Research & reports

Nathan McClintock · eScholarship (California Digital Library) · United States (California)

This paper explores the rise of urban agriculture (UA) in Oakland, California, using an urban political ecology framework. A macro-level structural analysis of Oakland's history reveals how 20th-century industrial capital flows and racialized urban planning concentrated capital devaluation in the flatlands, ultimately giving rise to food deserts. The study suggests that food justice activists are mobilizing through UA to counter these uneven transformations, despite critiques that some urban garden programs are neoliberal, emphasizing self-betterment while filling state-left gaps.

Alice J. Hovorka, Damell Smith, R. van Veenhuizen · · Global

This article argues that a gendered perspective on urban food security is essential to understand dynamics shaping food production and marketing in urban centers. It highlights that failing to explore women's distinct roles risks leaving gender inequities and food supply hindrances unaddressed, countering the invisibility of women's work often assumed as automatic domestic duties. The article emphasizes women's significant role in domestic food supply, even in societies with minimal household food production, citing examples like Latin American women organizing to address urban hunger.

C. Clare Hinrichs, Kathy S. Kremer · Journal of Poverty · United States

This 1997 case study examined a Midwest community supported agriculture (CSA) project that aimed to increase low-income participation through financial subsidies, using a telephone survey of 41 member-households. The study found that while subsidized households had lower incomes, the overall CSA sample was more advantaged in income, occupation, and education compared to local populations. The project inadvertently served the "advantaged" poor, indicating that social inclusion efforts in local food systems may not effectively reach the most vulnerable.

Melford Mj W. Gunderson · UND Scholarly Commons (University of North Dakota) · United States

A study of the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation and the community of Elbowoods, North Dakota (2001) describes the social disorganization and community upheaval inflicted on Native Americans by the 1954 construction of the Garrison Dam by the US Army Corps of Engineers. Flooding of thousands of acres stripped Elbowoods residents of farmland, natural shelter for people and cattle, family structure, community gardens, and a way of life that had existed for thousands of years. Drawing primarily on interviews with ten former Elbowoods residents, supplemented by newspapers, published reports, photographs, video, and congressional records, and framed through social disorganization and community theory, the study documents that the dam's construction and the resulting relocation devastated the community and forced residents to cope with and adapt to a "loss of community."

David Billings · · United States

A study of Portland, Oregon, examines claims that the well-documented benefits of community gardens are inequitably distributed across society. Portland is recognized as a sustainability leader with an abundance of community gardens and urban agriculture, yet it is also one of the whitest urban cities in the United States, where people of color — and the black community in particular — have faced a legacy of oppression and marginalization. Based on 17 in-depth interviews and extensive observation of community gardens, the research finds that the whiteness of these garden spaces functions to marginalize black individuals and contributes to the ongoing oppression of the black community. It also documents how Portland's black community engages in community gardening as a means of resisting these and broader effects of structural racism.