other for resources, but also work symbiotically Countering the depredations of racial capitalism is Gil- for their mutual benefit. Depending on their strategies, UA more’s notion of an “abolition geography” that seeks to projects with different taproots can also change the nature “destroy the geography of slavery by mixing their labor with of the soil matrix itself. the external world to change the world and thereby them- Within this socio-natural agricultural system, we look at selves” (2017, p. 227). If one element of Gilmore’s “external UA projects with justice, health, and market taproots, and world” is the soil, then abolition offers a way to use UA in ask: what are their historical bases, characteristics, and inter- liberatory projects to claim sovereignty over bodies, land, relationships? How does racial capitalism structure the con- and labor (Harris 1993). In a similar way, McKittrick takes nections and differentiation within and among them? We plantation geographies, a particular kind of black geography argue that these entangled roots and their interactions with in which the plantation is cast as “the penultimate site of racial capitalism are important attributes of UA in Sacra- black dispossession, antiblack violence, racial encounter, mento, and that by unearthing them, one can identify critical and innovative resistance,” and contrasts them with what she dynamics between communities, racial justice, and the food terms “plantation futures” (2013, p. 8). These, she writes, system. Conversely, without this root and soil analysis, it “demand decolonial thinking that is predicated on human will be difficult if not impossible to fully account for the life” (2013, p. 3). Ramirez applies McKittrick’s notion of variegated nature of UA. More broadly, this analysis can black geographies and plantation futures to frame “black 1 3 Unearthing the entangled roots of urban agriculture 207 food justice projects [that] use the land as a tool of libera- acknowledges and addresses the oppressive and racist tion, drawing from practices of resistance that stem from structures that are the underlying cause of the injustices of plantation survival strategies” (2015, p. 751), while Reese the food system. They do so by de-centering white actors promotes the “geographies of self-reliance” at the heart of in the food movement (Ramirez 2015), dismantling struc- black food projects (2018, p. 408). tural racism (Billings and Cabbil 2011), decolonizing the To help capture the racialized dimension of UA, we draw food system (Bradley and Herrera 2016; Grey and Patel upon Omi and Winant’s (1994, p. 2104) notion of “racial 2015; Meyers 2015), and uplifting models of knowledge projects”: which are “simultaneously an interpretation, rep- and leadership from communities of color (White 2017). resentation, or explanation of racial dynamics and an effort Sbicca and Myers highlight the herculean task of liberatory to organize and distribute resources along particular racial food justice movements, as they “build counter hegemonic lines.” Sbicca and Myers (2017) draw on Omi and Winant in forms of power that transform race relations and institutional their treatment of UA as a racial project. Thus, UA projects priorities” (2017, p. 38); they portray what they term “food shape and are shaped by deeply racialized social structures justice racial projects” as ways to resist racialized urban neo- that place different populations in hierarchical and ineq - liberalization (Sbicca and Myers 2017). White emphasizes uitable positions relative to the food system. We now turn the importance of examining history as a way to reframe to examining three types of UA projects, based on justice, people’s relationship to land, in order “to challenge the health, and market taproots and their racialized natures. persistent frame of agriculture as a site of oppression for African Americans,” noting that “the richness and complex- Justice‑rooted UA projects ity that is our agricultural history can be detailed from a place of resistance” (2017, p. 10). Ramirez adds that, in the Justice-rooted UA projects seek to transform a soil matrix context of UA, “black geographies reinscribe the landscape of racial capitalism that disadvantages farmers of color, with meaning, reproduce space in ways that challenge the impugns their agricultural knowledge, and exploits, pol- plantation legacy, and refuse to succumb to the bleak and lutes and appropriates their neighborhood spaces (Alkon unjust present” (2015, pp. 758–759). In their utmost expres- and Agyeman 2011; Galli and Clift 2012; Gottlieb and sion, justice-rooted UA projects are movements for abolition Joshi 2010; Sbicca 2018; Slocum 2006, 2007). These pro- and liberation. jects closely align with the food justice movement, in which actors seek to politicize and transform the production and Health‑rooted UA projects consumption of food in order to address underlying inequi- ties in the food system (Alkon and Agyeman 2011; Alkon Unlike justice-rooted projects, health-rooted UA projects and Guthman 2017; Alkon and Mares 2012; Anguelovski do not seek to transform the fundamental matrix of the soil 2015; Block et al. 2012; Galli and Clift 2012). of racial capitalism. However, they do work to improve its These scholars highlight the contributions and narratives potential to nurture the health and well-being of those who of people of color in agriculture, using food as a lens through cultivate it. These projects critique the social and ecological which to examine racial injustice, and by prioritizing support destruction of industrialized agriculture, but do not directly for food organizations led by people of color (Anguelovski confront the structural racism or neo-liberalism that sup- 2015; Billings and Cabbil 2011; Hoover 2013; McClintock port it. 2014; Passidomo 2014; Reese 2018; White 2017; Yakini UA projects with a health taproot align with some of the 2013). These actors support food sovereignty, so that peo- dominant narratives found in the alternative food movement. ple of color can reclaim agency and control over their own With a focus on health, nutrition, environmental quality, and food practices and systems, often in the face of corporate the vitality of local food systems, UA movements frame hegemony and state violence (Alkon and Mares 2012; Block social change as occurring both by educating people to help et al. 2012). They also seek to revalorize the labor of black them reconnect to food, and by addressing food access and and brown workers who have built, and continue to power, food deserts by increasing the availability and production of the agricultural industry, at great emotional and physical cost fresh, locally produced foods (Alkon and Agyeman 2011; to themselves (McKittrick 2011; Ramirez 2015). These UA Hardesty et al. 2014; Qazi and Selfa 2005). actors also often support initiatives related to health promo- Changing food systems through a health-rooted approach tion and entrepreneurship that are directed by and for people can, however, replicate social inequalities by assigning food of color, in order to meet larger racial justice goals (Bradley and Galt 2014; Bradley and Herrera 2016; Reese 2018). Several authors show that, while daunting, struggles The metaphorical use of the term decolonization has been critiqued for a just food system can be won, at least in part. Justice- by Tuck and Yang (2012); we use it here only to reflect its use by rooted organizations put forward a vision of change that these authors. 1 3 208 J. K. London et al. a morality and universality. As Bradley and Herrera write, the institutional racism in capitalist systems themselves. “local, sustainable, and environmentally friendly foods are This neo-liberal vision has been critiqued by scholars as assumed to be universally good,” while the racialized ineq- being largely ineffective at creating systemic change, and uities that shape these systems remain unexamined (2016, as instead reinforcing racially oppressive and inequitable p. 6). Uncritically proclaiming the universal benefits of food systems (Alkon and Guthman 2017; Allen and Guth- these foods and foodways often has the effect of reinforc- man 2006; DuPuis et al. 2006; Giménez and Shattuck 2011; ing whiteness in the food movement, ignoring the experi- Guthman 2011; McClintock 2014, 2018). ences and contributions of people of color (Anguelovski 2015; Guthman 2011; Slocum 2006; 2007). In providing Entangled roots education to consumers about the benefits of local and sus- tainably produced foods, white-led or predominantly white Food justice scholarship tends to heavily critique health- and organizations with a health-centric taproot that aim to “do market-rooted UA projects, and praise justice-rooted ones. good” by helping underserved communities and commu- However, very few scholars have shown the specific ways nities of color (Slocum 2007) can unintentionally end up and places in which these three forms of UA grow together. reinforcing systems of white privilege and white supremacy Notable exceptions are Pudup (2008), McClintock (2014, (McClintock 2018; Minkoff‐ Zern 2014; Passidomo 2014; 2018), and Sbicca and Myers (2017, p. 8), who examine Reynolds 2015). They can also lead to the displacement the contingent and inherently contradictory nature of UA. of people color through racial “viscosity” (Ramirez 2015) McClintock considers the role of racial capitalism in under- which allows white people to claim black geographies as standing the internal contradictions and contingency of UA, white spaces. noting that “how [UA] is mobilized and by whom … can make all the difference in whether it serves to bolster racial Market‑rooted UA projects capitalism or to undermine it” (2018, p. 9). This entan- glement is an understudied but important focus of future Market-rooted UA projects largely accept the dominant scholarship, as there are many symbiotic and competitive racial capitalist mode of agriculture, but seek to harness it to interconnections between the three UA roots, which together drive local and regional economic development, ostensibly form interwoven networks. Without attention to these rela- for universal benefit. Still, these projects tend to overlook the tionships between the roots and the soil matrix of racial ways that their work relies upon and enables the reproduc- capitalism, we argue, it is impossible to fully understand tion of structural disparities at the heart of racial capitalism. the complex nature of UA. It is this contingent and contested UA projects with a market taproot typically comprise nature of UA that our analysis of distinct yet entangled roots farm-to-fork or vote-with-your fork events, in which food seeks to illuminate. We offer the following case study to becomes a mechanism for engaging with the market, and respond to this need. supports a normative vision for social change (Allen and Guthman 2006). These movements are market-based in three ways. First, the proponents of these approaches promise to Case study context: Sacramento, California enlist the forces of the market to build assets and wealth for marginalized farmers, and in disadvantaged neighborhoods Sacramento provides an ideal setting in which to explore the ( Daftary-Steel et al. 2015; Vitiello and Wolf-Powers 2014;). relationship of justice-, health-, and the market-rooted UA Secondly, however, these market-based relationships often projects with each other and with the soil matrix of racial also contribute to the exploitative impact of racial capitalist capitalism. systems on labor and the subaltern classes (Cohen and Reyn- Sacramento is a globally significant seat of agricultural olds 2015). Third, market-based solutions can be understood power, and of environmental, economic and social policies. as part of the neo-liberal retrenchment of state mechanisms It is the capital city of California, a US state that, if it were of social regulation in favor of market actors, thereby plac- a nation, would have the fifth largest economy in the world. ing responsibility for structural change on individual and The state’s industrial agricultural system leads the US in consumer-based action (McClintock 2014; 2018). In this cash farm receipts, and produces two-thirds of the country’s paradigm, farming enterprises and consumers are presented fruits and nuts (California Department of Food and Agricul- as the agents by which local food systems are transformed, in ture 2019). At the same time, the dominance of the indus- ways that ignore the underlying racialized logic of the larger trial agricultural model has produced a condition of “poverty agro-industrial system (Pudup 2008). amidst prosperity” (Martin and Taylor 1998), especially for In sum, market-rooted projects typically approach race the state’s predominantly Latino farm workers. by focusing on what they see as disadvantaged popu- Sacramento has a vital UA movement with many roots. lations in need of uplift and charity, but do not confront The city has branded itself as the nation’s Farm-to-Fork 1 3 Unearthing the entangled roots of urban agriculture 209 Capital, a UA project—described further below— of fes- consisted of scholars from UC Davis, University of Illinois, tivals, dining events, and tourism promotion that is largely Urbana-Champaign, and University of Northern Kentucky). white-centered and consumption-oriented. More broadly, The overall study sought to understand the tradeoffs between the city has eight farmers markets, 54 school gardens, 17 the perceived benefits of home gardens (such as improve- city-run community gardens, 5 nonprofit-run community ments in nutrition, mental health, aesthetics, neighborhood gardens, and at least 7 urban commercial farms. The city cohesion and pride) and the potential sense of danger, stigma has passed local ordinances supporting the production and disempowerment provoked by the presence of soil lead and marketing of harvests from home and community gar- in and around area gardening sites. dens. It also has a small but growing food justice move- The study involved a collaboration between the university ment led by people of color that is simultaneously lauded in team and two community-based and Black-run UA organi- the local media and by local political elites and yet greatly zations, Ubuntu Green and the Yisrael Family Urban Farm underfunded by foundations relative to mainstream UA (YFUF). The study supported Ubuntu Green and YFUF to organizations. install over 75 home gardens in two racially and ethnically Meanwhile, Sacramento remains a site of significant diverse and underserved urban neighborhoods in Sacramento and growing social and economic inequities. Rental rates and to partner with the university team’s testing of soil lead for housing are the third fastest-rising in the country (Yardi levels in and around these gardens. Ubuntu Green’s and Matrix 2020), resulting in intense pressures of gentrifica- YFUF’s UA projects were in turn part of a larger strategy tion and displacement (Ho 2019). Until recently, a lack of called Building Healthy Communities (BHC) funded by The rent control accelerated many residents’ descent into hous- California Endowment, a philanthropic foundation focused ing poverty. Sacramento is also one of the most diverse cit- on inequities in the social determinants of health. The food, ies in the state and country. There are over 121 languages nutrition, and gardening strategy of BHC was coordinated spoken by city residents, and 34% of area inhabitants speak by Soil Born Farms (SBF), a nonprofit organization dedi- a language other than English at home (US Census Bureau cated to promoting urban gardening as a means of achieving 2018a). The city is also is highly segregated by race. The healthy communities and a sustainable city. overall percentage of people of color in the City of Sacra- Researchers conducted 24 semi-structured interviews. mento is 33.6%, but the percentage of people of color ranges Interview participants included nine residents, nine inter- from 90% in some neighborhoods, to as low as 5% in others mediary UA or environmental organization leaders, and six (US Census Bureau 2014). African American children in policymakers. The sampling frame for the resident inter- Sacramento County die at twice the rate of children of any viewees was structured to represent the ethnic/racial diver- other race/ethnicity. Finally, Sacramento is a critical site sity of the home gardeners enrolled in the garden building for Black Lives Matter (BLM) organizing. This was brought program (African American, Latino, Asian American, and to a flashpoint following the 2018 police killing of Stephon white), as well as those in the two project neighborhoods Clark, an unarmed Black man (Walker 2018); since then, in north and south Sacramento. Interviewees were selected related racial justice uprisings have continued in response using a purposive sampling approach in each of these cat- to continued police killings and violence, joining the 2020 egories. The project team identified residents who seemed nationwide surge in BLM-related protests. most engaged in the project and who were likely to be inter- ested in participating in an interview. Although this selec- tion process may have introduced some bias into the sam- Methods ple, it allowed researchers to analyze the narratives of those deeply engaged in UA projects. The sampling frame for the This article draws from data collected through a five-year environmental organizational leaders and policymakers was transdisciplinary study of home gardening and soil lead in developed through a scan of the most prominent leaders in Sacramento, California (London et al. 2018). The research their sectors. This identification relied on the first author’s team (the first, second, third and fifth authors of this paper) familiarity with the local UA community, gained through long-time engagement in the region. This process may also have introduced some sampling bias, but also insured that 2 key actors were included in the pool of interview subjects. This statistic comes from The Black Child Legacy Campaign at The interviews were conducted using a semi-structured https ://black child legac y.org/ (last accessed May 20, 2020). guide in participants’ homes and offices, and lasted between Lead can be deposited and persist in soil and around gardens from sources such as paint from older homes, automotive exhaust from the era of leaded gasoline, and historic and contemporary industrial emis- sions (Schwarz et al. 2016). Our study measured soil lead levels in and around home gardens to understand the relative health risks and The second and third authors have switched institutions since con- disparities associated with home gardening (London et al. 2018). ducting the research. 1 3 210 J. K. London et al. one and two hours. Using qualitative analysis methods up a land rush, and later a gold rush, in the Sacramento area (Welsh 2002; Miles and Huberman 1994), interviews were (Griswold del Castillo 1998; Cameron 1998). transcribed and coded with NVivo11, applying the key Starting in the 1870s, the demand for agricultural labor themes of experiences and perceptions of the social, cul- was filled by tens of thousands of Chinese immigrants (Gam- tural, political, economic, and health dimensions of home birazzio 2009; Leung and Ma 1988) whose prominence gardening and UA, as well as meanings associated with on Sacramento’s rural fringes was in part a result of their the physical conditions of the environment in the city. The exclusion from the urban core, through violence and poli- racialized and entangled roots of UA were not the initial cies of enforced segregation (Leung and Ma 1988). With the focus of the interviews, or of the broader study. Instead, this rise of anti-Chinese racist violence in the late 1880s, (Sax- theme arose during the interview and analysis process, as a ton 1995) Chinese agricultural laborers were increasingly way to make sense of the diverse narratives associated with replaced by Japanese immigrants, followed by Filipino and people’s experiences of gardening, and their broader struc- Mexican immigrants. All of these groups were considered tural contexts. These themes were then integrated into the exploitable, both because of their political marginalization, coding scheme to guide the analysis. It was in this context and because of racist ideas about the supposed suitability that the concept of racial capitalism emerged as a useful of non-white bodies for backbreaking labor (McWilliams framework for understanding UA in Sacramento. 2000). The Japanese presence in Sacramento area agricul- ture rose to a peak in the years before World War II, and then declined precipitously due to the federally ordered wartime Agriculture and Sacramento’s racialized internment of Japanese people (Azuma 1994; Wilson 2010). urban landscape From 1942 to 1964, the Bracero agricultural labor program brought thousands of Mexicans to work in area farms, fill- Before exploring the contemporary manifestations of the UA ing a labor shortage created by the military deployment of a movement, we will place it and its constituent projects in largely white male military force, and by the internment of a deeper historical context, grounded in agricultural tradi- Japanese Americans (Mitchell 2010). Mexicans and Mexi- tions and conflicts that long predate Sacramento’s contem- can Americans soon represented the vast majority of Sacra- porary food movement. Sacramento’s complex racial and mento area’s agricultural labor force, and continue to power ethnic mosaic is shaped by the material processes associated the region’s agricultural industry today (Holmes 2013; Mar- with the development of natural resource and agricultural tin 2011a, b). industries in and around the city. These processes are based African American settlement in the Sacramento region in histories of discursive and physical violence provoked began during the post-Civil War Reconstruction era in the by successive displacements and relocations of racialized late 1800s, and picked up during World War II, due in part populations, their incorporation into racialized systems of to the growing exodus of Black Americans fleeing racial labor, and the resulting production of racialized urban and violence in the US agricultural South (Dingemans and Datel peri-urban landscapes. At the heart of all of these processes 1995; Datel and Dingemans 2009; Datel 2018). Racially are the workings of racial capitalism, including the ideology restrictive covenants concentrated African Americans in of white supremacy, which underwrites multiple techniques what were then outlying neighborhoods in north and south and technologies of racist violence by the combined forces Sacramento (Hernandez 2009, 2014). Some of these neigh- of capitalism and the state (Almaguer 1994). These racial- borhoods were designed with lots able to accommodate the ized logics form the soil matrix in which the current agro- agrarian practices that African Americans carried with them social landscape of Sacramento is cultivated. (Dingemans and Datel 1995), with traces of this agricultural This violent history begins with the genocide of and heritage still present today. Starting in the 1980s, many of land theft from Native Americans by European missionar- these neighborhoods have faced gentrification and displace- ies, traders, settlers, and gold miners, and by massacres of ment, due to successive rounds of urban restructuring. For Native Americans throughout the 1700s and 1800s (Heizer example, one neighborhood of south Sacramento’s Oak Park et al. 1977; Heizer 1993; Hurtado 1988). The colonization that once formed the core of Black culture in Sacramento has and conquest of Mexico’s Alta California by the US opened experienced a drop in its Black population from 65% in 1970 to 28% in 2018 (US Census Bureau 2018b). In the period following the Vietnam War in the 1970s, refugees from Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam, many of In the past two decades, environmentally-oriented economic devel- them from ethnic groups such as the Hmong and Mien, who opment by area tribes such as the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation has fought alongside US military forces, fled to resettlement begun to rebuild this land-based tenure and stewardship. See, for gateway cities such as Sacramento (Helzer 1994; Sower- example: https ://www.sekah ills.com/story /susta inabl e-pract ices/ (last wine et al. 2015). Many of these refugees had been rural accessed August 13, 2019). 1 3 Unearthing the entangled roots of urban agriculture 211 villagers, practicing subsistence agriculture. Once resettled developed a proposed ordinance that would allow for the sale in Sacramento’s urban neighborhoods, some families were of produce from home and community gardens, as well as able to establish small-scale farms, usually on rented lands, the protection of community gardens, and other provisions. while others developed home gardens for food and medicinal In March 2015, the Sacramento City Council approved the purposes (Corlett et al. 2003). agriculture ordinance in its packed chambers, with scores of White settlement over the past century has involved residents and garden activists in attendance. Many of these migration of people of multiple white ethnicities, often were African American, and included Hmong and other into neighborhoods with the racially-restrictive covenants Southeast Asian refugee urban farmers. Following its vic- mentioned above and benefiting from government programs tory at the city, the coalition achieved a second victory, suc- such as home and business loans among others (Hernandez cessfully pressuring Sacramento County to adopt a similar 2009, 2014). This systemic racism has created a pattern of ordinance. domination of political and economic life. White people and While the coalition shared the unified goal of passing white-run organizations also predominate in the UA move- the ordinance, its members had a wide variety of motiva- ment. Most recently, lower-income immigrants from eastern tions. For justice-rooted actors, the ordinance represented Europe have become involved in community gardening. economic empowerment and a validation of their agricul- These centuries-long historical dynamics of racialized tural expertise; for health-rooted organizations, it meant agriculture in and around Sacramento highlight the city’s an increase in the supply of local nutritious food; and for place in a global nexus of racial capitalism. Racial and eth- market-rooted organizations, it meant the monetization of nic diversity is considered one of Sacramento’s strengths, formerly non-market activities. but it has also been the basis of significant conflict over time. On one level, the development of the SUAC, and the pas- These dynamics continue to play out in the contemporary sage of the Sacramento Urban Agriculture Ordinances illus- UA movement, in ways that we will illustrate below. trate a convergence between different roots of the region’s UA movement. However, if we unearth a deeper structure, and examine the relationships between these roots as they Promoting UA in Sacramento inhabit the soil matrix of racial capitalism, we can discern both their entangled and distinct natures. It is to this project To begin unearthing the three individual taproots of the UA of unearthing and disentangling that the narrative now turns. movement in Sacramento in the contemporary moment, it will be useful to highlight one instance in which all three have been entangled in a major victory—one built on a long The three taproots of UA in Sacramento history of urban gardening in the city (Cutts et al. 2017; de la Peña 2015; Napawan and Townsend 2016). Justice‑rooted UA: “not gardening in English” In 2012, the Sacramento Urban Agriculture Coalition (SUAC) was formed as an off-shoot of the Healthy Food for Justice-rooted UA can be seen as part of a resistance move- All Collaborative, a partnership of many of the UA organi- ment to the racialized processes that place communities zations in Sacramento. SUAC’s goal was to bring together of color in marginalized positions, both in food systems, over a dozen organizations drawn from multiple move- and in the mainstream food movement. The justice-rooted ments, including the environmental, UA, legal aid, com- approach is grounded in an analysis of racial capitalism, and munity development, and other movements around a key of the process by which the state and capital have conspired policy challenge: supporting UA through land use, zoning, to oppress and exploit people of color. This process began and health codes. The SUAC represented a symbiosis of all with the first wave of European settlement of the Sacramento three of the major taproots of UA organizing in Sacramento, Valley, and continues today through the criminalization and which had joined to work for a common cause. The coalition devaluation of Black and brown bodies, their labor and basic described itself as follows. humanity, through disinvestment, gentrification, displace- ment, and the violence of economic deprivation. The Sacramento Urban Agriculture Coalition is … Justice-rooted UA advocates seek to contest these deep dedicated to addressing issues of food access, eco- agricultural legacies, which are normalized, rendered nomic resilience, and neighborhood blight in order to advance the health and well-being of all Sacramento residents (City of Sacramento 2012). Sounding a note of caution about urban farming ordinances, To achieve this broad goal, the SUAC set its sights on influ- Havens and Roman-Alcalá (2016) observe that urban gardening ordi- encing the City of Sacramento’s 2012 General Plan update. nances can have the unintended consequences of aiding neo-liberal Through years of heated negotiations, the city and the SUAC urban development processes (particularly gentrification). 1 3 212 J. K. London et al. invisible, and buried underground. They seek alternatives region of Punjab is very fertile and rich. And a lot of to the de facto racial segregation that locates Black popula- farming still happens there. So, from that perspective tions and other populations of color in food deserts, with few I wanted to, kind of, reconnect to that … options to procure fresh and nutritious food. They work to Ubuntu Green, a Sacramento-based environmental jus- move people of color from the margins to the center of the tice organization, embraced a similar vision of a racial food movement, which is otherwise dominated by white-led justice-grounded UA movement. Founded in 2009 by organizations. Their work parallels Gilmore’s challenge to Charles Mason Jr., a Black environmental justice advocate, build an abolition geography by “changing places” (2017), it was a multi-racial organization based on the concept of for example, by changing south Sacramento landscapes from Ubuntu, a Bantu-language term meaning shared human- ones that reproduce social relations rooted in slavery, into ity, generosity, and common effort. It ran a number of regenerative and health-giving landscapes, where people community development programs, including one on UA. mix their labor with the soil as a practice of freedom (Ram- Ubuntu Green gained funding from an urban gardening irez 2015; White 2017). In this way, justice-rooted UA activ- component of The California Endowment’s BHC initia- ists produce liberatory alternatives to the plantation legacy, tive (coordinated by SBF) to install gardens in dozens of and enact versions of a redemptively Black sense of place home gardens in disadvantaged communities in south and (McKittrick 2011; 2013; Ramirez 2015; Reese 2018). north Sacramento. A common narrative about the evolution of the UA When Ubuntu Green closed its doors in 2015, the YFUF’s movement is that it was originally the creation of white-led “We Diggit” program took up this charge; it has continued to alternative food network organizations that have recently build gardens, and advance food literacy and career pipelines begun to incorporate people of color. However, this ver- into the food and farming sector for low-income youth of sion is increasingly met by a counter-narrative, in which color. The YFUF is truly a family enterprise run, by Cha- engagement in UA by people of color does not represent a nowk and Judith Yisrael, a Black couple, and their children new phase or constituency of the UA movement, but rather in south Sacramento. It combines training in home garden- signifies that the UA movement has finally caught up to the ing, medicinal and value-added food production, and youth long-standing farming and gardening practices of these pop- leadership in UA. This is all done to realize the family’s ulations. Many justice-oriented UA activists take pains to vision of “Transforming the Hood for G.O.O.D” (Growing point out that these practices both predate the contemporary Our Own Destiny.) A partnership with SBF helped fund variation of the ‘foodie’ movement, and extend far beyond the home garden installation program of the YFUF, though the movement’s white-coded racial identity. This analysis is members of the Yisrael family had been involved in food not only factually corrective. It is also politically redemp- and agriculture for several years before this collaboration. tive, as justice-rooted activists take aim at elements of racial Chanowk Yisrael described the origins of his garden- capitalism that devalue Black and brown bodies and their ing, not in an explicitly social or racial justice framework labor, and place them in subaltern material and discursive (that would come later), but as obeying the twin impera- positions in state and market systems. tives of self-sufficiency and health. Fatima Malik, a community activist of South Asian descent who was interviewed as part of the study, critiqued [In] 2008 … I’m trying to figure out how I’m going the racialized discourse that symbolically and materially to continue to keep putting good healthy food on the excludes farmers of color, and proposed an alternative table. And, either I’m going to have to grow some food framework of resistance and cultural affirmation. or I’m going to have to figure out a way to make a whole bunch more money. And so, my, my idea was to But I think from a racial perspective … I think the start to grow food in the back yard … It was not urban garden community … it seems like it’s a white thing, farm. It was not to help the community. I’ve always you know? Because you hear more about like, let’s been sensitive to what’s going on in the community say, ‘white people garden’; But, the Hmong people, because I grew up in those conditions and if I had the they garden. They’re just—not gardening in English, ability to do it, I would have loved to have been able I guess. Right? Like, so, you just don’t know about it to give back. But it wasn’t for that reason that I started because it’s not in English of the whiteness of urban growing food, it was just really to be able to grow food, ag. eat healthy food, and then be able to feed my family. Fatima credited her ancestors, which include farmers in the Having started with this embodied scale and food sover- Pakistani Punjab region, with her own interest in gardening. eignty objective, Yisrael now places his family’s experi- I recognize that my ancestors, and not too far ence in a larger political economic perspective, one that removed, were farmers. And even to this day the critiques capitalism’s extractive model of value. 1 3 Unearthing the entangled roots of urban agriculture 213 The whole idea of this society that we live in where, soil. So, we look at ourselves as right now we’re just where you’re taught not to create your own value. getting the soil ready … We haven’t even started doing You’re always looking for values somewhere else. And anything yet because we’re just now getting the soil that’s just the nature of a capitalistic society is that ready so that when we do finally put those seeds in … somebody’s got to get exploited somewhere. So, there, you’ll see the growth explode. and it’s usually the people that are, you know, on the In this way, Yisrael and the YFUF seek to transform soil that bottom that are getting exploited. So, the idea of creat- has been poisoned and depleted through racialized violence, ing your own value, food, clothing, shelter, becoming back into a regenerative medium where justice-rooted UA self-sufficient, that’s what America was, was built on. projects can germinate and thrive. In doing so, he also draws This notion of food sovereignty and the creation of one’s on some health-rooted values, by pushing for access to nutri- own value contains both a critique of the capitalist system, tious food, and building market-rooted projects to support but also a strategic engagement with it. The complex rela- the self-sufficiency of Black farmers and families. tionship between market-rooted UA in the YFUF UA’s pro- Justice-rooted visions are also found in the city’s political ject arises as it seeks to help gardeners and farmers of color leadership. In a similar way to Yisrael, Phil Serna, a Latino create value-added agricultural products for home use and member of the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors for sale, and train youth for careers in food and agriculture (and son of Sacramento’s first Mexican–American mayor, while maintaining a critique of the inequities of the capital Joe Serna) highlighted the formative role of agriculture in system. his family. He is bemused by recent efforts to brand Sacra- Yisrael addresses critical elements of the racial capitalist mento as the farm-to-fork capital. order that devalues and criminalizes Black bodies and stig- With a family including my extended family that was, matizes Black-coded spaces, by recounting a personal story they themselves were migrant farmworkers and very of ‘gardening while black.’ In it, he offers an example of the active in the farmworker rights movement during the negative consequences of being surveilled as a racial Other ‘60 s. And hearing some of the stories about, things in the space of a neighborhood community garden. like being sprayed with pesticides and crop-dusted But I think the key environmental concern for me is while harvesting crops. Certainly have an apprecia- how people are perceived to be that live here. Because tion for the toil of what it means to, to be a farmworker the police already think we’re all criminals. I know … Not that we, we thought it was shameful. Not at all. because I’ve been at the garden at 14th and 44th and But, it was a very tough life. I think it’s kind of funny I’ve have been put in handcuffs … Obviously, some- in retrospect that there’s a generation of Sacramentans, body must have thought I was breaking in so they people that reside in this region that just think it’s this called the police. You know, that type of thing. So, I’ve incredibly novel idea that we embrace our heritage as ended up in handcuffs a couple of times, which, you a food producing region, when I never thought we lost know … ‘Hey, I’m a farmer … I mean if you wanted it. I, to me, it was always part of who we were. some squash, you could have just asked me.’” [Laughs] Serna’s puzzling over the historical amnesia in the main- To counter these physical and discursive assaults, Yisrael stream, mainly white-led foodie world was coupled with linked his work to long-standing racial justice movements a critique of a recent regional agriculture plan by a local such as the Black Panther Party, with their emphasis on self- non-profit organization to promote the Sacramento region’s sufficiency and food sovereignty as a form of community farm-to-fork brand. empowerment. But what was glaring, the glaring omission for me: it Interviewer: So, I wonder … how do you see yourself was, there’s nothing in it about social justice. There relative to some of those other, even more explicitly was nothing in it that it even began to acknowledge revolutionary movements, or like, radical African- who it is that actually produces the food. And I’m not American movements? just talking about the people that harvest the food, the Yisrael: I don’t see us any different. I mean because farmworkers. Even the farmers.[T]here has been such before you can do what they did, you have to have a focus and heavy concentration on the product and not food, clothing and shelter. And so, I think of it as we’re the producers.[N]ot to be overly abrasive about it in building an infrastructure to bring our communities the context of that forum, but I did point it out and the back … In order to start a revolution, whether it’s authors of the plan that were there, were a bit embar- political, social, violent or whatever, you have to live rassed by the truth and said, you know, ‘No one has with the people … If you want food, you have to be really asked the question about, you know, about what where the soil is and you have to do the work in the is it that we should be thinking … about it as a region 1 3 214 J. K. London et al. when it comes to the social equity of food production?’ such as SBF, are increasingly seeking to be inclusive and And I think that’s where we really, if we’re going to supportive of UA organizations led by people of color, and continue to embrace that as, as part of who we are as a that are located in diverse neighborhoods. region, I think we necessarily have to also embrace the The evolution of the UA movement in Sacramento is social equity involved in food production, harvesting. grounded in the countercultural movements of the 1970s and early 1980s. Like those elsewhere in the US, these move- The authors of the regional agricultural development plan ments were generally led by white activists and farmers who had focused their work on small-scale agriculture in the sought alternatives to industrialized food systems, and to the urban core, not on labor relations in the industrial agricul- degradation of urban environments, with its associated pub- ture on its rural periphery, yet they missed the diversity in lic health crises. The establishment of the Sacramento and Sacramento’s UA as well. Serna’s critique exemplifies many Davis Food Co-ops in the 1970s, and local and organic farms of the perspectives expressed by justice-rooted activists: they such as Yolo County’s Full Belly Farm and Good Humus critique the ways that the market-rooted parts of Sacramen- Farm in the early 1980s, exemplified the counter-cultural to’s UA movement marginalize workers and people of color. Zeitgeist of the time. Shawn Harrison Co-Director of SBF, Serna’s challenge has been to reimagine the Sacramento a white man and leader in Sacramento’s health-rooted UA region from the perspective of social and racial justice, movement, recalled that in the late 1990s, there was: focusing on issues of production in the food system. This approach is typical of the justice-rooted model: it blends a Some conversation that was beginning to happen critical analysis of labor relations, with an understanding around like, ‘well what is the role of the city with of the structural changes needed to rebalance the scales in respect to food?’ And, you know, ‘what are we going favor of farm workers, as and attend to the well-being and to do to get healthier food into our communities’? empowerment of communities of color. We’ve historically been an agricultural region, but we’re becoming disconnected from that. How do we preserve that heritage, how do we preserve that Health‑rooted UA: from counterculture to deli identity? But it was still very much, in my opinion, counters agriculture was very much the step-child. Wasn’t fully embraced, and it needed some awareness and a little Health-rooted UA projects focus on reconnecting people to love. their food, and improving public health through gardening education, the expansion of community gardens, and policy In this environment, Harrison, along with SBF Co-Director, advocacy. We describe this movement as health-rooted to Janet Zellen, a white woman, and a third co-founder Marco refer to the ways it has directed agricultural interventions Franciosa, a white man, developed their first urban farm on to address the degradation of human and ecological health the outskirts of Sacramento in the early 2000s, with the mis- associated with the modern food system. This activity aims sion of demonstrating the feasibility of organic farming in to produce empowered and educated subjects with sover- urban environments, and improving the supply of healthy eignty over their own diets. food to area residents. Harrison recounts that his desire to The engagement of these UA projects with racial capi- grow food drew on a long lineage of farmer practitioners talism centers on a critique of capitalism’s impacts on the dedicated to the embodied practice of cultivating the land. health of the land and human bodies. While this has begun to He viewed this “hands in the soil” practice as a meaningful change in recent years, these projects generally lack an anal- way to sustain healthy bodies and, by extension, to improve ysis of structural racism that would allow them to specify the health of communities and the land. Harrison empha- whose bodies are being particularly affected by racial capi- sized that this craft knowledge was transmitted to him from talism, and to distinguish the historical and structural factors a diversity of mentors, including people of color, as well as that produce food inequities. Furthermore, in some cases, white farmers. organizations in this movement exacerbate the marginaliza- In the early 2000s, SBF brought together early agri- tion of people of color by reproducing a white, normative, cultural innovators with organizations bent on improving agrarian imaginary, through an allegedly color-blind optic. nutrition access, such as the Health Education Council, area Their education projects—even when well-intentioned—can hospitals, and local chefs seeking to offer fresh and local devalue the food ways and knowledge of people of color ingredients. SBF developed its own small-scale demonstra- (Minkoff‐ Zern 2014). Many of these organizations benefit tion farm and garden-based learning programs for school- from the white privilege of their leaders, who can mobi- children, using models such as the Edible Schoolyard in lize social and financial capital to grow their programs. It is Berkeley, and the Student Farm at UC Davis. Then in the simply not part of their core mission to explicitly challenge mid-2000s, the movement took off, as philanthropic foun- structural racism in the food system. Still, some area groups, dations began to invest in SBF and its broader network of 1 3 Unearthing the entangled roots of urban agriculture 215 organizations. In the years since, SBF has become a hub downplay or even obscure its inequities, dehumanization, organization, helping coordinate multiple organizations’ and historical systemic violence. They adopt a neo-liberal efforts to promote UA and sustainable food systems (de la stance that minimizes the role of the state in regulating capi- Peña 2015). SBF has also provided training, and supported tal and addressing structural problems in the market. Instead, the funding for, food justice organizations such as YFUF, they emphasize the primacy of individuals as consumers, as expanding their education programs throughout disadvan- opposed to individuals as political actors capable of driving taged communities in Sacramento. SBF has also contrib- social change. uted to the region’s UA movement through complementary Over the past two decades, there have been a range of efforts such as the healthy food campaigns of the Food Lit- market-based economic development strategies to boost the eracy Center, Health Education Council, and the Sacramento region’s agricultural sector and food system by local gov- Food Policy Council (Napawan and Townsend 2016). ernments, chambers of commerce, and agricultural trade It is important to note that health-rooted UA projects are organizations. Starting in the late 1990s, the focus was on not only led by white people, and are not always grounded maintaining the viability of the region’s agriculture indus- in white-coded projects. These UA projects have complex, try by protecting farmland from urban and suburban sprawl. racialized dimensions. For example, an African American In the early to mid-2000s, this was followed by efforts to woman from Del Paso Heights, a disadvantaged neighbor- link agriculture to rural economic development and health. hood of Sacramento where low-income people of color and At this time, these strategies sought to catalyze agricultural immigrants predominate, described her motivation for work- clusters, build localized food production, invest in process- ing on her UA project as follows. ing and consumption webs, seek investment in agriculture high technology (including rural broadband), and promote The gardening aspect that I got involved in was look- the brand of Sacramento agriculture as a regional economic ing at healthier eating options in the community of Del driver. However, there was little attention to UA, and virtu- Paso Heights. I was working with a nonprofit organi- ally no engagement with issues of racial justice. zation … which is an organization with professional In 2012, Mayor Kevin Johnson, the city’s first Black African-American women who focus on community mayor, proclaimed Sacramento as the nation’s “Farm-to- service. We wanted to really target in on using empty Fork Capital” in an effort to re-position the city from a lots in the neighborhood and show how we can go back “cow town” to a vital center of economic innovation. The to the times that I had grown up where a lot of people Farm-to-Fork campaign orients its work around four values: actually in the neighborhood had their own gardens, health, the economy, the environment, and community. In and we thought we could implement that back into the theory, these values leave room for connecting with health- community and teach the younger generations about and justice-rooted UA projects. In fact, however, they make gardening. It’s less expensive, it’s healthier, and I think the role of the market and the construction of a consuming it’s very therapeutic. public their driving and mediating forces. Absent in their This quote speaks to the ways in which healthy eating can materials is any mention of the causes of food injustice, or have a redemptive value in communities of color, but also any reflection on potential collective action or public sector reminds us how class privilege can shape the work of organ- solutions. The hunger and food insecurity of hundreds of izations that set out to ‘teach the poor how to eat.’ This thousands of the region’s residents is described as excep- quote identifies a route to social and physical transforma- tional and paradoxical, as opposed to being an intrinsic part tion through individual behavior, rather than through struc- of a food system that places low-income people and people tural change (e.g., challenging the racialized urban political of color in subordinate positions. This framing allows the economy that leads to so many empty lots in communities dominant agro-industrial order to evade critical scrutiny. of color). More broadly, it points to the need to trace the Little to no attention is paid to the poverty wages of many intersectional relationships between race class, gender and farm workers, or the de facto segregation of people of color other factors in order to understand the mutual entangle- in food desert neighborhoods. In this market-rooted UA ments of health- and justice-rooted UA projects, in a matrix project, Sacramento’s food system crisis of is understood of racial capitalism. to be a temporary glitch or shortcoming, to be solved by means of charity through food banks—an approach that does Market‑rooted UA: branding Sacramento Johnson, a former National Basketball Association All Star, and a Market-rooted UA projects focus on using the power of native of Sacramento, has played an important but controversial role capital, constructing a consuming public to transform the in spurring revitalization in his home neighborhood of Oak Park. This local and regional economy. Their racialized UA projects work has had a strong African American theme, but has also raised tend to reinforce a white imaginary of the food system, and concerns about gentrification. 1 3 216 J. K. London et al. not address the racialized drivers of food insecurity (Pop- about what it’s like to do this kind of a small business pendieck 1999). versus others?” Sacramento’s self-branding is exemplified by the city’s This approach promises to expand the scope of benefits of renowned Tower Bridge Dinner, launched in 2013. To par- the market to farmers of color. Still, it does not consider the ticipate, would-be diners are asked to submit a lottery form ways in which racial capitalism itself is marginalizing and to win the opportunity to buy $240 tickets. Only 80 tickets in some cases destroying black geographies. The engage- are available to the public, with the remaining 720 slots allo- ment of food justice organizations such as the YFUF in such cated to corporate sponsors, with each ticket priced at over market-rooted visions is a double-edged sword. The YFUF $600. Diners are treated to al fresco feasting on Sacramen- seeks access to markets to sell the produce from its and other to’s iconic golden Tower Bridge, with fare that includes pro- urban farms, but in doing so, risks having its more critical duce from area farms prepared by local celebrity chefs. To political projects blunted through a dependence on actors its credit, the proceeds of this exclusive event are directed to and systems that do not share its radical commitments, and supporting educational events about the region’s UA, includ- may in fact oppose them. ing university scholarships for the children of farmworkers. Still, the dinner lays bare the tensions between the exten- sive wealth generated by the region’s food system, and the Conclusion ways in which this wealth is distributed. It also demonstrates with impeccable clarity how UA projects can be coopted The framework of racial capitalism and racially-organized for elite purposes. The contributions of the farmworkers, UA projects offers a powerful way to unpack the racialized who actually produced the bounty for the celebratory dinner, dynamics of UA. Applying this framework to the specific are largely erased. Instead, the public is treated to a largely case of Sacramento helps unearth many of the key tensions white and consumption-oriented image of agriculture and and synergies that dominate complex, local ecosystems of food, one that mirrors the racialized discourse in the region’s entangled justice-, health-, and market-rooted UA projects. agricultural system as a whole. As we have seen, there are many points of connection and More recent efforts, facilitated by the Sacramento-based even symbiosis between the taproots of these different UA nonprofit organization Valley Vision, have infused a broader projects. Thus, for example, coalition-building fora, such set of perspectives into the Farm-to-Fork initiative. Accord- as the Healthy Food for All Collaborative work on issues ing to Trish Kelly, a long-time local and regional economic ranging from promoting herbicide-free schools, to fruit tree development consultant, these efforts aim to build a vibrant planting in disadvantaged neighborhoods, to developing agricultural entrepreneurship ecosystem, one that includes large-scale facilities to support home and community gar- business development, financing, and workforce develop- dens. Likewise, the alliance of justice-, health-, and market- ment training. Overall, Kelly describes the imperative of rooted organizations in the SUAC was critical in pushing the scaling up and capitalizing smaller UA projects by calling Sacramento City Council and the Sacramento County Board for more investments in UA and outlining critical questions of Supervisors to pass their respective Urban Agriculture for local elected officials. Ordinances. [W]hat is the political support on the part of the city Justice-rooted projects emphasize the need to develop and the county? They’ve passed ordinances, which is markets for home-grown produce, and empower agricultural great. What is the investment support to activate the entrepreneurs in communities of color; this work clearly concept? … So, if it’s a for-profit, are there mecha- resonates with that of market-rooted UA projects, which nisms that they’re financing or their loans or like you focus on the power of the market to transform communities do to any other small business? … But I think if you’re and regions. At the same time, justice-rooted organizations going to treat people like Yisrael Family Farms as an pay attention to promoting healthy eating in communities of enterprise and you want to activate small business color, through home gardens, farm stands and farmers’ mar- entrepreneurship, especially in low-income commu- kets, clearly echoing the focus on dietary concerns of health- nities, what part of a strategy is that? Like any other rooted movements. Meanwhile, some health-rooted organi- small business, they need connection to resources, zations, such as the SBF, support the mobilizing resources right? I think there could be an advocacy role there for many justice-rooted organizations, such as the YFUF. if it’s enough at scale where you go to Community The health and justice roots of the UA movement are clearly Capital or Opening Doors and say, “Hey, we got 10 linked through these organizations’ shared appreciation for entrepreneurs in the queue for this. Why don’t you restoring people’s connection to the soil—a connection sev- develop a cohort to really get some content expertise ered by industrial agriculture—through embodied individual and collective experiences of UA. 1 3 Unearthing the entangled roots of urban agriculture 217 Acknowledgements The authors wish to acknowledge the generosity On the other hand, as we have seen, the taproots of UA of the urban agriculture movement leaders in Sacramento for sharing projects are embedded in different racial matrices, in ways their stories and insights to form the basis of the paper. We thank that often place them in divergent subjective and politi- Shawn Harrison, Trish Kelly, and Chanowk Yisrael for their careful cal positions. Market-rooted UA projects can potentially reading and valued comments. The authors also thank Dr. Krystyna von Henneberg of Creative Language Works for her skillful copy editing. mobilize resources to support justice- and health-rooted organizations. However, their emphasis on the market can Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attri- also limit the depth of these organizations’ transformative bution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adapta- effects on the soil of racial capitalism. True, both kinds tion, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long of UA projects seek to open spaces for people repair rup- as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes tures with the soil. However, it is important to recognize were made. The images or other third party material in this article are that the ruptures they seek to repair have been caused by included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated racially-specific histories. That is, while both white and otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in non-white residents have been distanced from the soil by the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will industrial agriculture, people of color inhabit a very differ - need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a ent ecological landscape than many white people do. Their copy of this licence, visit http://creativ ecommons .or g/licenses/b y/4.0/. relationships to racial capitalism have been shaped by deep histories of racial violence both by the state, and facilitated by the state, including centuries of expropriation and seg- References regation. More broadly, justice-rooted projects can be seen as a form of resistance to the marginalization of people Alkon, A., and J. Agyeman. 2011. Cultivating food justice: Race, class, of color in both health- and market-rooted projects, and and sustainability. 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Ramirez, M.M. 2015. The elusive inclusive: Black food geographies and racialized food spaces. Antipode 47 (3): 748–769. Reese, A.M. 2018. ‘We will not perish; We’re going to keep flourish- Jonathan K. London is an Associate Professor in the Department of ing’: Race, food access, and geographies of self-reliance. Antipode Human Ecology at the University of California, Davis (UC Davis). He 50 (2): 407–424. is also Faculty Director of the UC Davis Center for Regional Change, Reynolds, K. 2015. Disparity despite diversity: Social injustice in New and Co-Director of the Community Engagement Core in the UC Davis York City’s urban agriculture system. Antipode 47 (1): 240–259. Environmental Health Sciences Center. His research, teaching and Robinson, C.J. 2000. Black Marxism: The making of the Black radical engagement focus on environmental justice social movements and tradition. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. public policy, and employ a participatory action research approach. Saxton, A. 1995. The Indispensable enemy: Labor and the anti-Chinese movement in California. Berkeley CA: University of California Bethany B. Cutts is an Associate Professor of Human Dimensions Press. of the Environment and Geospatial Analytics in the Department of Sbicca, J. 2018. Food justice now! Deepening the roots of social strug- Parks, Recreation, and Tourism Management and Faculty Fellow, gle. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Center for Geospatial Analytics at North Carolina State University. Sbicca, J., and J.S. Myers. 2017. Food justice racial projects: Fighting Her research focuses on participatory mapping, environmental justice, racial neoliberalism from the Bay to the Big Apple. Environmen- and geovisualization. tal Sociology 3 (1): 30–41. Schwarz, K., R.V. Pouyat, and I. Yesilonis. 2016. Legacies of lead in Kirsten Schwarz is an Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Envi- charm city’s soil: Lessons from the Baltimore ecosystem study. ronmental Health Sciences at the University of California, Los Ange- International Journal of Environmental Research and Public les. She is an urban ecologist with research interests at the interface of Health 13 (2): 209. environment, equity, and health. Her research focuses on environmen- Slocum, R. 2006. Anti-racist practice and the work of community food tal hazards and amenities in cities and how their distribution impacts organizations. Antipode 38 (2): 327–349. minoritized communities. 1 3 220 J. K. London et al. Li Schmidt has a M.S. in Community Development from UC Davis. management and design, influences ecological processes. Current work She has worked in community-based food systems for over six years focuses on the metropolitan regions of Baltimore and Sacramento and and her research and work center on equity, cultural foods, and health, grasslands and high alpine of California. including as a graduate student researcher with the University of Cali- fornia Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program. Mary L. Cadenasso is a Professor of Plant Sciences at the University of California, Davis. She is an urban and landscape ecologist and her research explores how human action on the landscape, such as 1 3

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