Cultivating the Commons:
Assessing the Potential for Urban Agriculture
on Oakland's Public Land
Here in Alameda County, California, almost one-third of the population is food insecure. An even larger number live in areas with limited access to affordable and nutritious food. Many residents of Oakland’s flatlands neighborhoods have few healthy, culturally-appropriate, or affordable food choices. Their food choices are further constrained by other factors such as purchasing power and access to transportation.
A number of food justice organizations are raising awareness of the unequal terrain of Oakland's foodscape by implementing programs to improve access to fresh produce and nutrition education in the flatlands. Urban agriculture is one of the strategies they employ and hope to expand to the large number of vacant and underutilized spaces throughout the city. This interdisciplinary research project integrates methods from urban geography, agroecology, and planning to examine the obstacles and opportunities surrounding the expansion of urban agriculture in Oakland. There are three ongoing phases of research:
Land Inventory
While urban agriculture programs and backyard gardens are thriving in Oakland, the untapped potential for growing food in the city is tremendous. Working with an advisory committee comprised of representatives from city agencies, community members, and non-profits, we inventoried vacant and underutilized public land in Oakland in order to assess its possible contribution to urban food production. Research was funded in part by a mini-grant from the HOPE Collaborative and sponsored by City Slicker Farms. Print copies of the report will be published by Food First.
We are currently working with Oakland North and Stamen Design to create an online version of the Land Locator, and with UCB Architecture Professor Nicholas de Monchaux to create visualizations of what these 495 sites might look like if farmed.
To download the entire report, click on the report's cover (to the left).
Download the Executive Summary only.
Download the Land Locator only.
Download the press release.
Soil Quality Assessment
Even if vacant and underutilized land in Oakland is abundant, soil contamination may be an obstacle to the expansion of urban agriculture at some sites. Using new data collected in the field and existing data from City Slicker Farms and the Alameda County Lead Poisoning Prevention Program, we are using GIS to map and analyze concentrations of heavy metals in Oakland's soils. At the site-scale, we hope to locate potential "hot spots" where metals levels are high enough to be of concern; similarly, at the neighborhood- and municipal-scales, we hope to identify areas in need of further assessment before food production proceeds. Additionally, we will examine a number of other soil quality indicators in order to help inform management recommendations for urban farmers. This phase of research has been funded by a pilot research grant from the Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources Analytical Lab in Davis, CA. UC Cooperative Extension Specialist Christy Getz was the co-PI.
Unearthing Urban Agriculture's Roots in Oakland
In order to understand why access to healthy food is limited in Oakland's flatlands, it is important to uncover the historical social, economic, and political forces that created Oakland's "food deserts" during the latter half of the twentieth century. Ground zero of industrialization and deindustrialization, migration, freeway construction, housing booms and busts, "blight" and redevelopment, the flatlands have been continuously shaped by flows of investment and disinvestment. This qualitative historical portion of the research project uses economic and census data, archival material, and interviews to shed light both on the political economic processes that created a landscape of unequal access to fresh, nutritious food in Oakland, and on the urban agriculture and food justice movements that have arisen in response. Preliminary results can be found in a working paper for the Institute for the Study of Social Change entitled "From Industrial Garden to Food Desert: Unearthing the Root Structure of Urban Agriculture in Oakland, California".
Mapping School Gardens
There are more then 200 school gardens in Alameda County, half of which are located in Oakland. In Summer 2009 we worked with Alameda County Cooperative Extension's School Gardens Program to map these gardens for the newly published 2009-2010 School Gardens Assessment. Download the maps here.
People
Project Leader
Nathan McClintock is a PhD candidate in geography at UC Berkeley. Broadly, he is interested in the dynamics giving rise to urban agriculture and the ways in which urban agriculture, in turn, responds to these dynamics. Overall, his goal is to conduct applied research that bridges the environmental and social sciences, innovates agricultural research, extension, and education, and contributes to the development of more a sustainable agrifood system. Future research will explore the viability of using municipal solid waste compost in urban agroecosystems both as a fertility source and means of heavy metals remediation. Also of interest is the impact of climate change on urban food systems and how ecological farming methods might increase long-term resilience and sustainability.
Nathan is a 2007 - '09 Graduate Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Social Change, a 2008 - '09 Switzer Environmental Fellow, and a 2009 - '10 CFERP Dissertation Fellow. His research interests draw on more than a decade of experience in sustainable agriculture as a researcher, trainer/instructor, journalist, consultant, and organic farmer. He has worked on agricultural development projects with the Rodale Institute in Senegal and Partners in Health in Haiti, as well as done short-term consultancies in Bangladesh, Nepal, Mali, and Mexico. He served as a Peace Corps agricultural extension volunteer in Mali, and farmed in British Columbia and North Carolina. He holds a B.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1996) and a M.S. in crop science/sustainable agriculture from North Carolina State University (2004) where he studied nutrient cycling in organic farming systems. He currently holds a seat on the Oakland Food Policy Council.
Research Assistants
Noah Bartlett is a Conservation & Resource Studies major in UC Berkeley's Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management. His research interests lie at the interface between plant biology and political economic drivers of environmental change. He will be researching plant community ecology under anthropogenic disturbance regimes at several of the sampling sites.
Jenny Cooper received her BA in geography from UC Berkeley in 2008. Her research interests include climate justice and the intersections of climate change and development. Jenny is currently a John Gardner Public Service Fellow working with the Environmental Defense Fund in Washington, DC, on international climate policy.
Thanks also to Lucy Clark and City Slicker Farms interns Katie Beaton, Joe Boone, and Nikki Witt for their help in the field.
Dissertation Committee
Nathan Sayre, Dissertation Chair (Geography)
Richard Walker (Geography)
Jason Corburn (City & Regional Planning)
Garrison Sposito (Environmental Science, Policy & Management)
Miguel Altieri (Environmental Science, Policy & Management)
Research funded by:
HOPE CollaborativeCity Slicker Farms
ANR Analytical Lab
Institute for the Study of Social Change
Robert and Patricia Switzer Foundation
Community Forestry and Environmental Research Partnerships
Contact:
Nathan McClintock
University of California, Berkeley
Department of Geography
507 McCone Hall, #4740
Berkeley, CA 94720
Email: mcclintock (at) Berkeley (dot) edu
