Back to the Roots: Memory, Inequality, and Urban Agriculture 9780813590189

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Back to the Roots ;

Nature, Society, and Culture

Scott Frickel, Series Editor A sophisticated and wide-­ranging so­cio­log­i­cal lit­er­a­ture analyzing nature-­society-­culture interactions has blossomed in recent de­cades. This book series provides a platform for showcasing the best of that scholarship: carefully crafted empirical studies of socio-­ environmental change and the effects such change has on ecosystems, social institutions, historical pro­cesses, and cultural practices. The series aims for topical and theoretical breadth. Anchored in so­cio­log­i­cal analyses of the environment, Nature, Society, and Culture is home to studies employing a range of disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives and investigating the pressing socio-­ environmental questions of our time—­from environmental in­equality and risk, to the science and politics of climate change and serial disaster, to the environmental c­ auses and consequences of urbanization and war making, and beyond. For a list of all the titles in the series, please see the last page of the book.

Back to the Roots ; Memory, In­equality, and Urban Agriculture

S a r a S h o s ta k

Rutgers U niversity Press New Bru nswick, Camden, and Newark, New Jersey, and London

 Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data Names: Shostak, Sara, author. Title: Back to the roots: memory, in­equality, and urban agriculture / Sara Shostak. Description: New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, [2021] | Series: Nature, society, and culture | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020035570 | ISBN 9780813590141 (paperback) | ISBN 9780813590158 (cloth) | ISBN 9780813590165 (epub) | ISBN 9780813590172 (mobi) | ISBN 9780813590189 (pdf) Subjects: LCSH: Urban agriculture—­Mas­sa­chu­setts. Classification: LCC S494.5.U72 S56 2021 | DDC 630.9173/209744—­dc23 LC rec­ord available at https://­lccn​.­loc​.­gov​/­2020035570 A British Cataloging-­in-­Publication rec­ord for this book is available from the British Library. Copyright © 2021 by Sara Shostak All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 106 Somerset Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901. The only exception to this prohibition is “fair use” as defined by U.S. copyright law. The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—­Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992. www​.­rutgersuniversitypress​.­org Manufactured in the United States of Amer­i­ca

 For my beloved, Matt Glaser

Contents



Introduction ​ ​ ​1



1

Cultivating the Commonwealth ​ ​ ​18



2

The Powers of Food ​ ​ ​48

3

Lineages and Land ​ ​ ​76

4

Stories of the Soil ​ ​ ​99

5

Urban ­Futures ​ ​ ​120





Conclusion ​ ​ ​146



Epilogue ​ ​ ​158 Appendix A: Into the Field: Data and Methods ​ ​ ​161 Appendix B: Research and Reflexivity ​ ​ ​167 Acknowl­edgments ​ ​ ​175 Notes ​ ​ ​179 References ​ ​ ​201 Index ​ ​ ​213

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Introduction

On September 28, 2015, the Urban Farming Institute of Boston (UFI), Historic Boston Inc. (HBI), and the Trust for Public Land (TPL) celebrated the groundbreaking for their ambitious revitalization of the Fowler Clark Epstein Farm (FCE Farm).1 Located in the Boston neighborhood of Mattapan, the FCE Farm is among the oldest remaining agrarian sites in the Commonwealth of Mas­sa­ chu­setts. At the time that HBI purchased the property, its hundreds-­years-­old buildings ­were falling apart, and the land, which had not been farmed in de­cades, was strewn with garbage and debris. Two years l­ater, when the FCE Farm opened its doors, and its fields, as “a 21st ­century urban farm, residence, and teaching center,” Boston mayor Martin Walsh proclaimed, “What you see ­here is history, what you see ­here is public health, what you see ­here is open space, what you see ­here is job training . . . ​[and] a symbol of Boston’s ­f uture.”2 Mayor Walsh’s comments seem to suggest that we all see the same “history” at the FCE Farm. As we look at its painstakingly restored historic buildings, this may appear to be a relatively straightforward claim. Back to the Roots demonstrates, rather, that the aspects of the past we encounter not only at the FCE Farm, but at urban farming sites across the Commonwealth of Mas­sa­chu­setts, are complex, multilayered, and profoundly consequential for con­temporary cities and neighborhoods. Indeed, all of the impor­tant issues that Mayor Walsh highlighted at the opening of the FCE Farm—­public health, access to land, job opportunities—­ require that we grapple with how the materiality and meanings of the past continue to shape the lives and life chances of urban residents. A central thesis of this book is that urban agriculture has become a critical site for recollecting and making vis­i­ble both past-­and present-­tense inequalities, thereby opening up the possibility of new forms of reclamation, reparation, and re­sis­tance. To be sure, compared to other urban farms in Mas­sa­chu­setts, the FCE Farm is unique in its centuries-­long history as a farm.3 As we ­will see, urban farms are 1

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more often built on vacant lots and/or on brownfields whose histories are long buried.4 Likewise, the presence of historic agrarian buildings at the FCE Farm is aty­pi­cal; when urban farming advocates talk about “repurposing” buildings, they more often are referring to the possibility of using long ago abandoned factories or ware­houses for indoor growing. Nonetheless, the FCE Farm offers us a jumping-­off place for understanding how the interwoven pasts of ­people and places, and their con­temporary consequences, may be found in urban agriculture ­today.

Finding the Past at the FCE Farm The Boston Landmarks Commission (BLC) report provides a remarkable formal history of the site that is now the FCE Farm (2005). Based on the BLC research, we know that in the late 1700s, Stephen Fowler, a veteran of the American Revolution, left his 330-­acre estate in the town of Dorchester to his son Stephen Jr. and his grand­sons Samuel, Stephen III, and Jesse. The farm­house was built by Samuel Fowler sometime between 1786 and 1806, when it first appears in city rec­ ords. When Samuel Fowler died, he left an 11¼-­acre parcel with “all the buildings thereon” to his wife, Mary; she, in turn, sold it to her son, Samuel Fowler Jr. Over time, the land was subdivided further, with some lots inherited by ­family members and ­others sold at auction to other Dorchester yeomen. In 1837, Henry and Mary Clark bought a parcel that included a “mantion [sic] ­house and barn”; they built the carriage ­house that now stands at the site around 1860. Agricultural production in the area continued ­until well into the nineteenth ­century. In 1870, Boston annexed the town of Dorchester and the farmlands of Mattapan, which both became Boston neighborhoods. Beginning in the 1890s, as electric streetcars made the outlying agricultural districts of Boston more easily accessible, this land became desirable to developers (Warner 1978). Between 1910 and 1918, Mary Clark and her son, James Henry Clark, followed the lead of many Dorchester landowners, subdividing their roughly twelve-­acre estate into sixty-­one lots, the majority of which they sold. Houses, including the triple-­ deckers that are characteristic of Boston’s outer neighborhoods, w ­ ere built on what had been their fields, as well as on ­t hose of their neighbors. It is this well-­documented agricultural history, along with the buildings on the property, that made it pos­si­ble for the Boston Landmarks Commission to confer landmark status on what is now the FCE Farm. As noted in the site study that preceded the landmark designation: “The Fowler-­Clark farm reflects Dorchester’s rich agricultural history, with a long line of yeoman tilling the land. . . . ​The ­house and stable that comprise the Fowler-­Clark farm are outstanding examples of vernacular architecture reflective of Boston’s agricultural past. . . . ​Such intact properties are exceedingly rare and highly valuable for study” (Boston Landmarks Commission 2005, 9–15).5 It is this history that qualified the site for state

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and federal historic rehabilitation tax credits and earned it a place on the National Register of Historic Places.6 It is the preservation of this history that has received awards from the Mas­sa­chu­setts Historical Commission.7 At the same time, the farm is embedded in more recent histories of the city of Boston and its neighborhoods. In 1940, James Henry Clark sold the remaining acre and a half to the Hunt ­family, who held the property for just a year before selling it to Jorge Epstein. At this time, the neighborhoods of Dorchester, Roxbury, and Mattapan ­were centers of Boston’s Jewish community; Mattapan, in par­tic­u­lar, was home to many working-­class Jewish families. Epstein was a jeweler, with a shop on nearby Blue Hill Ave­nue, then a bustling business district (H. Levine and Harmon 1993). Over time, Epstein also developed an architectural salvage business, Old Mansions Com­pany, which boomed as the Boston Redevelopment Authority began to implement its controversial vision for urban renewal (Vrabel 2014; Warner 1987). As the city demolished older buildings—­ and, indeed, destroyed entire neighborhoods (Gans 1962)—­Epstein took advantage of the opportunity to salvage mantels, win­dows, doors, moldings, pottery, cupolas, turrets, and other materials. While he sold some of ­these, reportedly for a handsome profit, he also installed many artifacts as part of the land around the farm­house, where he lived with his wife, Ida, and their ­children.8 Beginning in the 1950s, and accelerating in the 1960s, Mattapan was among the Boston neighborhoods most devastated by blockbusting, redlining, and white flight (Gamm 1999). As is well documented by urban historians, real estate agents deployed racist tropes to encourage panic selling by white homeowners, and then bought their properties for far below their market value (H. Levine and Harmon 1993). At the same time, the Boston Banks Urban Renewal Group (BBURG) made federally guaranteed home mortgage funds available to low-­ income African American families interested in living in Mattapan as well as adjacent sections of Dorchester and Roxbury (Gamm 1999). African American families, in turn, ­were taken advantage of by real estate speculators and negligent inspectors, who often performed only cursory evaluations of properties for sale and failed to identify necessary repairs. When families sought loans for ­t hese repairs, they ­were often denied; if they fell ­behind on their mortgage payments, the banks quickly foreclosed. By 1974, half of the African American families in Mattapan had been shut out of their homes (Vrabel 2014). As buildings fell into disrepair—or ­were lost to arson—­vacant lots appeared throughout the neighborhood (Warner 1987).9 During this time, racial tensions and vio­lence wracked Mattapan, and nearly all of the remaining Jewish residents left (H. Levine and Harmon 1993). The Epsteins, however, stayed in their home, where Ida and one of her sons resided even ­after Jorge’s death in 1998. In 1999, Ida, then an eighty-­one-­year-­old ­widow, spoke proudly of staying in Mattapan, explaining that she liked her neighbors and was not interested in relinquishing her home of fifty-­seven years; eventually,

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however, her health deteriorated, and she and her son moved out (Clark 2015).10 In 2005, the ­lawyer for the f­ amily’s estate petitioned the city to demolish the buildings so that the property could be sold to a developer.11 In 2006, however, the Boston Landmarks Commission designated the buildings on site as landmarks, mandating their preservation. In 2013, the city seized the property, alleging extensive neglect, deterioration of historically significant buildings, and years of arrears on tax bills. The city’s letter to the l­ awyer for the f­ amily trust described the property as “an overgrown dumping ground infested with rodents” that “represented serious sanitary and building code violations.”12 With the goal of preserving the site, the city eventually allowed the ­family’s trust to redeem it and then sell it to HBI.13 Of course, the Epsteins’ neighbors ­were well aware of the deterioration of the property. As one recalled, “It looked like a dumping ground with old, rattled buildings . . . ​it was tattered and dirty; folks threw trash in ­there. ­There ­were weeds everywhere, and piles of broken stones.” Similarly, State Representative Russell Holmes recalled, “When I first got elected, this was the place where every­one . . . ​just came over and dumped in.”14 In the context of a neighborhood that did not feel “seen” or supported by city government, many saw the derelict property as yet another sign that “the city had abandoned us” (Field notes, February 2016). Mattapan ­today is a vibrant neighborhood that ­faces a myriad of consequences from de­cades of racialized stigma, marginalization, and disinvestment. Mattapan has one of the lowest median ­house­hold incomes in Boston15 and among the highest rates of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and ­children’s emergency department visits for asthma (Boston Public Health Commission 2016–2017). Since the 1970s, it has become a majority Black neighborhood, home to many recent immigrants from the Ca­rib­bean, as well as African American residents; many of Mattapan’s businesses are owned by first-­generation immigrants.16 Mattapan hosts a rich array of community-­based organ­izations that seek to “draw on the wonderful ethnic and cultural diversity of the Mattapan community to promote a healthy living environment”17 and ­counter negative ste­reo­t ypes of the neighborhood, including ­t hose perpetuated by local media.18 For example, the Mattapan Food and Fitness Co­a li­tion (MFFC) is a community-­based organ­ization led by African American and Ca­rib­bean ­women from the neighborhood who have expertise in nonprofit management, nutrition and diet, community and ­family engagement, and child and youth development. The MFFC partners with neighborhood residents, including youth, to create a time when “Mattapan w ­ ill become known as one of the healthiest communities in Boston, with easy access to affordable and healthy food options. Our streets ­will be clean, safe, walk-­able, and bike-­able. Our residents of all ages and abilities ­will take regular advantage of the abundant and inviting play spaces and recreational opportunities.”19 In recent years, community organ­izing in Mattapan has also focused on housing

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Figure I.1. ​The Fowler Clark Epstein Farm. Photo credit: Sara Shostak

and tenants’ rights, as many residents fear that the neighborhood is at high risk for gentrification. The challenges facing Mattapan, and community-­based efforts to address them, shape the meanings of the FCE Farm. Speaking at the opening of the FCE Farm in 2018, Patricia Spence, the executive director of the UFI, who grew up nearby and remembers riding her bike past the farm as a child, expressed hope that the farm would be a “healing landscape” that ­w ill “help us heal our community, bring our community together and help us help each other.”20 Vivien Morris, the founder of the MFFC, stated that the restored farm ­w ill be a ­great boon to the area by improving access to fresh food that is culturally relevant for the community.21 This is especially impor­tant in a neighborhood that has become home to so many recent immigrants. In fact, as we ­w ill see, across Mas­sa­chu­setts, urban farms and gardens have emerged as a critical resource for individuals who wish to stay connected to the foodways and herbal healing practices of their cultures. Indeed, even as it is located in the history of the land, the neighborhood, and its residents, the FCE Farm is embedded also in the collective pasts and identities of the ­people who farm—­and who are learning to farm—­there ­today. It serves as the flagship headquarters of the UFI (see figure I.1), a person of color–­led organ­ ization22 that seeks “to develop and promote urban farming as a commercial sec-

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tor that creates green collar jobs for residents; and to engage urban communities in building a healthier and more locally based food system.”23 As highlighted on the UFI’s website, its varied programs are meant to serve as “a springboard for individuals” for whom “traditional job models do not work,” a means of bringing ­people “closer to food production,” and a mechanism for heightening “the awareness around public policy that has impacts in the community.” UFI’s farms and programs orient especially to the Boston neighborhoods of Dorchester, Roxbury, and Mattapan, home to communities of color that long have been “underrepresented” and have “critical needs” in regard to both healthy food access and employment.24 As part of its commitment to turning vacant lots into collective opportunity for neighborhood farmers, the UFI helped to found the first community land trust for urban farmland. Further, as part of its work training “the next generation of urban farmers,” the UFI has created space for reclaiming the history of Black farmers. This pro­cess of reclamation includes reconsidering relationships to the land as both a site of suffering and a means of liberation (Field notes, February 2017; see also Penniman 2018; White 2018).25 As we can see at the FCE Farm, and as we ­w ill explore further in the following pages, the histories encountered at con­temporary urban farming proj­ects across the Commonwealth of Mas­sa­chu­setts uncover and make vis­i­ble connections between a myriad of times, places, and p ­ eoples. In part, this happens ­because of the materiality of urban farming, most especially the need for land and soil. In Mas­sa­chu­setts’s postindustrial cities, many urban farming sites contain the sediments of industry and its demise. Other sites, especially vacant lots, represent legacies of municipal neglect and environmental racism as well as loci of neighborhood mobilization and collective hope. The histories of some sites may be recovered in archives, while ­others can only be pieced together from the stories of longtime neighborhood residents. Some of t­hese histories are uncovered only upon the discovery of toxic traces of the past embedded in the soil. No doubt, some remain buried. Moreover, urban farmers and gardeners bring to t­hese sites their collective identities and memories. In their conversations amid the vegetables and herbs growing in their raised beds—­and also, for example, at events focused on the history of Black urban farmers, in debates at neighborhood meetings about who should pay for the material legacies of environmental racism, and in controversies about the costs of high-­tech growing systems—­urban farmers and gardeners call attention to the deep histories of in­equality that have given shape to their cities and neighborhoods and to the lives and life chances of their residents. They also reclaim knowledge and practices related to farming, food, and healing that are rooted in places and times far away from their current cultivations. Drawing on a multiyear and multisited ethnography of urban farming in Mas­sa­chu­setts (see appendix A), Back to the Roots demonstrates that urban agriculture is a space in which individuals and institutions are encountering the

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meanings and materiality of the past and grappling with their consequences for the pre­sent and the f­uture. It theorizes gardens and farms, harvest festivals, and cooking classes as places that are profoundly ­shaped by multiple social histories and how they are recollected. Indeed, although many urban farmers celebrate growing food as a way of reconnecting with nature, neither plants and herbs nor the soil in which they are planted are simply part of the “natu­ral world.”26 Rather, they carry deeply held meanings linked to p ­ eople and to places, both urban and rural, past and pre­sent. As we ­w ill see, the meaning and materiality of the past can be found interwoven at the center of controversies about urban agriculture as well as in hopeful visions of its ­f uture.

An Urban (Agri)Culturalist Approach At the center of Back to the Roots are questions about how cultural meanings and material legacies of the past are unearthed, encountered, reclaimed, and reconfigured in and through the practices of urban agriculture. Back to the Roots asks how “the stories that we tell each other about the past shape the material world” (Jordan 2015, 2) and also how the material world shapes the stories we tell each other about the past, pre­sent, and ­f uture. It thereby calls attention to the importance of collective memory, broadly understood as “the active past that forms our identities” (Olick and Robbins 1998, 111), and its consequences for con­temporary urban practices and policy. It centers memory proj­ects, and the act of recollection, as critical focuses for the fields of urban sociology, environmental studies, and public health. Sociologists distinguish between history and memory, contending that “history is the remembered past to which we no longer have an organic relation—­ the past that is no longer an impor­tant part of our lives,” such that “memory inevitably gives way to history as we lose touch with our pasts” (Olick and Robbins 1998, 111). Similarly, the boundary between memory and history is defined by the move from lived experience to practices of preserving and transmitting identities and cultures that might vanish without commemoration (Halbwachs 1992, 78–83; see also Nora and Kritzman 1996). That is not to say that we cannot claim a relationship to history; rather, “we can celebrate even what we did not directly experience, keeping the given past alive for us” (Olick and Robbins 1998, 111). Indeed, communities can be understood as “in an impor­tant sense . . . ​ constituted by their past” (Bellah et al. 1985, 153; see also Zerubavel 2003). The act of remembering “helps community stick together in certain ways and break apart in ­others” (Zelizer 1995, 219). It is clear also that the pre­sent gives salience to dif­fer­ent aspects of the past, as “the memory of the past is rooted in the pre­sent” (della Porta et al. 2018, 160) and “dif­fer­ent ele­ments of the past become more or less relevant as . . . ​circumstances and prob­lems change” (Schwartz 1996, 909). That is, even as “the remembered

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past molds the pre­sent . . . ​recollections of that past are s­ haped by present-­day concerns” (Griffin and Bollen 2009, 602). For example, pre­sent events may reactivate and reanimate apparently dormant histories whose meanings may previously have seemed fixed (Bearman, Faris, and Moody 1999) and establish new connections between seemingly disparate realms of history (Schwartz 1996). Relatedly, memory can be a site of contestation, as “agents of memory” strug­gle over “how to interpret the past, who should be remembered, and the form that a historical narrative ­ought to take” (Jansen 2007, 959). Th ­ ese contestations, as well, have implications for the ­future as “we create and critique worlds through stories we tell about the past” (­Reese 2019, 69). A fascinating lit­er­a­ture in urban sociology explores the role of memory, in par­tic­u ­lar, and culture, more broadly, in revitalizing cities. ­These studies suggest that “as a source of images and memories, it [memory] symbolizes ‘who belongs’ in specific places . . . ​[and] it plays a prominent role in urban redevelopment strategies based on historical preservation of local ‘heritage’ ” (Zukin 1995, 1). Culture, in this sense, becomes a resource for urban growth machines (Logan and Molotch 1992), supporting the transformation of cities into centers of consumption, with specific place-­based identities or “brands,” often linked to art or ­music (Greenberg 2008; Wynn 2015; Zukin 1989). Such strategies may rework the physical structure of cities as “dormant manufacturing zones and . . . ​ unique and unused places” are transformed into entertainment zones (Wynn 2015, 25). New York City’s meatpacking district, with its high-­end restaurants and vibrant nightlife, is a much cited and oft-­criticized example of how historic places can be remade as centers of consumption where “the ambiance of authenticity” serves the interest of development (Zukin 1991, 51; see also Halle and Tiso 2014; Zukin 2010). Development, in turn, often contributes to gentrification, which may include the displacement of the very “old timers” whose stories are commodified in efforts to “recapture the value of a place” (Zukin 1991, 191–194; see also Brown-­Saracino 2006; Tissot 2015). Less attention has been paid, however, to how urban proj­ects and policies outside of the strategies of urban growth coalitions—­indeed, even in opposition to them—­may build on cultural meanings and collective memories that are impor­ tant parts of how we experience cities, their neighborhoods, and our places within them. This is perhaps due to the assumption that efforts to engage urban cultural meanings and memories can only be opportunistic, “overly selective invocations of history” (Paulsen 2007, 2) or “false gods” in the name of which developers act “in the end, growing nothing so valuable as their own private fortunes” (Katz 2010, 28; see also Gotham 2007; Greenberg 2008; Zukin 1995). Recently, however, sociologists have begun to call for greater attention to the multiple pro­ cesses through which “cities are indelibly s­haped by memory” (Hunter, Loughran, and Fine 2018, 330; see also Small 2004; Sampson 2013). The concept of “memory politics” refers to “po­liti­cal contests over the use of shared

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community history” (Hunter, Loughran and Fine 2018, 331). Theoretically, “memory politics” offers a lens for explaining “how both branding and opposition efforts derive their legitimacy from cultural associations among history, community, and place”; importantly, it “also opens up for analy­sis the actions and interests of groups located outside of ‘growth machines’ as traditionally understood” (Hunter, Loughran, and Fine 2018, 331). Indeed, as anthropologist Ashanté ­Reese powerfully demonstrates, how p ­ eople imagine the past “provide[s] impor­tant data for understanding the social change p ­ eople would like to see” (2019, 90). Building on ­these insights, Back to the Roots takes seriously how the rich cultural meanings linked to urban agriculture—­including the meanings of food and farming, rural and urban, cities and their neighborhoods—­“reflect sincere efforts of individuals and groups to connect their lives to a meaningful past” (Paulsen 2007, 2); establish bases for social identities based on food (DeSoucey 2016; Jordan 2015), farming, and/or proximity to the natu­ral world (Bell 1994; Fine 1998; Jerolmack 2013); and advance specific notions of au­then­tic and desirable community development (Stanton 2006; Wherry 2011) and urban f­utures (Jonason 2019). It attends carefully to the role of memory in mobilizations “from below,” that is, on the relatively understudied ways that memory features in “contestations that emerge around po­liti­cal economic restructuring, racial segregation, poverty, and other issues” (Loughran, Fine, and Hunter 2015, 198). In so ­doing, Back to the Roots demonstrates that urban agriculture has become a critical arena for explorations of, and challenges to, the long-­standing and systemic inequalities that shape Mas­sa­chu­setts cities and their neighborhoods.

“Our Food Holds Our Story” As is evident in recent newspaper articles, tele­v i­sion shows, award-­w inning cookbooks, and memoirs, food is very much at the center of con­temporary proj­ects of remembering, providing a mechanism for telling stories about the past, making connections between ­people and places, and articulating visions of hoped-­for ­f utures.27 Food is intrinsic not only to individual memories but to collective memories; it is “part of the collective identities of communities, diasporas, and nations” (Jordan 2015, 36). Recent memoirs and cookbooks—­many of which combine individual narratives, social histories, and r­ ecipes—­use food as a means of exploring pasts marked by profound disruptions, dislocations, trauma, and loss, including slavery (Twitty 2017), settler colonialism (Sherman and Dooley 2018), and war (Ceizadlo 2012). To wit, in his extraordinary account of African American culinary history, Michael  W. Twitty explains that, for African Americans, “the food is in many cases all we have, all we can go to in order to feel our way into our past” (2017, 21).28 Scholars have emphasized dif­fer­ent aspects of food in their accounts of its unique capacity as a carrier of memory. Central to t­ hese analyses is how food

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makes material relationships between nature and culture, places and p ­ eople, and past, pre­sent, and f­ uture (Jordan 2015). In her beautiful elaboration of “edible memory,” sociologist Jennifer Jordan explores the “intertwining of botanical, social, and edible worlds” that vests specific foods, such as heirloom tomatoes and antique apples, with “nostalgic ideas about the past” (2015, 26). As Jordan demonstrates, the way that both individuals and social groups vest food with memory and meaning has profound consequences, shaping agricultural biodiversity, landscapes, and local and global food systems. Another conceptualization of the connections among food, place, and culture is the French notion of terroir, which refers to “the ways that the natu­ral environment, including soil and climate, shapes a food’s special qualities and unique taste” (DeSoucey 2016, 28; see also Beriss 2019).29 In her incisive study of the “gastropolitics” of foie gras, sociologist Micheala DeSoucey demonstrates that the concept of terroir is imbricated with specific aspects of national identity, including the “virtuousness and innocence of the French countryside,” as represented by the image of the paysan farmer (2016, 72).30 Terroir, therefore, can be seen as including both the physical and social history of a place, its materiality and its meanings. Seeds also carry both ge­ne­tic material and meanings forward through time. Studies of seed savers have emphasized how seeds become the carriers of stories, a material basis for cultural transmission (Carolan 2011; Jordan 2015). For example, Jordan describes how in addition to gathering (and distributing) “more than two thousand va­ri­e­ties of seeds well adapted to the dry conditions of the Southwest,” Native Seeds/SEARCH also has established a “Cultural Memory Bank . . . ​ collecting in vari­ous ways the stories of the seeds as well as growers’ firsthand knowledge of techniques of cultivation, preparation, and preservation” (Jordan 2015, 56, emphasis added). Reading the stories that travel with seeds can draw one into “other worlds, other times, and places” (Jordan 2015, 56). In contrast with the more celebratory valence of terroir, stories that travel with seeds—­like ­those I encountered among many urban farmers in Mas­sa­chu­setts—­often bear witness to injustice, displacement, and loss. Back to the Roots extends ­these insights, demonstrating the centrality of both food and its production—­for example, urban agricultural practices—to con­temporary proj­ects of recollection and remembrance.31 It insists that we attend si­mul­ta­neously to the meanings and material practices of urban farming and their connections to both ­people and places, past and pre­sent. Importantly, while it examines how urban agriculture is taken up in narratives and practices associated with gentrification, Back to the Roots also highlights narratives that center pro­cesses of reclamation, reparation, and re­sis­tance. In order to gain insight into the memories and meanings interwoven in and through material practices of urban agriculture, I focus on the narratives of the growing ranks of con­temporary urban farmers. As sociologist Robert Wuth-

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now observes in his poignant study of Amer­i­ca’s rural farm families, “The way to gain an understanding of what farm life means, short of farming oneself, is to listen to farmers tell their stories” (2015, 8, emphasis added). As we ­w ill see, this is no less true in cities. Indeed, from a so­cio­log­i­cal perspective, narratives offer us a way into understanding the connections between ­people, places, and practices. Narratives are “never mere lists—­assemblages of dates or facts—­put together without logic or motivation. Rather they are selective accounts with beginnings and endings, constructed to create meanings, interpret real­ity, or­ga­nize events in time, establish coherency and continuity, construct identities, enable social action, and to construct the world and its moral and social order for its audience” (Vinitzky-­ Seroussi 2002, 35). Consequently, narratives provide an impor­tant win­dow onto “how individuals view themselves in relation to ­others and . . . ​construct social identities” (Small, Harding, and Lamont 2010, 17). Through narratives, individuals select and order events in ways that help them give meaning to the experiences of their lives (Riessman 1993). Narratives are consequential to individual and group identities, in part “­because individuals choose actions that are consistent with their personal identities and personal narratives” (Small, Harding, and Lamont 2010, 17). At the same time, narratives can “create the glue that binds ­people together in networks, providing them with a sense of history, common ground, and f­uture” (Lejano, Ingram, and Ingram 2013, 2). Indeed, the identities of both persons and places “depend on the existence of resonant narratives” (Hunter, Loughran, and Fine 2018, 344). Consequently, narratives have a myriad of implications for identity and action. Narratives about places—­their histories, identities, and ­futures—­can be multiple and contested, created and martialed by both “insiders” and “outsiders,” elites and organizers, and in the interest of both transformation and preservation (Brown-­Saracino and Parker 2017; Small 2004). How p ­ eople experience their neighborhoods, for example, is s­haped by their memories; understandings of local histories and residents’ recollections of past strug­gles are often embedded in the emplaced narratives of cities and their neighborhoods (Aptekar 2017; Sampson 2012; Small 2004). Likewise, “collective historical memory and longing for the past” can be understood as a part of how neighborhoods confront collective challenges, such as structural barriers to food access (­Reese 2019, 90). At the same time, outsiders’ narratives about places, often reproduced in local media, can contribute to lingering negative reputations, despite the best efforts of neighborhood residents to challenge place-­based stigmas (Wherry 2011). As such, narratives offer a means of examining how and why p ­ eople see places differently, and with what consequences. Moreover, narratives orient not only to place, but to time. By definition, narratives draw on the past. Indeed, one conventional understanding of narrative defines it as a sequence of nonrandom past events connected to each other in a

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way that schematizes the meaning for the listener or reader (T. Smith 2007). To attend to narratives is to ask questions about how the meanings of events are ­shaped by their position in a series of events (Abbott 2001; Bearman, Faris, and Moody 1999). Narratives can also provide a win­dow onto visions of the f­ uture, “­whether in the form of full-­blown utopian or ideological narratives, or more fragmentary, vague, and partially formulated scenarios,” which may serve as “maps for actions” in the pre­sent (Mische 2014, 444). For example, ­Reese suggests that “embedded” in narratives we may find the “necessary seeds for growing a radically dif­fer­ent food system” (2019, 5). Relatedly, communications scholar Garrett Broad contends that successful food justice organ­izing must “be driven by local storytelling about food and justice—­conversations that emerge from lived experience and historical realities, are rooted in place, and are grounded in community-­based collaboration” (2016, 26). As we ­w ill see, attending to where and how urban agriculture appears in dif­fer­ent kinds of narratives—­a nd the points at which ­t hose narratives themselves begin and/ or conclude—­can help us make sense of how it has become impor­tant, for varied reasons, to so many social actors. My attention to narratives also reflects practices of urban farmers and gardeners who explic­itly emphasize the importance of stories in their work. As an urban farmer from Lowell put it, “When ­you’re urban farming, ­you’re not just farming . . . ​­you’re listening to your neighbors . . . ​you ­really have to listen to ­people’s stories about growing tomatoes” (Field notes, UFC 2014). Further, I take seriously the perspective of farmers who see stories as interwoven with the materiality of food and farming. As one example, the motto of Groundwork Somerville’s World Crops Proj­ect—­which engages mentor farmers from the community to teach young ­people how to grow nutritious, culturally relevant food—is “Our food holds our story” (see chapter 2). To attend to narratives requires that we pay attention to the characters, plot structures, and meta­phors impor­tant to their telling. It is from a power­f ul and multidimensional meta­phor that this book takes its name.32

Back to the Roots The growing season in Mas­sa­chu­setts begins in green­houses, where seeds are nestled into tiny compartments in plastic trays to begin their lives. Once the ground has thawed and the threat of frost has subsided, seedlings are transferred into the fields. Putting the ­actual, material roots of plants into the ground is an essential part of farming. Urban farmers also use “roots” as a meta­phor to describe several intertwined aspects of their motivations and experiences, each of which has a dif­fer­ent tie to the past. ­These include reconnecting with nature, reclaiming complex and often painful collective pasts, and confronting urban inequalities. As we w ­ ill see, ­t hese meta­phorical roots are deeply intertwined in

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con­temporary urban agriculture. Consequently, they wind their way through each of the chapters of Back to the Roots. First, roots provide a power­ful meta­phor for connection to the land and to nature. Many urban farmers celebrate urban farms and gardens—­and, relatedly, “getting your hands in the dirt”—as a means of reconnecting with “the natu­ral world,” even while living in the city. This meaning of “roots” is connected to broader cultural beliefs about connection to nature as an “innate need” that enables urban dwellers to be in relationship to “creation,” “transcend the ills of society,” and “find fuller meaning in their lives” (Jerolmack 2013,104; Gibson 2009).33 Similar to the urban gardens of the past (Lawson 2005), ­today’s urban agriculture si­mul­ta­neously relies upon deep cultural assumptions about “the city” and “the country” (R. Williams 1973), “urban” and “rural” lifestyles (Bell 1994), “grey” and “green” ways of being in the world (Angelo 2017; Wachsmuth and Angelo 2018). At the same time, Black, Indigenous, and P ­ eople of Color (BIPOC) farmers articulate relationships to nature and the land as an impor­ tant form of healing, especially for p ­ eoples who have been forcibly removed from and denied access to land (Penniman 2018). As we ­w ill see, ­t hese narratives emerge, in dif­fer­ent ways, across urban agriculture proj­ects, and they are at the heart of controversies about high-­tech vertical growing systems being built in renovated ware­houses and repurposed shipping containers. To begin, then, the title of this book, Back to the Roots, gestures ­toward the strong motivations of urban farmers and gardeners to reconnect with the land and to be in healing relationships with nature. Relatedly, through urban farming, p ­ eople connect with aspects of the past and express deeply felt collective identities that are grounded in an array of rural and urban places. A second meaning of “roots” emerges from narratives that describe growing food in the city as a means of reclaiming collective histories and identities linked to food and farming. As we ­w ill see, ­t here are multiple versions of t­ hese narratives. One version, offered most often by white urban farmers, harkens back to the small, family-­owned farm as embodiment of the ideals of “demo­cratic agrarianism” (B. Cohen 2009; King et al. 2018) and an alternative to the industrialization of the food system. In the narratives of more recent immigrants who have arrived in Mas­sa­chu­setts’s cities from Asia, Africa, and Latin Amer­i­ca, urban agriculture promises a way to stay connected to the foodways and herbal knowledge of their countries of origin (Hondagneu-­Sotelo 2014; Shostak and Guscott 2017). Moreover, in Mas­sa­chu­setts and beyond, BIPOC farmers and gardeners are excavating the historical relationships among farming, oppression, and re­sis­tance and making critical connections between the brutal racial history of the United States and its con­temporary social, economic, and health consequences (Penniman 2018; White 2018). From this perspective, urban agriculture is a means of community sovereignty and survival that includes “owning our own land, growing our own food, educating

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our own youth, participating in our own health care and justice systems,” and reclaiming African agricultural wisdom (Penniman 2018, 8). ­Today’s urban agriculture also is rooted deeply in the histories of postindustrial northeastern cities and the ongoing inequalities that shape them. To be sure, cities and the con­sul­tants who design their branding narratives often valorize specific aspects of local history linked to food and farming. The material practices of urban farming, however, unearth less easily commodified aspects of the past, including the toxic legacies of postindustrial cities and their neighborhoods. For example, soil contamination bears witness both to the history of industry and its collapse. In Boston, urban farmers make connections between the patterning of vacant lots and local histories of blockbusting, redlining, and arson in neighborhoods that ­were never rebuilt. Both histories have led to per­ sis­tent and painful challenges to the lives and life chances of urban residents, including inequities in access to healthy and affordable food. Thus, the title Back to the Roots gestures, third, to how urban farmers and gardeners call attention to the roots of in­equality in cities and their neighborhoods, as well as in the food system itself. As we w ­ ill see, focusing on root c­ auses of in­equality raises challenging questions about how to ensure that urban agriculture serves to increase justice and equity, commitments that define the missions of many community-­ based urban farming organ­izations. In the following chapters, Back to the Roots examines urban agriculture as an arena in which varied stakeholders seek to reconnect with the land, reclaim and repair collective histories and identities, and remediate the legacies of in­equality that “haunt” postindustrial cities. It explores the power­f ul mixture of meanings, memories, and materiality that undergirds urban agriculture as “a marketable image, a nostalgic background evoking the preindustrialized city and countryside . . . ​[and] a panacea to relieve con­temporary ills” (Imbert 2015, 9). ­Toward ­these ends, each chapter of Back to the Roots explores a dif­fer­ent kind of narrative. They ask you to travel not just to urban agriculture proj­ects across Mas­sa­chu­setts’s cities, but also to look backward and forward in time, as urban farmers confront the past and seek to shape the ­future.

Plan of the Work Chapter 1 provides an overview of the field of urban agriculture in the United States and an introduction to the Mas­sa­chu­setts cities where I conducted the research for this book. It describes the variety of community-­based and entrepreneurial organ­izations that are d ­ oing this work and their varied missions, sources of funding, and relationships with policy makers. It also considers the deep cultural assumptions about rural and urban life, nature and culture, that give meaning to the proj­ect of urban agriculture across specific locations. Together, ­t hese provide the material and symbolic foundations for

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con­temporary urban agriculture proj­ects in the postindustrial cities of the Northeast. Chapter 2 pre­sents a comparison of how two Mas­sa­chu­setts cities, Somerville and Lowell, have leveraged food in general, and urban agriculture in par­ tic­u­lar, in efforts to transform their economies and their images. It explores how food has emerged as a form of cultural production that urban growth co­a li­tions deploy in “urban branding.” In branding narratives, urban agriculture is positioned as an au­then­tic and vibrant part of each city’s history and civic and social life and as part of what makes them a g­ reat place to “live, work, play, and raise a f­ amily” (Field notes, June 9, 2014). This chapter, however, adds complexity to assumptions about the relationship between urban agriculture and gentrification, in at least two ways. First, unlike art and ­music, for example, food—­and especially healthy food access—is implicated directly in individual and population health. As we ­shall see, the power­ful linkages made between food and health in con­temporary public health programs and policies mean that urban agriculture initiatives draw to the t­ able a dif­fer­ent set of advocates, city officials, and funders than have been involved in previous cultural policy agendas. ­These programs and policies render vis­i­ble the ways that varying understandings of health can serve as warrants for par­tic­u ­lar approaches to community development. Second, this chapter demonstrates that while urban agriculture has been positioned as a “common ground” between longtime residents and gentrifiers in Somerville, it is deployed as a means of supporting recent immigrant families in Lowell. Therefore, while ­t hese observations suggest that urban agriculture can contribute to gentrification, this clearly is not the only way that it shapes social relationships in a city. Chapter  3 turns from the narratives of cities (and their branding con­sul­ tants) to ­those of urban farmers and gardeners. This chapter describes three narratives that build “mnemonic bridges” (Zerubavel 2003) between current urban farming initiatives and specific aspects of the past. ­Because of migration and immigration patterns, rural farming is part of the heritage—­and identities—of many of ­today’s city dwellers, for whom urban farms and gardens are a means of connecting with the knowledge and practices of generations past. White urban farmers and gardeners often invoke their f­ amily histories on small farms to explain their interest in con­temporary urban farming. Farmers and gardeners of color challenge ­t hese bucolic visions, however, with narratives that highlight histories of systemic racism and oppression and their con­temporary consequences. ­These narratives emphasize, for example, the intergenerational trauma and loss wrought by slavery and sharecropping in the rural South, and by racial discrimination and residential segregation in the urban North. Such narratives position urban agriculture as a mechanism for healing individuals and communities, through reclaiming foodways and transforming relationships to the land. ­These narratives are shaping practices of urban agriculture

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both within and beyond Mas­sa­chu­setts, for example, through power­ful calls for reparations and the establishment of community land trusts. The ­actual work of growing food in cities often directly confronts the most difficult histories of a place, raising both the ghosts of the past (Bell 1997) and the inequities of the pre­sent. Many urban farmers are committed to telling the stories of the neighborhoods in which they work—­including stories of racism, municipal neglect, and environmental ­hazards; they see bearing witness to the past as an inextricable part of their social justice missions. Chapter 4 examines the “neighborhood narratives” (Small 2004) that emerged during a multiyear pro­cess of rezoning the city of Boston for commercial urban agriculture. Th ­ ese neighborhood narratives contravene the development imperative that the painful memories of a place “must be buried deep in the past—or presented as an aesthetic sight” (Zukin 1995, 1), rather than raising them up as a means of “address[ing] perceived shortcomings of con­temporary social life” (Paulsen 2007, 2). Such narratives highlight how urban farming has become a site at which neighborhood residents insist that “environmental justice is not just disproportionate exposure to bad environmental ­things, but disproportionate lack of access to goods,” including access to healthy food and to “safe, healthy, open space” (Interview 22). As such, urban agriculture has become a means through which communities of color renegotiate relationships to “community control of land . . . ​ ­people being able to use the land the way they want to use it, for ­things that make their lives healthier and more enriched” (Interview 22). Not all urban farmers see their work as part of a larger social justice proj­ect, however, nor do all urban farmers contend directly with the challenges of growing in the soil of postindustrial northeastern cities. Urban agriculture also is promoted by individuals in high-­tech and industrial development, who see innovative technological systems such as freight farms, rooftop farms, vertical farming, and hydro-­and aquaponics as the “true ­f uture” of healthy food production in cities, especially given the uncertainties created by climate change. While supportive of urban agriculture broadly, ­these individuals ­favor high-­ tech means of growing food locally year-­round, over the “spirituality of getting your hands in the soil” (Field notes, April 15, 2015). Given the intensive technological infrastructure and the significant capital investment that such efforts require, they have raised questions about w ­ hether high-­tech forms of urban agriculture ­will exacerbate extant urban inequalities. Relatedly, some urban farmers criticize high-­tech approaches for being rooted neither in the soil nor in the communities where they have emerged. Chapter 5 describes how urban agriculture has become a space of “hyperprojectivity” (Mische 2014) in which competing narratives about the f­ uture of cities—­and their relationships to the past and to nature—­are developed and contested. Together, ­t hese chapters demonstrate that urban agriculture has become an impor­tant domain for reckoning with the inequities of the past and addressing

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their many con­temporary consequences. While memory proj­ects may be taken up in urban branding and boosterism, potentially exacerbating gentrification, the narratives of Mas­sa­chu­setts’s urban farmers focus rather on moving ­toward greater justice and equity. The conclusion highlights how urban agriculture’s engagements with multiple pasts help us to better theorize the social shaping of both the materiality of cities and the bodies of their inhabitants.

chapter 1

;

Cultivating the Commonwealth

On a bright April morning, I meet Tristram (“Tris”) Keefe, then the farm man­ ag­er for Boston’s City Growers, at the Sportsmen’s Tennis and Enrichment Center (“Sportsmen’s”) on Blue Hill Ave­nue in Dorchester, the largest and most diverse neighborhood in the city of Boston.1 Sportsmen’s, “the first indoor non-­ profit tennis club built by and for the African American community,” was established in 1961 by “a small group of friends [who] shared a deep commitment to their struggling community and a belief in the transformative power of tennis.”2 Over half a c­ entury l­ater, Sportsmen’s continues to provide tennis instruction and a wide variety of health and educational programs to “open doors of opportunity and hope, doors which should be open to all members of society.” It is also the site of a quarter-­acre urban farm (see figure 1.1).3 When I arrive, Tris offers me a tour of the site—­one of three micro-­farms that City Growers is cultivating in the spring of 2015. It is still early in the season, but garlic shoots are coming up in perfect rows. The bright green of the plants contrasts with the dark soil. Tris explains to me that to make such a small space productive, they ­w ill be using intensive growing practices through the summer; for example, the plants I see now are just the first of several plantings that ­will happen ­here before cold weather closes out Boston’s growing season. The lot is bounded by the main Sportsmen’s building on one side and an outdoor tennis court on another. A third side features a small shed, several piles of bright-­orange crates, and a picnic ­table. Appreciating the sunshine a­ fter a particularly brutal winter, Tris and I sit down at the picnic ­table to talk. Tris was born and raised in Dorchester and grew up playing soccer on fields that we can see just past one of the fences on the far edge of the farm. He got interested in farming first through his work as a cook. Initially, he just wanted to try his hand at growing some of his own food, and began by planting hot peppers in containers on the stoop of the home he shares with his wife in 18

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Figure 1.1. ​Tris, Farming at Sportsmen’s. Photo credit: Maureen White

Dorchester. A friend who noticed Tris’s interest in growing connected him with City Growers, where he began volunteering a few mornings a week. In 2013, Tris joined the first class of trainees at the Urban Farming Institute of Boston (UFI). He credits UFI with giving him the knowledge and confidence “to produce at a bigger scale” and to take the role of farm man­ag­er at City Growers in 2014. Founded by urban agriculture advocates and local entrepreneurs Glynn Lloyd and Margaret Connors, City Growers is committed to social justice and community-­driven economic development: “Our goal is to revitalize underutilized land, some of which has been sitting vacant for more than 30  years, to benefit eco­nom­ically and environmentally challenged communities. The local neighborhoods are the center of our success and ­w ill play a pivotal role in their own economic development through small-­scale intensive agricultural production. We work collectively with community groups to access land opportunities; we prepare the land for planting and train growers to cultivate it using carbon ­free practices. Ultimately, our farms ­w ill be managed and worked by local community residents.” 4 Both City Growers and the Urban Farming Institute of Boston ­were centrally involved in the development of Article 89, a “right to farm” zoning amendment that, in 2013, made commercial farming a permissible land use in the city of Boston. As Lloyd told me in an interview in 2015, it was in his role as CEO of City Fresh Foods that he had “one of t­ hose moments” that led him to become an advocate for urban farming in Boston:

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Back to t h e Ro ots I was driving down Harold [Street], and literally—­there’s a vacant lot, t here’s another vacant lot, and ­ ­ t here’s another vacant lot, and ­ t here’s another vacant lot, a vacant lot. . . . ​A nd it turned out to be, like, an acre and a half of vacant land in this immediate area. . . . ​A nd then . . . ​in my kitchen, that same week, I was watching my staff cut up romaine lettuce, and I went, “Wait a second. That’s a cold crop. We could be growing this stuff closer. It makes no sense for us to be buying from Southern California.” So that was kind of one of ­those . . . ​moments, where I was like, You know what? . . . ​ We’ve got to do something. (Interview 41)

Lloyd went first to leaders in the community to explain his vision: “I said, ‘­Here’s the concept. We want to get Black farmers on this land, and we want to create economic opportunity.’ ” With community support, Lloyd reached out to the city to request access to the lots, which is when he learned that commercial farming was not mentioned as an allowable use in Boston’s zoning code. And so “we went in to talk with the Mayor.” In response, Mayor Thomas Menino launched Boston’s Urban Agriculture Initiative “to increase access to affordable and healthy food, particularly for underserved communities.”5 It is the experience of growing up in Dorchester that fuels Tris’s commitment to the vision for urban agriculture promoted by City Growers and UFI: I’m from ­here, and I’ve always been around a lot of empty space in this neighborhood. . . . ​­There’s not a lot of jobs in ­these neighborhoods. . . . ​Part of why I’m so passionate about this work is [that] I’ve always, my ­whole life, lived in Dorchester, and had to travel for work. . . . ​I ­really love that I’m close to my ­house, that I’m close to my f­amily, that I’m . . . ​helping to build the industry ­here, where the traditional view, at least when I was growing up in Boston, was that t­here’s nothing ­here. All you see is empty businesses and empty lots. (Interview 35)

This is a theme that Tris comes back to repeatedly throughout our conversation. He notes that he lives between two vacant lots, so this is a “personal issue for him . . . ​the amount of trash and junk that gets dumped in” However, more broadly, Tris hopes that urban farming ­will provide a means of transforming the economy and the “mentality” of his neighborhood: “­You’re actually creating jobs for ­people, and ­you’re actually giving ­people the sense that the place they live is not an economic wasteland . . . ​where ­there’s never g­ oing to be any work h ­ ere, ­there’s never ­going to be anything good, ­there’s never ­going to be any opportunities. . . . ​­There’s too much of that mentality, and that mentality can cripple you.” From Tris’s perspective, however, City Growers is more than a business. Importantly—­and in contrast to other urban agriculture enterprises—­Tris sees City Growers’ work as part of a movement that prioritizes social justice and advances the health of ­people and the environment:

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­ ere’s a lot of ­people involved in urban ag that ­don’t have any interest in Th food justice or social justice or economic and racial justice, and that . . . ​ is . . . ​impor­tant to me. And that’s why I’m happy to be working with an organ­ization that addresses ­t hose ­t hings . . . ​t hat’s a very impor­tant part of it for us . . . ​the environmental [impacts], the health impacts that growing food and building more of a strong local food economy can create. . . . ​The wider social impacts are a major driving force for me . . . ​helping to create change.

Tris is critical of approaches to urban agriculture than emphasize the “trendiness” of “urban grown this and that,” as when restaurants “put a bunch of buzzwords” on their menus and then “they get a huge markup from what t­hey’re paying us for the product.” He acknowledges that t­here are urban farming enterprises that are oriented only to their bottom line, which he describes as the “least challenging” way to be an urban farmer: “If you have resources, and you ­don’t ­really care about being a part of a social justice mission, then just go ahead and do it. Start it up. Get the funds. Get an indoor space, and do a l­ ittle micro-­ greens business, and market it to restaurants. In a way, the least challenging aspect is when you take any social mission out of it.” In contrast, even while Tris and his colleagues are working hard to “prove that we can reach a certain level of profitability per square foot,” not all of their decisions are motivated by the bottom line. For example, they regularly sell at a local farmers’ market—­a lmost always at a loss—­because improving food access in the neighborhood is part of their social justice mission: The farmers’ markets are tough . . . ​remember, we only get paid from what we sell, so if ­we’re ­going to go and sit out t­ here for six hours? We know ­we’re kind of volunteering. . . . ​For us, ­t here’s always this tension of, are we . . . ​keeping it real? And if w ­ e’re just selling to restaurants in Cambridge, and Newton, and South End . . . ​but at the same time not reaching . . . ​many low-­income customers, ­we’re not ­really keeping it real with our social mission. So . . . ​we run the market. In a week of restaurant sales, literally, we made more money than we made at the market the ­whole year.

In 2016, the City Growers farming team became a part of UFI. As the UFI farm man­ag­er, Tris continues to oversee farming operations on small urban lots that lead to sales to both restaurants and in­de­pen­dent grocers, and at farm stands and markets that cater to low-­income customers in Dorchester, Roxbury, and Mattapan.

A few months a­ fter my conversation with Tris, I stand on the roof of Fenway Park, about five miles from the City Growers’ lot at Sportsmen’s. Since it opened

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in 1912, Fenway Park has been the home of the Boston Red Sox, the city’s Major League Baseball team. As the capital of “Red Sox Nation” and with its tag­line “Amer­i­ca’s Most Beloved Ball Park,” Fenway is one of the most popu­lar tourist attractions in New E ­ ngland (Field notes, July 17, 2015; see also Borer 2008). In 2015, Fenway hosted approximately 2.8 million visitors for baseball games, and even more for tours, concerts, and other special events.6 That same year, as the Red Sox opened their season, a Somerville-­based urban agriculture business—­ Green City Growers—­opened Fenway Farms, a 5,000-­square-­foot rooftop farm (see figure 1.2). Fenway Farms was built by Green City Growers and Recover Green Roofs,7 also a Somerville-­based com­pany, using milk crate containers and an advanced drip irrigation system.8 Green City Growers maintains the farm, which produces approximately 6,000 pounds of produce each year. Most of that produce is used by the chefs at Fenway’s EMC Club, who work with the Green City Growers farmers to choose what crops are grown during two major “plant-­ins” each season.9 Some produce makes it into “general concessions” as well; I was told to look for a “kale caesar salad wrap” when I was next at a game, but was warned that while the farm’s produce is “available to public,” it is “not at an inexpensive cost” (Field notes, July 17, 2015). I am at Fenway Farms that morning as part of Boston’s Urban Agriculture Visioning Group. Funded by a grant from the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Local Food Promotion Program, this group has been charged with developing a plan for growing “food, community, and the economy”

Figure 1.2. ​Fenway Farms. Photo credit: Adam DeTour

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in Boston, with a focus on commercial urban farming.10 The July 2015 meeting was held at Fenway Park, where Jessie Banhazl, the founder and CEO of Green City Growers, gave a pre­sen­ta­tion on “the commercial side of farming in the city, what it’s taken to get to ­here, what it looks like,” followed by a tour of Fenway Farms (Field notes, July 17, 2015). Jessie is a passionate advocate for commercial urban agriculture in Mas­sa­chu­setts, which she sees as a way of “activating unused spaces” and making them productive; the Green City Growers website proclaims that they can convert “unused commercial, municipal, educational and residential spaces into vibrant urban farms anywhere the sun shines.”11 As Jessie tells me in an interview, she began Green City Growers with a focus on residential growers. However, “within the first year, we ­were identifying that ­t here ­were opportunities elsewhere . . . ​t hat first restaurant and that first corporate wellness program kind of have evolved over time [and] now we have a dozen area restaurants, and almost a dozen employee wellness programs” (Interview 15). In fact, Jessie has made a “conscious decision” to move the business “more ­towards the commercial scale.” To my surprise, Jessie tells me that working with developers and businesses is often easier than getting access to vacant lots in cities, which requires more time and logistics and can be “trickier.” Her clients include major developers and management companies, including Boston Properties12 and Davis Marcus Management,13 who see value in adding features to their buildings that w ­ ill be seen as “sustainable”: ­ ey’re always looking for ways to be more sustainable . . . ​t hat’s clearly the Th ­t hing that ­people want to see in a building ­t hese days. . . . ​[Also], it’s a way for ­people to get outside . . . ​a nice, relaxing, calming outdoor space, and so it exists as a feature of the landscape. . . . ​And again, I think a lot of businesses are looking for ways to have wellness programming . . . ​and if the property management is providing [the garden], basically the property management is a catalyst for that wellness program, ­because ­t hey’ve paid for the infrastructure that is needed to have it happen. (Interview 15)

This strategy has been remarkably successful, and Green City Growers has seen its business expand dramatically over time. As of the spring of 2017, Green City Growers had created 150 farms and gardens spaces, which include the largest rooftop farm in New ­England, on top of the Whole Foods Market in Lynnfield, Mas­sa­chu­setts, and rooftop and raised bed gardens at schools (including Brandeis University, where I teach), restaurants, work sites, and health care institutions throughout Mas­sa­chu­setts—as well as its most famous farm, at Fenway Park. Green City Growers is an urban farming business, with products that include raised bed construction and installation (price starts at $1,550), creative growing systems (“price variable”), milk crate growing systems like the one used at Fenway (“price variable”), and chicken coops (price starts at $3,350).14 The Green City Growers staff can also be retained for maintenance of growing systems

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and offers educational programs for schools,15 corporations,16 health care facilities,17 and community groups. They use only organic growing methods. As Jessie explains, it is part of the mission of Green City Growers to get ­people engaged in growing food. For some of their clients, this engagement is as impor­tant as the food itself, which many sites donate to food rescue organ­ izations. Consequently, from Jessie’s perspective, locations with a higher volume of interaction are more likely to change the personal choices of more ­people, with a greater impact on health. Fenway Farms exemplifies this approach. As Jessie tells the Urban Ag Visioning Group during our visit to the farm, ­people tour Fenway Park “­every hour.” She feels that having a farm at Fenway “takes urban ag to a dif­fer­ent population.” And she imagines that kids who see that farm ­will say, “Look, Mom! The Red Sox have a garden! I want a garden!” (Field notes, July 17, 2015). The Green City Growers website likewise emphasizes how Fenway Farms is showing Red Sox Nation the value of “eating fresh food”: “Eating vegetables, especially ­t hose grown organically and locally, combats obesity and other common health issues. Fenway Farms represents the Red Sox’s commitment to health and wellness for both ­children and adults. We estimate that approximately 500,000 ­children and adults interact with Fenway Farms annually, helping to expose thousands to the food growing pro­cess, often for the first time in their lives.”18 Like Tris, Jessie sees herself as part of a movement. However, in contrast to Tris’s focus on partnerships in disadvantaged neighborhoods to improve employment opportunities and food access, Jessie’s focus is on partnerships with developers, whom she describes as “impor­tant allies.” When I ask her where this movement is g­ oing, she tells me that she “­really want[s] to see new development constantly and consistently incorporating t­ hese features into new buildings,” similar to the growing popularity of solar panels: You know, it’s like now solar is just a part of new buildings . . . ​and so [is] having garden space on the roof or in the courtyard . . . ​creating infrastructure for ­people to be growing their own food and supporting themselves. That’s what I think needs to happen. And it’s consumer demand. I think the developers ­w ill soon begin to see that this is what ­people want, versus, like, “Oh, ­we’ll give them this ­because it seems like a good idea.” It’s like, “No, no, no. ­These ­people want this.” So that’s what needs to happen. ­Because ­t here’s only so many . . . ​vacant lots. (Interview 15)

Green City Growers advertises to developers and property man­ag­ers with the following claims: “Differentiate your property by providing on-­site food production and engagement as a tenant amenity. Draw tenants outside to plant, maintain, and harvest organic produce from your building’s on-­site farm or garden. . . . ​Green City Growers’ tenant wellness gardens  ­w ill enhance your building’s sustainability, improve tenant health and wellness, attract and retain

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happy clients, give back to the local community, and garner positive press.”19 On their web page for developers, Green City Growers cites a real estate ser­ vices com­pany, CBRE, that contends that “a landlord can charge 10 to 15 ­percent more for an NYC office space with an outdoor area.”20

Two sports facilities, two urban farms, two very dif­fer­ent practices and visions of urban agriculture. In the helpful framing of geographer Nathan McClintock, ­there is an “inherent contradiction” in the field of con­temporary urban agriculture: it orients si­mul­ta­neously to “radical” (social justice) and “neoliberal” (market-­driven) agendas (2014). In the language of fields theory, urban agriculture is an “unsettled” or “emergent” field. As is common in new fields, a “dominant logic”—­that is, a unitary understanding of the field, its motivations, and its modes of action—­has not yet come into being, and “organ­izations face contradictory external demands regarding the proper way forward” (Haedicke 2016, 25). Thus, for some prac­ti­tion­ers, like Tris, urban agriculture is part of a movement for social justice, focused on lifting up the economies and the residents of long-­ neglected urban neighborhoods. For o ­ thers, like Jessie, it is an opportunity to build green enterprises and development, while helping to educate p ­ eople about local food and healthy eating. Research on other fields, including organic agriculture, suggests that one logic may come to dominate over time (Haedicke 2016); however, at this moment, the field of urban agriculture has space for individuals and organ­izations with diverse motivations and agendas. Urban agriculture’s “inherent contradiction” is reflected also in the bifurcated social scientific scholarship on the field. On the one hand, scholars celebrate urban agriculture as a local alternative to the global industrial food system (T. Lyson 2004; Metcalf and Widener 2011), an impor­tant strategy for progressive politics (Reynolds and Cohen 2016) and a power­f ul means of increasing the sustainability and resilience of cities, especially in the context of climate change (Barthel, Parker, and Ernston 2013).21 On the other, a critical lit­er­a­ture decries urban agriculture as a phenomenon brought into being by the erosion of the Keynesian safety net and exemplifying neoliberal governmentality (Allen and Guthman 2006; Delinde 2015; Broad 2016), an expression of elite cultural dominance regarding food and health (Guthman 2008; M. Lyson 2014), and a “sustainability fix” through which developers seek to capitalize and/or enclose aging urban infrastructure (Draus, Roddy, and McDuffie 2014; S. Walker 2015) and valorize unused land (Sbicca 2019). Relatedly, a burgeoning lit­er­a­ture suggests that urban agriculture contributes to gentrification, even if unintentionally (McClintock 2018; Sbicca 2019). Only recently have scholars begun to consider the importance of history, and of memory, to understanding the meanings and practices of specific urban agriculture proj­ects (Lindemann 2019; White 2018).

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Contestations regarding the meanings and materiality of the past have not been a primary focus of much social scientific research on urban agriculture to date. I contend, however, that they are impor­tant to each of the two primary orientations of this lit­er­a­ture. For scholars who critique urban farming as a form of neoliberalism and a result of the retrenchment of the welfare state, the past provides a basis for asking how ­things could be other­wise—­whether this means honoring local preferences for rebuilding residential neighborhoods (Delinde 2014) or organ­izing to transform public policies shaping the nation’s social safety net (Broad 2016). The collective memories and identities provided by engaging with the past also offer a way to challenge assumptions that changing individual be­hav­ior should be the primary outcome of urban farming initiatives (Cairns 2018). For scholars who celebrate urban farming as a practice of social justice, the past provides a basis for (re)building community and identity that may support collaboration ­toward shared goals (Reynolds and Cohen 2016), including “historically and culturally rooted understandings of sustainability” (Greenberg 2017, 183) and of health. Many food justice activists see addressing “historical trauma” as foundational to their work.22 Moreover, as demonstrated by Monica White’s pathbreaking research on the history of “freedom farmers,” the past provides impor­tant models for liberatory relationships to food and farming, as “black ­people not only have been connected to the land but have used the land individually and collectively to challenge white supremacy and po­liti­cal and economic exploitation” (2018, 142).23 In challenging “popularly assumed understandings that singularly view farming and agriculture as a yoke around the neck of black ­people,” White’s research reclaims “a legacy of horticultural knowledge, a rich expression of strug­gle, a foundation for building institutions, and the potential for learning lessons born of collective strug­ gle” (2018, 142). As demonstrated by the vignettes that open this chapter, even within one ­ eople define urban agriculture in multiple ways and for varying purposes city, p (see also Lovell 2010; McClintock and Simpson 2017). As we ­w ill see in the following chapters, ­t here are urban farming proj­ects in Mas­sa­chu­setts that align more e­ ither with social justice or with market-­driven agendas. In this chapter, I am interested not so much in labeling proj­ects in one way or another, but rather in locating Mas­sa­chu­setts’s urban agriculture proj­ects in both time and space (Abbott 1997). ­Here, I aim to provide, very broadly, the background that ­will allow the reader to make sense of more detailed analyses (e.g., of ­people and places, their memories and identities) of the subsequent chapters. ­Toward that end, I situate urban agriculture in the postindustrial cities that provide both its material and symbolic contexts, provide an introduction to the orga­ nizational stakeholders that are central to urban farming across the commonwealth, and consider the determinative boundary that defines urban agriculture,

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that is, the long-­standing cultural assumptions about the differences between city and country, urban and rural natures.

Cultivating the City Farming within U.S. cities was commonplace ­until the mid-1800s, when municipalities began to ban agricultural production within their limits, often in the name of protecting the public’s health. Nineteenth-­century zoning restrictions took aim especially at urban animal husbandry, which was nearly eradicated within city limits. As one example, in 1830, Boston mayor Harrison Gray Otis banned grazing on the Boston Common. While public health was the putative rationale for such restrictions, urban historians have demonstrated that restriction of urban animal husbandry was motivated by invidious racial and ethnic ste­reo­types (McNeur 2014). At the same time, ­these prohibitions enacted a vision of a healthy city that prioritized the recreation and promenading needs of elites, rather than the nutritional needs of working-­class families (Warner 1987). Another major reason for moving farming out of cities was to make room for the large-­scale industrial production facilities that promised to provide more jobs for more ­people in urban centers. Each of the cities that I visited as part of this proj­ect was once home to one or more major industries; ­these included textiles in Lowell and Lawrence; paper in Holyoke; brick manufacturing, smelting, and auto assembly in Somerville; tobacco in Springfield; and wire in Worcester, among o ­ thers. While ­these industries thrived, Mas­sa­chu­ setts cities became home to successive waves of immigrants seeking the “American Dream.” In the late 1800s and early 1900s, immigrants to Mas­sa­chu­setts cities most often came from French Canada, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, and Greece. ­After 1965, the same cities became home to immigrants from Puerto Rico, Haiti, Latin Amer­i­ca, Brazil, and Southeast Asia. The population of Mas­sa­chu­setts cities has been ­shaped also by internal migration. First, the ­daughters of New ­England farmers, who had few options for making a living in the agricultural sector of the mid-1800s, moved to towns like Lowell and Lawrence to work in the textile mills (Stanton 2006, 46–48). Then, in the mid-1900s, thousands of African Americans migrated to escape the vio­lence, terror, and institutionalized inequalities that ­were part of life in the South and to seek employment in the factories of the North (Wilkerson 2010; Hunter and Robinson 2018). The G ­ reat Migration had significant consequences for the demographic profiles of cities in Mas­sa­chu­setts. For example, between 1940 and 1960, the African American population in Boston increased from 20,000 to 60,000 (Anguelovski 2014, 56). As we ­will see (chapter 3), con­temporary urban agriculture takes its meanings from both the complex cultural legacies carried up from the South and the inequalities encountered in the urban North.

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Beginning in the 1950s, factories in urban centers across the Northeast and the Midwest 24 began to close, as industry sought to maximize profits by relocating to suburbs, to the Sunbelt, or to countries with lower wages, fewer environmental regulations, and advantageous trade policies (Wilson 1987). Deindustrialization, disinvestment, and capital flight decimated urban ­labor markets. The decline of industry eroded the municipal tax base necessary for public goods in cities, such as school systems and public parks. Increasingly, ­t hose who could afford to leave the city—­most often white families—­moved to the suburbs. As a policy maker in Springfield recounted: “Springfield . . . ​was so wealthy, for a c­ entury . . . ​up u ­ ntil . . . ​the 1970s, when industry kind of went downhill . . . ​a lot of industries closed down [and] the factories. . . . ​Globalization started at that time, so ­t here was a lot of manufacturing that took place in Springfield that left. And for the city itself, ­there was a very large, white, middle-­class affluent community that—­just like across the country—­went to the suburbs” (Interview 26). “Urban renewal” and other development proj­ects tended to have disproportionately negative effects on communities of color, not only in Boston (Gans 1962; Medoff and Sklar 1994; Vrabel 2014; Warner 1987), but in cities across the commonwealth. For example, in Springfield the construction of a highway fueled white flight and left “holes” in what became predominantly Black neighborhoods: When the highway was made . . . ​Black ­people that ­were living at the bottom of the hill w ­ ere kind of transplanted up to the top of the hill, to McKnight and . . . ​the Mason Square area. And the white ­people that w ­ ere in ­those areas at that time moved out to . . . ​[the suburbs of] Longmeadow and Wilbraham, and . . . ​t he businesses then followed them, and it left this hole in the neighborhoods, where some of ­those basic ser­v ices that used to be ­there ­either went out of business, b ­ ecause t­ here was no way to maintain them, or they left and followed . . . ​where [they thought] the money was ­going. (Interview 19)

African American families faced multiple challenges in urban neighborhoods (Sharkey 2013), including redlining (Rothstein 2017), discriminatory lending policies (Gamm 1999), and landlords who neglected their properties, leaving tenants to deal with substandard living conditions (Vrabel 2014). In Boston in the 1970s and 1980s, arson gutted the neighborhoods of Dorchester, Roxbury, and Mattapan that ­were home to communities of color; in 1981, Roxbury had the horrible distinction of being “the Arson Capital of the Nation.” Many of the “empty lots” mentioned by Tris, Glynn, and other advocates for urban agriculture in Boston are places where ­houses ­were burned to the ground and never rebuilt. In addition to vacant lots, cities across Mas­sa­chu­setts have been left with the legacies of industrial production in the form of brownfields, abandoned buildings, and environmental contaminants seeping out from former sites of

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manufacture (Frickel and Elliott 2018). Urban neighborhoods that have suffered significant disinvestment also tend to become sites for polluting small industries, such as auto repair shops, gas stations, scrap metal dealers, and truck storage facilities (Anguelovski 2014). Several of the leading urban agriculture organ­izations in Mas­sa­chu­setts began as environmental justice organ­izations, focused especially on cleaning up contaminated soil and ­water, reclaiming vacant lots, and ending dumping in their neighborhoods. As one advocate recalled, the organ­ization he directs began with the question “What do we do with postindustrial cities? Every­one’s left for the suburbs, and ­there’s all ­these empty lots, and no one’s ­here. What ­will we do? The idea is . . . ​[we] green—­regreen—­the city, and take ­these old industrial lots and turn them into gardens, and parks, and farms, and put ­people to work . . . ​in their own city, like kind of investing in their own city” (Interview 10). As I traveled across the commonwealth, it was quite striking that many urban agriculture organ­izations are ­housed in the renovated and reconfigured mills and factories once central to their city’s economy. Since the mid-1900s, Mas­sa­chu­setts cities have had varying success in rebuilding their economies. Some cities, such as Boston, have successfully leveraged their locations, partnerships with institutions of higher education, and access to capital to rebuild economies that now focus on biotechnology, information technology, and finance, as well as education and health care. As we ­will see, other cities have put culture—­including both the arts and food—at the center of successful revitalization strategies. The “new economy” successes of ­t hese cities, however, have not been evenly distributed across their populations, raising urgent concerns about both equity and gentrification. Further, many of the Mas­sa­chu­setts cities that are home to thriving urban agriculture initiatives are “Gateway Cities,” a designation that refers to “midsize urban centers that anchor regional economies around the state. For generations, ­these communities ­were home to industry that offered residents good jobs and a ‘gateway’ to the American Dream. Over the past several de­cades, manufacturing jobs slowly dis­appeared. Lacking resources and capacity to rebuild and reposition, Gateway Cities have been slow to draw new economy investment.”25 ­These dynamics—­and the ways that they have undermined the lives and life chances of urban residents—­are a critical material context for understanding con­temporary urban agriculture initiatives. Indeed, many of the claims of advocates for urban agriculture regarding economic development, job skills training, and environmental remediation gain their currency from the ongoing need to transform the economies, environments, and reputations of postindustrial cities. Advocates for urban agriculture position transforming the food system as a means ­toward ­t hese ends.

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Urban Food Systems As cities grew rapidly in the nineteenth ­century, “more and more ­people had to buy most or all of their food, rather than growing it themselves” (Jordan 2015, 159). ­Until the industrialization of the food system, which accelerated rapidly just ­a fter World War II, urbanites tended to rely on the ring of peri-­u rban and rural farms circling their par­t ic­u ­lar city for fresh fruit and vegetables (Jordan 2015). Indeed, historians note that this division of land and ­labor made the rise of American cities pos­si­ble (Cronon 1991). ­Today, most of the U.S. domestic production of food comes from relatively few large operations.26 This is not to say that food production ever dis­appeared entirely from cities. Community garden proj­ects initially and consistently have emerged in response to economic crises that increase demand for subsistence food production (Lawson 2005). Community garden proj­ects also have been or­ga­nized by upper-­and middle-­class reformers, not only as a means of cultivating food but “to achieve the moral, cultural, and esthetic uplift of poor and working-­class p ­ eople, many of them foreign born immigrants and their c­ hildren” (Pudup 2008, 1230). More recently, residents of urban neighborhoods have planted shared gardens as a means of reclaiming vacant lots, beautifying neighborhoods neglected by city governments, and serving as a space for both social interaction and po­liti­cal organ­izing in low-­income communities and communities of color (Hondagneu-­ Sotelo 2014; Hynes 1996; Martinez 2010; Warner 1987). With the industrialization and globalization of the food system, however, most urban and rural dwellers alike now consume food grown and pro­cessed thousands of miles from their homes. Even though the Mas­sa­chu­setts food system employs 426,000 ­people (one of ­every ten jobs in the state) and accounts for 4.5 ­percent of all economic activity, only 10 ­percent of the food consumed in Mas­sa­chu­setts is produced t­here (Donahue et  al. 2014). Many advocates for urban agriculture see this system as unsustainable given its reliance on fossil fuels, which are used both as inputs for fertilizers and to transport food over ­great distances, with adverse environmental impacts. Further, as advocates of urban agriculture point out, this system has not supported the health and well-­being of many urban residents, especially t­ hose who live in low-­income neighborhoods and communities of color, which are least likely to have consistent access to fresh fruits and vegetables (Field notes, UFC 2015). A robust multidisciplinary lit­er­a­ture demonstrates that ­people living in low-­income communities and communities of color are less likely to have access to a fully stocked grocery store (Morland et  al. 2002; R. Walker, Keane, and Burke 2010; Zenk et al. 2005). Grocery stores located in low-­income communities tend to carry produce of less variety and lower quality when compared to stores in more affluent communities (Latham and Moffat 2007). More-

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over, low-­income urban communities are more likely to have abundant fast-­food outlets and con­ve­nience stores (Block, Scribner, and DeSalvo 2004; Freudenberg and Galea 2008), where food is typically both more expensive and less healthy (Latham and Moffat 2007). Scholars and policy makers often refer to ­t hese areas as food deserts, defined as “area[s] with ­limited access to affordable and nutritious foods, particularly such an area composed of predominantly lower income neighborhoods and communities” (USDA 2009). Many urban agriculture advocates, however, prefer the term “food apartheid,” which, as noted by urban farmer and activist Karen Washington, “looks at the ­whole food system, along with race, geography, faith, and economics.” According to Washington, food apartheid “brings in hunger and poverty. It brings us to the more impor­tant question: What are some of the social inequalities that you see, and what are you ­doing to erase some of the injustices?”27 Similarly, leading scholars contend that the term “food desert” is too often “a short-­hand for inequalities that overemphasizes lack and very rarely examines agency or resilience among community members” and that it “often obscures the pro­cesses that led to unequal access and reflects a long-­standing interest in uncritical and negative evaluations of Black communities and ­people” (­Reese 2019, 46). This impor­ tant critique also calls out the tendency of progressive food movement proj­ects to “disproportionately benefit and serve the interests of t­ hose who are already eco­ nom­ically advantaged and, most often, white communities,” rather than creating “transformative structural change across the entire food system” (Broad 2016, 52). As we ­will see, in Mas­sa­chu­setts, community-­based urban agriculture organ­ izations put social inequalities and justice—­especially food justice—at the center of their work.

­Great Expectations At federal, state, and local levels, policy makers tend to be favorably inclined ­toward the idea that urban agriculture ­w ill create transformative change in cities and neighborhoods. For example, on the Urban Agriculture Toolkit website, the USDA proclaims that “the face of agriculture is changing, and urban agriculture is one of the latest movements to challenge the traditional view of farming. From rooftop gardens to aquaponics centers in old ware­houses to growing crops on abandoned properties, urban agriculture provides many benefits to a community, including closer neighborhood ties, reduced crime, education and job training opportunities, and healthy food access for low-­income residents.”28 In announcing the Mas­sa­chu­setts Department of Agriculture’s first grants for urban agriculture in 2014, then Energy and Environmental Affairs Secretary Rick S­ullivan commented: “Urban agriculture is an impor­tant, developing component of the Mas­sa­chu­setts food system. . . . ​It can revitalize blighted neighborhoods, improve public health, promote local businesses, engage youth and provide all Mas­sa­chu­setts residents with access to fresh, nutritious food.”29

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The New ­England–­based Conservation Law Foundation argues that “food lies at the intersection of many of our most pressing prob­lems,” including the obesity epidemic, the rising costs of health care, climate change, and ­limited employment opportunities in urban settings; its advocacy for urban farming in the Northeast is based on its assessment that “by creating a healthier local food system that is integrated with a sustainable regional food system, we can begin to tackle some of ­t hese issues” (Conservation Law Foundation and CLF Ventures 2012, 3).30 A report commissioned by the city of Brockton, Mas­sa­chu­setts, to explore the possibilities of urban agriculture noted that “­there is ­little to no substantial opportunity for developing commercially ­v iable agriculture in the traditional sense” but then recommended that the city pursue urban agriculture for its “social benefits” (Kilduff and Tensen 2017, 2): “In other cities across the United States and beyond, urban agriculture has brought diverse urban communities together, humanized vacant and derelict sites, grown nutritious produce that reduces ­house­hold food expenses, and provided valuable job training and educational opportunities” (iv). Social scientists have critiqued urban agriculture programs—­and governments’ expectations thereof—as a form of neoliberal governmentality through which responsibility for the health and well-­being of the most vulnerable members of the public is being shifted to a decentralized “non-­profit industrial complex” (Broad 2016, 18). Although I did not hear this specific critique from urban agriculture prac­ti­tion­ers in Mas­sa­chu­setts, they did express concern about the expectations that their work would be a panacea for all of the challenges facing their cities. As one practitioner put it, “I just feel like every­one is taking all the social and environmental ills that have plagued cities for de­cades, and heaping it on this unbelievably fragile, emerging effort called urban agriculture, and expecting it to be essentially the economic, social, and environmental panacea” (Field notes, January 30, 2015). A public health professional commented that while she is optimistic about the power of urban agriculture, she was “also conscious that urban ag is the kitchen sink right now, for every­thing. We can  increase access, increase nutrition, create awareness, increase demand. It’s ­ ecause ­t here is hope, becoming the end-­a ll and be-­a ll, and that’s worrisome, b yet ­t here is also this untested t­ hing ­we’re working on. We need some time for us to see how it works” (Interview 32). Moreover, advocates from communities of color point to the challenges they face that are not addressed directly by urban agriculture. A speaker at the Mas­sa­chu­setts Urban Farming Conference observed that that the Criminal Offender Rec­ord Information (CORI) Act, which defines the mechanisms by which employers and landlords may obtain the criminal rec­ords of individuals applying for jobs and leases, “is making p ­ eople suffer, especially young men of color.” Therefore, he continued, “I d ­ on’t want to pretend that farming is a cure for all urban ills” even if it “goes a long way” (Field notes, UFC 2014).

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Concerns about overpromising are heightened also among ­those thinking about urban agriculture from policy perspectives. For example, public health researchers warn that “if its benefits are overstated, or limitations overlooked, this could propel advocates to disproportionally allocate resources to urban agriculture at the expense of other, potentially more effective interventions. And if urban agriculture does not live up to its promises, it may lose the cultural and po­liti­cal support necessary to sustain the benefits it can offer” (Santo, Palmer, and Kim 2016, 3). A co­a li­tion of farmers and researchers in New York City refers to the proposition that urban agriculture should deliver a myriad of social benefits while becoming eco­nom­ically self-­sustaining as an “unattainable trifecta,” that is, “the myth that urban agriculture, without long-­term funding investments, can si­mul­ta­neously do three t­ hings that are each difficult to do on their own: (1) Provide good food to ­people with ­limited financial resources at prices they can afford; (2) Provide job training, work experience, and/or leadership development for ­people typically excluded from employment and/or leadership roles; (3) Generate income for producers and create jobs funded by profits from sales” (Daftary-­Steel, Herrera, and Porter 2015, 19–20). ­There is historical pre­ce­dent for concerns about promising unattainable outcomes. In her brilliant history of community gardens in Amer­i­ca, Laura Lawson notes that for a c­entury, gardens have been asked to solve “the bigger prob­lems facing urban communities”; ­t hese expectations, she argues, irresponsibly put the onus for resolving complex social prob­lems “on the individual and the neighborhood” (2005, 293). Unable to deliver on promised social, economic, and environmental outcomes, prior urban growing initiatives lost the support of participants, policy makers, and funders (Lawson 2005).

Planting a Stake In the past two de­cades, urban agriculture—­including ground-­and roof-­level fruit and vegetable production, hydroponics, aquaponics, and the keeping of bees and chickens—­has gained in popularity and prominence across North Amer­i­ca. This resurgence of urban food production reflects not only increased individual engagement with community gardens, but also the emergence of a variety of both community-­based and commercial urban farming proj­ects, varyingly supported by government, philanthropy, and venture capital.

Community-­Based Urban Agriculture The formal mission statements of even a few of the community-­based urban agriculture organ­izations in Mas­sa­chu­setts highlight the ambition and the diversity of their goals (see t­ able 1.1). In pursuit of t­ hese missions, urban agriculture organ­izations undertake a wide variety of programs, including farming, training new farmers, building raised beds for community gardens, ­running

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Back to t h e Ro ots ­Table 1.1 Examples of Mission Statements of Community-­Based Urban Agriculture Organ­izations in Mas­sa­chu­settsa

Organ­ization

Mission

Gardening the Community

Gardening The Community is a food justice organ­ization engaged in youth development, urban agriculture and sustainable living to build healthy and equitable communities.

Groundwork Lawrence

Through its environmental and open space improvements, healthy food access programs, youth education, employment initiatives, community programming and events, GWL creates the building blocks of a healthy community, and empowers residents to improve their quality of life.

Groundwork Somerville

Groundwork Somerville strives to bring about the sustained regeneration, improvement and management of the physical environment through the development of community-­based partnerships which empower ­people, businesses and organ­izations to promote environmental, economic and social well-­being.

Mill City Grows

Mill City Grows fosters food justice by improving physical health, economic in­de­pen­dence and environmental sustainability in Lowell through increased access to land, locally-­grown food and education.

Nuestras Raíces

Our mission is to create healthy environments, celebrate “agri-­culture,” harness our collective energy, and to advance our vision of a just and sustainable ­f uture.

The Food Proj­ect

The Food Proj­ect’s mission is to create a thoughtful and productive community of youth and adults from diverse backgrounds who work together to build a sustainable food system. Our community produces healthy food for residents of the city and suburbs, provides youth leadership opportunities, and inspires and supports ­others to create change in their own communities.

Urban Farming Institute of Boston

The Urban Farming Institute of Boston’s mission is to develop and promote urban farming as a commercial sector that creates green collar jobs for residents; and to engage urban communities in building a healthier and more locally based food system.

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­Table 1.1 Examples of Mission Statements of Community-­Based Urban Agriculture Organ­izations in Mas­sa­chu­settsa (continued) Organ­ization Worcester Regional Environmental Council

Mission Founded in 1971, REC has been dedicated to building healthy, sustainable and just communities in Worcester and beyond for more than 40 years.

Taken from the following websites, accessed May 15, 2018: (1) http://­w ww​.­gardening​ thecommunity​.­org​/­mission​.­html; (2) https://­w ww​.­groundworklawrence​.­org​/­; (3) http://­w ww​.­g roundworksomerville​.­org ​/­; (4) http://­w ww​.­millcitygrows​.­org ​/­about​ -­us​/­mission​-­v ision​-­and​-­values​/­; (5) https://­nuestras​-­raices​.­org​/­en​/­our​-­mission​/­; (6) http://­t hefoodproject​.­org​/­our​-­mission; (7) https://­urbanfarminginstitute​.­org​/­; (8) https://­w ww​.­recworcester​.­org​/­who​-­we​-­are. a

mobile farmers’ markets, providing educational and employment opportunities for youth, teaching cooking classes, addressing issues of environmental justice, and participating in food system planning at the state and local levels. As suggested by their varied aims, urban agriculture organ­izations are often ­running multiple, interlocking programs. For example, explaining the breadth of its programs, the former director of The Food Proj­ect, J. Harrison explains that “­there’s a youth component to our work, ­there’s a food component to our work, ­there’s a community component to our work, and ­those three ­things all work together ­towards the end of building a more sustainable food system.” In Lowell, Mill City Grows supports a network of community gardens, farms five acres of land in the city (where they grow thousands of pounds of food), partners with the school district on an array of school gardens, and runs a mobile farmers’ market. The Urban Farming Institute of Boston’s programs include a farmer training program, enterprise farming, farmland procurement and development, planning and implementing a statewide urban farming conference, and offering a wide variety classes and workshops for community members. This combination of food production and distribution, community engagement, education, and youth or workforce development can be observed across organ­izations in Mas­sa­ chu­setts. Additionally, organ­izations are often involved with advocacy and policy, ­whether focused on local ordinances and zoning amendments (e.g., Boston’s Article 8931) or programs that support healthy food access for low-­income families (e.g., the Healthy Incentives Program32). Even as ­these multiple activities serve their missions, urban agriculture prac­ti­tion­ers emphasize that their organ­ izations strive to achieve much more than the sum of their programmatic parts.

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Urban agriculture organ­izations often focus explic­itly on food justice, broadly defined as “the right to grow, sell, and eat [food that is] nutritious, affordable, culturally appropriate, and grown locally with care for the well-­being of the land, workers, and animals” (Alkon and Agyeman 2011, 5). For example, Lydia Sisson, cofounder of Mill City Grows in Lowell, explains, “­We’re a food justice organ­ization. And ­we’re trying to increase community members’ access to food and capacity to cook and eat healthy local food through transforming urban lots into food production, providing food-­based education, and ­really being a catalyst for creating a robust healthy food system.” Many of the older organ­izations now ­doing food justice work in Mas­sa­chu­ setts have their roots in the environmental justice movement. For example, at the Worcester Regional Environmental Council, Grace Sliwoski notes that the organ­ization has a history of addressing “environmental justice through the lens of food” and has gradually become “a food justice organ­ization. I think that’s a more concise way of talking about our work, locating . . . ​where we are [now].” The environmental justice movement’s focus on racial equity pervades con­temporary food justice activism. For example, an advocate in western Mas­ sa­chu­setts commented that he does “racial justice work using food as a catalyst” (Field notes, July 5, 2017). Many urban agriculture advocates see advancing food justice as part of a broader commitment to social justice and equity. Across organ­izations, ­there was a clear recognition that they are trying to address “fundamental challenges” (Field notes, March 19, 2018) that are systemic and structural: “The prob­lem is racism, nativism, ageism, sexism—­unequal access to resources” (Field notes, July 5, 2017). Such prob­lems have deep historical roots in policies that go beyond local food systems: “If you understand how this system was built historically . . . ​ from when the Eu­ro­pe­ans first arrive to this continent, ­every policy along the way . . . ​has benefited some ­people and not ­others” (Interview 06). Insofar as food is an essential and impor­tant part of life, however, t­ hese advocates see it as a means of transforming policy and politics: “This is social justice . . . ​lifting up the voices of ­people who are not being heard and resourcing [their needs] . . . ​to me [this] is the most impor­tant form of social justice, which is having policy systems align with what ­people are saying they need” (Interview 01). Only one person I interviewed was critical of this orientation, which he described as a “soft approach” to systems that produce in­equality. “We are never ­going to community garden ourselves out of poverty or out of hunger,” he commented, pointing to the importance of linking urban agriculture with “dif­fer­ent ways to intervene,” including “policy, direct actions, grassroots organ­izing, and community-­driven leadership” (Interview 06). More broadly, however, urban farmers and advocates recognize that their programs ­will not create social change without engagement with policy pro­cesses at multiple levels: “When you keep pushing, you realize that ­you’re not ­going to be able to make the changes that ­you’re trying to make by just d ­ oing t­ hese programmatic . . . ​­things” (Interview 01).

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Indeed, central to urban agriculture prac­ti­tion­ers’ visions of po­liti­cal transformation are beliefs about how food and farming can bring p ­ eople together and create a space that supports collective action. Urban agriculture, I heard advocates say time and time again, is “not about growing food, it’s about community” (Field notes, UFC 2016). As one farmer put it, “Ag is like nothing ­else we have in the city to connect p ­ eople” (Field notes, UFC 2015). For ­these urban farmers and gardeners, growing food provides a “third space” in which vari­ous stakeholders—­community members, youth, elders—­can come together to “start to ask questions . . . ​like, ‘Well, why ­don’t I have access to fresh, healthy food in my community? Why is this vacant land sitting ­here not being used to grow productive food?’ ” and thereby become “more civically engaged” (Interview 33). The social change orientation of many nonprofit community-­based urban agriculture organ­izations is also recognized and valued by many funders of urban agriculture proj­ects. A program officer from a foundation that has made significant grants to nonprofit urban agriculture organ­izations in the northeastern United States commented, “We have never been into urban agriculture for the vegetables. W ­ e’re into all the other t­ hings it can do, like community cohesion and well-­being” (Field notes, June 6, 2016). Indeed, for many nonprofit urban agriculture organ­izations, growing food in the city is, importantly, a means to accomplish varied social justice, educational, and ecological missions. When this is the case, urban farmers may choose methods of cultivation that serve ­these missions even when they compromise the volume of food produced. As an urban farmer from the Merrimack valley put it: “It would be a lot easier for me to go off on a tractor by myself and grow vegetables. We’d have more vegetables, and quicker, that way. But that’s not what w ­ e’re d ­ oing. ­We’re not just about growing vegetables” (Field notes, October  2014, emphasis added). Likewise, while urban farmers highlight their ability to use intensive cultivation practices to grow significant amounts of produce and provide healthy food in urban areas that are not well served by the existing food system, they rarely suggest that urban farms and gardens could become the sole source of food for entire cities. Even staunch supporters of urban agriculture admit that “urban farming is not ­going to be able to generate all the crops for which ­t here is a market in cities—­ for example, we d ­ on’t have space to grow corn” (Field notes, UFC 2015) and “­we’re not ­going to grow fields of wheat in Boston” (Field notes, UFC 2014). That said, many community-­based urban farming organ­izations do some amount of commercial growing. For example, at the Dudley Green­house, in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston, half of the growing space has been “designated for enterprise.” The Food Proj­ect uses this space to grow greens and tomatoes, which are sold at market rate to local restaurants. The profits from ­these sales generate revenue that supports the other half of the green­house, called the Community Bay, in which local groups and gardeners grow produce for themselves and their neighbors in twenty-­seven raised beds.33 Reflecting the multiple logics at work in the field, ­t hese are “hybrid organ­izations” in that they

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orient si­mul­ta­neously to two typically distinct institutional logics (Battilana and Dorado 2010; Haedicke 2016). At the same time, as we have seen, for-­profit urban agriculture organ­izations like Green City Growers make claims about potential social and ecological benefits while serving wealthier clients (see also McClintock and Simpson 2017).

Commercial Urban Farming Enterprises Two primary kinds of enterprises constitute commercial urban farming in Mas­ sa­chu­setts. First, ­there are organ­izations that develop and maintain growing systems for aspiring urban farmers. Second, a handful of for-­profit farmers are using such systems to support commercial food production in Mas­sa­chu­setts cities. Fenway Farms offers us a vista onto one part of the for-­profit farm system development and management sector. Fenway Farms was built and maintained by two Somerville-­based organ­izations, Recover Green Roofs and Green City Growers, that design growing systems (e.g., crates and/or modular raised beds) for urban farmers who grow in soil, ­whether in small lots or on rooftops. While Recover Green Roofs specializes in building rooftop systems, Green City Growers also provides farm (and garden) management. Both organ­izations have proj­ ects across the commonwealth. For example, Recover Green Roofs also built the rooftop farm at the Boston Medical Center (BMC), which provides fresh produce to the hospital’s food pantry. The BMC farm is maintained by Higher Ground Farm, which, like Green City Growers, offers consulting and management ser­ vices.34 For all of their clever design and impressive productivity, however, ­these organ­izations, and the farms they manage, represent the low-­tech end of the continuum of urban farming systems being developed in Mas­sa­chu­setts. At the high-­tech end of the continuum are indoor and vertical growing systems, which are a focus of agricultural technology companies not only in Mas­sa­chu­setts but across the globe. While I was ­doing fieldwork, I heard stories about representatives from international technology companies, including Philips, which designs lighting systems for indoor growing, and 7AC, which designs HVAC systems, coming to Mas­sa­chu­setts to talk with policy makers about the urban farming sector and to meet with researchers at the Mas­sa­chu­ setts Institute of Technology (Field notes, July 1, 2015).35 I also met farmers using the high-­tech indoor growing systems designed by the Boston-­based com­pany Freight Farms. As described by Freight Farms, the com­pany builds “complete, vertical hydroponic growing facilities . . . ​ inside shipping containers. Our farms are capable of growing lettuces, herbs, and hearty greens at commercial scale in any climate or location. They enable any individual, community, or organ­ization to grow fresh produce year-­round.”36 ­These systems are managed with a proprietary computer application—­a recent version of which is wryly named Farmhand—­that “automates temperature, ­water, nutrient levels, pH, CO2, and humidity to maximize growth.”37 As of January  2019, hydroponic container farms built by Freight Farms ­were operating in thirty-­eight states in

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the United States and in fifteen countries.38 As we ­w ill see, this approach to urban farming in Mas­sa­chu­setts has been controversial (chapter 5). Commercial urban farms in Mas­sa­chu­setts include rooftop enterprises, such as the farm on the top of the Boston Design Center, which was maintained by Higher Ground Farm from 2013 to 2018,39 and container farms, such as Corner Stalk Farm, in East Boston, which I describe in detail in chapter 5. Multiple respondents shared with me that a Montreal-­based rooftop farming com­ pany, Lufa Farms,40 had expressed interest in coming to Boston, and the New York City–­based rooftop farming com­pany Gotham Greens41 is often mentioned as a model for pos­si­ble development in Mas­sa­chu­setts. At the time of this writing, however, ­t hese large-­scale commercial urban farming visions have yet to become a real­ity in Mas­sa­chu­setts cities.

Funders The rise of con­temporary urban agriculture has stimulated new interest—­ and new funding—­f rom both the public and private sectors. In 2015, USDA secretary Tom Vilsack announced that the agency was putting together an  “urban farming tool kit” that would “provide a step-­by-­step pro­cess if you  are interested in establishing an urban farm.” 42 The tool kit, which was released the following year, details in par­t ic­u ­lar the many funding mechanisms available for urban farming through federal programs such as the USDA’s Local Food Promotion Program and Community Food Proj­ects Grants; it also provides overviews of vari­ous kinds of technical assistance available in the areas of business planning, environmental quality, and infrastructure development.43 Similarly, at the state level, agricultural extension ser­vices and departments of agricultural resources from coast to coast provide both grant funding and consultation.44 In 2014, the Mas­sa­chu­setts Department of Agricultural Resources (MDAR) launched an Urban Agriculture Program and began an annual grant cycle to support urban agriculture proj­ects. ­These proj­ects are as diverse as the field itself, and include support for remediating small lots for urban farming, building composting systems, purchasing refrigerated vans for mobile farmers’ markets, building green­houses and other season extenders, and training new urban farmers. While MDAR’s focus is on supporting commercial urban agriculture, many of their grants support the market-­oriented proj­ects of community-­ based organ­izations. Beyond the metrics that MDAR uses to assess orga­nizational outcomes, such as “job development, economic impact,” and “effects on p ­ eople, like access to food and nutrition” (Field notes, July 1, 2015), MDAR staff also hope to see cities passing ordinances or zoning amendments that support commercial urban farming (Field notes, February 5, 2016). All of the community-­based organ­izations I encountered in Mas­sa­chu­setts rely on both private and government funding for their bud­gets.45 ­There is tremendous variation in the missions and goals of philanthropic funders, which

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include food access, community economic development, and youth education and employment. For example, Harvard Pilgrim Healthcare provides funding to increase “the amount of healthy, local produce distributed ­free to low-­income families.” 46 The Merck ­Family Fund supports urban agriculture as a mechanism of youth development, focusing especially on “programs in low-­income urban areas that are harnessing the power of young ­people to create urban farms and local markets.” 47 While essential to nonprofit urban agriculture, ­t hese grants, “which tend to be small, are rarely multiyear, are highly competitive,” and also “require substantial quantities of staff time to acquire and manage” (Daftary-­Steele, Herrera, and Porter 2015, 28; see also Shostak 2018). Private sector investment has been directed especially ­toward novel high-­ tech indoor vertical farming systems, which make it pos­si­ble to grow food year round. For example, in 2013–2015, Goldman Sachs raised $30 million in funding to finance the redevelopment of a 69,000-­square-­foot industrial building in Newark, New Jersey.48 The proj­ect was described as part of “an ongoing effort by the city and the community to transform functionally obsolete industrial buildings into highly efficient light industrial spaces, better suited to the needs of ­today’s economy.” The anchor tenant of the renovated space is Aerofarms, a firm that builds, owns, operates, and leases indoor vertical farming systems. In addition to building its systems ­there, Aerofarms ­will “operate the world’s largest aeroponic farm on the site, creating approximately 78 new permanent jobs.” 49 In addition to their direct support of urban agriculture organ­izations, funders shape con­temporary urban agriculture through vari­ous kinds of convenings of stakeholders and grantees. For example, MDAR has supported a yearly statewide Urban Farming Conference, and in 2015 or­ga­nized a convening on urban agriculture for municipal leaders at the Mas­sa­chu­setts State­house. In 2013, the Mas­sa­chu­setts Food Policy Council initiated a food system planning pro­cess that brought stakeholders together in multiple meetings over a two-­year period. And as we have seen, with the support of a grant from the USDA, the city of Boston convened a “visioning pro­cess” that brought together organ­izations from across the city to “find a common vision for growing in Boston that meets the needs of all stakeholders involved.”50

Rural Farms and Farmers Urban farmers define their proj­ects and practices by their location within city bound­aries. Nonetheless, rural farmers are colleagues of urban farmers, sometimes critics of urban farming initiatives, and valued partners at urban farmers’ markets. A tremendous amount of farming in Mas­sa­chu­setts happens outside of its cities. According to the USDA’s Census of Agriculture, ­there are 7,755 farms in Mas­sa­chu­setts working on over 523,000 acres to produce $492 million in agricultural products. Eighty ­percent of Mas­sa­chu­setts farms are ­family owned, and

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95  ­percent are “small farms,” grossing u ­ nder $250,000 per year.51 The average Mas­sa­chu­setts farm produces $63,470 of agricultural products on just sixty-­ eight acres. According to MDAR, Mas­sa­chu­setts’s farmers face a myriad of challenges, including development pressure, high land values, and harsh winters.52 From 2007 to 2012, Mas­sa­chu­setts was one of the few states that experienced growth (1  ­percent) in both the number of farms and acres in farmland.53 This small growth, however, was preceded by massive losses of farmland and farm closures (Platt 1977).54 Indeed, in rural counties across the United States, the loss of ­family farms and the “hollowing out” of rural communities have been defining facts of the past ­century (Carr and Kefalas 2009). As sociologist Robert Wuthnow notes, “A ­century ago, approximately six million Americans farmed. That number has declined dramatically. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, fewer than 750,000 employed Americans list their principal occupation as farmers, meaning they earn their primary living from farming land they own or rent” (2015, 2). Federal policy that favored large producers and commodity farmers clearly contributed to this consolidation (Wuthnow 2015). Farmland also has been lost to development. According to the American Farmland Trust, in less than one generation, the United States irrevocably developed nearly eleven million acres of its best land for intensive food and crop production. This loss continues, with an estimated seventy-­five acres of farmland lost ­every hour, amounting to a loss of 1.5 million acres ­every year.55 Discriminatory policies have led to disproportionate land loss among African American farmers. In 1920, Black Americans owned 925,000 farms, but by 1975 just 45,000 Black-­owned farms remained. The 2012 Census of Agriculture estimated that Black farmers now make up less than 2 ­percent of the nation’s farmers and 1 ­percent of rural landowners.56 During the time that I was d ­ oing this research, urban farmers seemed to be actively thinking through their relationships with rural farmers and farming. Some farmers told me that they “tried to stay connected to the rural farming community,” even in the context of expectations that they would prioritize relationships with other urban farmers. As an urban farmer in Boston commented: It is something that I strug­gle with a l­ ittle bit. When p ­ eople [said,] . . . ​“I ­can’t believe ­you’re not ­going to the Urban Farming Conference,” I was like, “I went to the Mississippi Green­house Tomato Conference this year.” For me, it was two days of [learning about] tomato production. And for winter greens, too, rather than go to the Urban Farming Conference, you should go out to . . . ​ Red Fire Farm, [where] Ryan does a Greens Intensive ­every winter, and it’s amazing! So . . . ​I’m always trying to stay connected to the rural farming community ­because I think that’s actually where the best food production knowledge is. (Interview 34)

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Representatives from both urban and rural farms regularly come together as part of the Collaborative Regional Alliance for Farmer Training (CRAFT) program. Through CRAFT, farmers and farm apprentices gather at each other’s farms once a month through the growing season for an educational tour and discussion.57 Building bridges and collaboration between rural and urban farmers was the theme of the 2015 Mas­sa­chu­setts Urban Farming Conference. At the opening plenary, this was emphasized by a speaker who recounted how a previous MDAR commissioner had watched farmers interacting at a CRAFT event at a strawberry farm in Amesbury and was surprised that “you guys share every­ thing. In no other business would you see this!” “We gotta keep each other in business,” he concluded. “Farmers welcome other farmers” (Field notes, UFC 2015). “Agriculture in Mas­sa­chu­setts can only be strengthened by all of us working together to support all of our farmers,” commented another farmer during the plenary. Jennifer Hashley, director of the New Entry Sustainable Farming Proj­ect, which supports beginning farmers growing in both rural and urban areas, emphasized that they not only face many similar issues but have shared goals: “­There are similar challenges in each setting—­issues of scale, land access, quality of soil, NIMBY issues, financials, affordability, access to good food for every­one, job opportunities, addressing environmental concerns and climate change, regulatory challenges. . . . ​­There are many common concerns and intersections. . . . ​­Because ­we’re in this together. We all have the same end goal: we want to feed ­people” (Field notes, UFC 2015). Despite ­t hese optimistic visions, two issues tended to divide rural and urban farmers. The first issue centers on resources. This is unsurprising, given that “many rural farmers in New ­England are poor. . . . ​It is the odd farmer that’s ­really making a ­really good living, like ­really wealthy. Most of them are, at best, ­middle class” (Field notes, UFC 2015). Rural and urban farmers do not compete for land, but some perceive themselves as competing for federal and state funding. Consequently, I was told repeatedly that rural farmers ­were not enthusiastic about MDAR’s Urban Agriculture grants program, with responses ranging from skepticism to anger. “­There is one place of antagonism,” acknowledged a plenary speaker at the 2015 Urban Farming Conference, “and that is grant money.” Some rural farmers fear that scarce resources are being diverted from rural farmers, who also strug­gle to make ends meet, to support urban farming ­ ecause they are not providing the primary proj­ects that they see as “hobbies” b incomes for the farmers, or as “social ser­v ices” ­because they are oriented more ­toward social benefits than commercial viability (Field notes, UFC 2015). Relatedly, rural farming advocates have said that they support the grants program provided that “the input equals the yield,” that is, “as long as public funds ­aren’t being sunk into nonviable enterprises.”58 The second issue, raised primarily by urban farmers, concerns how racial differences between rural and urban growers may create barriers to collabora-

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tion and community building. For example, an urban farmer told the Mas­sa­ chu­setts Urban Ag Working Group that he is regularly the only Black person at CRAFT events in western Mas­sa­chu­setts. Consequently, he cannot imagine youth of color feeling comfortable at t­hese gatherings or participating in the apprentice programs supported by CRAFT (Field notes, April 1, 2015). The practical and cultural implications of the fact that rural farmers in Mas­sa­chu­setts are mostly older, male, and white, while urban farmers are more likely to be younger, female, and p ­ eople of color, are focal concerns for many urban farming advocates. As described in more detail in the following chapter, part of what is at stake ­here are long-­standing images and ideas about who is a farmer and who belongs on the land.

Markets The markets for urban agricultural products are as varied as urban farming proj­ects themselves. As we have seen, urban farmers sell both to high-­end commercial markets, including restaurants and supermarkets, and at local farmers’ markets, often sponsored by health clinics or community-­based organ­izations that aim to increase food access in neighborhoods without supermarkets. Additionally, t­here are urban farms that orient entirely e­ ither to providing fresh local food to underserved communities or to selling at top dollar to generate maximum profits. Further, urban farming enterprises that sell farm building and maintenance ser­v ices orient to a wide variety of end users—­individuals, schools, real estate developers, and Red Sox Nation, among ­others. ­Because of their geographic focus, and likely ­because of the relatively small scale of urban farming enterprises, I never heard rural farmers complain that urban farmers ­were siphoning away their customers. It was fairly common, however, to hear urban farming advocates express some version of the idea that urban agriculture is a means of “opening up new markets” in the city for rural farmers by increasing demand for locally grown fruit and vegetables. For example, at the 2015 UFC, Glynn Lloyd shared the following story: A gradu­ate of UFI went to work at a health center in Dorchester. She wanted to restart the Farmers’ Market ­t here, but ­couldn’t find farmers to sell, so she asked the UFI. This is a tough neighborhood; it’s hard to attract vendors. But UFI made good money selling t­ here and ­couldn’t keep up with demand. So, we worked to bring rural farmers in to sell. This is an example of urban agriculture opening up the market in the city. Urban farming is not g­ oing to be able to generate all the crops for which t­ here is a market in cities . . . ​but it can increase demand. (Field notes, UFC 2015)

Similarly, in Somerville, identifying demand for callaloo—­a leafy green that is the central ingredient in a popu­lar Ca­rib­bean dish—­among customers at a mobile farmers’ market led to the development of a relationship between the

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market and a rural farm, which is now growing callaloo specifically for the city’s residents (Shostak, Blum, et al. 2017). In 2017, a report from the Mas­sa­chu­setts Public Health Association highlighted “grocery gaps” throughout the state, which it found to be most acute in “small rural towns and Gateway Cities.”59 In recent years, the Commonwealth of Mas­sa­chu­setts, with support from federal funding, has launched several initiatives that seek to address both poverty and food access in rural and urban areas across the commonwealth. The Healthy Incentives Program (HIP), in par­tic­u ­lar, has transformed the market for locally grown fruits and vegetables among low-­income Mas­sa­chu­ setts residents. Launched in 2017, HIP provides matching funds to individuals enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) who use their benefits to buy fruits and vegetables at participating farmers’ markets, farm stands, mobile markets, and/or community supported agriculture farm share programs. For each dollar that a participant spends on eligible fruits and vegetables, HIP automatically returns a dollar to their SNAP account, up to a monthly limit determined by h ­ ouse­hold size.60 In its first year, HIP was so widely used by both rural and urban residents that it expended all of the $1.25 million in funding that had been expected to sustain it for three years. According to program data, in HIP’s first year, SNAP sales at farm retailers increased by nearly 600 ­percent. Recognizing the popularity of the program and its benefits for both families and farmers, the state provided a supplement so that it could continue through 2018 and allocated $4 million in state funding for fiscal year 2019.61 HIP enjoys wide support from farmers and consumers across the commonwealth and points to the possibility of initiatives that serve constituencies across taken for granted bound­aries.

At the Bound­aries: Urban and Rural Natures Urban agriculture is defined by its relationship to the city and, in turn, by cultural assumptions about the differences between cities and countryside, urban and rural, and society and nature. ­These assumptions give meaning to the very term “urban agriculture,” define the bound­aries of its practices, and are both invoked and contested in many of the narratives described in the chapters that follow. As noted previously, moving farming outside of the city was impor­tant to the rise of American cities as centers of industry. This ­shaped not only the form and content—­t he materiality—of American cities, but also their meanings. As historian William Cronon observes, starting in the nineteenth ­century, Americans began “to see city and country as separate places, more isolated from each other than connected. We carefully partition our national landscape into urban places, rural places, and wilderness” (1991, xvi).62 This purported separation of

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city and country, nature and culture, likewise has been central to much so­cio­log­i­ cal research on cities; indeed, “Louis Wirth opened his celebrated article Urbanism as a Way of Life with the observation that ‘nowhere has mankind been farther removed from organic nature than ­under the conditions of life characteristic of ­great cities’ ” (Wirth 1938,1–2; quoted in Wachsmuth 2012, 506). Consequently, for many sociologists, “the study of society is the study of the city, while nature lurks as an unmentioned backdrop” (Wachsmuth 2012, 512; see also Go 2017). To be sure, con­temporary scholarship challenges t­hese bound­aries, documenting that city and country are so “tightly bound” that their development requires a “unified narrative” (Cronon 1991, xvi). Relatedly, social scientists have argued that the “society-­nature opposition” is simply “wrong,” as “nature is as much pre­sent in city concrete as in a farmer’s field” (Wachsmuth 2012, 506; see also Classens 2015).63 Nonetheless, in all of my interviews, only one respondent challenged the purported division between city and countryside and their assumed relationships with nature. Beekeeper, scientist, and urban agriculture advocate Noah Wilson-­ Rich observed that “one might just naturally assume, oh, countryside—­that’s nature. That’s where ­things thrive. But the concept of what’s natu­ral is so skewed with our modern world” Moreover, Wilson-­R ich’s research shows that cities may provide an optimal habitat for honey bees, as “bees are making more honey in cities. ­They’re surviving the winter at higher rates”; data from four cities in ­England indicate that “biodiversity is greater in cities for bees” (Interview 38). In ­every other interview, the differences between urban and rural—­and their relationships to nature—­were ­either uncommented upon or taken for granted. That said, interviewees certainly reflected on the practical consequences of rural/urban distinctions. For example, urban planners told me that they typically have ­little training in agricultural land uses ­because they “are trained for urban environments, and we have been conditioned to think about cities as places where food ­doesn’t grow . . . ​[since] ­people wanted it that way for a long time” (Interview 22). Relatedly, city officials and urban policy makers are often unfamiliar with the very possibility of growing food in the city; as a farmer in Boston observed, “Urban farming in the first place is hard for ­people to wrap their head around” (UFI Oral History Interview 2016). Consequently, an advocate from western Mas­sa­chu­setts commented, “many of us are used to having city officials look at us like ­we’re from Mars when we come in talking about urban ag” (Field notes, UFC 2015). Relatedly, advocates say that they “understand” that they need to c­ ounter the pervasive assumption that “you grow food in the country” (Interview 38). At the neighborhood meetings on urban agriculture held throughout Boston during the summer of 2013, “­people would . . . ​ say, ‘No, farming is something that happens in Oklahoma’ or [they would] name some midwestern state” (Interview 17). In an effort to expand “what we imagine farming to be,” the Boston Office of Food Initiatives staff would set up a “farm stand” at ­t hese meetings, with a poster that asks, “What can be grown

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in Boston?” Beneath the poster they would place a gorgeous variety of vegetables grown by existing urban farms, artfully arranged in wicker baskets. At the conclusion of the meeting, attendees ­were encouraged to “please take some produce on your way out!” (Field notes, July 2013). The romanticization of “nature” implicit in cultural assumptions about urban and rural, city and countryside, also has profound implications for how p ­ eople understand the potential benefits of urban agriculture. To take just one example, as sociologist Hillary Angelo observes, the very proposition that we can improve urban life through “greening” draws on a par­tic­u­lar way of seeing cities—as “grey,” industrial, anonymous, and alienated—­that emerged in relation to the large industrial cities of the early 1900s. This “city lens” built upon and codified long-­standing cultural assumptions about cities as the “opposite” of country life and wild nature (Angelo 2017, 162–163). Consequently, “nature” in the city—­even highly mediated forms of nature, such as urban farms and gardens—­becomes romanticized and associated with normative ideals including community (Angelo 2017), unalienated ­labor (Mincyte and Dobernig 2016), individualism and self-­help (Lawson 2005, 288–290), ­wholesome food, and health. As demonstrated by Michael Bell’s exquisite ethnography of the town of Childerley, such assumptions about the meanings of urban as compared to rural life are deployed also by t­ hose who self-­identify as “country p ­ eople” and see themselves as living “a distinctive way of life . . . ​closer to nature,” rooted “in community,” and ­free from the polluting economic rationalities of con­temporary social life (Bell 1994, 93). Simply put, the implication is that “country living” is a more natu­ral, au­then­tic, and moral way of being (Bell 1994). I heard such identity claims from urban farmers and advocates across the commonwealth. For example, an advocate who keeps chickens framed her enthusiasm for urban farming as expressing “a connection to a more rural lifestyle and wanting to kind of bring it into my city life a ­little bit” (Interview 14). A young ­woman speaking at the 2014 Urban Farming Conference told the audience that she had “lost my light” as a consequence of moving from her ­father’s farm, in Jamaica, to Boston; she sees in urban farming a means of reconnecting with “light” and “purpose” and more “natu­ral” ways of being in the world (Field notes, UFC 2014). For some urban farmers and advocates, rural living is linked also to the presumed values of an agrarian past (Lawson 2005, 289; K. Smith 2004). Participants in Boston’s Urban Agriculture Visioning Group not infrequently invoked the city’s rural history, recalling sheep grazing on the Boston Common in the 1700s as they talked about “­going back to the beginning,” a return to “how it all started” (Field notes, July  15, 2015). Relatedly, as I attended harvest festivals, Food Day events, and other cele­brations of agriculture in urban settings, I was struck by the prevalence of rural imagery. Across urban sites—­t he parking lot at Haley House in Boston, the vacant lot surrounded by freeway on-­ramps and trucking companies slated to become ArtFarm in Somerville, the Rotary Park

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in Lowell—­I saw bales of hay placed strategically to function as seating areas and climbing structures for ­children.64 Although the neighborhoods hosting urban farming and harvest festivals have their own rich cultural traditions—­ including ­those linked to immigrant communities from Central and South Amer­i­ca, Southeast Asia, and Africa—­such events almost exclusively feature bluegrass and country ­music, which are more often associated with rurality and (however incorrectly) with whiteness.65 As we ­will see in the following chapters, ­these relationships—­between past and pre­sent, rural and urban—­are both invoked and complicated in the narratives of Mas­sa­chu­setts’s urban farmers. For example, Black urban farmers bear witness to the fact that not every­one was f­ ree to graze their sheep on the Boston Common in the 1700s and that, for generations, their ancestors ­were forced to work the land as part of the horrors of slavery in the American South. Likewise, they recount the experiences of ­those who migrated north, definitively leaving ­behind country life and often emphatically rejecting any association with agrarianism. They call attention to the many challenges that face low-­income neighborhoods and communities of color in postindustrial cities, including environmental justice issues that mean that reconnecting with nature by placing one’s hands in (contaminated) soil can be a threat to one’s health. And, like Tris at the Urban Farming Institute of Boston, they insist that community development agendas linked to urban agriculture serve the needs of the residents of long-­neglected urban neighborhoods rather than high-­end developers. Indeed, as we ­w ill see, the narratives of urban farmers and advocates actively grapple with the pasts of both ­peoples and places. The histories of cities and their neighborhoods, and of the ­people who have migrated to them ­under a variety of conditions, provide the materiality and the meanings that appear in the narratives of urban gardeners, farmers, and advocates. They are central to how urban farmers and advocates understand both the places where they grow (e.g., Why are t­ here so many vacant lots in this neighborhood?) and the significance of growing food in ­today’s cities (e.g., “I thought I would never see nothing like this in my neighborhood!” [UFI Oral History Interview 2016]). At the same time, they give urgency to the divergent claims and visions regarding what urban farming should be, what it can do, and who should benefit.

chapter 2

;

The Powers of Food Somerville is the healthiest city in Mas­sa­chu­setts! —­Field notes, June 2017 We are growing a healthy community ­here in Lowell! —­Field notes, September 2014

Soon ­after Somerville passed its urban agriculture ordinance, a longtime resident commented to me, “They tried to do this [urban ag] ­under the previous administration, but ­people ­were like ‘This is Somerville. We do cars, we ­don’t do chickens!” (Field notes, May 29, 2013). In fact, Somerville’s premier development proj­ect—­the shopping, restaurant, condominium, and office complex known as Assembly Row—is named for the fifty-­two-­acre Ford assembly plant that used to operate in the area, which closed in 1958.1 The same year that Assembly Row opened, at an event celebrating urban agriculture in Somerville, Mayor Joseph Curtatone described “healthy living and urban agriculture” as among the core values of the city: “This is our value set: healthy living, urban agriculture and connecting ­people to their food source, learning and professional development” (Field notes, June 9, 2014). Mayor Curtatone has been a power­ful advocate for urban agriculture in Somerville, and he rarely misses an opportunity to mention that “Somerville is the first city in Mas­sa­chu­setts with an urban agriculture ordinance” (Field notes, July 2013, June 2014, October 2014, June 2017). Approximately thirty miles north of Somerville, in the former mill town of Lowell, the urban agriculture organ­ization Mill City Grows (MCG) is “dedicated to growing a healthier Lowell through creating urban food production sites throughout the city and providing the tools for safe urban growing.” MCG ­ ill be known for its innovative approach to food proenvisions that “Lowell w duction and food justice where residents are engaged actors in creating a food secure community that promotes the ability to grow, consume, and distribute healthy, locally produced food on land that is seen as a vital resource for the community and is protected for food production.”2 A city planner in Lowell told me that Mill City Grows earned the support of city hall when a community 48

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garden “totally transformed” a park that previously had been a site of seemingly intractable crime and vandalism. Since then, the community gardens and farms founded and maintained by MCG have “taken care of some of the most problematic lots” in the city inventory (Field notes, October 2, 2014). Cities like Lowell and Somerville have been at the forefront of the development of urban agriculture in Mas­sa­chu­setts. In 2014, when the Mas­sa­chu­setts Department of Agriculture made its first-­ever awards for urban agriculture, five of eight grants went to organ­izations in what the Mas­sa­chu­setts state legislature has designated as “Gateway Cities.”3 As noted in chapter 1, ­t hese are midsize cities that have faced per­sis­tent social and economic challenges as a result of the loss of their industrial economic bases.4 From the perspective of outsiders, Gateway Cities tend to have negative reputations; t­ hese typically focus on the prevalence of unemployment and crime and often have xenophobic undertones. However, in the words of a research and policy organ­ization that does economic development and civic engagement in the Gateway Cities, “they retain many assets with unrealized potential. ­These include existing infrastructure and strong connections to transportation networks, museums, hospitals, universities and other major institutions, disproportionately young and underutilized workers, and perhaps above all, au­t hen­tic urban fabric.”5 Focusing primarily on Somerville and Lowell, this chapter examines how post-­industrial cities “tell the story” of their urban agriculture initiatives. It explores how urban agriculture features in narratives that seek to c­ ounter long-­ standing and derogatory ste­reo­types about urban places, their histories, and their residents.6 In such narratives, urban agriculture is positioned as not only an au­t hen­tic part of the “urban fabric” but also an au­t hen­tic part of each city’s civic and social life.7 In so d ­ oing, this chapter describes how food has become central to narratives about economic development and health in postindustrial cities. As one city official put it, food is “the new art” in urban development strategies (Interview 28). That is, food is the latest in a series of cultural products, such as ­music, arts, crafts, and festivals, that entrepreneurs have deployed in their efforts to transform the economies and the reputations of distressed postindustrial cities (Grazian 2003; Wherry 2011; Wynn 2015; Zukin 1995). Similar to other development strategies focused on culture, ­these strategies commodify “the growing demand for all t­ hings ethnic,” sometimes at the expense of the immigrant communities whose ­music, parades, and, increasingly, food feature at the center of ­t hese initiatives (Wherry 2011, 3). Along with the ways that urban agriculture revalorizes previously vacant lots (Sbicca 2019), t­ hese sorts of narratives are at the heart of concerns that it ­w ill lead to gentrification. This food-­as-­development strategy was vividly on display in a 2018 article in Commonwealth Magazine that exuberantly proclaimed that Gateway Cities have discovered “the power of food!” As described in this article, initiatives

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across Mas­sa­chu­setts’s Gateway Cities aim to use food “to improve the wellbeing of the city . . . ​­whether through promoting [its] vast array of immigrant cuisines or making fresh, local produce more readily available. . . . ​It’s also about getting the city’s disparate populations to interact with each other a l­ ittle more.” The article went on to describe “a movement of sorts” to establish “a more local food economy . . . ​an effort that encompasses every­t hing from community gardens and farmers markets, to kitchen incubators and food trucks, to promoting immigrant cuisines.” Combining “the demand for locally-­sourced exotic culinary options, and for small-­batch artisanship over mass production” among the Boston area’s “upscale and hipster sets” is part of what makes this pos­si­ble. However, as the article noted, it is in the immigrant communities of the Gateway Cities, “where fresh lettuce, to say nothing of an organic farm-­to-­table meal, can be hard to come by,” that the stakes are “considerably higher.”8 As we ­will see, the threads woven together in this narrative have been taken up in cities across Mas­sa­chu­setts. In contrast to other culture-­based development strategies such as parades and festivals, described in previous so­cio­log­i­cal studies, food also invokes a broad set of meanings associated with health and well-­being. Indeed, the same city official who told me that food is “one of the next big ­things” in urban development strategies also asserted that urban agriculture is an impor­tant aspect of “food as medicine” (Interview 28). In part, food is linked to health in ­these narratives ­because, as noted in the Commonwealth Magazine article, healthy food access is a pressing issue in the Gateway Cities. According to a study conducted by the Mas­sa­chu­setts Public Health Association, this is mostly due to an absence of fully stocked and accessible grocery stores, especially in low-­income areas.9 At the same time, urban community gardens are promoted as a means of bringing ­people together who might other­wise be separated by differences in language, ethnicity, or socioeconomic status. Consequently, when cities and the nonprofit urban agriculture organ­izations with which they partner reclaim vacant lots for urban gardens or farms or host farmers’ markets, they see themselves not so much as creating cultural amenities as addressing public health challenges. Urban agriculture initiatives thereby provide their mayors with a basis for claiming that their cities are committed to population health and wellness. Although Somerville and Lowell have much in common with each other—­ and with other Gateway Cities—­t his chapter also highlights differences in their ­ ill see, both cities have rich histories official narratives and strategies. As we w related to immigration and significant populations of recent immigrants. However, whereas Somerville’s urban agriculture narrative primarily builds bridges between e­arlier waves of immigration, primarily from Eu­ro­pean countries such as Ireland, Italy, and Portugal, and its gentrifying pre­sent, Lowell’s narrative focuses much more on how urban agriculture contributes to efforts to support and integrate present-­day immigrants, including many recent arrivals

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from Southeast Asia and South and Central Amer­i­ca. To put it too simply, Somerville tends to highlight a purported continuity of interests between older immigrants and “foodies” and “hipsters.” In contrast, in Lowell, I was told repeatedly that urban agriculture is “not a hipster ­thing,” but rather a strategy for supporting poor and recent immigrant families. This difference allows us to consider the varied meanings and practices of urban agriculture and their consequences for the identities and possibilities of postindustrial cities.

Place Narratives This chapter focuses on narratives that constitute the “place identities” of cities. Most broadly, place identity refers to “a collection of attributes or an identity assigned to a place”—­t hat is, “the identity of the place itself” (Brown-­Saracino and Parker 2017, 842). Place reputation is a specific kind of place identity: “collective understandings about a place based on stories ­people out in the world tell about it”; when strong, it “effectively become the lens through which places are (at least initially) understood” (Brown-­Saracino and Parker 2017, 844, emphasis added). Again, narrative plays a central role, as both locals and outsiders “construct places through narratives” (Paulsen 2004, 244). As sociologist Krista Paulsen suggests (2004: 245), we can learn a lot about a place’s identity by observing “how ­people conclude the sentence: ‘This is a place where ­people . . .’ ” Do cars, for example. Or do chickens. Or grow vegetables. Branding is a special kind of place narrative that attempts to “form the impression that a city is a certain kind of place, often for instrumental reasons” (Brown-­Saracino and Parker 2017, 843). Branding narratives are often constructed by outsiders, including the realtors, developers, and politicians who come together in urban growth co­a li­tions to push specific development agendas (Logan and Molotch 1987, 32–36). In her pathbreaking study of the branding of New York City, sociologist Miriam Greenberg describes how boosters “sold” the city to developers and tourists (Greenberg 2008). Greenberg describes branding as a “dual strategy,” at once visual and material, “combining intensive marketing—in this case, place marketing—­with neoliberal po­liti­cal and economic restructuring” (2008, 10). From this perspective, cities (and their neighborhoods) possess dif­f er­ent forms of “symbolic capital,” including their “historical narrative, collective memory, and lifestyle”; together with aspects of its physical environment, a city’s boosters ­will leverage symbolic capital to make claims about its “uniqueness, authenticity, particularity, and speciality” (Greenberg 2008, 29). An “ambiance of authenticity” is often a part of commercial development (Zukin 1991, 51). As urban sociologist Jonathan Wynn observes: “City branding and the promotion of locales is hardly a new strategy. . . . ​Manufacturing-­age branding was once used as a way to attract industry . . . ​branding t­ oday has been adapted to developing place character as a strategy for attracting businesses, residents, and

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tourists” (2015, 28). Consequently, it is very much in the interest of urban growth co­a li­tions to shape place-­based narratives about the locales that they seek to develop. However, branding narratives are not always successful. Nor are they the sole creations of outsiders who impose them upon powerless local residents. As sociologist Frederick Wherry demonstrates in his impor­tant analy­sis of efforts to brand and promote a Latino neighborhood in Philadelphia as a place “teeming with arts and culture,” community-­based organ­izations play a central role, shaping the development, success, or failure of neighborhood brands. Further, branding narratives can be constrained by a place’s history and prevailing urban myths (2011, 1). Therefore, successful branding narratives tend to “rely on accumulated narratives that have characterized the community and its inhabitants” (2011, 7). One methodological implication of Wherry’s observations is that sociologists need to “attend to histories of repre­sen­ta­tion” and “reputational attributes” of the places that we study. ­These can function as “deeply embedded constraints” on how places “can be believably represented to a mainstream audience,” and they may “limit what mainstream society believes about a neighborhood’s potential for transformation and growth (2011, 118). As we ­will see, city officials, and their branding experts, seek to incorporate aspects of the histories and current identities of postindustrial cities in order to make development strategies seem au­t hen­tic to the place. ­Because branding efforts are often part and parcel of pro­cesses of gentrification, it is critical to ask for whom branding, and associated “place-­making” initiatives, change a place “for the better.” To wit, speaking at the 2018 Mas­sa­chu­setts Urban Farming Conference, Chicago-­based artist, architect, and urban planner Emmanuel Pratt argued powerfully that the “creative placemaking” at the heart of many economic development initiatives, including ­those that leverage food and farming proj­ects, is r­ eally “the erasure of places” and “an act of vio­lence.” Creative placemaking is “just colonialism,” he asserted. “It was already a place. You [place-­makers] want to bring in dif­fer­ent places or businesses and erase memories of what was ­here” (Field notes, UFC 2018). As the founder and director of Chicago’s Sweetwater Foundation, Pratt advocates rather for “regenerative placemaking,” which he describes as “a blend of urban agriculture, art and education to transform vacant spaces and abandoned buildings into eco­nom­ically and ecologically productive and sustainable community assets that produce engaged youth, skilled workers, art, locally-­grown food, and affordable housing.”10 At stake h ­ ere is w ­ hether the place—as well as the story of the place—is being changed to reflect the needs and aspirations of its current residents or to appeal to outsiders, such as developers, tourists, and pos­si­ble ­future residents. Relatedly, a growing lit­er­a­ture documents how urban greening proj­ects—­ including parks, community gardens, and farms—­are promoted by “green growth co­a li­tions” and result in “green gentrification” (Gould and Lewis 2017).

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Green growth co­a li­tions “co-­opt environmental concerns” as a means of facilitating high-­end development (Curran and Hamilton 2018, 2). They are often framed as efforts to “improve the environmental quality of neighborhoods and turn eco­nom­ically ‘wasted’ spaces into productive spaces” (Gould and Lewis 2017, 2). ­These environmental improvements, however, may come at the expense of long-­term residents, including ­t hose who long have been at the forefront of efforts to green their communities, through volunteer cleanups and gardening initiatives (Martinez 2010). Further, even when greening proj­ects are not designed to advance gentrification, they may nonetheless result in the displacement of longtime residents and businesses (Gould and Lewis 2017, 2). As a counterstrategy, scholars and activists have rallied ­behind the idea of making places “just green enough,” by which they refer to plans for remediation and revitalization that uncouple environmental cleanup from high-­end residential and commercial development (Curran and Hamilton 2018, 3). As described in chapter  1, urban agriculture evokes cultural meanings associated not only with food, but with country, community, and healthy living. As part of the “country” side of the long-­standing city/country (urban/ rural) binary, ­t hese meanings provide power­ful rhetorical resources for cities seeking to transform their reputations, as well as their economies: “If cities are ­imagined to be crowded, grey, dense, dirty places (in implicit contrast to the countryside outside), the addition of green space can be, and usually is, evaluated as good” (Angelo 2017, 167). At the same time, many urban agriculture initiatives are promoted for their potential to improve population health, ­either by increasing access to healthy and affordable food or by bringing communities together. Consequently, considering how urban agriculture appears in branding strategies also raises new questions about how “health” features in the identities of con­temporary cities.

Somerville With a population of 81,360 and a size of slightly more than four square miles, Somerville is the most densely populated municipality in New ­England. It is a strikingly ethnically diverse city. According to 2017 data from the American Communities Survey, 25  ­percent of the city’s residents ­were born outside the United States, and 29 ­percent of ­house­holds report speaking a language other than En­glish at home.11 More than fifty languages are spoken in the Somerville public schools.12 Eco­nom­ically, Somerville is a strikingly unequal city. Although the median ­house­hold income is $84,722, approximately 12 ­percent of the city’s residents live below the poverty line. Although it is not officially a Gateway City, Somerville shares a similar trajectory and set of challenges.13 Its industrial base, which included brick-­making, meatpacking, and car assembly, declined dramatically in the m ­ iddle of the twentieth c­ entury, with devastating consequences;

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population, ­house­hold income, and city bud­gets ­were in steep decline through the early 1980s. Somerville’s reputation has reflected t­ hese challenges. It was long known by the derogatory nickname “Slummerville,” an epithet that Mayor Curtatone reports his “branding experts” have forbidden him from uttering.14 A 2014 article in Boston Magazine about Mayor Curtatone’s “transformation” of Somerville reported that for de­cades ­people living and working in the Boston area (but presumably not themselves Somerville residents) described it as “sketchy,” “shady,” and the “armpit of New ­England.” This article went on to assert that Somerville was no longer a “troubled urban landscape” but had become one of New ­England’s “most livable cities.”15 That same year, a New York Times article asserted that Somerville had “come out of the shadows” ­after previously having been “synonymous to some with the mobster Whitey Bulger, whose Winter Hill gang was headquartered ­there.” However, according to the New York Times, thanks to “cool mayoral initiatives like urban agriculture” and a variety of food-­focused enterprises that include “restaurant and bar openings, plus new businesses like the indoor farmers’ market Something GUD, and the Aeronaut Brewing Co.,” Somerville is now “coming into its own as a hip alternative to both Boston and Cambridge.” The article went on to recommend that tourists visit a high-­end pizza restaurant and an artisanal donut shop in “the city’s creative hub, Union Square.”16 As suggested by this laudatory media coverage—­itself a part of boosterism and urban branding—­enterprises related to food and farming, such as farmers’ markets, restaurants, breweries, and urban agriculture, have been central to efforts to transform Somerville’s reputation. For example, an urban planner recounted to me how becoming a “foodie place” has been part of economic development in Somerville: “­There is an ele­ment of economic development. . . . ​ B ­ ecause Somerville has become known as this foodie place, and ­people come ­here to go to restaurants, and ­people come ­here for this kind of aura of food haven, local food, e­tcetera” (Interview 07). Food-­based initiatives have also been at the center of efforts to change the narrative about specific neighborhoods within Somerville. For example, a very popu­lar Saturday farmers’ market in Union Square was designed, in part, to transform the reputation of a neighborhood that previously was known mostly for its traffic prob­lems: “The ­t hings that p ­ eople knew us for early on [­were] traffic, trash, and . . . ​traffic again, ­ eople talked about. in terms of crazy intersections, but that was the main stuff p And now nobody complains about that, and we ­haven’t done anything to change the traffic!” (Interview 11). City officials see urban agriculture as part of economic development and food-­focused branding in Somerville: “Another big impetus for this [urban agriculture] is economic development. Why ­can’t Somerville be branded as a special food place? With local foods that are both unique to Somerville and healthy. This is one of the ­t hings that is impor­tant to the Mayor” (Field notes, June 4, 2013).

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Urban agriculture fits with the Somerville food brand as well, ­because it is both “local” and “healthy.” It thereby articulates also with another part of the city’s new reputation, the nationally recognized program Shape Up Somerville (SUS). According to the program’s website: “SUS began in 2002 as a CDC-­ funded research study led by Somerville community members, Tufts University, Somerville Schools and Cambridge Health Alliance with the goal of preventing obesity in 1st through 3rd graders through environmental changes. The researchers found that environmental changes like adding bike lanes, helping restaurants offer healthier options, and updating school lunches made a difference in preventing childhood obesity” (see also Economos et al. 2013). SUS is central to the city’s claim that “Somerville embodies a culture of health.”17 At a myriad of events, Mayor Curtatone has referred to Shape Up Somerville as the city’s “DNA” and part of what makes Somerville “a ­great place to live, work, play, and raise a ­family” (Field notes, July 2013). At urban agriculture events, in par­tic­u­lar, Mayor Curtatone and other city officials often comment that urban agriculture “started with Shape Up Somerville” and “fits with focus of the city on health, Shape Up Somerville’s focus on getting ­people moving, eating nutritious food” (Field notes, June 2014, October 2014). Members of the Curtatone administration—­and the mayor himself—­frequently comment that Shape Up Somerville is “the basis for Let’s Move!”—­the food and fitness program supported by former First Lady Michelle Obama—­and “has set the tone for the nation and the world.” According to a 2014 article in the Boston Globe, Somerville’s branding as a healthy and vibrant community has been so successful that other cities—­and, indeed, many of Mas­sa­chu­setts’s Gateway Cities—­are now vying to be “the next Somerville.” Among the advantages mentioned in the article are Somerville’s cafés, ethnic and high-­end restaurants, innovation hubs, public transportation, and “nationally recognized health programs.”18 It is worth noting that initiatives focused on food—­including cafés, restaurants, farmers’ markets, and cookbooks—do not necessarily confront the material consequences of a city’s industrial history. In contrast, for gardeners and farmers, this history lingers in the form of pervasive soil contamination and brownfields19 (including one that, ­after remediation, became a community garden20). The city of Somerville seeks to educate gardeners about the ­hazards of soil contamination through its user-­friendly “ABCs of Urban Agriculture,” which includes information regarding soil testing, recommendations regarding not growing vegetables in soil with lead levels of more than 300ppm, and a host of “best gardening practices,” including using raised beds.21 Further, residents who wish to sell their Somerville-­grown produce are required to conduct an annual soil test and to post the results at the point of sale.22 Rather than focusing on the physical environment, as I describe below, urban agriculture in Somerville is positioned as part of ongoing efforts to bring ­people together across differences, including differences based in ethnicity,

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immigration history, and socioeconomic status. Somerville’s immigrant history, specifically the in-­migration of ­people from Eu­ro­pean countries such as Ireland, Italy, and Portugal who brought with them farming and gardening traditions, is hailed as what makes agriculture an au­then­tic part of Somerville’s urban fabric. However, ­until very recently this narrative has less often celebrated the farming and gardening traditions of Somerville’s more recent immigrants. Rather, it is seen as building an affiliative bridge between an ­earlier generation of (mostly white) immigrants and the more recent influx of affluent (mostly white) professionals. This points to a specific cultural mechanism through which urban agriculture in Somerville may contribute to gentrification.23

“A Foot in Each World” In July 2014, at a ribbon cutting at the Somerville Innovation Farm—­a hydroponics learning farm at the Edgerly School—­I introduce myself to Luisa, a city planner who wrote much of Somerville’s urban agriculture ordinance, and tell her that I am interested in urban agriculture, and especially how it is happening in Somerville. She tells me that ­t here are two groups interested in food in Somerville—­“­there’s the older immigrants, and the hipsters.” Reflecting on her own ­family history, she describes how her grandparents, who are Portuguese, had a “tiny garden,” with a beautiful arbor; similarly, she tells me, ­there are Portuguese immigrants tending arbors and gardens across Somerville. Mayor Curtatone has, in Luisa’s words, “knit together” the interests of t­ hese two dif­fer­ent groups. She notes that “he has a foot in each world,” so “he’s perfectly positioned” to do this (Field notes, June 9, 2014). This narrative, with its emphasis on how local food appeals to two dif­fer­ent constituencies in the city, has been central to advocacy for urban agriculture in Somerville. It positions urban food production as a shared interest among individuals who might other­w ise be seen as not having much in common or as having divergent interests. This story took somewhat dif­fer­ent forms, but consistently emphasized the shared interests of an “older generation of farmers” connected to the “immigrant experience” and the “locavore” and “DIY aesthetic” of more recent Somerville residents (Interview 11): “It [urban ag] builds ­ eople in Somerville growing food. on the fact that ­t here ­were generations of p So, ­t here is this existing older generation of farmers, and then a new groundswell of ­people interested in local food” (Field notes, June 4, 2013). Occasionally, this narrative was interwoven with stories about the agricultural history of specific locations within the city. For example, at a discussion of Somerville’s urban farming ordinance, a participant commented, “My ­house near Porter Square used to be a subsistence farm, run by a Portuguese immigrant ­family. Now, I’ve got chickens ­t here, too!” (Field notes, June 4, 2013). Although Somerville also occasionally hosts events to celebrate the city’s distant rural past,24 local advocates suggested that immigrant gardeners provided “a

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more in­ter­est­ing history than talking about the ancient farms.” One commented, “Most of the gardeners on my street are old Italian, Portuguese men, and they grow ­t hese enormously ornate vegetable landscapes. So it’s like, they ­didn’t just start d ­ oing that. . . . ​­They’ve been [gardening] for seventy years” (Interview 10). Thus, this narrative positions urban agriculture as an au­t hen­tic aspect of the city’s identity—­deeply rooted in its history—­while acknowledging Somerville’s widely publicized “hipster” or “foodie” pre­sent: “This goes back to Somerville’s roots. ­People have always been growing food in Somerville. Now ­t here’s a new population growing [food]. But, this ­isn’t new” (Field notes, October 17, 2014). However, this framing of urban agriculture as knitting together t­hese two constituencies in Somerville does very l­ ittle to address the very real tensions in the city about in­equality and gentrification. Rather, it is an expression of what sociologist Susan Ostrander calls an “immigrant imaginary” in Somerville, which endeavors to create “a shared experience . . . ​and support a sense of shared community” (2013, 61) even in the context of demonstrable and durable inequalities.

The Immigrant Imaginary Somerville’s efforts to use gardening as a means of bringing ­people together date back to the early 1990s, when the Somerville Arts Council (SAC) began hosting an annual Garden Awards contest. The Somerville Garden Awards ­were described to me as part of a “One Somerville” campaign, which aimed to “ease the b ­ attles” facing the city at the time between “immigrant newcomers” and “the blue-­collar crowd” and “the yuppies coming in” (Interview 11). The awards “recognized the artistry of Somerville’s gardeners, stimulated neighborhood pride, and accorded public thanks to gardeners for the richness their gardens brought to the dense urban landscape of Somerville” (Somerville Arts Council [hereafter SAC], 1999). Each year, the award-­w inning gardens ­were featured on a public tour, which concluded with a “big event at the Somerville Museum.” As a Somerville resident recalled, “The old Italian guy who was making his grapes would have his wine ­there, and the person who was growing loofahs would be ­there, and then ­ eople ­were the folks who did flowers. And it was a way of recognizing how p ­ eople walking by on the sidewalk, and to improving the neighborhood, just for p feel seen” (Interview 11). In 1999, fifteen award-­winning gardens ­were highlighted in Creating Eden: A Portrait of an American City through Its Gardens, a publication of the Somerville Arts Council that leveraged “the universal appeal of gardening” as a way of “reach[ing] across age, class, gender, and ethnic bound­ aries and provid[ing] a bridge to each gardener’s personal aesthetics, f­ amily traditions, life philosophy, moral values and local history” (SAC 1999, 6). The goal was to produce a “portrait of Somerville” that emphasized it as a place where

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“many kinds of ­people live together while pursuing dif­fer­ent kinds of lives” (SAC 1999, 7). In the interviews that accompanied the portraits of each garden, the participating gardeners w ­ ere asked about the role of gardening in connecting to their past, as well as their current practices. Although the garden tour and awards ­were last held in 1997, they w ­ ere frequently recalled to me as a part of the city’s experience with urban agriculture: “So the urban ag ­t hing feels like it’s kind of still in that ethos. ­Because I think back then it was a lot of the immigrant folks that ­were cooking, or ­doing like the food-­oriented stuff, and it was part of that . . . ​the Italians with the grape vines over the driveway” (Interview 11). Such references pointed to a connection between the city’s immigrant history and con­temporary urban agriculture initiatives. Further, following the lead of ­these ­earlier efforts, advocates promote con­temporary urban agriculture initiatives as a way of d ­ oing “community building in a diverse city” (Field notes, October 17, 2014). Indeed, in the years since Somerville’s urban agriculture ordinance passed, some of the “older generations” growing food in the city have become local celebrities. As I did interviews and fieldwork in Somerville, I was told repeatedly about the city’s “Tomato Men.”25 Somerville’s Tomato King is Carmelo Arria. Born in Sicily, Arria came to Somerville in the late 1950s, and brought his methods of growing with him. Now in his mid-­eighties, Arria grows hundreds of pounds of tomatoes each year in his yard on Putnam Ave­nue. I have heard multiple admiring reports about his basement, “full of cans of tomatoes and sun-­dried tomatoes” (Field notes, October 20, 2014). Well into his early nineties, Guy Amara—­k nown as the Tomato Guy—­grew tomatoes in a 400-­square-­foot plot that his ­father started in the 1940s, using seeds that trace back to ­those his grand­father originally brought from Italy (Field notes, October  17, 2014).26 Amara saw his gardening as a form of community ser­v ice; he shared his produce freely with many neighbors and sought to introduce local community gardeners to “Old World tastes and ways.” He also volunteered at the Somerville Growing Center, where he was “welcomed into the fold of a younger generation of Somerville residents who appreciated his experience and wisdom.”27 Together, I was told, Amara and Arria represent what makes Somerville “a perfect candidate” for urban agriculture, specifically that “you have folks who have been ­doing this for such a long time—­the Italian, Portuguese immigrants, ­t hese kind of old-­world Somerville folks”: “­Here is a man who has 143 tomato plants in a tiny backyard. He cans all the tomatoes. He makes sun-­dried tomatoes. I mean, just amazing, amazing guy. . . . ​And so you have t­hese cultures that ­were very close to agriculture, that have adapted their tiny urban plots into what they knew how to do” (Interview 7). Both “Tomato Men” have been introduced to successive classes of Somerville Urban Agriculture Ambassadors, participants in a city-­sponsored program to promote urban agriculture. ­These introductions have both made connections and highlighted differences between

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generations of Somerville gardeners. For example, “the older folks relied more on non-­organic ­t hings . . . ​whereas the newer folks are so purist”; despite ­t hese differences, the ambassadors realize that “older folks have been growing successfully since the 1960s, and ­there’s something to be learned ­there” (Interview 07; Field notes, October 2014). As we have seen, Mayor Curtatone’s personal connection to the immigrant history of the city is also central to this narrative. Not only does the mayor himself frequently comment on his memories of the gardens—­and cooking—of his ­family members, but other city officials and advocates also invoke Curtatone’s experiences: “The mayor’s m ­ other—­ you know, he’s Italian-­ American, first generation—­his ­mother grew herbs and plants his ­whole life, and used them in her cooking. So it’s not like he never saw any of that” (Field notes, October 17, 2014). Somerville’s older generation of white ethnic immigrants occupy a prominent place in ­these narratives. As suggested by the centrality of the “Tomato Men”—as well as Mayor Curtatone’s ­family—­Italian immigrants are frequently invoked. I also heard often about immigrants from Portugal, who arrived in Somerville from communities where farming was still central to daily life: “­There’s still the ‘old world’ in Somerville. ­People who immigrated from Portugal and Italy in the 1960s—at the time that they immigrated, their countries ­were still agricultural, unlike the U.S. at that time” (Field notes, October 20, 2014). Similarly, recounting a trip to Portugal in 1979, a respondent told me that “every­one ­there still farmed.” Consequently, she continued, the p ­ eople who immigrated to Somerville from Portugal at that time “­were farm p ­ eople. They came to the U.S. from farms. And they put their agricultural practices into use ­here” (Field notes, October 20, 2014). Somerville’s more recent immigrant communities—­many of whom have arrived from Brazil, Africa, and Southeast Asia—­were strikingly absent from ­these narratives. Rather, in my conversations with advocates and at public events, urban agriculture in Somerville was posited as a “common cause” more often between older white ethnic immigrants and more recent, affluent Somerville residents—­sometimes described as “progressive,” “hipster” or “foodie”—­ than between older and newer waves of immigrants. More recent immigrant communities w ­ ere more often mentioned as consumers of agriculture, especially in regard to the Somerville Mobile Farmers Market (SMFM), which sells fresh fruits and vegetables in neighborhoods where many low-­income immigrant families might other­wise face challenges in accessing healthy and affordable food. In fact, the idea of a mobile market emerged out of conversations between Shape Up Somerville and organ­izations serving immigrant youth and families in the city: This was around the time that [the] Star Market had closed on Broadway, so ­there was this gap in access to food in that neighborhood. So we ­were talking . . . ​

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about how to [help] p ­ eople to get to markets and to get to farmers’ markets, and ­there ­were all ­these barriers that ­were coming up, like transportation, affordability. . . . ​And then one of the youth from LIPS28 said, “Why ­don’t we just bring the produce directly to the ­people ­here in the housing development?” And so that’s how it got started. (Interview 08)

The Welcome Proj­ect, a leading immigrant advocacy organ­ization in Somerville, advised that a market was a culturally appropriate means of improving food access, as its members “heard from immigrant residents that this was more similar to their experience, in which farmers would bring carts into communities to sell fruits and vegetables” (Field notes, June 18, 2014). Additionally, organizers hoped that the market would become an impor­tant social institution and a means of connecting recent immigrants with each other: “So right now, like, the largest, fastest-­growing ethnic minority groups are Indians and Nepalis. . . . ​We found out, by talking to Nepalese p ­ eople in Somerville, that they ­don’t or­ga­nize around religious institutions . . . ​they or­ga­nize around markets” (Interview 08). The SMFM has evolved since its founding, largely as a consequence of efforts to better meet the needs of its immigrant clientele (Shostak, Blum, et al. 2017). Focusing entirely on more recent immigrants as customers at the SMFM, however, elides—­however inadvertently—­t he challenges and barriers they have encountered as urban food producers.

Into the Mystic Alongside the lush private gardens and arbors that Italian and Portuguese immigrants have cultivated in their backyards, ­t here is a much more complicated history of immigrant community gardening in Somerville. In the late 1980s, a community garden at the Mystic Housing Development was started by immigrants who had farmed in their home countries and wanted to grow their own food in Somerville (Field notes, June 18, 2014).29 Hanh Le, a resident of the Mystic who had farmed in Vietnam, took the idea to the Welcome Proj­ect (SAC 1999, 73). As Warren Goldstein-­Gelb, the former director of the Welcome Proj­ ect, told a group of visitors to the Mystic in June 2014: “In 1985, the Mystic was 100  ­percent white. Now, it is majority p ­ eople of color—­immigrants from all over the world. ­There w ­ ere tensions when the Mystic started to integrate, and the Welcome Proj­ect was oriented to ­t hose tensions” (Field notes, June 18, 2014). As part of its work at the Mystic, the Welcome Proj­ect helped broker support for a community garden. Like many community gardens founded by recent immigrants—­and, as we ­shall see, similar to the gardens in Lowell, Mas­sa­chu­ setts—it made impor­tant contributions to the community’s access to healthy and culturally appropriate foods: “­These ­were ­people who ­were motivated by the fact that they had always been farmers, and they needed to do it, almost viscerally, that they ­were extremely poor, and did not have a source of adequate

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fresh food in their lives. And also, that the produce that they ­were used to was not available commercially in the U.S., and they felt cut off from their culture and their cuisine, without having access to b ­ itter melon, or Thai basil, or . . . ​ other specialized crops” (Interview 13). Despite ­these benefits, the housing authority in charge of the Mystic objected to the garden, which it perceived as “junky and derelict.” According to Congresswoman Denise Provost, “­People would trash pick to get the materials that they needed for trellises, and fences, and supports,” and the housing authority felt that it was “embarrassing to have something that was so makeshift-­looking” in a “high visibility area.”30 The improvisational scavenging that provided the materials for the garden was noted also by the team that profiled the garden for Creating Eden: “What caught my attention first ­were the ingenious structures made of baby cribs, pieces of bedsprings, old picket fences, plastic construction fencing, twine, and wire,” wrote photographer Roberta Lynn Hynes (SAC 1999, 72).31 Likewise, one of the SAC visitors to the garden describes thinking at first, “This is not like an American garden”—­noting, for example, the lack of space between plants. However, she immediately chastises herself: “What could be more American that the gardeners at the Mystic Housing Development? . . . ​Most gardeners are refugees and immigrants from Vietnam, Cambodia, Haiti and Brazil. Where ­else but ­here would . . . ​[they] live in the same buildings and garden together?” (SAC 1999, 77). The housing authority, however, did not take this more expansive view of the garden, and relocated it to a “less vis­i­ble” area. While the Mystic gardeners still have twenty-­one plots, this area gets less sunlight, which is an ongoing challenge (Interview 13). The Mystic gardeners also have yet to be well integrated into the city’s Urban Agriculture Ambassador (UAA) program, as ­either experts (à la the Tomato Men) or ambassadors to their communities. In 2014, when almost all of the ambassadors ­were white, I was told that the UAA program was “still working on outreach to immigrant communities.” At that time, translation was proving to be a barrier, as they needed translators in more languages so that they “could work with more groups” (Field notes, October 7, 2014). Likewise, a UAA program coordinator noted that they ­were having a hard time assessing ­whether the Mystic Garden was meeting the demand for growing space in the community, since it was difficult to communicate with the gardeners ­t here, many of whom do not speak En­glish. The gaps between the city’s urban agriculture initiatives and its most recent immigrants emerged as an issue again in a conversation at the 2016 Mas­sa­chu­setts Urban Farming Conference, in an exchange that ended with Karen Washington, an urban farmer and advocate from New York, telling representatives from the city of Somerville that it was up to them to “get over the barriers” of “language and citizenship status” and to “get translators” (Field notes, UFC 2016). In the past few years, nonprofit organ­izations like Groundwork Somerville, with support

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from the city and local foundations, have led initiatives to make urban agriculture more inclusive of recent immigrants.

Midsummer at South Street Farm In August 2015, I join a group of about thirty ­people for a “midsummer’s night cele­bration” at Somerville’s South Street Farm. Whenever I visit South Street, I am struck by the industrial land uses that surround the two concrete lots that the city has made available to Groundwork Somerville to build the city’s first urban farm; the dominant colors of the cityscape h ­ ere are gray and rust. The farm itself, planted in raised beds, built in part from the large concrete blocks that once littered the lots, is a riot of color—­bright green plants of all shapes and sizes, vibrantly red tomatoes, the delicate yellow of squash blossoms. One of the large fences that defines the outer edge of the farm has a complex mural, in shades of green and yellow, that “tells the story” of “how many ­people in Somerville have prediabetes and how the farm gives them hope for a healthier f­ uture” (Field notes, July  1, 2013; see figure  2.1). Another fence is decorated with the words “Grow Somerville” rendered in a script comprised of multicolored gigantic vegetables. Soon a­ fter arriving, I accept an invitation from one of the youth leaders of Groundwork Somerville’s youth program, the Green Team, for a tour of the farm. As he leads me through the dif­fer­ent raised beds, Tony emphasizes how much the Green Team has grown this summer; they have brought “hundreds of pounds” of vegetables to the Somerville Mobile Farmers Market. He is especially excited that they have been able to grow watermelons and butternut squash for

Figure 2.1. ​The Health Data Mural at Somerville’s South Street Farm. Photo credit: Sara Shostak

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the first time, while lamenting that their experiment with growing corn had not been as successful. When I ask Tony how he feels about the season, he tells me that he feels proud, ­because “we built this” (Field notes, August 2015). ­After contemplating the remarkable abundance of the farm’s raised beds, Tony and I walk back t­ oward the center of the cele­bration. ­Here, two long t­ ables hold a wonderful variety of foods. The Green Team members, all Somerville High School students, have been asked to bring food from their families’ countries of origin. As I fill a paper plate, I recognize dishes from the cuisines of Mexico, Brazil, Thailand, Vietnam, and Japan. ­There are also a few dishes made from produce from the farm—­salsa, kale chips, kale salad, and a subtly green mint choco­late chip ice cream. As suggested by the offerings at this cele­bration—­and affirmed in my interactions with the Green Team youth—­many of the Somerville residents most actively involved in cultivating the South Street Farm are the ­children of recent immigrants. Likewise, the hydroponics farm at the Edgerly School and Somerville’s extensive network of school gardens undoubtedly serve a diverse population. As noted above, the Somerville Mobile Farmers Market sells food grown at South Street, where crop planning increasingly orients to the demand for foods favored by recent immigrants, including callaloo (a leafy green popu­lar in Ca­r ib­bean cuisines) and jiló (a small, pale-­g reen eggplant featured in Brazilian cooking). During the summer of 2016, Senhor Antonio, a community member with expertise in growing jiló, served as a mentor to the Green Team, resulting in a harvest that a Groundwork Somerville volunteer described as “just beautiful” (Field notes, October 2, 2016). In 2017, Groundwork Somerville built on this successful collaboration to develop its World Crops Project. With funding from the city, the Boston Foundation, and the Whole Foods Foundation, Groundwork was able to “bring on three experienced growers to teach us and the Green Team about producing crops from their home countries—­places that are well represented in Somerville and that make up the rich culture of our city.”32 The mentor farmers included Senhor Antonio, “who ­w ill be returning this spring ­after a successful season of teaching us about growing jiló . . . ​[and] Luc Francois and Kawsar Jahan, who ­will be teaching us about Haitian and Bangladeshi crops.” 33 As well, the World Crops Project supported outreach efforts to the growers at the Mystic Garden and educational sessions about world crops with youth at the Mystic Learning Center. Such efforts have the potential to make urban agriculture in Somerville more inclusive. Who is included, and excluded, from the overall proj­ect of urban agriculture in Somerville raises critical questions about equity and green gentrification. This certainly is not to claim that urban agriculture is a primary cause of Somerville’s gentrification. Indeed, ­there is a consensus that dynamics in the housing market (e.g., the end of rent control and the prior gentrification of

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nearby Cambridge) and the extension of public transportation into the city have been the major ­drivers of gentrification in Somerville to date. However, it is clear that in the context of ongoing gentrification, using urban agriculture to “bring ­people together” risks excluding ­t hose who are already most likely to be harmed by the city’s new reputation and the rising rents and housing costs that accompany it. A former staff member of Shape Up Somerville articulated ­t hese challenges in making the case for emphasizing equity in the city’s urban agriculture initiatives: We could go out and we could start a million farms, and grow a billion pounds of food. . . . ​[But] is it a successful initiative if what happens is kind of what’s happening? [That is] . . . ​a ll the ­middle class white families go, “Oh, wow! It’s ­really ­great that someone did that. Somerville’s a ­really appealing place for me to go live now.” And [it] pushes [­people] out—[that’s] gentrification, the negative parts of gentrification. So, we would say “no, that’s not a success.” A success is if you could do that and improve a city’s environment . . . ​and then have it benefit every­one, but specifically have it benefit ­people of color and immigrants [and] low-­income groups. (Interview 10)

In recent years, Somerville has committed resources to supporting immigrant entrepreneurs, including support of food-­focused initiatives that celebrate the culinary traditions of a much more diverse range of cultures. The Somerville Arts Council has claimed food and food-­focused entrepreneurism as part of its mandate, announcing that it is “obsessed with food” ­because it not only “propels cultural tourism” but “conveys countless stories about cultural identity” and is part of the city’s cele­bration of “healthy living” (SAC 2012, 4–5). As part of this “obsession,” the SAC sponsors a food-­focused blog and has published a cookbook that highlights “food, art, and culture” in the Union Square neighborhood, where each year it offers walking tours of “the square’s international markets” (SAC 2012, 4). The SAC also hosts restaurant tours and food-­ focused booths at festivals across the city. In February 2017, when thousands of residents came out on a frigid February morning to rally in support of Somerville’s Sanctuary City status, the SAC sponsored booths that featured the food of immigrant entrepreneurs from Ethiopia and Venezuela. ­W hether such initiatives only “spur the cultural economy” of the city (SAC 2012, 4) or also allow more recent immigrants to thrive in Somerville remains to be seen.

Lowell On the banks of the Merrimack River and with its network of canals that, by the mid-1800s, powered ten large textile mills, Lowell “entered on the cycle of industrial cap­i­tal­ist development ­earlier than most American places” (Stanton

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2006, 103). Lowell was also one of the first American cities to experience the devastating effects of deindustrialization and to turn to “culture” as a means of “repair[ing] some of the social and infrastructural damage done by the loss of industries and to draw new kinds of p ­ eople and businesses into decayed and abandoned downtowns and industrial areas” (Stanton 2006, 4). As part of this revitalization strategy, large parts of the city of Lowell have been designated a National Historical Park, which makes the story of Lowell’s mills, and especially its immigration history, central to its current identity. Urban planners in Lowell referred back to this history when they told me that “Lowell has historically been a community that’s been very welcoming of immigrant populations, and so we have a constant influx of new groups coming in all the time” (Interview 39). Lowell’s mill o ­ wners initially sought to recruit the d ­ aughters of New E ­ ngland’s farmers to work in the mills. By the 1840s, however, their workforce consisted mostly of immigrants, who came to Lowell from the United Kingdom and Eu­rope to work in the textile mills and factories (Stanton 2006, 46–50). Ironically, according to the National Park Ser­v ice, it was actually the failure of mill o ­ wners to welcome Irish immigrants that made ethnic enclaves a defining feature of life in early twentieth-­century Lowell: “The failure of mill o ­ wners in early Lowell to accommodate the Irish in com­pany housing set a pre­ce­dent that significantly influenced community life in the city. Immigrant groups resided away from the mills in their own neighborhoods, where old-­world cultures came to terms with the demands of American urban-­industrial life. By the turn of the ­century, Lowell was a microcosm of the broader society[,] an uneasy blend of many ethnic groups living in distinct neighborhoods” (U.S. National Park Ser­ vice, n.d.,140). A 1912 map of Lowell shows five major immigrant communities scattered in clusters around the city. “­Little Canada, which bordered the Northern Canal, had become the primary neighborhood for French Canadians. Greeks concentrated in the Acre along Market Street, while Poles, Portuguese, and Rus­sian Jews had their own enclave within each of ­t hese areas.”34 Lowell’s textile factories w ­ ere hit early and hard by the decline of industry in the Northeast. Between 1923 and 1927, industry moved an estimated $100 million of capital from New ­England to the South; by 1930, 45  ­percent of New ­England’s 280,000 textile workers had lost their jobs (L. Gross 1991; Stanton 2006). Deindustrialization had dramatic consequences both for the population and the built environment of the city: “Reflecting the tough times and slowing immigration, Lowell’s population dropped 11 ­percent from 1920 to 1930, from 113,000 to 100,000.”35 In the name of “urban renewal,” many neighborhoods that had previously been home to the city’s immigrant communities “witnessed the wrecking ball” in the 1940s; such proj­ects si­mul­ta­neously reshaped and deeply polarized the city through the 1960s. Following the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which abolished the national origin quotas, the city of Lowell saw a renewed stream of

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global mi­grants; this has played a role in stabilizing the city’s population, which had declined steeply following the closure of the mills and factories in the early twentieth ­century. In recent de­cades, immigrants have arrived in Lowell from Southeast Asia (especially Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam), Africa, and South and Central Amer­i­ca.36 In 2017, Lowell had a population of 109,871, with p ­ eople of color comprising more than 50 ­percent of the city’s residents. Cultural development, especially the 1978 founding of the Lowell National Historical Park, which was the first urban historical park, has been at the center of efforts to revitalize Lowell (Stanton 2006). Old mill and factory buildings also have been repurposed as museums, galleries, and work and living spaces. Indeed, according to a 2007 article in the Boston Globe, “Lowell’s creative reuse of old buildings was an inspiration to other cities that wanted to rejuvenate their economies without losing touch with their roots.”37 The city also built a sports stadium and encouraged developers to build condos, reasoning that the Lowell commuter rail station would make it an attractive option for professionals working in Boston. As one of Lowell’s city planners recounted: “When the idea of the cultural economy became kind of popu­lar . . . ​­people ­were thinking, like, is that something that would make sense ­here, and is ­t here a way to market our proximity to Boston and our affordability . . . ​as an arts and cultural community. [­People are] looking for that kind of ­thing, and then that became an obvious outreach group, and a marketing mechanism that the city latched onto, and tried to get ­people interested in Lowell through that lens” (Interview 39). ­Under the banner “#Lowell. Th ­ ere’s a Lot to Like,” the city hosts a website that features a wide variety of cultural amenities, including m ­ usic festivals, museums and galleries, theaters, restaurants and bars, and walking tours associated with the city’s national heritage area.38 The “authenticity” of the city’s diverse cultural heritage is highlighted on this site, which notes that “immigrants have been drawn to the city since the early 1800s, making Lowell a destination for au­t hen­tic, in­ter­est­ing culture. The city is home to a variety of active ethnic & cultural organ­izations preserving and presenting their unique traditions.”39 As anthropologist Cathy Stanton astutely observes, Lowell’s “brand” is that of “a small and gritty city climbing back from the brink of disaster by celebrating its distinctive industrial history and ethnic cultures” (2006, 110). While Lowell’s revitalization was initially hailed as a “miracle” and subsequently emulated by other postindustrial cities, ­t here are questions about how evenly its gains have been distributed (Stanton 2006). In 2017, the median ­house­hold income in Lowell was $46,972, well below the state median ­house­hold income of $75,297; additionally, 21.5 ­percent of ­house­holds are below the poverty line.40 Indeed, it appears that Lowell’s rebirth “has not solved the prob­ lems of poverty, high unemployment, and economic vulnerability,” while it has “made Lowell a much more expensive place to live than most comparable small cities in New ­England” (Stanton 2006, 130). Local media coverage suggests that

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t­ here are two distinct Lowells, “the one of the in­ter­est­ing cultural revival and the one of ­t hese immigrant neighborhoods that are not necessarily connected to re­nais­sance Lowell.”  41 ­These complexities are reflected in Lowell’s reputation. Narratives about the city are varied, with some describing it as “forlorn” and crime-­ridden and ­others celebrating its cultural offerings. In contrast to Somerville’s clear “no longer Slummerville” story, Lowell has not established a dominant narrative of transformation. A city planner told me that the government, with its branding con­sul­tants, is actively working to “dispel this old, lingering reputation that the city has that . . . ​­really ­doesn’t reflect what’s g­ oing on h ­ ere anymore.” From her perspective, Lowell’s reputation felt like a “lingering old ­thing” that includes that “Lowell is dangerous. It’s dumpy. ­There’s nothing ­going on ­here, that it’s not a safe place. That it’s a big, bad city” (Interview 39). Aspects of urban agriculture clearly contribute to efforts to challenge the old, lingering reputation of Lowell. For example, when Francey Slater, one of the found­ers of Mill City Grows (MCG)—­a nonprofit organ­ization that has founded and maintains community gardens, farms, farmers’ markets, and school gardens throughout the city—­welcomes ­people to a harvest festival in a city park previously known for its high rates of drug use and crime, she announces: “We love Lowell. This is a ­great place to do what we do! It is a ­great place to grow fruits and vegetables! The average yield from one of the garden plots is 100 pounds. That’s 100 pounds of healthy food. We are growing a healthy community h ­ ere in Lowell!” (Field notes, September 20, 2014). Francey’s comments highlight health and community as part of what one would “love” about Lowell. City officials noted also that community gardens had helped to “physically revitalize some depressed places,” which has been “incredibly helpful” for building support for Mill City Grows. At the same time that it challenges Lowell’s lingering reputation, MCG also confronts the legacy of its industrial history, which has resulted in soil contaminated with a variety of heavy metals and petroleum residues. As a report on food access in Lowell notes, the city contains eighty-­t wo sites that the Environmental Protection Agency has designated as requiring environmental oversight and remediation, forty-­five of which are brownfields. Most of ­t hese sites are in the center of the city, around canals and rivers south of the Merrimack River, that also have the highest concentrations of low-­income residents; this means that “the residents with the fewest resources are faced with the greatest challenges for participating in urban gardening” (Nyman, McCartney, and Schermerhorn 2013, 54). In response to t­hese challenges, Mill City Grows, which defines itself first and foremost as a food justice organ­ization, has built a network of gardens that make safe growing techniques accessible and affordable to low-­income residents, including recent immigrants.

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“Growing a Healthy Community” The sun is shining in a clear, blue sky as I arrive at the Rotary Park and Community Garden, where Mill City Grows is holding its annual harvest festival. Rotary Park is in a dense neighborhood in Lowell, with closely placed houses—­ many clapboard, some single-­family and some double-­and triple-­deckers—­ arrayed along a maze of mostly one-­way, narrow streets, with mere slivers of sidewalks in front. On the few larger streets that bound the neighborhood, I notice several small businesses—­a self-­service laundry, appliance shops—­and what appear to be some larger residential buildings. While the residential area surrounding the park is crowded with p ­ eople on their way to the harvest festival, ­t here are only a few ­people on the larger streets. The Rotary Park itself has a concrete area in its center, with several low ramps where ­children are skating and riding their bikes. This area is surrounded by a grassy perimeter, which is being used by event sponsors and participants for their tents and ­tables. ­There are ­tables for the three MCG community gardens in Lowell, each with a focal activity—­one pressing cider, another making delicious vegetable soup, another giving out small brown paper bags filled with popcorn. The National Park Ser­v ice also has a t­able, where they are inviting participants to “explore your roots”; as their materials make clear, roots h ­ ere can refer to the industrial history of Lowell, your f­ amily tree, or the roots of the plants in your garden. ­There are also t­ ables with representatives from the Lowell Health Center, the YWCA, a candy shop, a s­ ilent auction and a raffle to support MCG, a build-­your-­own herb garden using wood pallets (“upcycling!” says their sign), bike repair, and a plethora of activities for kids, including pumpkin and face painting, coloring, and interactive games, some of which are nutrition-­ themed. The MCG mobile farmers’ market is set up, selling apples, greens, tomatoes, potatoes, tomatillos, husk cherries, honey, jams, and T-­shirts with “I Dig Lowell!” emblazoned on the front. On the outer edge of the park, a food truck sells Southeast Asian cuisine to a long line of ­people. A large community garden is off to one side of the park (see figure 2.2). As I enter the garden, I am struck by the careful use of raised beds, the intricate lattices rising up to support flourishing vines, and the height of the corn, which towers over every­t hing ­else. Many plants are sagging ­under the welcome weight of ripening fruit, including several va­ri­e­ties of radiantly red tomatoes. Against the far wall, ­t here are several beautifully painted wooden boards that look like they take their inspiration from Central American folk art traditions. Throughout the garden ­t here are signs posted about the importance of planting edibles only in raised beds.42 As I walk through the garden, I chat with a volunteer from MCG. When I mention that I am still learning my way around Lowell, she tells me that even ­people who know Lowell well might not know this neighborhood. It’s “pretty

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Figure 2.2. ​The Rotary Club Park Community Garden sign, in Lowell. Photo credit: Sara Shostak

off the beaten track,” she says, and would “be unfamiliar to many, even in Lowell.” She says that it used to be Portuguese immigrants who lived ­here, and “it was a ­really tight-­k nit community.” Now, many immigrants from Southeast Asia and the Ca­rib­bean live in the neighborhood. The Portuguese history of the neighborhood is on display in multiple ways. At the festival, Portuguese potato kale soup is being served to attendees. The ­woman who hands me a serving tells me that it is “healthy” and vegan (though she also has sausage on hand for anyone who wants to add it to their dish) and suggests that I go online to find “a good r­ ecipe” so that I can make my own. During the official program for the event, Fatima—­a neighbor of the garden—­asks for a turn at the microphone. As she hands Fatima the mic, Francey Slater, who with Lydia Sisson founded and directs MCG, thanks Fatima and her husband Tony for bringing delicious Portuguese bread and tarts to share at the festival. Fatima has tears in her eyes as she describes how she has lived in this neighborhood for twenty-­seven years, and now she has “the best two neighbors, Francey and Lydia,” who she says are like “her d ­ aughters.” Hugging Fatima, Francey calls our attention to their garden, which can be seen just over an adjacent fence, “It’s an oasis in the city. We ­couldn’t do this without them” (Field notes, September 9, 2014). Throughout the day, speakers and participants hail the “multicultural” nature of the Rotary Park Community Garden. Congresswoman Nicky Tsongas comments, “I love seeing t­ hese multicultural gardeners, and so many dif­fer­ent kinds of fruits, and . . . ​vegetables.” The volunteer with whom I walk through

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the gardens describes them as a place of intercultural exchange: “I love what happens ­here. I love the cultural exchanges that I see. At this garden, ­people ­don’t just stay in their language groups. They talk with each other. They help each other with their plots. That’s why I got involved.” In contrast with the usual bluegrass, country, and old-­time ­music that one typically hears at urban farming festivals events, DJ Manny is playing international fusion ­music as I depart to walk back to my car; Fatima again reaches for the mic to encourage him to “play some Portuguese ­music!” As we ­will see, Lowell’s urban agriculture program—­which began ­here, in the Rotary Park Community Garden—­orients strongly to the city’s most recent immigrants. Through its network of community gardens, in par­tic­u ­lar, it seeks to provide new city residents with opportunities both to honor their cultural traditions—­for example, by growing food impor­tant to the cuisines of their countries of origin—­and to become more integrated into civic life in Lowell—­ for example, by meeting their neighbors and practicing En­glish in community gardens.

Staying Connected Sour leaf is an impor­tant ingredient in Burmese food. While it is available in some Asian groceries in Lowell, it is expensive, costing as much as $7 for a pound. When Mill City Grows first made raised bed plots available to residents of Lowell, three Burmese families applied for and ­were given plots. Not only did they successfully grow sour leaf in their new hometown, but they grew so much that they ­were able to share it with other Burmese families. The subsequent year, thirty Burmese families applied for plots in the MCG gardens, where they now cultivate sour leaf, among other crops (Field notes, October 2, 2014). Stories of recent immigrants, like the one above about Burmese families and sour leaf, are at the center of narratives in Lowell about the importance of urban agriculture. Time and again, I was told about specific immigrant families for whom growing foods impor­tant to their ethnic cuisine provided an impor­tant form of cultural continuity, a way of creating “home” in a new place. To be sure, Lowell’s urban planners and farming advocates also recognized a broad need in their community for fresh, local, affordable produce. I was told by multiple respondents that much growing in Lowell is “for subsistence” and that it is critical that “­people are able to grow food that they can feed themselves with” (Interview 39). Indeed, one advocate emphasized that Lowell remains a “working-­class city,” noting that—in contrast with her understanding of Somerville—­“ it’s not a hipster t­ hing in Lowell. It’s a working-­class city. ­People eat the food they grow” (Field notes, October 2014). However, beyond subsistence, advocates in Lowell emphasize the cultural value of providing recent immigrants with the opportunity to grow food that is central to their cultures. Drawing on power­f ul narratives about Lowell’s com-

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mitment to multiculturalism (Stanton 2006), city officials assert, for example, that “in Lowell, with our immigrant community, it’s been hugely helpful for ­people to be able to grow crops that they ­can’t find at the stores ­here easily. And so ­people are able to feed themselves food that they want” (Interview 39). Urban agriculture advocates highlight additionally the cultural variations in what gardeners see as desirable crops. For example, a farmer in Lowell described to me how a variety of greens—­a maranth, purslane, lamb’s quarters—­a re regarded as weeds by some gardeners while being cultivated by o ­ thers. She has even seen immigrant gardeners “rescue” t­ hese plants from their fellow gardeners’ weeding piles: “One gardener pulls it out of their plot, and another plants it in theirs” (Field notes, October 2014). Moreover, the very opportunity to grow food may provide recent immigrants with agricultural backgrounds with an impor­tant sense of continuity, a means of “staying connected to who they are” in a “dif­fer­ent place” (Interview 39).43 Across the United States, community gardens also provide recent immigrants with the opportunity to grow herbs that are impor­tant to health and healing in their countries of origin (Hondagneu-­Sotelo 2014). A farmer in Lowell recounted being contacted by a man who wanted an herb for his wife that was thought to aid lactation. It is not just that “food is central to ­people’s sense of ­family, to culture, and to their health,” she told me, but also “for this man, this herb was central to his sense of taking care of his ­family in a new place” (Field notes, October 2, 2014). The centrality of community gardens to Lowell’s urban agriculture initiatives means that recent immigrants are given space—­and clean soil, and w ­ ater, which is provided by the city—to grow the food and herbs that are impor­tant to their cuisines and their health. Even as MCG and the city of Lowell support the development of urban community gardens—­adding at least one garden most years—­ MCG also helps to or­ga­nize both stationary farmers’ markets and mobile markets around Lowell, where the MCG farmers join with rural farmers from across the state in selling culturally desirable produce to Lowell residents. In contrast to farmers’ markets that are primarily white spaces (Alkon and McCullen 2011), the customer base at the weekly market on the plaza adjacent to Lowell’s City Hall is ethnically diverse, as are the farmers who sell ­there (Field notes, August 2014). However, in addition to providing impor­tant points of access to culturally desired foods, MCG also sees its gardens as incubators for civic engagement.

Growing Civic Engagement An urban planner in Lowell described her delight at seeing “a twenty-­ something-­year-­old kid from UMass, who’s a student,” gardening “right next to an el­derly Cambodian ­woman, who is right next to recent African immigrant to the city” (Interview 39). Advocates for urban agriculture in Lowell are proud of its multiculturalism, which is designed into the gardens and valued as a

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potential mechanism for language acquisition, cross-­cultural exchange, and civic engagement. In 2014, when I first went to Lowell to learn about its urban agriculture initiatives, MCG was supporting three community gardens, in which nine languages ­were spoken. Part of the funding for the gardens came with the requirement that “a certain percentage of each garden is allocated to ­people who are low-­income.” Additionally, MCG had de­cided to “try to have multiple language groups within each garden.” Practically, MCG de­cided that they would allocate space to three or four gardeners from the same language group, while aiming for a diversity of language groups at each site. Having “some concentration” of gardeners who speak the same language “helps with translation.” Having diversity of language groups in the garden—­including p ­ eople whose first language is English—­“also helps ­people learn En­glish.” “­People get ­here and start working,” I was told, “and it’s hard for them to find the time to learn En­glish, too” (Field notes October 2, 2014). Supporting a diversity of immigrant groups in the gardens required that MCG develop extensive support for translating all of their outreach and informational materials. According to one of the garden coordinators, they do translation not only into Spanish, but also Viet­nam­ese and Burmese, among other languages. This unquestionably adds to the work of coordinating the gardens: “The garden program requires a ton of personal interaction and outreach. It would be easier to just send announcements over email, of course, but not every­one has a computer and not every­one reads in En­glish. So, we have to call ­people, and then we make another set of calls for help with translation.” However, MCG leadership sees this work as an essential investment in the success of the gardens. In contrast to more long-­standing community gardens “that have a rich history and culture,” the MCG gardens “are new,” which means that garden coordinators have the opportunity to establish norms regarding re­spect and exchange across cultures (Field notes, October 2014). Indeed, alongside cultural continuity, MCG sees its gardens as a location for cross-­cultural exchange. Referring to the historically Portuguese neighborhood surrounding the Rotary Park Community Garden, one of the MCG coordinators notes that t­ here are lush private gardens full of “grapevines and tomatoes and gourds.” The community garden, then, provides a site where the knowledge that has gone into the cultivation of ­t hese backyard gardens can be “handed down” from t­ hose gardeners (Field notes, October 2014). Further, as neighbors grow food together, sharing their gardening knowledge and traditions, they are also getting to know each other and, ideally, becoming connected to their neighborhoods. As an urban planner commented: ­ ere is actually a transformative effect. It’s not just about ­people growing Th chard. Yeah, p ­ eople are ­going to go home with their vegetables, but t­ hey’re also

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­going to know their neighbors now, and have deep connections to where they are, and be committed to . . . ​maintenance, and beautification—­all t­hese ­things that communities are struggling to figure out how to pay for, and maintain. We sort of get this sort of built in buy-in from p ­ eople, b ­ ecause t­ hey’re just so committed to their gardens, and then as a result, committed to the space around the gardens. Then they meet their neighbors, and that piece of it has been so obviously positive for [the city]. (Interview 39, emphases added)

In addition to its community garden program, MCG grows thousands of pounds of produce at several small urban farms.44 MCG sells this produce, often at steep discounts, at its mobile farmers’ markets; ­t hese “Farmstands on Wheels” bring “fresh, affordable, and culturally appropriate foods to neighborhoods throughout Lowell.” 45 In Lowell, narratives about urban agriculture center not only on improving food access, but on how community gardens can support recent immigrants in growing culturally desired food and herbs, meeting their neighbors, and becoming connected to their new home. Th ­ ere is an explicit effort to use the gardens as a site of intergenerational and intercultural exchanges between older immigrants, recent immigrants, and young families and students. ­These programs thereby take aim at one of the central shortcomings of Lowell’s “revitalization” proj­ects—­t heir lack of connection to immigrant communities outside of the downtown area. While also participating in aspects of the city’s cultural economy, such as a popu­lar farmers’ market in a repurposed mill, MCG’s garden program and mobile farmers’ markets seek to address the urgent food access and food justice issues that challenge many Gateway Cities. ­W hether and how ­these efforts affect Lowell’s economy and reputation, and with what consequences to gentrification, are open questions at this time, especially as Lowell continues to debate w ­ hether and how to prioritize a next generation of “economic growth” and “attract new, affluent residents.” 46

A Place for Urban Agriculture This chapter provides insight into how urban agriculture initiatives are taken up in the place narratives of two postindustrial cities in Mas­sa­chu­setts. First, it demonstrates that urban agriculture aligns well with urban branding campaigns that leverage culture as a means of transforming urban economies and reputations. In addition to being part of efforts to make food “the new art” in urban economic development strategies, urban farms and gardens evoke deeply resonant meanings associated with food, immigration, community, and health. Both mayoral administrations and the nonprofit organ­izations with which they partner to build and maintain urban farms and gardens articulate urban food production as not only part of their cities’ histories but part of what makes

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them healthy and vibrant places t­oday. Further, as a varied set of practices, urban agriculture offers branders tremendous flexibility in how it can be articulated as part of the city’s past. As one longtime observer of urban agriculture put it, while specific practices of urban agriculture are “­shaped” by “regulatory and policy framework[s] . . . ​a lot of it has to do with just local interests and politics. I mean, look at Somerville . . . ​and the w ­ hole food and fitness t­hing ­there, and Joe Curtatone. I mean, it’s got its own flavor, and it’s all based on that” (Interview 27). In both Somerville and Lowell, narratives link older city identities associated with immigration with current branding efforts centered on food and health. In Somerville, advocacy for urban agriculture has sought to make connections between the city’s white ethnic immigrant past and its rapidly gentrifying and hipster pre­sent, which includes a focus on local foods and an emphasis on “shaping up” as part of healthy living. Only recently have initiatives such as the World Crops Proj­ect centered the expertise of a more diverse community of farmers and gardeners. Lowell’s history of immigration also is part of its branding narratives, as vividly instantiated in its national historic area and museums (Stanton 2006). In Lowell, however, narratives about urban agriculture focus on community gardens as a site for preserving cultural practices regarding food and healing and supporting the civic integration of recent immigrants. Thus, this chapter suggests that even when linked to seemingly similar themes such as immigration, food, and health, urban agriculture can take on dif­fer­ent forms across cities. It w ­ ill likely, therefore, have dif­fer­ent consequences, with varied implications for gentrification. Further, this chapter highlights how health has become impor­tant to urban brands. Historically, studies of urban branding have tended to assume that health issues in cities are obscured, rather than highlighted, in branding initiatives. The only aspect of health addressed in the seminal work on the “urban growth machine” was the existence of a healthy (enough) workforce (Logan and Molotch 1987). Likewise, research on city “branding” and gentrification seems to assume that “selling the city” involves obscuring the health needs of residents rather than addressing them (Greenberg 2008; Zukin 1995). This perspective assumes that branding “conceals a highly unequal socio-­economic real­ ity,” with the focus on a city’s image taking pre­ce­dence over residents’ needs, such as “filling widening gaps in the City’s bud­get for education, health care, and housing” (Greenberg 2008, 9–13). Such assumptions render invisible the ways that par­tic­u­lar understandings of health can serve as warrants for both branding and development. As we have seen, a major focus of urban agriculture initiatives is increasing food access as a means of improving public health. That said, it is impor­tant to ask what definitions of health are featured in advocacy for urban agriculture. As we w ­ ill see in the following chapter, urban farmers and gardeners frame health not just in terms of healthy food access, but

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also in terms of reclaiming cultural knowledge and reckoning with the legacies of painful pasts. L ­ ater, in chapter 4, we w ­ ill see that urban farmers in Boston have framed health in terms of environmental and economic justice, thereby raising new questions about the potential contributions of urban agriculture; their efforts demonstrate also that branding strategies can be powerfully contested by neighborhood residents. Together, ­these chapters suggest that while focusing on the relationships between urban agriculture and gentrification is undoubtedly impor­tant, it is also only part of the story.

chapter 3

;

Lineages and Land In the 1940s, my grand­father grew food, and canned and pickled the extras. My parents purchased land so that they could grow their own food. They ­were urban farmers! And we are the next generation of urban farmers! —­Field notes, July 11, 2014 The history of Blacks and farming is an untold story. You ­can’t just Google it. Often it’s a story about loss, but we need to tell this story in many ways. —­Field notes, February 27, 2016

In April 2017, the British daily newspaper The Guardian ran a story entitled “Is Boston the Next Urban Farming Paradise?” The article opened with the observation that “for ­those seeking mild, year-­round temperatures and affordable plots of land, Boston, with its long winters and dense population, i­ sn’t the first city that comes to mind.” The central argument of the article, however, was that Boston has become a national hub for urban agriculture, an achievement that the authors attributed to its educational infrastructure and entrepreneurial spirit: “Gradu­ates of the city’s nearly 35 colleges and universities are contributing to the area’s growing reputation as a haven for startups challenging and transforming age-­old industries, from furniture to po­liti­cal fund­rais­ing. The city’s strong entrepreneurial spirit, combined with progressive legislation like the passing of Article 89, has also turned Boston into one of the nation’s hubs for urban agriculture.” The article then highlighted start-­ups in Boston area working on dif­fer­ent aspects of urban farming, including two for-­profit urban farming companies, Green City Growers (see chapter 1) and Freight Farms (see chapter 5).1 Simply put, the article linked urban agriculture with power­ful aspects of Boston’s place identity as a hub for higher education, innovation, and progressive politics. Responding to the article in a letter to The Guardian, Dave Madan—­a member of the board of the Urban Farming Institute of Boston—­rebuked the author for “entirely ignoring the innovative black entrepreneurs who founded and lead Boston’s urban farming sector.”2 Madan challenged the narrative at the center

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of the article for its lack of attention to history, and especially its failure to acknowledge the role of Boston’s African American leaders: “Boston’s most famous activist and former politician, Mel King, pioneered the movement in the 1970s, kickstarting growing food across the city and protecting small farmland statewide. In 2011, entrepreneur Glynn Lloyd’s farming enterprise, City Growers, lobbied for the legalization of urban agriculture. . . . ​In 2013, Klare Shaw and other prominent community members founded the Urban Farming Institute, which co-­developed the ground-­breaking zoning revision (Article 89) . . . ​ successfully advocated for $8m in urban agriculture infrastructure funding across Mas­sa­chu­setts, and or­ga­nized the sector’s annual regional conference.” He concluded: “Black entrepreneurs are the driving force b ­ ehind urban farming in Boston ­today. Yet, they are not recognized ­here for it—­ perpetuating black invisibility, even when they are at the center of the story.”3 As urban agriculture gains in popularity, the erasure of African American activists, entrepreneurs, farmers, and gardeners is a growing concern. At the 2016 Mas­sa­chu­setts Urban Farming Conference (UFC), keynote speaker Karen Washington observed that a­ fter being part of the community gardening movement in New York City for twenty-­eight years, she has been concerned to see that the “narrative” of the movement “is starting to look white and yuppie.” As a consequence of the whitening of the narrative, she tells us, “­people ­doing this work for so many years, with their hands in the dirt, in the ground, are not getting the credit. . . . ​[We] need to share our stories, so that youth understand [the] history of this movement, and [so that] it moves forward in a way that is diverse.” In agreeing with her, Dave Madan stated, presciently, “Folks ­doing this work for years are not [the ones] getting into the newspapers.” “We need stories that are inclusive,” concluded Washington (Field notes, UFC 2016; see also Reynolds and Cohen 2016). In this chapter, I explore the stories that urban farmers and gardeners tell about their historical relationships to farming, in both urban and rural settings. As we ­will see, ­there is much that is at stake in t­ hese often racialized narratives, including who gets recognized as a farmer, who gets access to land, and whose visions of the ­future of urban farming gain po­liti­cal and financial support.

Bridging Narratives One of the first t­ hings that caught my attention as I began my fieldwork with urban farmers and gardeners was how frequently talked about their own interest in urban agriculture in terms of their ­family histories.4 This caught my attention particularly ­because in a prior research proj­ect, in which I interviewed almost one hundred scientists, policy makers, and environmental health and justice activists, no one ever began an interview by telling about how their work

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linked back to that of their ­father or grand­father, ­mother or grand­mother (Shostak 2013). In contrast, when I asked farmers, gardeners, food policy advocates, and urban planners to tell me about their background and training—­ perhaps naively expecting to hear something about their education or work experience—­a lmost all of them began by telling me about how the history of their ­family, broadly defined, has ­shaped their interest in farming.5 Although this chapter focuses on accounts offered by individuals, on the ­whole ­t hese are not individual-­level narratives. They are collective and, as we ­will see, ­shaped by histories of racialized inequities. To wit, white urban farmers, policy makers, and advocates tend to articulate their proj­ects as extensions of their familial farming lineages; they invoke a nostalgic past of small f­amily farms, vineyards, and backyard gardens. In contrast, urban farmers, gardeners, and advocates of color position their efforts as part of collective histories in regard to race and racism, relationships to the land, and community health; their narratives lift up not only ­family histories of growing food and herbs, but also systemic oppression and collective traumas embedded in both the rural South and the urban North. Further, as we w ­ ill see, they highlight the con­ temporary consequences of the past, for both the materiality of cities and the bodies of their inhabitants. They reveal that racialization—­t hat, is, “the elaboration of racial meanings to par­tic­u ­lar relationships, social practices or groups” (Omi and Winant 1994, 91)—­extends to “par­tic­u ­lar environmental practices and places in the landscape” (Norgaard 2019, 46). Further, they highlight the importance of ­these practices and places for individual and community health. As we w ­ ill see, ­t hese narratives draw on collective memories that invoke “a common past” that is recalled by members of a group, even if they did not personally experience the events themselves (Zerubavel 2003, 4). Narratives do the work of connecting historical events, places, and/or ­people to each other, and to sent, through what sociologist Eviatar Zerubavel calls “mnemonic the pre­ bridging” (2003, 40). Such bridges help us “transform a series of noncontiguous points in time into seemingly unbroken historical continua” (Zerubavel 2003, 40). Simply put, narrative continuity is accomplished by selecting which ­people, places, and events belong in ­t hese stories—­and which do not. Indeed, as I demonstrate in the following pages, the events, places, and actors that are bridged over and left out ­t hese narratives also provide insights into the identities and aspirations of con­temporary urban farmers. The stories we tell each other about the past shape the material and social world (Jordan 2015). They can alter landscapes, affect the availability of dif­fer­ ent kinds of foods, transform neighborhoods, and shape our understandings of ourselves and each other. The mnemonic bridges embedded in the narratives of urban farmers, gardeners, and advocates have consequences for how urban agri-

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culture is understood and how it is implemented in cities. Alongside the overarching issue of what urban agriculture is—or should be—­part of what is at stake in ­these stories are claims to being “the next generation of urban farmers,” and with this, claims to secure land tenure and other resources essential to farming. In the following pages, I describe three sets of narratives, the mnemonic bridging work that they do, the aspects of racialized in­equality they invoke, and the vision of urban farming, and farmers, they thereby bring into being.

Farming Runs in My ­Family Narratives that position urban farming as a “return” to valued traditions, ­family “roots,” and agrarian lineages w ­ ere extremely prevalent in my conversations with urban farmers, gardeners, and policy makers of Eu­ro­pean descent. The kinds of farming backgrounds that enter into ­t hese narratives point to the kinds of history that many white urban farming advocates seek to claim. Specifically, t­ hese narratives connect con­temporary urban agriculture with small-­ scale farming of days past and to the agrarian ideals of the Jeffersonian vision of democracy, including the valorization of land owner­ship, the moral and economic value of ­labor, and the importance of individual in­de­pen­dence (K. Smith 2004; King et al. 2018). I first noticed this narrative at community events in Somerville. For example, at a gathering in 2013—­during the first growing season a­ fter the city passed an ordinance supporting urban agriculture—­participants ­were asked to introduce themselves and say a few words about their interest in urban farming. In response, a few p ­ eople mention their backyard gardens. Another mentions the commercial aquaponics proj­ect he hopes to begin soon. A striking number of participants invoke their “roots” and connection to farming. “I grew up in a ­family of farmers,” shares one young man. “This started for me when I was growing potatoes with my grand­father when I was four. My grand­father had moved to ­ reat Depression. So, I’m very excited about urban Nebraska to farm during the G ag ordinance in Somerville.” A ­woman with a soft smile comments, “Farming is in my lineage, too, and it’s been calling to me” (Field notes, June 4, 2013, emphasis added). The next speaker introduces herself by telling the group, “My parents are from North Portugal. I grew up with this—­for many generations. My ­father was a farmer. Like many from immigrant groups in Somerville . . . ​the idea of farming is not foreign to me” (Field notes June 4, 2013). Such invocations of lineage ­were also common among white politicians who recalled ­family histories at public events in their cities and across the state. At the ribbon cutting for the Garrison-­Trotter Farm, in July 2014, Boston mayor Marty Walsh told the audience that he had never farmed in the city, but worked on a farm in Ireland, where he spent a summer, as a child, with his ­mother.

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Mayor Walsh recalled that he “planted” and then “pulled potatoes out of the ground—­and also turnips.” From this experience, he continued, he “learned where food comes from, and the value of farming.” Somerville mayor Curtatone’s stories about his grand­mother’s tomato and basil plants are so well known that they are told not only by the mayor himself; when I asked an urban farming advocate in Somerville why, as she put it, “urban ag is Mayor Curtatone’s ­t hing,” she replied, “Curtatone comes from a big Italian ­family. He grew up with his relatives growing their own food” (Field notes, May 29, 2013). Mayor Curtatone’s childhood memories also found their way into official city press releases about urban agriculture: “ ‘Growing up in Somerville, urban agriculture was simply neighbors sharing some of their prized tomatoes or freshly grown basil. Supporting urban agriculture t­ oday is a return to ­t hose roots,’ said Mayor Joe Curtatone” (press release, city of Somerville, March 15, 2014). While they often celebrated the past, sometimes ­t hese narratives seemed to rework difficult ­family histories. At the Somerville Mobile Farmers Market, set up on Thursday after­noon at the Council for Aging, an older w ­ oman, her white hair bound up in a blue handkerchief, shared with me that she grew up on a farm in Nova Scotia, where they grew all their own food. She was one of seven ­children and the older of two girls. ­Because the girls had to help their ­mother, she did not get to finish much schooling. As soon as her younger s­ ister came of age—­and therefore was able to help around the house—­she moved to the Boston area, following some cousins who had preceded her. She has lived ­here all her life. Despite the fact that this could be taken as a story of rural hardship—­ and its par­tic­u­lar costs to young ­women—­she tells me that this is why she is so excited about the market and the seedlings that she has just purchased t­here (Field notes, SMFM 2014). Central to ­t hese narratives is a sense that an appreciation of and talent for gardening and farming are traits that are “in the blood” (Wuthnow 2015). Ten-­ year-­old Corrina, with whom I planted tomato seedlings at a community garden cleanup, told me proudly, “I am a good gardener. I get this from my grand­father. He has a garden in his backyard. . . . ​He grows tomatoes and corn and he tries to grow cucumbers” (Field notes June  6, 2012). Corrina and her grand­father are growing food, side by side, in the same city. However, I also heard about lineages that spanned continents and de­cades, and still found continuity with local food production. For example, Congresswoman Denise Provost told me: The side of my ­father’s ­family which was in Quebec for 400 years, if you look at all the rec­ords . . . ​t he occupation of all of them, ‘cultivature.’ They ­were all farmers. They ­were all farmers. And then on the French side of his f­amily, ­those ­people grew vines that grew grapes in the Loire Valley. . . . ​And the French side of my m ­ other’s ­family, t­ hose folks w ­ ere growing vines in an area

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of Alsace Lorraine. . . . ​Nobody grows vines ­there anymore, but ­people did for hundreds of years. And the fact that we can [grow them] in Mas­sa­chu­setts? (Emphasis added)

Narratives of familial farming lineages also spanned types of agricultural production, including ­cattle and dairy farms. The or­ga­nizer of a pop-up urban farming store in Somerville told me that her business partner’s ­family was “big into ­cattle”: “Her grand­mother was like the Cattlemen’s Association . . . ​in Florida, and [she] was very involved in 4-­H.” In ­these narratives, to grow food in the city is, at least in part, to manifest an innate connection to food and farming. Th ­ ese ­family history narratives serve as a means of expressing a deeply felt interest, passion, or engagement, rather than making a more instrumental claim about technical knowledge or agricultural expertise. In all the stories that I heard about f­amily histories of farming, only once did someone make an explicit link between their f­ amily history and a strategic or instrumental outcome. Sean Cooney, whose freight farm is described in detail in chapter 5, noted that his summers farming with his ­uncle ­were enough to qualify him as a “beginning farmer” and therefore make him eligible for USDA funding: “I had spent my summers from the time I was a ­little kid ’til the time I was in college in Nova Scotia, working at my u ­ ncle’s subsistence farm, like six to eight acres, growing potatoes and carrots, and peas and beans—­that kind of stuff. Moving rocks, cutting hay. And that qualified as someone who had done ‘some farming.’ ” Cooney made this point in the context of a conversation about access to resources for beginning farmers. Though he began by noting his experience farming with his ­uncle, he went on to point to a variety of paths to gaining experience that are not dependent on ­family history: “So someone who’d worked for a year at The Food Proj­ect at some definable level, or worked twenty hours a week volunteering at The Food Proj­ect, and could talk about what they did and how they did it . . . ​‘I know how to do this. I know how to do that. I can plant. I can harvest. I can package.’ That would prob­ably put anyone like that in that ‘beginning farmer’ bucket” (Interview 37). Indeed, experiences actually farming in urban settings—­rather than ­family lineages—­might better prepare one for the challenges of small lot, intensive urban farming, or chicken keeping. As noted by a city planner, “Even though I come from a long line of farmers, I d ­ on’t know [the] dimensions for keeping chickens in super dense city” (Field notes, March 11, 2016). However, farming, in ­these narratives, is part of who you are, rather than something you know how to do. ­These narratives harken back to a romanticized pastoral vision of farming, emphasizing lineages linked to small, family-­owned farms that for de­cades ­were passed down from generation to generation. As noted in chapter  1, the intergenerational transmission of small f­amily farms has been massively disrupted by the industrialization of American agriculture and its “hollowing

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out” of rural Amer­i­ca (Carr and Kefalas 2009). The consequences of this disruption tend to be elided in t­hese narratives; they almost entirely omit the recent history of American agriculture, with its focus on commodity crops, biotech inputs, and large monocrops of corn and soy (Broad 2016). Strikingly, they skip over ­these transformations—­and the po­liti­cal economy that created them—­and bridge back directly to a much ­earlier moment in agricultural history. Such bridging is, in part, prognostic. Many advocates of urban agriculture see “big agribusiness”—­and its consequences—as a key challenge that they wish to address. Most are advocates of relocalizing food systems and creating “civic” and sustainable agriculture (T. Lyson 2004). As such, it is nearly unthinkable that urban agriculture advocates would include factory farms or agribusiness in their collective memory proj­ects. Additionally, urban farmers are not alone in making their critique of the industrialized food system. To exploit the familial meta­phor, such narratives make urban farming the con­ temporary “kin” of the revival of local food systems currently ­under way in small towns across New ­England (Hewitt 2010), upstate New York (Barber 2015), and rural Montana (Carlisle 2016). Together, they reject the factory farming models that have marked the demise of so many rural American f­amily farms and led to the industrial food system that many see as “broken” and “unsustainable” (Field notes, UFC 2016). ­These stories, however, also elide the histories of ­people of color in the United States, and they fail to consider how systems of in­equality and discrimination continue to shape relationships with land, farming, and food (Norgaard 2019; Penniman 2018; White 2018). Both scholars and activists have noted that insofar as they “hold . . . ​t he small-­scale, yeoman farmer as an American agricultural icon,” ­t hese narratives must be understood as a “white imaginary” that excludes the experiences and aspirations of ­people of color (Alkon and McCullen 2011, 945). For example, such narratives do not include the conquest and frontier genocide through which Native Americans lost their lands (and with them, the ecologies in which they ­were embedded) to white settlers, the enslavement of African Americans, or the exploitation of underpaid Asian immigrants who worked in California’s first factory farms (Alkon and McCullen 2011; Norgaard 2019; Leslie and White 2018). Moreover, this imaginary fails to consider ongoing pro­cesses of colonialism, racism, and exploitation in the con­temporary food system, including “the ­labor of the low-­paid, predominantly Latino/a workers who do the bulk of the cultivation” and the injuries and risks they suffer as a consequence (Alkon and McCullen 2011, 939; see also Holmes 2013). Such narratives—­and the vision of urban agriculture they support—­thereby risk reproducing long-­standing inequities. In challenging the whiteness of ­these narratives, urban agriculture advocates in Mas­sa­chu­setts emphasize that simply growing food in the city (or, for that ­matter, revitalizing local food systems) is not itself enough to transform

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the current food system or improve population health. Rather, they insist that working for equity and justice—in the food system and in Mas­sa­chu­setts cities—­requires confronting histories of settler colonialism, racism, and systemic oppression: “Our agricultural system is built on stolen land and stolen ­labor. If you a­ ren’t willing to have this conversation, you a­ ren’t working for justice, even if ­you’re growing food” (Field notes, UFC 2018). Indeed, the stories of farmers and gardeners of color offer a power­ful challenge to the uncritical nostalgia and romanticism that characterize the bridging narratives of many white urban farmers. In so d ­ oing, they also offer an impor­tant reframing of restoring relationships to food, farming, and the land as essential to the health and well-­being of con­temporary urban communities.

“This Goes Back Generations”: Land, Culture, and Health On a cold February morning, I walk into the Bethel AME Church on Walk Hill Street in Boston’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood. An older man with a warm smile sits at a t­ able near the entry to the church’s youth annex, g­ ently directing traffic. P ­ eople heading to a choir rehearsal—­the beginnings of which can be faintly heard—he points up the stairs. He directs me to the left, down the hall, where the Urban Farming Institute of Boston (UFI) is hosting an event on the history of Black urban farming. Having arrived a few minutes early, I chat with UFI’s educational programs coordinator, LaDawn, who is setting up a timeline depicting the history of Black farming in the United States. Strung along the wall are carefully labeled photos and clippings from newspapers, mounted on pale-­yellow paper and attached with tiny ­binder clips, marking centuries of African and African ­ ere are cards for slavery, Black farming cooperatives, disAmerican history. Th criminatory federal policies resulting in the loss of land held by Black farmers, and the class action lawsuit (Pigford v. Glickman) that, in the largest civil rights settlement in history, awarded payments to the thousands of farmers harmed by ­t hese policies.6 At the far end of the timeline, representing the f­uture, is a picture of the UFI’s newest proj­ect, the revitalization of the Fowler Clark Epstein Farm, in Mattapan. As she works on the timeline, LaDawn tells me, “I always start with, ‘we have always been on the land.’ ” ­Later in the morning, during her formal pre­sen­ta­tion of the timeline, LaDawn emphasizes that “this timeline ­doesn’t end . . . ​t his just keeps flowing.” LaDawn’s timeline is mnemonic bridging made material. With images and newspaper clippings, yellow paper, b ­ inder clips, and string, it creates relationships between historical events, the pre­sent moment, and the ­future. At the same time, it is an attempt to instantiate a narrative that, in her words, is “an untold story. You ­can’t just Google it” (Field notes, February  27, 2016). This timeline also highlights the complexity of the narratives I heard from Black

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urban farmers, gardeners, and advocates, which take up not only histories of racism but its con­temporary manifestations and consequences, in both rural and urban contexts. In the following pages, I highlight two sets of narratives, each of which builds a dif­fer­ent mnemonic bridge. The first connects con­temporary urban farming in Mas­sa­chu­setts cities with the history of slavery in Amer­i­ca. ­These narratives make connections between the vio­ lence, trauma, and cultural disruption caused by slavery and the health prob­lems facing con­temporary communities of color. At the same time, t­ hese stories draw on and rework complex cultural meanings about country, food, and farming long associated with the American South (­Reese 2019; Robinson 2014; White 2018). As Hunter and Robinson observe: “Black mi­ grants brought and bring ‘The South’—­ Black regional customs, worldviews, and cultures—­w ith them to their new homes in destinations across urban American. . . . ​Black southern mi­grants sought to relieve themselves of the culture of White domination in the South, but they w ­ ere invested in retaining cultural traditions they had come to value” (2018, 4). In t­hese narratives, con­temporary urban agriculture becomes a means by which African Americans can reclaim historic and empowering relationships to the land, to food, and to health (Penniman 2018; White 2018). A second set of narratives link con­temporary urban farming to the history of gardening—­and racialized in­equality—in northern cities. ­These stories build bridges between discriminatory policies and practices in urban settings, the community gardening movement, and con­temporary urban farming initiatives. Such narratives highlight the history of urban community gardens, which have served as an impor­tant focus of both ­house­hold food production and community organ­izing, especially in low-­income communities of color neglected, for de­cades, by their city governments (Hynes 1996; Lawson 2005; Martinez 2010; Warner 1987). In ­these narratives, urban agriculture emerges as a form of reclamation, re­sis­tance, and community health intervention. In both narratives, con­temporary urban farmers and gardeners of color negotiate complicated relationships with farming, food production, and food access, while positioning control of the land as essential to community survival. They thereby instantiate an emerging urban Black agrarianism, “in which land is a source of freedom, pride, and belonging” (King et al. 2018), reclaim knowledge about health and healing, and seek to challenge inequalities rooted in both rural and urban contexts.7

Reckoning and Reclaiming At the Bethel AME Church, the after­noon program on food as healing begins as Demita hands out plates of a delicious root vegetable salad, dressed with homemade honey vinaigrette. Demita tells us that she has assembled this salad with the goal of demonstrating “how you can eat in Roxbury ­today.” Roxbury

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is a neighborhood of Boston in which 91  ­percent of residents are p ­ eople of color, 60  ­percent of whom are African and African American. In 2016, the median ­house­hold income in Roxbury was $33,8000, making it one of Boston’s poorest neighborhoods.8 Demita did all the shopping for her salad at the local Stop-­n-­Shop, “where ­people can actually afford to buy food, not like Whole Foods.” Demita explains that she cooks “how her grandma and mom cooked—­t his goes back generations.” She recalls that her mom and grandma “could look at a rock in w ­ ater and make something magical happen.” She remembers the beauty of their long, brown fin­gers rolling dough, which she watched from her perch atop a phone book, that is, when she was young enough to need some extra elevation to be able to see the countertop. For Demita, “food is medicine,” and she offers her own health history as testimony to the healing power of ­whole foods. She tells us how she healed herself from eczema and has kept her blood pressure low, even as she ages (she is now in her sixties). “The proof is in the pudding,” she quips, but then adds more seriously, “­Really, the proof is in my numbers” (Field notes, February 27, 2016). Demita’s story, however, is not just about her own health. Rather, she states clearly that healthy eating is “our birthright, as a p ­ eople . . . ​our health and our right to eat delicious food.” Demita refers to the words of urban agriculture superstar ­Will Allen in describing how this inheritance has been disrupted: “­Will Allen says that we have a lot of pain in us about the dirt. Painful t­ hings happened in dark hollows.” Reflecting on her own ­family history, she continues: “My Mom got us out of Mississippi as soon as she could, so we could have the life she wanted for us. But still, she got chickens for us . . . ​­t here was a need for country, a need to be close to the ground” (Field notes, February 27, 2016). This is a central tension in the first set of narratives that I heard from African American advocates of urban farming and gardening. In this narrative, Black urban farmers and gardeners recollect the enormous suffering that began when millions of ­people ­were torn from their homes in Africa and subjected to generations of forced ­labor, vio­lence, and brutal subjection in the American South. Consequently, the land and the dirt are described as holding enormous collective pain. In the words of farmer, educator, and activist Leah Penniman: “Our families fled the red clays of Georgia for good reason—­t he memories of chattel slavery, sharecropping, convict leasing, and lynching ­were bound up with our relationship to the earth. For many of our ancestors, freedom from terror and separation from the soil ­were synonymous.” However, Penniman continues, while the land was “the scene of the crime . . . ​she was never the criminal.”9 This narrative posits, further, that reclaiming “reverent connection between Black ­people and soil” and cultural knowledge about food and herbs offers possibility of deep healing from the trauma of slavery and its many con­ temporary consequences (Penniman 2018). It thereby builds temporal bridges

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between the history of slavery, relationships to the land, the health issues facing communities of color in the pre­sent, and the promise of urban agriculture. Urban farmers and advocates across Mas­sa­chu­setts recognize that for many Black ­people the meaning of farming is strongly associated with the history of slavery in the United States. Speaking on a panel at the Mas­sa­chu­setts Urban Farming Conference, Ibrahim Ali, codirector of Gardening the Community (GTC) in Springfield, Mas­sa­chu­setts, commented that “our youth come with a lot of ideas about working in the fields, and this is often not appealing to them” (Field notes, UFC 2015). Even more starkly, reflecting on her work with youth of color in a summer program, an advocate reported that “young p ­ eople affiliate farming with slavery” such that as the summer goes on “­t hey’ll say, ‘I’m getting black like a slave!’ ” (Field notes, UFC 2018). Reflecting on her experience organ­ izing farm days for ­children from low-­income communities and communities of color, LaDawn commented that “the kids say, ‘I ­don’t belong ­t here, slavery does.’ . . . ​We need to change this” (Field notes, February 27, 2016). Pat Spence, the executive director of the Urban Farming Institute of Boston, sees changing ­t hese perceptions—­and getting Black ­people back to the land—as a central part of its mission: “This is what w ­ e’re trying to do. We want young p ­ eople—­especially in Dorchester, Roxbury, and Mattapan—to get back to the land, to what ­we’ve always been ­doing” (Field notes, February 27, 2016). In t­ hese narratives, “reconnecting to the land” is also a form of sovereignty that is essential to community health. In the opening session at the Bethel AME Church, Nataka, the operations man­ag­er at the UFI, says that it is critical to “increase the numbers of Black farmers” and to be “in control of the land,” ­because then “we are in charge of our food, our health.” Similarly, Linda states that her engagement with urban gardening and farming is motivated by her belief that “we need to take control of the food system. It’s impor­tant to our health and our culture” (Field notes, February 27, 2016). Pat Spence agrees, recalling that in recent conversations with ­people at the Mattapan Health Center, they told her that “they see kids who think that carrots come from bags, peas come from cans.” Following this discussion, Apolo—­who apprenticed with the UFI before becoming the man­ag­er of a community-­based urban farm in South Dorchester—­ tells me that “when you grow your own food, you become more aware of health.” ­ ecause “we in the inner city suffer from chronic This is impor­tant, he continues, b conditions. I’m grateful for medicine, when we need it. But it’s better to be proactive about our health. That’s what the dirt is t­here for. . . . ​We need to build relationships to dirt and farming. . . . ​We need to build this for youth . . . ​our community should not be a profit point for the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal companies”10 (Field notes, February 27, 2016). In this context, taking control of one’s health includes reclaiming cultural knowledge about herbs and healing. In the discussion following Demita’s pre­sen­ta­tion, an older w ­ oman comments, “­There is so much that our grand­

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mothers and great-­grandmothers knew that we got away from.” Several ­people in the room express their interest in learning more about plants and the healing power of herbs; one w ­ oman recalls, “My mom did herbs. If you w ­ ere getting a cold and you drank her tea, next day you’d be better. We need herbs and ethno-­ pharmacology.” Echoing this theme of essential knowledge lost, Mel King, a politician and longtime community activist who now serves on the UFI board, responds, “It’s African survival. A lot of t­hese plants came over from Africa. We need to find a way to get this historical knowledge” (Field notes, February 27, 2016). This narrative emerged also in the comments of African American gardeners who participated in focus groups at the Dudley Neighborhood Green­house in 2015.11 As one gardener explained: For me, I came from a long line of farmers. My f­ amily is from North Carolina. In some cases they ­were forced to tend to the land, right? . . . ​­There’s that thread throughout the diaspora where we have this conflicted relationship with land, but yet we know ultimately that that’s where the power is. That’s where the peace comes from. That’s where the meal comes from. If we allow the trend in our communities to continue, where we have no clue what this dirt, this soil can do for our communities and our ­children? Then folks like Monsanto ­w ill dictate what ­w ill happen. (Dudley Green­house grower)

Gardeners emphasized also that urban agriculture offers a means of reclaiming cultural traditions that use plants—­especially herbs—to maintain and promote health and healing: “For me [gardening] . . . ​is about health and also my great-­ grandmother. When I was growing up, my ­father always planted. He always said that if you knew how to plant, you never go hungry. I had a great-­grandmother ­ hole garden was herbs. She had an herb and a remedy for just did herbs. Her w every­thing” (Dudley Green­house grower). Moreover, urban gardens can provide a place for ongoing intergenerational sharing and connection to one’s culture: “That intergenerational sharing and being socially and other­wise involved around growing food, it’s something that’s ­really a deep part of I think most of our cultures, our ancestors and legacy” (Dudley Neighborhood grower). Glynn Lloyd, one of the most vis­i­ble and influential advocates for urban agriculture in Boston, put preserving and passing on cultural knowledge at the center of his pre­sen­ta­tion to the Garrison-Trotter Neighborhood Association when making the case for establishing an urban farm in their neighborhood. As Glynn recounted in an interview, the rationale for the Garrison-Trotter Farm was not just that it was being started by ­people who live in the neighborhood, such that “­we’re talking about Black business,” but “­we’re also talking about, like, ‘Listen, we have a generation of folks who are getting older. They come from the land. Can we learn—­can we pass this knowledge down?’ And they [the neighborhood association members] ­were like, ‘When do we start?’ ”

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Reconnecting to the land and reclaiming knowledge and practices associated with health and healing are power­ful warrants for Black urban farmers. ­These narratives have strong links to Black agrarian traditions, which emphasize the land as a source of in­de­pen­dence, empowerment, re­sis­tance, and sovereignty (King et  al. 2018; Penniman 2018; White 2018). In and through t­hese narratives, and the practices they inspire, Black urban farmers and gardeners reclaim power­ful agricultural traditions and cultural knowledge about not only food and farming, but health and healing.

“­There ­Wasn’t a Grocery Store for Miles”: Confronting Urban Inequalities Reflecting on her experience working at Gardening the Community’s farmers’ markets and farm stand in Springfield, Qamaria observes that African American elders in have been “­dying” for fresh produce. She tells me that when they see the vegetables grown by GTC, they say: “Oh, can we take some home? Can we take some home? Can we take some home?” P ­ eople are ­dying for fresh vegetables, and a lot of the residents h ­ ere came from down south. They came up north to get away from farming back in the day. . . . ​So when they see youth ­doing it, it brought back memories, or they would say, “Oh, I remember when I used to help my m ­ other on the farm,” or “We used to grow all our vegetables,” and you know, “We came up h ­ ere so we can get away from it, but I love the work y’all are ­doing, and I love fresh vegetables.”

Qamaria tells me that African Americans moved to the North “­because they ­didn’t want to have that strug­gle anymore. . . . ​So they moved up h ­ ere, and they enjoyed . . . ​­going to a grocery store and buying their vegetables and produce.” ­ eople of color: “A lot However, cities presented a dif­fer­ent set of challenges to p of them lived in Springfield for twenty, thirty, forty years, so they had seen . . . ​ Springfield changing, and losing grocery stores, and losing that fresh produce that [was] once in grocery stores. . . . ​They went through t­hose changes, and ­they’ve seen the changes that have been happening [to] the community of the ­people of color . . . ​t he youth ­t hese days, and how disconnected from the Earth and from food they are.” Qamaria’s comments bring together the “disconnection from the land” and changes in cities—­often wrought by deindustrialization, disinvestment, and white flight—­which have had a myriad of harmful consequences for urban communities of color. The community gardening movement—­which arose in response to abandonment and disinvestment in t­hese communities—­ provides the basis for a second narrative, which addresses racism, food, and health in urban contexts. Speaking at an UFI event, flanked by gorgeous photos of the UFI farm team and radiant tomatoes from last year’s harvest, Pat Spence holds up a pair of

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denim overalls and a hat, and tells us that they belonged to her grand­father. Pat explains that she also has her grand­father’s farming tools; together, t­ hese items are valued reminders of her connection to farming. Pat’s grand­father was from Jamaica. When he came to Boston, he first lived in Grove Hall—­a neighborhood right at the intersection of Dorchester and Roxbury, two of the neighborhoods where UFI now farms—­where he began growing food. She reflects on her grand­ father’s food cultivation practices, telling us that “­every part of the land was used.” Similarly, ­every bit of what was grown was used, with gardening in the summer followed by pickling and canning in the fall, “so that we could eat through the year.” Pat’s f­ather also grew food in Boston, she tells us. He “collected” vacant lots, u ­ nder a municipal policy that allowed him to acquire “vacant abutter lots,” and farmed using techniques that he had learned from his ­father. The next speaker, urban farmer and educator Bobby Walker, recalls: “I grew up in a garden. My grand­mother, we would help her out. I ­don’t know, I must have been five, six, and I would help her. I knew all the weeds from the plants and ­things like that.” Mel King says that “when the question comes up—­why are you into farming?—­I go back to growing up in a neighborhood where ­people grew food, in their backyard or on their fire escapes. My Mom made us scoop up ­horse manure to help her grow her plants” (he then smiles wryly and notes, “That gives you a sense of my age”) (Field notes, February 27, 2016). In fact, King was an early leader in establishing a “new politics of community gardens” that centered local control of land and community sovereignty (Warner 1987, 28–29). ­These narratives harken back neither to the romanticized agrarian “white imaginary” of the ­family farm nor to the brutal history of slavery in the American South. Rather, they call attention to the history of urban community gardens, often in abandoned lots, where ­people of color have learned to grow food as a means of subsistence, a strategy for beautifying their neighborhoods, and a way to be in community (Hynes 1996; Lawson 2005; Martinez 2010; Reynolds and Cohen 2016; Warner 1987). In so d ­ oing, they raise impor­tant questions about the relationship between the history of community gardens and con­ temporary urban farming proj­ects. In fact, community gardens are an impor­tant part of how many urban farmers learn to grow food. Many of the p ­ eople I interviewed as part of this proj­ect garden in their neighborhoods, sometimes serving as community garden coordinators. In a conversation at UFI’s office in spring 2016, Bobby Walker tells me that it is b ­ ecause of gardening—­including a class that he took through the Boston Urban Gardeners Program—­t hat he was able to become a farmer. As Bobby methodically removes seeds from last year’s carrot crop in preparation for this year’s planting, he recalls: I got into farming b ­ ecause I wanted to start a farmers’ market in our neighborhood. We ­were staying in Lower Roxbury at the time. We did a bunch of

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stuff to get farmers to come. We went to dif­fer­ent conferences and ­t hings like that, and we c­ ouldn’t get any farmers to come. I was like, I’m already a community gardener. I already have the gardening skills to grow food, period. I de­cided that I’m ­going to be a farmer. If I ­can’t get anybody to come to my farmers’ market, I’ll be the farmer. That’s how it started for me. (UFI Oral History Interview, 2016, emphasis added)

A staff member of Nuestras Raíces in Holyoke told me that “community gardeners are the pipeline” for urban farming. Invoking the meta­phor of heritability, she said, “Community gardeners have the farm gene” (Field notes, Urban Farming Conference 2014). To extend this meta­phor, in­equality and discrimination are very much the environment in which “the farm gene” gets expressed. Alongside the barriers to food access that Bobby mentions, this environment has been ­shaped also by inequities in sustained and secure access to land suitable for cultivation. For example, ­t here is a well-­documented history of municipal governments seizing the vacant lots that residents have turned into gardens just as soon as a previously marginalized neighborhood becomes attractive to developers (Martinez 2010). How to acknowledge this history—­a nd prevent the exacerbation of in­equality in cities—is a topic of ongoing debate and discussion among urban farmers, gardeners, and advocates. On a bright January morning in 2015, more than fifty p ­ eople gather in a top-­floor conference room at the Boston Foundation for the first meeting of the city’s Urban Agriculture Visioning Group.12 ­After a series of pre­sen­ta­tions about the possibilities of urban agriculture in Boston, Ruth Goldman, a program officer with the Merck ­Family Fund, poses the following challenge to the group: “­There is a history of gardening in this city. In the 1960s and 1970s, communities of color w ­ ere gardening. ­There was a time when no one cared about ­t hese communities and food production, before this new focus on commercial urban agriculture. How do we hold this history?” (Field notes, January 21, 2015, emphasis added). The facilitator of the group, Holly Fowler, reminds us that the focus of the group is on “commercial urban agriculture,” though she acknowledges that noncommercial agriculture is impor­tant. This tension emerges at almost ­every subsequent Visioning Group meeting. At the group’s meeting in March, a participant angrily challenges the premise of the group, stating, “Let’s be honest, what’s ­going on h ­ ere is the commercialization of growing food in Boston. That’s the radical shift” (Field notes, March 18, 2015). A few weeks a­ fter the January Visioning Group meeting, as Ruth Goldman and I talk over tea at a café near her home, she returns to the question “How do we hold this history?” This history, she notes, is explic­itly about inequities linked to race and class: “So urban farming, urban ag—if you go way back, it’s Victory Gardens. But ­really, the modern urban ag movement comes out of the community gardening

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movement, which is r­ eally about urban disinvestment of the fifties and sixties . . . ​ [the] community gardening movement came out of ­people trying to build community, make a place, do something positive in their community.” Ruth points especially to the experiences of African Americans who came north as part of the ­Great Migration, and then disproportionately suffered the effects of urban disinvestment and decline: “They built the highway systems right through communities of color. All the white p ­ eople left. And Black p ­ eople, their communities ­were red-­lined. They ­couldn’t get loans. They ­weren’t allowed to live in the suburbs. . . . ​ And then p ­ eople burned buildings.” She argues that it is critical that t­ oday’s urban farmers and gardeners remember “where the movement comes from,” especially its connection to race and class: “­There’s a huge history of African American urban farmers in t­hose communities who ­were originally from the South, and came north, and wanted to grow food that they could eat, ­because . . . ​­there ­wasn’t a grocery store for miles. So, I think to forget where the movement comes from is ­really to disrespect the issues now of gentrification and displacement.” Such narratives also point to the importance of urban inequalities for understanding the health challenges facing communities of color. Specifically, t­ hese accounts highlight how communities of color are made structurally vulnerable to poor health by both the “missing connection” to “gardening, and growing your own food, and subsistence, and making stocks and stews, and healthy and ­wholesome food” and a “system that tells you what to eat, and targets communities, based on their color or income, to consume low-­quality food” (Interview 32). Such narratives add (dis)connection to the land to accounts of the social causation of health disparities: “It’s a duality of a push and a pull. So ­you’re being pushed in one direction, but you also know ­t here was a connection to the Earth that was disconnected, ­because of oppression, and racism, and capitalism. . . . ​ Yes, ­you’re at risk for obesity, but . . . ​your race is not why ­you’re at risk. It’s all the other systems, in addition to where you are in the social structure” (Interview 32). Urban poverty compounds this prob­lem; as Demita put it in her pre­ sen­ta­tion on food as healing, “Most of us learned nutrition through the WIC program. That’s a horrible way to learn about food, focusing on what you can buy with WIC” (Field notes, February 27, 2016). In this context, community gardening—­ and urban farming focused on improving food access—­can be seen as a form of re­sis­tance to the poor quality foods being sold in many urban communities of color. This theme also emerged powerfully in the comments of African American community gardeners (Shostak and Guscott 2017; see also Twitty 2017, 265–280; White 2011): “Once you start ­doing research on what good food [is], what we s­ houldn’t be putting in our bodies, you go into ­these stores and you see what ­they’re selling us. It’s time to question it. It’s time to ask, ‘Can you put a better quality in ­here? . . . ​Or can we just grow our own?’ It’d be nice if p ­ eople started ­doing that. [When you] grow your own food, you know what’s ­going in the soil . . . ​It’s healthy” (Dudley Neighborhood grower).

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Relatedly, a neighborhood gardener explained that community gardening is what makes the “­whole conversation about access to healthy food choices” actionable for her: “I would say that . . . ​growing food and . . . ​gardening, specifically, makes the ­whole conversation about access to healthy food choices, affordable quality food, have meaning, have substance. Wanting or needing or trying to provide for your ­family, for yourself, by just shopping at some of the local stores or larger supermarkets . . . ​­you’re relying on ­those sources for healthy food [and it] is just . . . ​not guaranteed. It’s l­ imited to one’s ability to get to t­ hose places and afford ­those prices” (Dudley Neighborhood grower). ­These accounts offer a counternarrative, and a corrective, to the individualistic focus of con­temporary biomedicine, which holds individuals accountable for their health. They call for a structural analy­sis of health in communities of color that connects current circumstances—­including barriers to healthy food access—­with the trauma of the past, including the violent removal and dispossession of ­people of color from the land. To wit, an urban farming advocate and public health professional who moved to the United States from Jamaica tells me that it’s “American history” that is responsible for the specific health challenges in “communities of color”: A lot of lit­er­a­ture speaks to communities of color . . . ​as “the prob­lem to be fixed” [­because of] high blood pressure, obesity, and every­t hing ­else. ­There is rarely any information that I’ve found, at least, that speaks to their cultural norms, and re­spect for gardening. . . . ​­There are long histories of Southern farmers and gardeners, and something happened. Th ­ ere is trauma in the farming system, where Blacks ­weren’t allowed to own land. And ­t here’s not much talk about that. What you hear instead is that ­t hey’re obese. So, the history is disjointed, and I think one-­sided. It . . . ​[focuses on] “the prob­lem to be fixed,” versus the systematic oppressions that ­causes removal from the land, and why that happened. (Interview 32)13

Consequently, as described by Karen Washington at the 2016 UFC, too many ­people approach communities of color as if they “need fixing. . . . ​­There’s a mentality that low-­income neighborhoods ­don’t know what ­t hey’re ­doing.” In contrast, she states, “to move this food movement forward, ­people with power need to give up [power] or share it. . . . ​W hen [you] move into marginalized communities—­share your resources. So many p ­ eople in low-­income neighborhoods have the knowledge. We need to share power and resources so they can act” (Field notes, UFC 2016). This narrative insists that urban agriculture should be about honoring the experiences and expertise of urban communities of color and removing structural barriers that impede agency and harm health, including inequalities in secure access to land. As we w ­ ill see, this narrative has clear implications for policy pro­cesses, including ­t hose used to make land permanently available to farmers in communities of color.

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How Stories ­Matter Given the well-­documented barriers to healthy food access in communities of color, academic observers express concern that urban agriculture might represent a new form of abdication by the state, which other­w ise might be forced to address the issues of food access and health brought into being by the erosion of safety net programs (Allen and Guthman 2006; Broad 2016; Delind 2015). From this perspective, urban agriculture can be seen as yet another means by which urban communities of color are being left to fend for themselves in the context of long-­standing and pervasive inequities. The urban farmers and gardeners I met across Mas­sa­chu­setts are just as critical of in­equality and injustice as any scholar. Many advocate powerfully for changes in federal, state, and local government policy and practice, including but not l­ imited to programs to ensure consistent and equitable access to healthy and affordable food. However, the narratives of urban farmers and gardeners also highlight a broader vision, in which urban farming and gardening are a means of reclaiming cultural knowledge, practices, and identities linked to individual and community sovereignty and health. And t­ oward this end, urban agriculture also is about obtaining and retaining community control of land in the long term. In this context, mnemonic bridging is a critical corrective to interventions that fail to “recognize the relationship between present-­day inequities . . . ​and histories and geographies of oppression”; mnemonic bridges offer, rather, “an historically rooted knowledge of the expansive role of food, farming, and land within the Black community: how ­these have been and continue to be sources of both liberation and oppression” (Lindemann 2019, 874; see also Penniman 2018; White 2018). As such, bridging narratives are also an impor­tant part of how urban farmers and gardeners establish relationships to identity and to land.

Who Is a Farmer? In rural settings, stories about farming being “in the blood” are supported by the intergenerational continuity of farming in families: “The fact that many if not most farmers w ­ ere raised in farm families is one of the most distinctive features of farm life. It is hard to imagine an occupation in which this kind of generational continuity is more impor­tant” (Wuthnow 2015, 14). Generational continuity is impor­tant, in part, due to the economics of farming. Young ­people who wish to farm are at an advantage if their parents (or grandparents) can give or share their land, machinery, and technical expertise. The economics of farming, however, are only part of the story: “Being significantly connected to the past is as impor­tant to the mentality of farming as it is to the economics” (Wuthnow 2015, 14, emphasis added). This mentality includes feeling as if you are following in the footsteps of your ancestors, carry­i ng forward ­family

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traditions, and living grounded in the legitimacy granted by the past (Wuthnow 2015, 15). Urban farmers are far less likely to inherit land or machinery from their parents. They cannot gesture to a field or a barn and tell the story of how “their parents not only farmed, they farmed ­here, in this place” (Wuthnow 2015, 16, emphasis in original). In this context, building a mnemonic bridge to one’s ­family history is a way of accessing aspects of what Wuthnow describes as the “mentality” of farming. ­Because of the transformation of farming in rural Amer­i­ca over the past half c­ entury, aspiring urban farmers with personal histories linked to small f­amily farms may need to build mnemonic bridges to claim this past. They rely on stories to fill in the intergenerational gaps and make connections to ancestry, traditions, and the legitimacy of an occupation long valued and valorized as an essential part of the American proj­ect. The narratives of urban farmers and gardeners of color remind us, however, that the small f­amily farm as an icon of American agriculture has long been part of a “white imaginary” that elides the lives and experiences of ­people of color. Notably, even the overall decline of rural farming evinces stark racial disparities. The number of Black-­owned farms decreased from 900,000 in 1930 to 6,996 in 1978, and “the total number of acres of U.S. Black-­owned farmland declined from 14 million in 1920 to 2 million by the turn of the ­century” (Leslie and White 2018, 350). Th ­ ese dramatic declines w ­ ere “not simply part of the broader trend ­towards farm consolidation,” but rather a consequence of discriminatory federal policies (Leslie and White 2018, 350). As such, Black farmers are not only much less likely to be able to farm the same land that their parents or grandparents owned—­t hey are much less likely to own land at all. The uncritical nostalgia of “farming runs in my f­amily” narratives is challenged by the bridging narratives of farmers and gardeners of color, which highlight racialized inequities in both the American South and the urban North. Importantly, ­t hese narratives honor the lineages of Black urban farmers and gardeners, affirming their identities as “the next generation of urban farmers” (Field notes, July 2014; see figure 3.1). Again, reflecting on her conversation with elders in Springfield, Qamaria tells me: So when they see us, and they go, “Oh, I’m glad you have young youth ­doing it . . . ​youth of color” . . . ​it makes them happy, ­because when you think of a farmer, you ­don’t think of a person of color. You d ­ on’t think of someone in the city, or amongst buildings and traffic, and amongst fast-­food restaurants and gas stations, growing food. You think of someone out in the rural area just on this big land in a tractor, with the straw hat—­a Caucasian person—­and just riding their tractor and growing food. So when they seen that, you know, it kind of excites them to say, like, “Oh, it’s still alive. We still have that spark in us, as a culture, as ­people of color. We ­didn’t completely lose it.”

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Figure 3.1. ​Bobby Walker, training the next generation of urban farmers. Photo credit: Adam DeTour

This reclamation is impor­tant not only to legitimizing urban agriculture, but also to pushing back against what was described to me as the “huge racial discrimination” encountered by farmers of color, not just historically but ­today. Racial discrimination and exclusion are part of the “DNA” of the American food system (Penniman 2018) and shape ­every aspect of how it operates (Leslie and White 2018). In conversations across Mas­sa­chu­setts, I heard reports of a myriad of forms of racism and its effects. Some w ­ ere entirely overt, such as when a farmers’ market man­ag­er refused to allow Somali Bantu farmers to participate in a weekly market; this was resolved only ­under threat of a formal civil rights complaint; however, then “half the white farmers left” (Interview 27). Other incidents ­were perhaps not as obvious, but no less significant. For example, the director of an urban agriculture program that works primarily with youth of color recounted the difficulty of helping Black kids access the resources and training required to become farmers, especially in rural western Mas­sa­chu­setts: “Farmers are consistently saying that t­ here’s a disconnect between Black kids in Springfield and farms looking for apprentice farmers or coop owner­ship. ­They’re not thinking about the kids that [we] are working with, who we are talking with about farming as a sustainable way of living. They are asking: Can I ­really farm? ­Because they drive up to ­these farms and ­don’t see anyone who looks like them” (Field notes, February 28, 2015). The rifts between older and newer farmers are amplified by a “rural-­urban disconnect,” which is also patterned by race and ethnicity. This has impor­tant

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implications for access to land and, thus, the ability to farm. As observed by a participant at the Mas­sa­chu­setts Urban Agriculture working group, “­There is a real rural-­urban disconnect. Rural farmers are aging, mostly white and male. New farmers are younger, a lot are ­women, ­people of color, [folks trained by] New Entry. And t­ here ­aren’t a lot of connections being made. The older white farmers are not handing off farms, even when their kids ­don’t want to farm, [likely] ­because of cultural rifts between older and newer farmers” (Field notes, February 28, 2015). It remains to be seen w ­ hether narratives about the history of Black farmers can help to bridge the “disconnects” between urban and rural, older and newer farmers. In urban areas, however, t­ hese narratives are already at the center of conversations about secure and equitable access to land.

Who Gets Access to Land? As we have seen, in narratives that emphasize reconnecting to the land, reclaiming cultural knowledge, and resisting urban inequalities, urban farming and gardening are positioned as critical to the culture, sovereignty, and health of communities of color. In Boston, the degree to which urban agriculture is or is not empowering for p ­ eople of color has emerged as not only a topic of contention, but also an orienting goal for the pro­cess of establishing new urban farms. Just as advocates of urban agriculture refer to the legacies of the rural South, ­people opposed to urban farming in Boston draw on this history in expressing their concerns about commercial farming in the city. In chapter 4, I describe in detail how images of “plantations” and “colonial regimes” w ­ ere used to object to the siting of four pi­lot urban farms in Dorchester. Former Office of Food Initiatives (OFI) director Edith Murnane likewise recounted conversations with a Boston resident who said to her, “Edith, my grand­father was a sharecropper! You ­really think that urban ag is ­going to be empowering for me? In my mind, agriculture is not about empowerment. Not when that’s your history” (Field notes, March 11, 2016). ­ ill Allen In Boston I was told repeatedly that together, a 2012 event led by W 14 of Growing Power, the advocacy of local entrepreneur Glynn Lloyd, and the establishment of the Urban Farming Institute of Boston gradually “shifted this conversation” by making urban agriculture about “local empowerment,” including long-­term “community control” of land (Field notes, UFC 2016). As a Boston policy maker described it, “They insist that urban ag can be dif­fer­ent, that it can be about local access to land, entrepreneurship, and empowerment” (Field notes, April 8, 2015). The emphasis on empowerment is not merely rhetorical (cf. Eliasoph 2011); it has ­shaped specific practices regarding land access and tenure. For example, Lloyd and ­others pushed the city to develop “a pro­cess that puts focus on empowerment in the neighborhoods” in deciding which parcels of land are dedicated to commercial urban farming: “We need a pro­cess to happen for each parcel, and especially

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the parcels owned by the City of Boston. We need a public, open pro­cess before and ­after each RFP that puts the power in the hands of the community” (Field notes, April 8, 2015). Similarly, at the 2016 UFC, Lloyd highlighted the importance of policies that make “sure that the folks on the land that the community is in are not just at the ­table, but controlling the pro­cess” (Field notes, UFC 2016). Relatedly, urban agriculture advocates have emphasized how impor­tant it is that farming opportunities be made available to the p ­ eople in the neighborhood where the farms are located. In Boston, where vacant lots that might be converted into farms are more often found in low-­income communities and communities of color, advocates have insisted that “it’s impor­tant that the farmers who are in the neighborhood are a reflection of the ­people who actually live in that neighborhood . . . ​making sure that urban agriculture remains culturally relevant, and ­v iable, for ­people who live in the neighborhood or grew up in the neighborhood . . . ​where ­t hey’ll be working” (Interview 44). This emphasis on empowerment also informs the Urban Farming Institute of Boston’s founding focus on how to ensure access to land, in perpetuity, for farmers from Dorchester, Roxbury, and Mattapan. Stable land tenure is critical to establishing urban farming as a v­ iable ­career. Again, historical events give meaning to current discussions about how to make sure that urban farming provides prac­ti­tion­ers with a living wage. As an urban farmer recounted in an interview, during a difficult conversation about land access in Boston, Mel King asked the UFI board, “ ‘Well, are we setting ­people up to be sharecroppers?’ And ­people ­were like, ‘Whoa, that’s a loaded word’ ” (Interview 33). The “load” in this word, of course, comes from its racialized history. For prac­ti­tion­ers and advocates for whom urban agriculture is about reclaiming healthy and productive relationships to the land, it is vital that their efforts not recapitulate racist and exploitative economic relationships. Again, such exchanges point to the ways that their awareness of the injustices of the past informs how urban farmers of color advocate for more equitable and healthy ­f utures for themselves and their communities. In 2017, the UFI achieved one of its founding visions, establishing the first-­ ever community land trust to hold commercial urban farms for community benefit. Although created during the civil rights era as a means for African Americans to collectively own land for farming, housing, and other critical community resources (White 2018), community land trusts have emerged also as an effective tool to ensure local control and protect long-­term housing affordability in urban neighborhoods. The founding mission of the Urban Farming Institute Community Land Trust (UFI CLT) was “to promote and protect urban farmland, and to ensure that decisions about this land remain in local control. UFI CLT acquires, develops, and stewards urban farms u ­ nder the governance of the ­people who are impacted by this land use.”15 In 2020, the board of the trust approved a new name and mission statement: “Boston Farms Community Land

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Trust turns vacant urban land into collective opportunity, supporting neighborhood farmers to grow the food that sustains us.” By serving as the primary owner of urban farmland in Boston, the Boston Farms Community Land Trust aims to “ensure long-­term community stewardship,” preventing potential loss to developers and/or purchase by commercial growers from outside the communities in which the farms are located (see chapter 4). On its website, the trust acknowledges the “inspiration and technical assistance” provided by the Dudley Neighbors Inc. land trust, founded in the 1980s to provide a mechanism for the residents of Roxbury to take back control of their neighborhood (see Medoff and Sklar 1994).16 It also notes that “the first CLT in the United States was formed in rural Georgia in the 1960s to protect the rights of African American farmers.”17 Put differently, in even a brief telling, the Boston Farms Community Land Trust bridges back to the history of African American farmers in the South and urban dwellers in the North.

“We Live in History ­Every Day . . .” Narrative plays impor­tant roles in establishing both individual and collective identities (Polletta 2006; Somers 1992). As sociologist Michaela DeSoucey demonstrates, claims about heritage—­including heritage associated with food production—­are often “concerned with legitimizing social identities for the pre­ sent” (2016, 17). However, neither memory nor the meaning of the past is fixed (Griffin 2004; Schudson 1993). Rather, events take their meaning from their position in a series of events (Abbott 2001; Bearman, Faris, and Moody 1999). Through narratives, individuals select and order events in ways that help them give meaning to the experiences of their lives (Riessman 1993). Similarly, where one begins the story of con­temporary urban agriculture has consequences for how we understand what it is, and what it may become. As demonstrated in this chapter, through the stories they tell, urban farmers create mnemonic bridges (Zerubavel 2003), linking con­temporary social action ­ thers—­with varied implications for the pre­sent. to specific pasts—­and eliding o One set of narratives positions urban agriculture as a return to small-­scale farming and a means of relocalizing food systems. ­These narratives are favored especially by white urban farmers who seek to reconnect with their ­family’s rural roots and establish alternatives to the industrial food system. In contrast, the narratives of urban farmers and gardeners of color frame urban agriculture as a means of challenging racism and its consequences, by reconnecting with the land, reclaiming cultural knowledge, and challenging long-­standing urban inequities. ­These narratives highlight especially aspects of African American history and culture that give par­tic­u­lar meanings—­and urgency—to the practices of con­temporary urban agriculture. As we ­will see in the following chapter, the past is raised up also in encounters with the land tilled by t­ oday’s urban farmers.

chapter 4

;

Stories of the Soil

Margaret Connors, one of the found­ers of Boston’s entrepreneurial urban farming com­pany City Growers, is among the first speakers at the 2014 Mas­sa­chu­setts Urban Farming Conference. “Welcome, fellow visionaries,” Connors begins, to a round of applause. She announces City Growers’ newest farm and describes their mission, “focused on vacant lots” and the possibility of “growing food in low income urban neighborhoods, building healthy communities.” In explaining her passion for this enterprise, Connors tells the audience that her ­father grew up in Orchard Gardens, the public housing development formerly known as Orchard Park (Vale 2018).1 Connors notes that the “Orchard” in the name of the development is not a coincidence. In fact, she informs us, “at the turn of the ­century, the Clapp pear was cultivated ­there.” Connors recounts further that her “grand­father harvested seaweed from Dorchester Bay for his garden.” Therefore, she concludes, “city soil has nourished me” (Field notes, UFC 2014). Connors’s story is one of a double connection to urban farming. Similar to the narratives examined in the previous chapter, it makes linkages between Connor and generations of her ­family who have grown food. Similar to the narratives examined in chapter 2, it makes linkages between the history of Boston, new urban agriculture initiatives, and specific visions of a healthy city. However, in contrast to the narratives and places we have considered so far, urban agriculture in Boston has been the focus of dramatic controversies. The question of ­whether “city soil” is “nourishing” or “poison” has been at the center of ­t hese controversies. Across Mas­sa­chu­setts, public health officials, urban planners, farmers, and gardeners acknowledge that the soil in postindustrial cities is “contaminated”; this is a legacy of e­ arlier land uses, such as manufacturing, as well as the once widespread use of lead paint (Frickel and Elliott 2018; Markowitz and Rosner 2014).2 Contaminated soil can pose a threat to both growers and consumers of 99

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urban produce: “Urban gardening can be a challenge for residents ­because direct contact with contaminated soil poses a high risk. ­Humans can uptake soil contaminants by breathing airborne soil particles, absorbing contaminants through skin, eating soil, eating produce with soil particles on it, or eating plants that have absorbed contaminants into their tissue” (Nyman, McCartney, and Schermerhorn 2013, 54). Consequently, the ordinances governing commercial urban agriculture typically include extensive soil safety protocols and soil testing stations are prominent at city farming festivals (see figure 4.1). However, the ubiquity of soil contamination in postindustrial cities is only part of the story. First, contaminated soil is “particularly common in mixed industrial and residential land, and ­these areas often are communities of color and/or neighborhoods with predominantly low-­income residents” (Reynolds and Cohen 2016, 26). Second, historical sites of industrial land use may have been redeveloped in ways that obscure the risks buried beneath them such that they no longer “look, feel or smell like risky places ­today” (Frickel and Elliott 2018, 104). Thus, the vacant lots available to con­temporary urban farmers may pose risks e­ ither b ­ ecause of their proximity to current sources of harmful exposure or ­because they sit atop relic industrial sites, containing h ­ azards long ago lost to memory and no longer available to sensory perception. As we have seen, in cities such as Somerville and Lowell, where the overwhelming majority of urban agriculture initiatives are stewarded by nonprofit, community-­based organ­izations, ­these issues are widely acknowledged—in the form of educational campaigns, testing protocols, and raised beds for gardening—­but they have not been a locus of controversy.

Figure 4.1. ​Soil testing station at The Food Proj­ect’s City Farm Fest, Dudley Green­ house. Photo credit: Sara Shostak

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In contrast, environmental health and justice w ­ ere at the center of the controversies in Boston, which erupted in 2010 when the city proposed the development of four “pi­lot” commercial urban farms in the neighborhood of Dorchester. In voicing their opposition to the city’s proposal, Dorchester residents contended that the soil in their neighborhood had been poisoned by a history of municipal neglect, which enabled the per­sis­tence of dumping and environmental ­hazards in the neighborhood. They argued that food grown in vacant lots would not be safe for consumption and that the soil posed a danger both to ­t hose working on and living near urban farms. In ­t hese narratives, chemicals in the soil are “­matter out of time” (Boudia et  al. 2018, 171; see also Douglas 1966), bearing witness to a local history of economic disinvestment, municipal neglect, and environmental racism that needed to be acknowledged and addressed before urban farms could be considered. The Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA), charged by then Mayor Menino with developing an urban agriculture ordinance for Boston, responded to community concerns by partnering with the Boston Public Health Commission (BPHC), which proposed stringent soil safety protocols for Boston’s urban farmers. At neighborhood meetings in 2013, however, residents of Dorchester, Roxbury, and Mattapan expressed objections to the proposed protocols. In their narratives, requiring soil testing was framed as a form of “prejudice,” implying that their neighborhoods ­were particularly unclean and unsafe (Field notes, July 13, 2013). Participants also raised concerns about how the costs of soil testing and remediation could make the economic opportunities potentially offered by urban farming inaccessible to neighborhood residents. Relatedly, as urban agriculture proj­ects have moved forward in Boston, farmers have criticized the city for shifting the cost of decades-­long neglect back onto their neighborhoods. How do we make sense of t­ hese very dif­fer­ent meanings of “city soil”? What has made the soil itself an object of sustained contention in Boston? Answering ­these questions requires careful attention to what sociologists call neighborhood narratives (Small 2004). As we ­w ill see, residents who see the soil as “poison” are telling a dif­fer­ent story about their neighborhoods than the public health experts who acknowledge that the soil in all postindustrial cities often is “contaminated.” Relatedly, while the presence of heavy metals in the soil appears as a public health issue for city agencies, it is also an economic issue for aspiring urban farmers. In this chapter, I examine narratives about the soil in Boston, and especially in the neighborhoods of Dorchester, Roxbury, and Mattapan. My analy­sis demonstrates that in their stories of the soil, neighborhood residents are demanding that city officials confront aspects of local history—­especially the more recent histories of communities of color in Boston—­t hat are not readily commodified in branding campaigns. This chapter contends that, like the built environment that is more often studied by sociologists, soil is an impor­tant

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part of the nature and culture of cities, laden not only with a myriad of contaminants but also with multiple meanings. ­These meanings of “city soil” shift and change as it is positioned in narratives with dif­fer­ent orientations to the racialized history of the city, its urban agriculture initiatives, and the possibility of greater equity and justice in Boston neighborhoods.

Neighborhood Narratives As we have seen, branding often relies on a city’s “historical narrative, collective memory, and lifestyle,” allowing urban growth co­ali­tions to make claims about their locales’ “uniqueness, authenticity, particularity, and speciality”; ­ these function as a form of symbolic capital in development campaigns (Greenberg 2008, 29). The agricultural histories of urban places may provide such symbolic capital. For example, the history of “Clapp’s favorite pear,” first cultivated in Dorchester in 1840, is hailed as “a symbol of the agricultural history of Dorchester.”3 Stories about the Clapp pear—­and the public art proj­ects that pay homage to it—­can be understood through this lens. Similar efforts have centered on the Roxbury Russet apple, believed to be the oldest apple cultivar bred in the United States.4 Such stories ask ­people to see now-­u rban places through a new lens and provide advocates with a means of “naturalizing” con­ temporary urban farming proj­ects. In ­these narratives, food production is portrayed as a deeply rooted part of life in par­tic­u­lar urban places. Together, ­these stories help to make the case that “­we’re not as far away as we think” from a time when ­people ­were producing food in the city (Field notes, UFC 2014). Such reframings may be especially power­ful when ­there are material traces of ­these rural pasts in city neighborhoods. For example, one may still find Roxbury Russet apple trees growing in Boston, a fact highlighted by a local brewery that makes hard cider with t­ hese apples.5 ­These agriculture-­centric narratives are consistent with the selective capitalization of local histories that is often part of branding campaigns. In Boston, and elsewhere, such narratives deploy bucolic imagery, in part, to elide the aspects of place identities that do not serve the interest of growth co­a li­tions. To put it starkly, one may highlight the histories of the Clapp pear or the Roxbury Russet without ever mentioning the recent history of the neighborhoods—­ Dorchester and Roxbury, respectively—­where they ­were first cultivated. Like historic preservation initiatives that focus on “what is perceived as the high point” in the development of an urban area (Hyra 2017, 86), to recall the orchards that preceded a low-­income housing development fails to acknowledge the experiences of ­t hose who lived in the housing development. In his account of historical preservation proj­ects in St. Louis, Andrew Hurley describes the costs of “highlighting a golden age” in order to legitimize a neighborhood’s “historic status”: “Privileging the distant past at the expense of the recent past, however,

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robbed p ­ eople of the ability to make connections to the pre­sent . . . ​­those who possess local roots ­were usually t­hose whose own history was most closely intertwined with the era of decline, precisely the period that booster oriented preservationists wanted to forget” (Hurley 2010, 24). Likewise, narratives that highlight the history and heritage of a place may not extend “belonging” to its current residents (Zukin 1995, 1); rather, they often find themselves not only excluded in ­these narratives, but pushed out by gentrification (Zukin 1991, 193–194). It would be a ­mistake, however, to assume that branding campaigns, and the place-­making narratives that support them, always succeed in determining the dominant story of a neighborhood (Brown-­Saracino and Parker 2017; Wherry 2011). Developing place narratives is not “the sole province of place professionals, planners or architects”; rather, residents of a place also craft narratives that assem­ble “the features of place so that specific forms of community are bolstered or promoted, while other[s] are diminished or extinguished” (Aguilar-­ San Juan 2005, 41).6 As skillfully demonstrated by sociologist Mario Small, local place-­based narratives can be multiple; that is, dif­fer­ent residents can have dif­fer­ent neighborhood narrative frames, with implications for their identities and po­liti­cal participation (Small 2004; see also Sampson 2012; Brown-­Saracino 2018). In contrast to the focus of branding narratives on commodifiable aspects of local histories, neighborhood narratives may invoke the past, in part, as a means of “address[ing] perceived shortcomings of con­temporary social life” (Paulsen 2007, 2) and resisting branding campaigns. Community histories can be used, for example, to “contest the hegemonic reordering of urban space, such as urban renewal and gentrification” (Hunter, Loughran, and Fine 2018, 331). Indeed, while advocates for urban agriculture observe correctly that “agriculture was the foundation of the economy in this region for hundreds of years” (Field notes, UFC 2015), much has happened in Mas­sa­chu­setts cities between the 1800s and ­today. As demonstrated in the previous chapter, redressing inequitable and unjust urban pasts is an impor­tant motivation of urban farmers and gardeners. The recent history of Boston features a myriad of practices and events that highlight racial in­equality in the city, including blockbusting, redlining, vio­lence, arson, and municipal neglect, especially in the neighborhoods of Dorchester, Roxbury, and Mattapan (Gamm 1999; H. Levine and Harmon 1993; Lukas 1986). Stories of long-­ago orchards and farms obscure the very real health, social, and economic challenges facing ­these neighborhoods, as well as the ongoing efforts of residents to improve the lives and life chances of their communities (Medoff and Sklar 1994). In their stories of the soil, residents of Boston neighborhoods insist that the city attend to their experience of their neighborhoods, confront the less easily commodified aspect of urban histories, and lift up their concerns about environmental racism, economic opportunity, and social justice.

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Boston’s Article 89 ReVision Urban Farm, in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood, describes itself as “an innovative community-­based urban agriculture proj­ect that grows produce . . . ​and provides access to affordable, nutritious and culturally appropriate food to residents of our ReVision ­Family Home and our extended community”; it also provides job training for youth and homeless ­people.7 When I first arrive to volunteer at ReVision, on a chilly, wet morning in April, I notice that in 2013 its green­house had been dedicated to Boston’s longtime mayor, Thomas Menino. Upon returning home that after­noon—­and a­ fter a long shower to warm up and wash away the smell of fish emulsion fertilizer—­I find the following explanation online: “This year, Victory Programs’ Boston Living Center paid special tribute to Mayor Thomas M. Menino in honor of his 20-­years of advocacy for p ­ eople living with HIV/AIDS. In honor of his love of urban farming, and tomatoes in par­tic­u­lar, Victory Programs officially re-­named their ReVision Urban Farm green­house the Thomas M. Menino Green­house. . . . ​Additionally, Victory Programs’ ReVision Urban Farm in Dorchester w ­ ill grow official ‘Tom-­atoes’ to be served exclusively at the Boston Living Center dining room.”8 Mayor Menino’s commitment to public health was a power­f ul theme in the interviews I conducted about urban agriculture in Boston, as well as in the obituaries that followed his death in October  2014.9 In a special section on Menino’s legacy, the Boston Globe ran an article entitled “Menino Long Championed Public Health.”10 The Boston Public Health Commission eulogized Menino as “The Public Health Mayor”: “From the time that he created the Boston Public Health Commission in 1996 to the day he left office, his focus was to promote and protect the health of e­ very man, w ­ oman and child in this city—­ especially ­those who lived on the margins of society. . . . ​He believed that the City had an impor­tant role in ensuring that ­every Bostonian had equitable opportunities and resources to achieve optimal health. He was often quoted saying that the Commission had to ‘make the healthy choice the easy choice’ for our residents.”11 Menino’s commitment to public health—­and health equity—­included a relatively early concern with food access. As one of his advisers told me: “As a city councilor, [Menino] helped [to] establish the Roslindale Village Farmers Market as a way to revitalize the neighborhood. And then when he ran for election in 1993, one of our pledges was a supermarket for e­ very person in e­ very neighborhood. . . . ​And then, as we went further, it was like, supermarkets are necessary but not sufficient. . . . ​Every­body can have a supermarket, but what about farmers’ markets? What about healthier eating?” (Interview 29). Menino’s advocacy for urban agriculture, according to his former staff, was the culmination of his administration’s concern with “food at the most basic level, in terms of addressing hunger,” as manifested also in the establishment of the Bounty Bucks pro-

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gram, a nutrition incentive program, and of the Boston Food Policy Council. As a former staff member recalled: “When we ­were talking to Mayor Menino about setting up an Office of Food Initiatives, one of the ­things that we said to him was, ‘­You’ve been d ­ oing food policy for years.’ And it was a way for us to bring together food from a number of areas. ­There w ­ ere ­t hings ­going on, certainly, in the Health Department. ­There ­were ­things ­going on in the environment. And ­there ­were ­things related to economic development” (Interview 28). Mayor Menino’s administration positioned his advocacy for urban agriculture as part of his “broader vision” that “would ensure access to healthy, local, nutritious food at fair prices for all Bostonians.”12 Additionally, as noted in the quotation above, the initiative that led to Article 89—­the citywide zoning amendment that made farming an acceptable land use in Boston and set out a pro­cess for permitting urban farms—­was oriented also ­toward “economic development.”13 When it launched in 2010, the objectives for the mayor’s Urban Agriculture Initiative included the following: 1. Increase access to affordable and healthy food, particularly in ­t hose communities that are currently underserved. 2. Promote greater economic opportunity and self-­sufficiency, including increasing the capacity of Boston residents and business to grow and distribute local, healthy food. 3. Increase education and knowledge around healthy eating and food production, particularly among youth. 4. Increase partnerships with, and/or between, local and regional food producers. 5. Increase healthy food supplies to local schools, organ­izations, institutions and corner stores. (BRA Meeting Notes, November 29, 2010) From the perspective of Menino’s staff, a focus on economic opportunity and job development was part of what made food “a good issue po­liti­cally,” especially insofar as it supported “small businesses growing in his city” (Interview 29). At the same time, urban agriculture fit well with positive aspects of Boston’s reputation, which include its commitment to health, education, and innovation.14 Indeed, a­ fter the passage of Article 89 in 2013,15 Boston Office of Food Initiatives (OFI) staff told me exuberantly that it had become a “win/win for every­one.” ­People “­really love that the mayor [was] a champion of their cause,” they said, and it led to “a lot of positive feedback” and “a lot of good press.” In the retrospections of Menino’s former staff, urban ag in Boston had not been “a difficult ­thing” (Interview 17). In certain Boston neighborhoods, however, the urban agriculture initiative that became Article 89 had been remarkably controversial from its very beginnings.

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Grounds for Controversy Pi­lot Urban Farms In 2010, the city of Boston proposed a zoning overlay district that would allow for the establishment of four “pi­lot urban farms” in the neighborhood of Dorchester. The pro­cess, managed by the Boston Redevelopment Authority, focused initially on setting up for-­profit farms—­which could include both fruit and vegetable production, beekeeping, and chicken coops—on vacant lots owned by the city’s Department of Neighborhood Development (DND). As Mayor Menino ­later described the proj­ect, it was meant to be “an opportunity to take underutilized city land and put it to productive use. Community gardening brings neighbors together and it creates a new way to get healthy, fresh fruits and vegetables into neighborhood stores and kitchens.”16 To the surprise of the BRA and OFI, residents of Dorchester met the proposal with anger. Two issues w ­ ere of par­tic­u­lar concern. First, residents pointed to the possibility that farm animals would contribute to ongoing issues with rodent control, which they alleged the city had done too l­ittle to address; residents felt like their needs and priorities, long neglected by the city, ­were again being ignored in the planning pro­cess for the farms (Agyeman 2014).17 Second, residents argued that given the history of industry and of illegal dumping in the neighborhood, the soil was likely to pose a health risk to ­people growing vegetables on ­these lots, eating vegetables from t­ hese lots, and living near the proposed farms. As decisively documented by Julian Agyeman (2014), the concerns of Dorchester residents must be understood in the context of the neighborhood’s racialized environmental history and “a history of policies encouraging divestment and neglect.” With this as a backdrop, Agyeman observes, a lack of participatory planning pro­cesses “can reasonably seem malicious, rather than the careless result of a rushed mayoral directive.”18 At the same time, the pi­lot farms controversy was also very much about racial inequalities in what OFI staff described as “primarily Black neighborhoods” (Interview 17).19 This was made clear by the language used by Councilman Charles Yancey, who at the time represented parts of the neighborhoods of Dorchester and Mattapan, when he addressed the BRA planners regarding the pi­lot farm proposal: “­There was a level of arrogance displayed in this pro­cess. . . . ​The BRA totally ignored the community concerns when they voted to approve this proj­ect, which in real­ity had been already approved by assigning their staff to do it. But that’s not a legitimate pro­cess. . . . ​This is not a colonial regime! This is not a plantation! ­These are residents who deserve re­spect” (Agyeman 2014, emphasis added). Councilman Yancey’s staff invoked the image of a plantation in an exchange with the director of the Office of Food Initiatives as well, as recounted by an OFI staff member: “­There was one moment at which this constituent ser­v ices director of this city councilor turned to our director, and said, ‘Why are you trying

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to turn Boston into the plantation South?’ ” (Interview 17). A BRA planner recalled being challenged, as well, by community members, who alleged that urban farming proj­ects ­were a return to a plantation economy: “­There was some pushback . . . ​ [we] heard ‘­You’re bringing farms back to the city. We escaped the farms, and now ­you’re bringing plantations’ ” (Interview 16). Th ­ ese comments stand in stark contrast to the bridging narratives of farmers of color who see urban agriculture as a means of reclaiming relationships to farming and the land and, relatedly, as a source of power and healing (see chapter 3; also see Penniman 2018; White 2018). Rather, they draw on the past to express re­sis­tance to forms of agricultural production seen as unjust, exploitative, and oppressive. Further, residents’ narratives drew attention to the material legacy of municipal neglect in their neighborhoods—­the hazardous substances in the soil. Residents accused BRA planners of being willing to “poison us with urban soil” as they challenged claims about the supposed health and economic benefits of urban farming in their neighborhoods, telling the city, “We ­don’t want to work on ­these farms!” (Interview 16). Testifying against the proposed overlay district, Councilman Yancey noted that one of the proposed sites had been “drenched with petroleum” when an oil com­pany stored its vehicles ­there, making it a “hazardous waste site.”20 Expressing skepticism that geotextile barriers would be enough to contain the ­hazards in the soil, he “urged the commission to reject the zoning proposal ­until ­after the city tested the under­lying soil.”21 In their opposition to the pi­lot farms, Dorchester residents ­were advancing an understanding of health centered not on increasing local food access—­especially as they believed that the food produced in ­these lots would be contaminated by “poisons”—­but on environmental health and justice. Both the BRA and the OFI quickly realized that the pi­lot farms proposal had unearthed issues of “racial equity” and “a real lack of trust” (Interview 22). City ­ ere “­going into neighborhoods, b ­ ecause the mission is staff believed that they w to serve low-­income communities, right?” (Interview 12). However, they had failed to recognize that from the perspective of residents, the city had neglected their neighborhoods, where “for 20, 30  years . . . ​­people are dumping their trash” (Interview 12). As a former OFI staff member recalled: “What emerged was a tremendous level of distrust in the city. ­These ­were areas where ­people had been waiting—­for years—­for the city to have larger conversations about planning and about investment in their communities overall. ­There was a lot of frustration that ­t hese conversations ­hadn’t happened yet. So, when we showed up wanting to talk about farming, this was the wrong conversation for the communities . . . ​[that] d ­ idn’t feel heard or empowered in regard to City Hall” (Field notes, April 8, 2015). In this context, for the city to (fi­nally) appear proposing commercial urban farms, rather than engaging residents in an open and truly participatory planning pro­cess for cleaning up and revitalizing their neighborhood, raised questions about whom the urban agriculture initiative was

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intended to benefit. Residents asked, for example, “Where is this coming from and is this ­really about empowering local residents? Would ­people from outside the city come in and be the recipient of the new pro­cess?” (Field notes, March 11, 2016). Especially given the expense of starting a new farm, residents ­were concerned that Monsanto or other large for-­profit companies would be the beneficiaries of undeveloped land in their neighborhoods: “­There was a lot of trepidation. . . . ​One of the concerns that a lot of ­people felt in the neighborhood meetings was that someone was ­going to come in from outside of their neighborhood and take over this plot of land, which [was] maybe owned by the city, but sort of felt like a community resource, and take that land away from them, and make a profit off of it” (Interview 17). They noted that ­unless “community members” ­were able to “access the benefits of t­hese urban farms,” then this would be yet another instance of gentrification in Boston, further evidence of “a desire by the city to engage in redevelopment proj­ects that suit the needs of outsiders and newly-­established wealthier residents rather than revitalization proj­ects that benefit community members” (Agyeman 2014). City staff soon recognized that their “explanations” of the rationale for the pi­lot program would not be sufficient to allay community concerns. As a public health practitioner in Dorchester recounted, “­There’s just so much promise breaking . . . ​a lot of promises about new programs and new economic development that never materialized, and t­ hose kinds of t­ hings. . . . ​So [­there is] a lot of mistrust, and a lot of anxiety around the lack of resources, and who’s ­doing what, and ­really im­mense challenges around very few resources, and very few t­ hings to lift ­people out of . . . ​extreme poverty” (Interview 24). Put differently, the more recent “historical context” of the neighborhood (Interview 24) demanded a dif­fer­ent pro­cess than initially proposed by the BRA for the four pi­lot farms. As Agyeman describes, the BRA made “two decisive decisions” to incorporate community concerns: “First, they responded to residents’ re­sis­tance to animals by permitting plant cultivation only. Secondly, the BRA eliminated one original site where residents working with a local community development corporation had long been petitioning to create a playground” (Agyeman 2014). Importantly, community concerns ­were also incorporated into the Request for Proposals (RFP) through which groups could apply to lease the remaining sites. Specifically, the RFP “required ongoing community participation and engagement to be a key feature of any farm’s proposal.” This gave residents a role as “decision makers” in shaping the operations of farms in their neighborhoods. Relatedly, the BRA committed to including “community benefits” in the ranking pro­cess for proposals. That is, in addition to considering “how well they demonstrated technical farming experience and a sound business plan,” proposals ­were also ranked on how they addressed community benefits such as making produce available to residents at affordable prices or providing job training and internships for local residents (Agyeman 2014).

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In 2011, two parcels in Dorchester ­were leased to urban farming proj­ects.22 The nonprofit Victory Programs’ ReVision Urban Farm was given a lease to develop a farm on Tucker Street, and the for-­profit City Growers was given a lease for a lot on Glenway Street. Initially, each property was leased based on a rate of $500 per acre per year (effectively, $125 to $200 per year) for a term of five years, with the possibility of lease extensions if the farms ­were “successful.”23 The community’s concerns about soil safety also ­were reflected in the RFP that led to the establishment of the two pi­lot farms. It specified that farmers would be required to follow “established practices of the Boston gardening community” for separating the existing soil from contact with p ­ eople and pro24 duce. However, this specification was not enough lay to rest issues about soil safety. ­These emerged again, quite centrally, in the Article 89 pro­cess that rezoned the entire city to allow for commercial urban agriculture.

Legacy Issues The pi­lot farms controversy put soil safety on the agenda—­i ndeed, at the top of the agenda—­for Boston’s Urban Agriculture Working Group (hereafter referred to as the Working Group) when it convened to implement phase two of the Mayor’s urban agriculture agenda. Bringing together staff from city offices and agencies (including the BRA, OFI, DND, and Office of the Mayor), representatives from the Mas­ sa­ chu­ setts Department of Agricultural Resources (MDAR), urban farmers and advocates, representative from local markets, and academics, this group led the city’s multiyear effort to rezone the entirety of Boston for commercial urban farming. Their meetings, in Boston’s City Hall, ­were open to the public and increasingly well attended over time. At one of the first meetings of the Working Group, BRA lead planner Tad ­ oing the pi­lot proj­ect, “we learned about some issues Read commented that in d of par­tic­u­lar concern to the community, such as soil safety. ”More broadly, Read advised that“moving forward, the public pro­cess in South Dorchester made the City aware of two par­tic­u­lar concerns in the community about the Pi­lot proj­ect: (1) The community seeks involvement with the farm management; (2) The community desires community benefits from the farms” (BRA Meeting Notes, October 27, 2011). ­These lessons informed the Working Group’s pro­cess over the next 2 and a half years in at least two ways. First, the development of soil safety protocols was a priority concern and the focus of a dedicated working group, which worked extensively with the Boston Public Health Commission. Second, in the summer of 2013, the Working Group engaged in an extensive community consultation pro­cess, holding neighborhood meetings across the city of Boston.25 In both settings, both the materiality and the meanings of urban soil ­were critical concerns. At their initial meeting, members of the Urban Agriculture Working Group expressed their belief that raised beds—­t he strategy incorporated into the two

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pi­lot farms—­were a “good solution” to the prob­lem of soil contamination (BRA Meeting Notes, October  27, 2011). However, they also raised the question of “how soil safety falls ­under the zoning code as opposed to the health code” (BRA Meeting Notes, March 8, 2012). Given the “importance” of the issue of soil contamination, the strategy that emerged was to “flag” it in the zoning code (i.e., what became Article 89), but to regulate it as a public health issue, ­under the jurisdiction of the BPHC. Lead poisoning in ­children was a “legacy issue” for the BPHC (Field notes, February 28, 2015). Article 89 Made Easy, the city’s overview of the urban agriculture zoning ordinance, highlights its success in reducing lead poisoning in ­children: “Since 1991, the City of Boston has been successful in reducing the incidence of lead poisoning for c­ hildren ­under six years of age from 42.3% to less than 1% in 2010.” The BPHC seemed to take pride in its leadership in developing protocols for addressing lead poisoning; in his first comments to the Working Group, BPHC Director of Special Proj­ects (and former Director of Boston’s Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program) Thomas Plant explained that “Boston helped the EPA develop best practices around t­hese questions” and has “been involved with ­t hese concerns for some time” (BRA Meeting Notes, March 8, 2012). In crafting the city’s soil safety protocols, the BPHC sought to balance “the value of urban farming from a public health perspective” with its acute awareness of “the health risks from potentially contaminated urban soils.” The initial protocols proposed by the BPHC required that farmers initially test their topsoil for multiple contaminants, apply a geotextile barrier, build raised beds (i.e., on top of the barrier), and then conduct annual testing of the soil in which they ­were growing for lead and arsenic (BRA Meeting Notes, February 7, 2013). When the initial protocols ­were presented to the Working Group, many members expressed concern that they ­were too stringent, especially as they ­were “treating all potential farm sites as a hazardous waste site.” Members noted that the proposed protocols w ­ ere more rigorous than t­ hose implemented by other cities, a decision that Plant defended as a consequence of the BPHC’s expertise: “Boston goes farther than other cities ­because of the extensive experience we have on this issue.” However, Working Group members noted also that the proposed testing requirements went beyond anything required by the Mas­sa­chu­setts Environmental Protection Agency (MA EPA). Additionally, they raised concerns about the “onus” put on farmers, not only by the cost of yearly testing, but of the remediation that would be required if the initial testing identified contamination in the topsoil, even though the farmers would be growing in raised beds, separated from the topsoil with a geotextile barrier. Consequently, Working Group members asked the BPHC to consider if ­t here was “another way to do this, without putting farms in the category of hazardous waste sites” (BRA Meeting Notes, February 7, 2013).

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The BPHC took public comments on the proposed protocols for three months before reporting back to the Working Group that “the two major topics . . . ​ included the (1) potential high cost of testing to farmers, and (2) how to set the safety standards at an appropriate level” (BRA Meeting Notes, April 5, 2013). As a participant in the pro­cess ­later recalled, “even the environmental organ­ izations” ­were saying that the proposed protocols ­were “too strict” (Field notes, MA Urban Ag Working Group, February 28, 2015). An environmental ­lawyer recounted that her organ­ization advocated for “less stringent” regulations, something she did not think they had ever done before. The Boston Public Health Commission d ­ idn’t have any prior experience with agriculture, and the contaminant levels that they set . . . ​­were so stringent that no one would be able to meet them. . . . ​And the levels that they had set ­were also significantly more stringent than the state levels, which meant that city farmers would be more burdened than someone growing in any other part of the state, which just d ­ idn’t make sense. I mean, the soil needs to be clean h ­ ere [Boston], but if a certain level of clean is acceptable in Shrewsbury, it should prob­ably also be acceptable h ­ ere. And the farmers felt very strongly about that. (Interview 22)

The revised protocols w ­ ere in place in time for the neighborhood meetings held by the BRA across Boston during the summer of 2013. ­Here, too, they ­were at the center of controversy.

Stigma in the Soil Soil safety protocols ­were a frequent focus of questions at the ten neighborhood meetings held in the summer of 2013.26 In striking contrast to the anger over and fear of the “poison” in urban soils that emerged during the zoning for the pi­lot farms in 2010, however, at the neighborhood meetings in 2013, residents of Dorchester, Roxbury, and Mattapan voiced concern that the soil testing require­ ere an expression of “stigma” and “prejudice” against their neighborments w hoods. They expressed frustration especially at the requirement that soil be brought in from other locations, which they saw as implying that their communities ­were particularly unsafe and unclean. For example, at a neighborhood meeting for residents of Roslindale and West Roxbury, a ­woman objected to the assumption that soil in Roxbury would be less safe than soil that was shipped in from other locations:27 “I want to say more about soil safety. I feel like t­ here’s a heavy prejudice against our soil, and I’m wondering if it’s being carried a ­little too far. The onus is much greater to prove that the soil that’s h ­ ere is safe to raise food in than soil that you bring in. And maybe t­ here’s good reason for that, but it ­doesn’t seem fair to me. It seems that if you want to be paranoid about your soil, you should be equally paranoid about the stuff you bring in” (Field notes, July  10, 2013). At the neighborhood meeting for Hyde Park and Mattapan, a

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community member who had also been very actively involved in the city-­w ide working group described calls for more stringent regulation as a “fear tactic” which she objected to, in part, for its potential to “demonize farmers” (Field notes, July 17, 2013). Such comments surprised many city officials and advocates, who saw the soil testing requirements, rather, as an expression of the city’s commitment to environmental health and justice. From the city’s perspective, the rigorous soil protocol represented a direct response to concerns raised by residents in Dorchester regarding the pi­lot farms, a way of making sure no one was “poisoned” by urban soil. Embedded in residents’ comments at the neighborhood meetings, however, are clues as to the changing meanings of the soil in debates and discussion about urban farming in Boston. For example, at the West Roxbury meeting, the ­woman who explic­itly rejected calls for stricter regulations commented also that “what ­we’re engaged in ­here is something that’s against big agribusiness. ­We’re saying that if you make an effort to do ­things well on a small scale, then that’s safe enough. And we believe in trying that ­here” (Field notes, July 10, 2013, emphasis added). Similarly, in the Hyde Park and Mattapan meeting, calls to not overregulate the soil ­were coupled with descriptions of urban farmers as “our community members” who are not “­doing it for the money” but for “other reasons” and who could be trusted: “If they see a prob­lem with a farm we can get together and deal with it. I ­don’t need more regulations ­doing that for me” (Field notes, July 17, 2013). Put differently, between 2011 and 2013, t­here had been a dramatic change in residents’ perceptions of who would be farming vacant lots in Boston neighborhoods. During the ­earlier controversy about the proposed pi­lot farms, Dorchester residents expressed fear of agribusiness—­often referred to as “Monsanto”—­ coming in to exploit vacant land in communities of color and exposing residents to toxics. During the summer of 2013, neighborhood residents ­were now rallying in support of making ­these lots available to farmers from their communities. And while large agribusiness—­w ith choices driven by the bottom line—­still was seen as an appropriate target for stringent regulations, they believed that their neighbors—­farming for more altruistic reasons—­could be “trusted.” The success of local advocates in making urban ag “about local access to land, entrepreneurship, and empowerment” (Field notes, April  8, 2015) had profound implications for how neighborhood residents oriented to the issue of soil contamination.28 Soil had become not only a witness to painful neighborhood histories, but a medium through which community members ­were expressing distrust of agribusiness and solidarity with their neighbors. Moreover, imagining community members as farmers more emphatically raised the issue of the cost of soil testing and remediation. At a meeting for neighborhoods in downtown Boston, a member of the audience commented that “testing imported soil w ­ ill be cost prohibitive especially for low income

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and particularly for recent immigrant communities, many of whom ­were born and raised planting” (BRA Meeting Notes, June 13, 2013). Similarly, at the Hyde Park and Mattapan community meeting, a member of the audience explained that “coming from a social justice [perspective], I see urban agriculture as something hopeful and positive to create opportunities.” She continued by noting that the proposed protocols would “exceed many cities throughout the country that are already ­doing this” and clarifying that she would not advocate lowering “the standards for dif­fer­ent areas.” Rather, she was concerned that “when I look at the cost of start-up, ­there’s already a lot of ­people who are ­going to be marginalized out of this pro­cess.” Consequently, she concluded, it was impor­tant to avoid “unnecessary costly regulations” (Field notes, July 13, 2013). Simply put, in narratives that position urban agriculture as a mechanism for creating economic opportunities in Boston neighborhoods, regulations that raise costs for local farmers are framed as barriers to access and equity. Looking back on the pro­cess that led to the final version of the BPHC’s soil safety protocols, Working Group members tended to say that they felt good about the pro­cess even as it “took a lot of discussion and trying to find common ground” (Interview 34). They ­were pleased especially that it led eventually to a protocol that Edith Murnane, then director of the OFI, described as requiring “regulatory levels equal to that of the state and federal levels. We are requiring that farms in Boston are developed to the same standards as throughout the ­ ere designed Commonwealth” (BRA Meeting Notes, May 9, 2013). The protocols w to balance the need to protect farmers, neighbors, and consumers from toxic substances in the soil with the imperative that residents have access to opportunities to farm in their neighborhoods. However, as urban farmers in Boston have discovered as they begin to develop farms, u ­ nder the provisions of Article 89, it is not only soil that bears the legacy of the city’s history.

Who Pays for the Past? As Boston urban agriculture advocate Glynn Lloyd commented in an interview, “Our neighborhoods look differently from other neighborhoods. . . . ​ ­We’re all living in the history of this country, and this city.” For Lloyd, “the question is—­W hat can we do about it?” Recounting his advocacy for urban farming in Boston, he remarked: “ ‘Lookit,’ I said, ‘­Here’s the concept. We want to get Black farmers on this land, and we want to create economic opportunity. It’s been sitting for the last twenty, thirty years.’ I mean, ­there’s a history of why ­these pieces of land have been sitting [empty]. . . . ​[Rather than having them] sit for another forty, fifty years, let’s get them productive.” This narrative has proven power­ful in Boston. Indeed, as we have seen, the idea that urban farming should be of benefit to low-­income families and communities of color motivated ­people to insist that soil safety protocols not create a barrier to entry for their neighbors

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who wish to farm. This narrative also raises questions about who pays for the past, including the aspects of the city’s history that create the conditions of possibility for urban farming in Boston—­t hat is, the vacant lots available for farming in Dorchester, Roxbury, and Mattapan. As with divergent stories of the soil, part of what is at stake in how ­people account for the patterning of vacant lots across the city is ­whether and how the racialized and unequal histories of Boston’s neighborhoods are included in conversations about con­temporary urban agriculture. For example, some city staff acknowledged the disproportionate prevalence of empty lots in communities of color but tended to frame this as “happenstance.” One morning, at the Boston OFI, a staff member commented to me, “It just so happens that the neighborhoods that have ­these vacant parcels are predominantly Black.” He saw it as simply “con­ve­nient” that “most of the areas that have vacant plots of land in the city” are in the neighborhoods of “Mattapan, Dorchester, Roxbury,” which also have high rates of “diet-­related disease” and therefore, in his estimation, stood to benefit greatly from improved access to fresh, healthy, locally grown food (Field notes, January 13, 2015). In contrast, as suggested by Lloyd’s comment above, many urban farmers in Boston recognize that racial and economic injustices, of the past and pre­sent, are an inextricable part of the availability of land in the form of vacant lots in Dorchester, Roxbury, and Mattapan (Warner 1987). Their neighborhood narratives center local histories of arson, in par­tic­u­lar, in accounting for the location of their farming proj­ects. For example, in Dorchester, a farmer explained to me that the field where we ­were planting spinach “used to hold ­houses.” She knew this ­because “when they started working on the lot, they found foundation stones from the ­houses . . . ​which burned to the ground during the unrest in the 1960s and 1970s” (Field notes, April 17, 2015). During another visit to the farm, a dif­fer­ent farmer commented that their fields ­were on “house lots, for sure . . . ​prob­ably burned down for insurance” (Interview 36). Similarly, in Roxbury, a farm man­ag­er mentioned that several of the lots in which they grow “had h ­ ouses on them . . . ​it’s a neighborhood that experienced a lot of burnings of ­houses and stuff” (Interview 34). In fact, in the early 1980s, fires in Roxbury created 840 vacant lots containing 177 acres of land. ­These stories illuminate the histories of racism and municipal neglect that “haunt” t­hese locations (Bell 1997) and continue to shape the lives and life chances of neighborhood residents (Sharkey 2013).29 It struck me as I visited urban farms in Boston, and across Mas­sa­chu­setts, that many farmers had become practicing urban historians. As their comments made clear, their historical research is motivated by a need to learn about the history of the soil at potential farm sites. This historical orientation is, in fact, encouraged by the Environmental Protection Agency: “Before starting a garden in urban cities . . . ​t he EPA advises residents to research the previous land use of their site” (Nyman, McCartney, and Schermerhorn 2013, 54). Many

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urban farmers therefore do extensive research to ascertain what contaminants might be an issue at any site where they are considering growing, as this farmer recounted: “It’s so expensive to test . . . ​[for a] wide variety of pos­si­ble contaminants. And it’s a start-up cost, before you even know if you can use the land. U Mass only tests for heavy metals, and ­there’s also PAHs, ­etc. You need to know the history of the site” (Field notes, April  7, 2015, emphasis added). The historical research of urban farmers often raises issues not only regarding past land uses, but also questions regarding who should be responsible for their legacies. As one farmer observed, “Many of the issues . . . ​­were created by the municipalities themselves” (Field notes, February 28, 2015). Nonetheless, urban farmers may find themselves liable for ­these “issues,” a point that has been raised repeatedly in discussions of urban farming in Boston. This is ­because, irrespective of historical ­causes, urban farmers who discover contamination on their sites are required to “comply with Mass DEP’s Mas­sa­chu­setts Contingency Plan (MCP) requirements” (BRA Meeting Notes, June 3, 2013).30 This means that if farmers discover dangerous levels of soil contamination, they ­will be required to remediate, even if they plan to grow only in raised beds separated from the soil on site. As a planner from the BRA explained at a neighborhood meeting in Jamaica Plain, “The farmer just needs to be aware of the potential l­egal and economic implications of testing and finding contaminants; the farmer could be ­under significant ­legal and financial obligation to remediate if contaminants are found. In general, the more economical—­but still safe—­method for avoiding growing in contaminated soil is the raised bed method” (BRA Neighborhood Meeting Notes, June 18, 2013). Although bringing in clean soil and building raised beds is a major expense for urban farmers in Mas­sa­chu­setts, it pales in comparison to the cost of being required to fully remediate a contaminated site. Therefore, many urban farmers report that they “­don’t test the city soil,” but rather “just assume it’s contaminated”; in the context of this massive liability, they prefer to bring in fresh soil and grow in raised beds (Field notes, UFC 2014). Unfortunately, the costs of the past are not l­imited to the soil. As urban farming proj­ects have moved forward in Boston, farmers growing on lots that ­ ater and held ­houses long ago burned to the ground have discovered that old w sewer lines can also pose an expensive challenge. As a Boston-­based urban ­ ater lines, farmer described one such site: “On two lots, t­ here ­were three old w three old sewer lines. We are being required to cut and cap every­t hing ­we’re not using. We had to cut into streets five times” (Field notes, February  28, 2015). Even at the historic Fowler Clark Epstein Farm, which is unique in its hundreds of years of history as a farm, rather than a vacant lot or brownfield, remediation has been a significant issue: “That land ­isn’t ready for farming. ­There’s lots left ­behind that you ­wouldn’t want to grow your food near. You need to clean and clear, hook up utilities, make land a productive space. . . . ​How do you find funding for this?” (Field notes, August 19, 2015).

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Urban farmers are quite clear about their objections to being held financially responsible for the long-­ago decisions—­and de­cades of neglect—­t hat result in soil contamination, buried infrastructure, and other challenges in many of the neighborhoods where land is available to them. At a meeting of the state’s Urban Agriculture Working Group, an urban farmer from Boston noted that one of the lessons of the Garrison-Trotter Farm—­t he first urban farm approved ­under Boston’s Article 89 process—is that “it’s r­ eally expensive.” At that time, the estimate for setting up Garrison-Trotter (also known as Harold Street for its location) was $200,000, putting urban farming well beyond the means of residents of the neighborhood.31 As a farmer observed, “Now that we have Article 89, it’s like, to put Harold Street together, that was like over $200,000. How is somebody ­going to do that? . . . ​­You’re not ­going to have any farms. You just ­won’t be able to do it. Fortunately for us [at UFI], we have ­people that are committed to what we do, and are raising the money to do it. For the average person? I d ­ on’t know anybody [who could do that]” (UFI Oral History Interview, 2016). In part, this is ­because of the fixed costs of setting up a farm, “such that a quarter-­acre farm costs as much as a one-­acre farm.” However, this is ­shaped also by the politics and history that mean that urban farmers in Boston are developing quarter-­acre lots that have long-­standing infrastructural prob­lems: Then, politics—we have access to quarter-­acre lots, so we are building farms on quarter-­acre lots. We would love to build farms on three-­acre lots, but ­those are ­going to housing or they are prohibitively expensive. We figured out how to build one farm and we can build more like it. But, it’s not a sustainable model, it’s too expensive. Barriers are big—­our cost to make a ­water connection, ­because ­t here’s stuff in the street that we are responsible for fixing that the city ­should’ve fixed thirty years ago. We ­shouldn’t be responsible for fixing a prob­lem that the city has had for thirty years. (Field notes, February 28, 2015, emphasis added)

Another advocate commented that, in this context, remediation is an urgent economic issue, which calls into question the city’s apparent generosity in making lots available at low cost: “What is real the cost of the lot? For nonprofits, lots in Boston are $100, but not if t­ here are $50,000 worth of remediation that needs to be done.” Therefore, she suggested that the “City Council needs to have a fund to remediate legacy issues on municipally owned land” (Field notes, February 28, 2015). Similarly, a Boston-­based urban farmer has suggested that the federal government should be supporting t­ hese proj­ects, similar to its support of rural agriculture: “Acquisition costs are $100–­$200, but then ­there are also attorney fees, working with the community, landscape design, construction and clean up, capping, bringing in soil, testing soil, connection to w ­ ater and sewer. . . . ​We are too reliant now on charitable donations. How to move ­towards public funding? Large-­scale agriculture gets subsidies. And urban ag

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has many benefits to communities, beautifying neighborhoods, rain w ­ ater capture, ­etc. This should get federal funding” (Field notes, August 19, 2015). While stakeholders promoted dif­fer­ent funding strategies, they agree that “the pro­ cess is still too costly in Boston to produce a micro-­urban farm. The city is still learning how to make this happen” (Field notes, March 16, 2016). If starting an urban farm costs $100,000–­$200,000 per quarter-­acre, then t­here are significant barriers to entry and to profit (Field notes, UFC 2015). Such costs, again, raise issues of equity and justice, as a staff member from UFI emphasized: “­Because Black folks and p ­ eople of color lack capital and access to capital, ­people can come into our neighborhoods with resources we d ­ on’t have and set up shop. So, UFI’s focus is supporting p ­ eople in our neighborhoods” (Field notes, UFC 2018). A UFI board member concurred, explaining that “UFI is a specific intervention, to build and own the urban farming space and to create priority access to p ­ eople of color from neighborhoods where t­ here is space for ­people to farm” (Field notes, UFC 2018).32 In this context—­and in ­these narratives—­telling the story of the soil and of the history that has produced vacant lots in specific Boston neighborhoods is a way of holding the city accountable for the consequences of de­cades of neglect and demanding access to opportunity for neighborhood residents.

The Presence of the Past Narratives that invoke the agrarian past of now-­urban locales offer a mnemonic bridge that connects con­temporary urban farming initiatives to place-­based histories. However, t­ hese vivid stories of long-­ago orchards and farms tend to skip over more recent, and more complicated, urban histories that include inequities in development, redlining and other forms of discrimination in real estate markets, arson, environmental racism, and municipal neglect. In Boston, such histories have resulted not only in profound inequalities across neighborhoods, but also significant distrust of city government. In the pro­cess of establishing urban agriculture in Boston, residents of the neighborhoods of Dorchester, Roxbury, and Mattapan have demanded that ­t hese histories—­and their decades-­long efforts to address them—be recognized. As we have seen, neighborhood narratives about the soil emerged powerfully in 2010, when residents of Dorchester protested the city’s proposed siting of four pi­lot urban farms in their neighborhood. Soil safety protocols then became a focus of sustained controversy throughout the multiyear Article 89 pro­cess. At a surface level, soil safety protocols provide technical guidance and require practices for addressing the challenges posed by soil contaminants. They do not address the histories that have generated soil contamination. They do not account for the unequal distribution of environmental ­hazards—­a nd their risks—­across cities. They do not acknowledge the

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stigmas and ste­reo­t ypes that burden specific neighborhoods, nor their impacts on economic opportunity and health alike. Despite—or perhaps ­because of—­ these elisions, in Boston, at public hearings and neighborhoods meetings, “city soil” became a medium through which residents of Dorchester, Roxbury, and Mattapan made vis­i­ble the city’s history of in­equality and its con­ temporary consequences.33 In fact, multiple legacies ­were at stake in the promulgation of Boston’s soil safety protocols. The BRA was working hard to establish itself as responsive to community concerns and to dispel the negative connotations that linger from its role in the “urban renewal” proj­ects of the 1960s. As BRA planner Tad Read explained in response to a question about why community consultation—in the form of multiple neighborhood meetings—­was necessary: In the past, in the distant past, the BRA made decisions without consulting with neighborhoods and the result was often not good—­the West End being a good example. We now work with constituents and residents and this is also how the mayor wants us to work. Also, based on the experience we had with the pi­lot program, we realized that what seemed like a harmless proposal—­ farming—­could face significant community concerns. Third, the BRA has found that the results of our work are better for having engaged with the community—­that is, good ideas and recommendations arise through the public pro­cess that would not other­wise have arisen, and ­these have positive effects on the final product. (BRA Meeting Notes, February 2, 2012)

Childhood lead poisoning was a “legacy issue” for the BPHC. As it promulgated soil safety guidelines for urban agriculture, the BPHC was challenged to realize its commitment to leadership in eradicating lead poisoning in a new sector, with competing public health and social justice goals. Neighborhood residents positioned the soil in narratives that insisted that the city acknowledge histories of racial vio­lence, arson, and municipal neglect—­ and their con­temporary effects in Boston neighborhoods. As we have seen, their narratives changed over time, but soil was central to each. In 2010, when residents in Dorchester perceived urban farming as an exploitative enterprise being forced on them without a truly participatory planning pro­cess, and with no clear benefit to their neighborhood, they accused the city of being willing to “poison us with urban soil.” In contrast, when urban farming was reframed by local advocates as a community-­based proj­ect to create opportunity for neighborhood residents, participants in neighborhood meetings opposed the BPHC’s proposed soil safety protocols as barriers to access in communities too long deprived of possibilities for economic development. They also objected to aspects of the proposed protocols that they saw as recapitulating ste­reo­types of specific neighborhoods as being particularly “dangerous,” “dirty,” or “unhealthy.” Simply put, the soil was a means through which social actors told specific stories

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about the past and its implications, not just for urban farming, but for the broader goals of community health and economic development. Sociologists have recognized that the physical environment is an aspect of place narratives. For example, Margarethe Kusenbach defines “place” as “chunks and features of the physical environment that are highly saturated with individual and collective meanings” (2008, 226). However, studies of urban place narratives more often focus on aspects of the built environment—­buildings, railways, and the like (e.g., Borer 2010; Halle and Tiso 2014)—­than on the air, ­water, and soil. Similarly, while sociologists note that “objects of material culture” can “act to preserve social memories” (Milligan 1998, 12), they more often focus on relics or memorabilia (Zerubavel 2003). This is part of a broader trend in much of sociology, in which “the material environment remains at best on the fringe of sociology, sometimes acknowledged, but rarely theorized” (M. Gross 2001, 395; see also Norgaard 2019).34 Even within environmental sociology, for de­cades the disciplinary home for analy­sis of “our physical circumstances” (Catton and Dunlap 1978, 44), only recently have scholars begun to recognize that “mundane nature in the form of common urban soils” is “an integral part of the stories we should be telling about cities” (Frickel and Elliott 2018, 103); indeed, the residues they carry are si­ mul­ ta­ neously material and cultural artifacts (Boudia et al. 2018). This chapter highlights the importance of bringing together insights from environmental and urban sociology to account for the material nature of cities and its multiple meanings. As we have seen, the narratives of community residents center material residues, ­whether heavy metals in the soil or crumbling foundation stones and dried-­out ­water lines; they leverage ­these to highlight aspects of local histories that cities wish to keep buried and to insist on more equitable ­futures in their neighborhoods. ­These neighborhood narratives have implications for how we understand not only the past, but also the ­f uture. As Michael Bell observes, “The ghosts of place are not only ghosts of the past; they can as well be of the pre­sent, and even the ­f uture. However we locate them temporally, the ghosts of place are always presences and as such appear to us as spirits of temporal transcendence, of connection between past and f­ uture” (1997, 816). In this chapter, we have seen how neighborhood narratives position the soil—­and also the remnants of long-­ destroyed houses—as a means of demanding that urban farming in Boston ­ ese narratives serve the needs of the neighborhoods in which it is based. Th draw on the past in order to make claims on the pre­sent and the ­f uture. In the next chapter, I again consider how claims are made about the ­f uture of urban agriculture, including the possibility of a high-­tech ­f uture of food production based in enclosed containers and indoor environments. While envisioning a form of food production entirely removed from the soil and its legacies, this ­imagined ­future nonetheless raises questions about ­whether and how “the ­f uture of farming” ­w ill advance or exacerbate urban inequalities.

chapter 5

;

Urban ­Futures This is an impor­tant and visionary ­thing that the city is ­doing. The Working Group should be thinking more in the ­future instead of immediate needs . . . ​ [and] have a vision for what food is ­going to be like in the city in the ­future. —­Boston Urban Agriculture Working Group (BRA Meeting Notes, May 3, 2012) Our focus is on the ­future. —­Boston Urban Agriculture Visioning Group (Field notes, January 21, 2015) We ­will taste the ­future, the bounty, ­here. —­Garrison-Trotter Farm (Field notes, July 11, 2014)

In May 2017, the Climate Action Business Association (CABA) hosted an event at the Boston Public Market entitled “The ­Future of Farming: How Urban Agriculture is Revitalizing Local Economies.” CABA is a Boston-­based organ­ization that endeavors “to help solve the climate crisis by organ­izing local business leaders to be more effective advocates for climate action within our businesses and communities, as well as at the state, national, and even international levels.”1 CABA identifies urban agriculture as a “local emerging market,” by which it refers to an opportunity to “change traditional business models” and provide “leadership in the transition to a carbon ­free economy.”2 In contrast to the narratives presented in the previous chapters, the speakers at the CABA event mostly focused on the ­future, tacking between positive and negative visions of what is to come. As one might guess given the event or­ga­nizer, climate change is a major focus of the eve­ning.3 More broadly, however, the panelists—­a group of urban agriculture luminaries from across the state—­navigate between their understanding of the hopeful and even revolutionary potential of urban agriculture,

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on the one hand, and their concerns about the pressures of economic instability and climate change, on the other. For example, Jennifer Hashley, who is the director of the New Entry Sustainable Farming Proj­ect as well as a chicken farmer herself, speaks warmly of her vision of a time when “more p ­ eople [are] growing food, sharing the miracle of putting seeds in the ground, sitting down together to share a meal.” At the same time, she warns that her vision of re-­ localizing food production may become not just a dream, but a necessity: “The time may be coming when we cannot afford to ship bananas all over the world. We are g­ oing to be forced to adapt.” 4 Glynn Lloyd emphasizes not only the importance of getting vacant lots into commercial production—­which has been a focus of his advocacy for several years—­but also the “broader impact that farming can have on communities.” This interest, he asserts, is imperative, ­because “­we’re in trou­ble. W ­ e’re hitting the limits of the extractive economy. ­We’re ­running out of w ­ ater in aquifers, the w ­ ater we need for farming. . . . ​The very nature of how we get food is ­under siege. . . . ​We need a sense of urgency about this.” Lloyd’s narrative also implicates the past, as he notes that “historically, more folks w ­ ere involved in growing food. This situation of 2 ­percent of us growing food for all of us is not ­going well.” Therefore, he argues that we need to “start making change” and that it should begin “where it’s hardest . . . ​in urban settings.” Lloyd sees food as “a catalyst to make a real change” and “get folks on the land.” His goal is to “get 15–20 ­percent of the population growing food,” by ­going “street to street in the neighborhood . . . ​w ith folks who look like me.” Describing urban agriculture as a “cultural movement,” he concludes, “This is how we move the dial.” Jennifer Hashley echoes Lloyd’s cultural diagnosis, noting, as well, the need to “get back” to another way of being in the world. We live in a “crazy world,” she says, citing the growing concentration of wealth and the suffering it ­causes as among her primary concerns. “We need to get back to our communities,” she states, and also to ask hard questions about “how to redistribute wealth and resources.” For Hashley, food is “a way to revolution.” We “need a reboot” she asserts, “so that we ­don’t need to be feeding ­people from food banks for another twenty years.” Hashley encourages the audience to “focus on farmers” and to ask, “Who is in control of our food?” She warns that we do not “want big business ­doing this in unsustainable ways.” Rather, we “need to make farming v­ iable” and develop a “local economy that appreciates craftsmanship and stewardship.” Looking forward, Hashley notes, one of the biggest threats to viability is the aging of the ­people growing our food. In Mas­sa­chu­setts, she tells us, “92  ­percent of aging farmers ­don’t have a successor, and we know that without a succession plan, it’s more likely that the land ­will get out of production. That’s when land gets sold to developers.” Therefore, Hashley emphasizes the importance of training the next generation of farmers, which is the focus of her work at New Entry.

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Former Mas­sa­chu­setts state commissioner of agriculture Greg Watson’s vision extends to the transformation of the entire economy. “We have to change the economy,” he says, pointing to Cuba as a sustainable agricultural system, with benefits for both h ­ uman health and the environment. Moreover, Watson notes, “it’s also an experiment in a new economy, something between socialism and capitalism.” Watson believes that we “need to search for this, too . . . ​for a ‘solidarity economy.’ ” He describes his vision as one in which we change “the ­whole enchilada, the entire system,” and transcend the “stupid economy ­we’re operating in” that “pits access versus affordability versus viability for farmers.” In contrast, Green City Growers’ founder, Jessie Banhazl, states clearly that she focuses on work within the cap­i­tal­ist system. She describes her partnerships in “the commercial sector” and emphasizes the power of “leveraging private organ­izations, to use their land for good.” Banhazl’s vision includes integrating urban agriculture “into development, to create new spaces” for food production. “If Greg’s world ­can’t be won,” she comments, “then we need to know how to grow more in small spaces.” Banhazl wants more R&D in urban agriculture and sees the main barrier to this in patterns of investment. She wants to see more urban farming in publicly accessible spaces—­she gives the example of Green City Growers’ Fenway Farms (see chapter 1)—­and more green rooftops. She is also interested in the development of “high-­tech systems for year-­round growing,” including the rooftop green­house approach being developed by New York–­based Gotham Greens and the contained growing systems developed by a Boston-­based com­pany, Freight Farms. She notes that ­there’s “a lot of money ­behind that sector,” and she is confident that “they w ­ ill find a way to make it work.” “­People do love tech in Boston,” Banhazl comments, gesturing to the city’s reputation for innovation, “and at least it’s local—­highly productive and better nutrient density than if shipped over long distance.” As made vivid at the CABA event, urban agriculture has become a focus around which ­people imagine, debate, and move ­toward varied visions of the ­future. Central to this pro­cess are what sociologist Ann Mische calls sites of hyperprojectivity: “arenas of heightened, future-­oriented public debate about ­ oing this contending ­f utures” (2014, 440). In fact, during the years that I was d research, ­t here ­were multiple groups in Mas­sa­chu­setts focused on the f­ uture of food systems, including urban agriculture. The existence of t­hese initiatives highlights the salience of “the f­uture” for food and farming advocates in Mas­sa­chu­setts. This chapter draws specifically on observations and written materials from the commonwealth’s food system planning pro­c ess (2013–2015), the city of Boston’s Urban Agriculture Visioning Pro­c ess (2015), and Food Solutions New ­England’s regional food vision. Each of ­t hese initiatives has emphasized engagement with multiple, diverse stakeholders and provided spaces “in which

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­ eople . . . ​stop and think projectively—­and yes, critically and deliberatively—­ p about what might or might not happen in the f­ uture” (Mische 2014, 440).5 I draw also on reports on the f­ uture of cities that include projections about their food systems, on advertising and promotion for high-­tech growing systems, and on media coverage of Boston’s Corner Stalk Farm, a freight farm in East Boston that I was fortunate to visit. Together, data from t­hese sites and publications provide a rich and textured basis for examining narratives of the f­ uture, and to consider how they grapple, to varying degrees, with both the materiality and the meanings of the past.

Future-­Tense Narratives In recent years, social scientists have begun to consider how “the capacity to imagine counterfactual f­utures” and to act on f­uture orientations shape individual and institutional be­hav­ior (Beckert 2016, 3; see also Adams, Murphy, and Clarke 2009). ­These scholars argue that “events in the social world cannot be explained by the past alone. Actors’ decisions are determined by more than existing structures and shared experiences—­t hey are ­shaped in equal mea­sure by perceptions of the ­f uture” (Beckert 2016, 35). Beliefs and expectations about the ­f uture “in part determine what happens in the pre­sent by contributing to how ­people think, feel, and behave” (Zimbardo and Boyd 2008, 137). As sociologist Jens Beckert describes this pro­cess, “Actors, motivated by an ­imagined ­future state, or­ga­nize their activities based on this m ­ ental repre­sen­ta­tion and the emotions associated with it” (2016, 9). ­These are deeply cultural proj­ects, imbricated with meanings that “shape specific images of the good life” and provide “a map of the journey from h ­ ere to ­t here and from now to then” (Beckert 2016, 292). As such, “reflexive engagement with ­future scenarios of action” should be understood “as part of deliberate efforts at social change” (Mische 2014, 439). Arguably, such imaginative engagements pose challenges to empirical observation; however, sites of hyperprojectivity, and the narratives offered therein, provide means of observing social interaction around pos­si­ble ­f utures. Sites of hyperprojectivity “are communicative settings, somewhat removed from the flow of day-­to-­d ay activity, in which the explicit purpose of talk is to locate prob­lems, visualize alternative pathways and consider their consequences and desirability” (Mische 2014, 447). As suggested by this definition, narrative is a central feature of hyperprojective settings; it is one mechanism through which ­f uture projections become externalized (Mische 2014, 448). In part, this is ­because we often hold “fragmentary, semi-­submerged narratives” of the ­f uture that have not been brought to the level of reflective consciousness. In hyperprojective settings, participants are asked to “make the implicit explicit and put contending narratives in direct, at times conflictual, juxtaposition to

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one another” (Mische 2014, 448). We may observe this pro­cess in action by considering the narratives developed at the CABA event: one panelist envisions the development of a ­whole new economy focused on “solidarity,” while another points to the how investments in high-­tech enclosed growing systems w ­ ill increase availability of locally grown foods. Relatedly, across dif­fer­ent types of hyperprojective settings, t­here is variation in “the degrees to which participants are focused simply on ‘airing’ or ‘exchanging’ ­these stories in an open-­ended fashion, or alternatively, are directly positioning against one another, or ­else pushing ­towards collective synthesis, resolution, and closure (e.g., provisional agreement on ‘where we go from ­here’)” (Mische 2014, 448). As a ­simple example, ­t here is no imperative that panelists at an event on the ­f uture of farming agree on a vision of that ­f uture; in fact, such events may be more in­ter­est­ing and engaging by virtue of openly aired disagreements. In contrast, Mas­sa­chu­setts’s food system planning pro­cess was charged with developing a report that represented the perspectives of many diverse stakeholders and could serve as a template for collective action to change policy, programs, and practices across the commonwealth. It therefore required more explicit agreement on specific goals, methods for meeting ­those goals, and metrics for assessing pro­gress and success. Similarly, the Boston Urban Agriculture Visioning Group was charged with bringing together stakeholders from “­every area of urban growing in Boston” and giving them “a role in determining this vision” that would therefore be so robust that they would be able to “collaborate as one entity to achieve this goal.”6 Developing a vision that ­w ill motivate collective action and collaboration requires a greater degree of consensus (Jonason 2019). To examine f­ uture projections is “not to assume that they come true, but to explore the ways they deeply infuse social interaction” (Mische 2009, 702). For example, sociologist Amy Jonason demonstrates that a shared vision of the ­f uture is “a meaningful idea that has the power to motivate and sustain participation from a diverse set of actors,” even among individuals who do not share identities that often serve as impor­tant bases for social movement participation (2019, 691). To be sure, the movement from “text to action”—­t hat is, “the ways that cognitions and narratives affect what we do, how we do it, and . . . ​w ith whom we do it” (Mische 2009, 702)—is s­ haped by a myriad of f­ actors, including power disparities, systemic barriers, and unintended consequences (Mische 2014, 444). Further, once participants move from imagination to action, differences may surface, potentially undermining actors’ prior commitments (Jonason 2019). Additionally, ­t here are often real disjunctures between the ­f utures we say that we want and the actions that we take in the pre­sent (Mische 2009). Nonetheless, the fact that ­people “put ­futures into explicit, self-­conscious (if often thorny and contentious) consideration” can motivate and direct social

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action “even if the f­utures ­under discussion are not realized or even clear” (Mische 2014, 448). This chapter examines how questions about w ­ hether, and to what extent, urban agriculture ­w ill reckon with the past also shapes visions of its ­future. Before turning to ­t hese varied visions, however, I examine two shared assumptions that underpin narratives about the ­f uture of urban agriculture: ongoing urbanization and climate change.

Shared Assumptions: Urbanization and Climate Change As sociologist David Wachsmuth observes, “The city is now frequently presumed to be the ­future proving ground for the relationship between ­human beings and their natu­ral environment” (2012, 508; cf. Norgaard 2019). In discussions about urban agriculture, two aspects of this relationship predominate. The first centers on the growing centrality of cities as population centers, and the second on climate change as a challenge to the current food system. Both of ­these assumptions raise questions about how to make cities more resilient and sustainable. First, farmers and policy makers alike suggest that in the ­f uture ­t here ­w ill be more ­people living in cities and, consequently, more demand for food from urban residents. Advocates already point to the density of cities as a rationale for urban farms. For example, speaking at the ribbon cutting for the GarrisonTrotter Farm in Boston, Kevin Essington, of the Trust for Public Land, emphasized the impact of putting a farm in the ­middle of a dense urban neighborhood, noting that “­there ­aren’t many other instances where ­there’s a farm within a mile of 7,000 ­people” (Field notes, June 10, 2015). This was a theme that emerged again in regard the revitalization of the Fowler Clark Epstein Farm in Mattapan; at a launch event, a city official described the site as “right in the ­middle of all ­these good ­people” such that “thousands of ­people ­w ill be able to walk to this farm” (Field notes, September 28, 2015). ­ ill Looking into the f­ uture, advocates proj­ect that growing urban density w increase demand for local food sources in cities. For example, a city planner speaking at a symposium on urban agriculture at the Mas­sa­chu­setts State­house ­ eople are in March 2015 commented, “We are seeing a shift. More and more p moving into cities.” Therefore, she continued, urban agriculture is impor­tant ­because “we need to be able to feed p ­ eople in cities, and we need ways to work on food justice” (Field notes, March 20, 2015).7 Speaking at the same symposium, Somerville’s Mayor Curtatone went further, linking urban agriculture to a par­tic­u ­lar vision of “healthy” cities of the ­f uture. “Why is urban agriculture impor­tant?” he asked. “Urban agriculture adds to the greatness of cities and city regions. We are in the midst of a demographic shift—­greatest in

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nation’s history—­t he move to cities. ­People want to live in healthy cities, and want to be connected to their food sources. ­There are more than 4 million ­people in the greater Boston region. Urban agriculture is part of the region’s ­future sustainability. We ­w ill only be successful if we address health, social, and economic forces to plan for the ­future” (Field notes, March 20, 2015, emphasis added). In this context, Curtatone asserted, building a vibrant local food economy represents an “investment in who we want to be tomorrow” (Field notes, March 20, 2015, emphasis added). Second, alongside visions of growing—­and hopefully thriving—­cities are concerns that “who we want to be tomorrow” is u ­ nder threat as a consequence of climate change. This is the second major theme that emerges in discussions of the ­future. Indeed, for many policy makers across cities in Mas­sa­chu­setts, the possibility that farms and gardens w ­ ill mitigate some of the harmful effects of climate change is a critical rationale for using often scarce urban land for growing food. This is perhaps the most material invocation of nature at work in visions of the f­ uture of urban agriculture, as it points to how urban farms and gardens can make urban environments more resilient through “green infrastructure improvements” (Rosan and Pearsall 2017). The potential benefits of increasing green space and infrastructure in cities include reduction of green­ house gases, better storm ­water management, more organic waste management (e.g., through composting), and improvement of urban biodiversity and habitats (Conservation Law Foundation and CLF Ventures, Inc. 2012; Cohen, Reynolds, and Sanghvi 2012). Urban farmers, city planners, and policy makers also discuss urban farming and gardening as an adaptation strategy, especially as the current food system becomes increasingly vulnerable to massive disruptions due to severe weather events. Such disruptions include possibly catastrophic consequences for the supply chains that bring food into cities and for the distribution systems essential to getting food into a city’s markets, stores, and food banks. In this context, making food systems more “sustainable, robust, and resilient” is framed as an “imperative” (Field notes, UFC 2014). The effects of Hurricane Sandy on food access and availability in New York and New Jersey are a central point of reference in analyses of the vulnerability of urban food systems.8 In an interview, a Mas­sa­chu­setts official commented, “Hurricane Sandy [is] the real example of how ­people ­couldn’t get food. Trucks ­couldn’t come in. So now, what do you do? Where did p ­ eople get their food from?” (Interview 12). In a “letter of support” prefacing a report commissioned by the city of Boston on food system resilience, Mayor Martin Walsh points to Hurricane Sandy as a portent and a call to action: “In the fall of 2012, Hurricane Sandy struck New York and New Jersey, causing devastating damages to infrastructure and severely limiting both food availability and access. Boston was lucky to avoid the worst of Sandy, but with climate change we can expect a rise

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in sea levels and more extreme weather events in the f­uture. We must better prepare our food system to be resilient a­ fter disruptions like hurricanes, floods, blizzards, and other natu­ral disasters.”9 The report includes a detailed accounting of the effects of Hurricane Sandy: “The Sandy storm highlighted many of New York City’s transportation vulnerabilities. Several tunnels and bridges, including the critical George Washington Bridge, w ­ ere closed, disrupting food deliveries. Over 45 ­percent of deliveries to the Hunts Point Cooperative Market and Produce Terminal use the George Washington Bridge and it is believed that nearly 30 ­percent of the truck traffic over the George Washington Bridge is carry­ing food. A ­ fter Sandy, food distributors coordinated with traffic enforcement officials to bypass bridge closures.” In addition to the challenges posed by damage to infrastructure, storms can damage the vehicles that are key to food transport and distribution. Again, reflecting on the experience of New York City, the report notes that “City Harvest, a food rescue organ­ization that delivered more than seven million pounds of food in direct response to Sandy, sustained significant and permanent damage to its truck fleet and refrigeration compressors due to the flooding of its fleet parking facilities. It needed to rent a fleet of 19 trucks to continue critical food distribution operations immediately ­after the storm.”10 Thus, this recent disaster is used to inform planning for an urban ­f uture made more uncertain—­and precarious—by climate change. The other point of reference for claims that “climate change is ­here, and it’s ­going strong” (Interview 12) comes from California, which during the time that I was ­doing this research, was experiencing a multiyear drought.11 Both the possibility of a “serious crisis” (Interview 33) facing California’s agricultural sector and the consequences for the availability and price of food across the country ­were prominent themes in discussions about the ­f uture of urban agriculture in Mas­sa­chu­setts. Urban farmers and advocates referred to California’s drought to make several dif­fer­ent sets of claims about the pre­sent—­and the ­future—of food and farming. First, they highlighted the importance of the “macro” level for understanding how cities get their food: “We have to look at . . . ​what’s happening around the country, where we get our food. When we look at our typical bread baskets, like California . . . ​and see the impact the climate has had on them, we just have to be realistic” (Interview 12). Second, they pointed to the drought as not only a present-­tense “disaster” but a harbinger of possibly dire t­hings to come, including both “radical” changes in the cost of food and its overall availability. At a meeting of the Mas­sa­chu­setts Urban Agriculture Working Group, a farmer asked, “What’s ­going to happen given what’s happening in California? This could radically change the price structure of produce” (Field notes, April 7, 2015). In answer to this question, the director of a prominent community-­based urban agriculture organ­ization in Boston predicted that if “California fails as an agricultural region, we ­w ill be in a dystopian world for food prices” (Field

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notes, April 7, 2015). At a meeting the following week, urban farmers noted that they already see “a changing growing season ­here” in Mas­sa­chu­setts (Field notes, April 15, 2015). Relatedly, a speaker at the 2014 Urban Farming Conference commented that “we are just slightly ahead of the curve” ­because climate change is already transforming food production (Field notes, UFC 2014). The central question in ­these conversations is what role urban agriculture might play in the context of climate change and its possibly devastating consequences for food security. At almost e­ very meeting of the Mas­sa­chu­setts Urban Agriculture Working Group, someone would ask some version of the question “What is our role ­going forward in the ­f uture?” While they acknowledge that “urban agriculture ­isn’t the only solution,” urban farmers and advocates also believe that “space in cities” can be “leveraged” to increase resiliency and food security (Field notes, April 7, 2015). Similarly, at the Mas­sa­chu­setts Urban Farming Conference, urban agriculture has been positioned as a “climate resiliency model” (Field notes, UFC 2014) and “a strategy for avoiding the worst-­case scenarios of climate change” (Field notes, UFC 2016). ­These framings have both po­liti­cal and economic consequences. Speaking at the 2014 Mas­sa­chu­setts Urban Farming Conference, an urban planner who had been “writing a regional climate change adaptation strategy” commented that it is “amazing” to “look at t­ hese issues together”: “We usually talk about climate change as ‘all t­ hese bad ­t hings,’ but t­ here are also opportunities in Mas­sa­chu­ setts.” Some of ­these opportunities are po­liti­cal; as she noted, “This . . . ​new focus—­urban agriculture as a form of climate adaptation—­has the potential to increase traction with policy makers” (Field notes, UFC 2014). Consequently, she recommended explicit efforts to frame urban agriculture as not only a way of adapting to climate change, but as an opportunity for strengthening the commonwealth’s agricultural sector. Relatedly, urban farmers and advocates also raise the possibility that changes in the production of food might make locally grown produce—­now often more expensive than that produced and distributed by the global industrialized food system—­a more affordable option. In comments that linked dif­fer­ent aspects of climate change, a farmer stated boldly that “the drought in California is good for Mas­sa­chu­setts growers, b ­ ecause it ­will drive up the cost of food. Growing locally also addresses issues of green­house gases and climate change” (Field notes, UFC 2015). Similarly, at meetings of the Mas­sa­chu­setts Urban Agriculture Working Group, participants noted that changes in the price of food imported from California have potentially profound implications for “urban models” of food production: “­There’s only so much [food one] can get out of each square foot. But, if a head of lettuce [grown in California] is g­ oing to cost $15, then t­hese urban models ­will begin to work” (Field notes, April 7, 2015). Urban farmers also raise the possibility that if food prices rise precipitously as a consequence of climate change, ­people ­will become more interested in growing their own food: “Is this

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drought in California ­going to raise food prices enough that all of a sudden every­one’s ­going to be looking at the lawn that they spend gobs of time, w ­ ater, money, watering, and be like, ‘Maybe I should be growing food? Maybe I should be collecting rainwater off my roof, and putting it in a garden?’ ” (Interview 33). Further, advocates suggest that urban farming has a role to play in ensuring urban food security, including food access in low-­income communities: “­There is so much money to be spent on food in food deserts in Boston. Growing food in t­ hese communities is part of the solution. Our goal must be to produce more food in the state for food security” (Field notes, UFC 2015). In contrast to ­t hese visions of the ­f uture of urban agriculture in the context of climate change, the team charged with assessing the resiliency of Boston’s food system was strikingly ambivalent about its potential contributions. In part, this is ­because “urban agriculture, while growing, still represents a very small share of the local food supply.” Additionally, their report notes that while local food production “may mitigate some climate change risks (e.g., by decreasing dependence on California), it may increase risks associated with local natu­ ral disasters.” Consequently, one of the recommendations resulting from this assessment is that the city “identify [an] optimal mix of local, regional and national food production.”12 Together, t­ hese two processes—­urbanization and climate change—­provide a divided field with some consensus regarding the challenges ahead. Even among farmers and advocates who are confident that urban agriculture has a role to play in a f­ uture characterized by urbanization and uncertainty, however, ­t here are significant divergences in opinion about how to move forward. As we saw at the CABA event described in the opening of this chapter, a central divide in ­these visions of the ­future is defined by narratives about high-­tech growing methods as a fix for reliable local food production, on the one hand, and narratives that center a return to nature and community, on the other. In the following pages, I consider each of ­these in turn.

AgTech ­Futures High-­tech indoor and vertical growing systems are a focus of agricultural technology companies across the globe.13 Advocates for such systems frame their development as a direct response to urbanization and climate change, such that high-­tech farming systems w ­ ill be “the farming method of the f­ uture.”14 Philips, an international tech firm that has been developing lighting systems for indoor farming,15 highlights both urbanization and climate change in its promotion of indoor farming technologies: The United Nations (UN) predicts the world’s population w ­ ill grow by some 2.5 billion ­people by 2050, and 80 ­percent of the world’s population ­w ill live

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in cities. At the same time, 80 ­percent of the land that is suitable for growing food is already in use. Moreover, extreme weather patterns across the globe have devastated crops, creating higher food prices, and as consumers become more conscious of how their food is produced, it is becoming more difficult for farmers to keep up with urban growth. This is driving innovation of new farming technologies that allow plants to grow without sunlight in indoor environments close to or within cities.16

Explaining its support of New Jersey–­based Aerofarms, investment com­pany Goldman Sachs emphasizes the potential of vertical farming systems to grow food with less ­water and no pesticides: “The com­pany’s award-­winning, proprietary aeroponic and LED technologies w ­ ill allow its urban farms to grow up to 22 crop turns per year, compared to three turns per year via conventional methods. The systems require no pesticides and use 95% less ­water than traditional farming methods.”17 In Mas­sa­chu­setts, the Boston-­based com­pany Freight Farms promotes its hydroponic container growing system—­the Leafy Green Machine (LGM)—­w ith a focus on both urbanization and climate change: “Ongoing changes to our world such as increasingly extreme weather and population growth have led many p ­ eople, particularly in urban communities, to take a long, hard look at food production and distribution. The promises of consistency, control, resource efficiency, and space efficiency have made indoor agriculture one of the most prevalent areas of innovation in this space.”18 Similar to statements above, Freight Farms emphasizes how LGMs support high-­volume production, with less w ­ ater, no pesticides, and no requirements for “natu­ral” light: “Hydroponics allows farmers and gardeners to grow large amounts of food, with fewer natu­ral resources, and very ­little ­labor compared to soil-­based farming.”19 Moreover, by using hydroponic techniques, indoor growing systems like the LGM sidestep the issues of soil contamination that, as we have seen, are a focal concern of urban growers. As Freight Farms explains in its “Introduction to Hydroponics”: “Hydroponics is a method of growing plants without soil. Instead, a nutrient rich ­water solution is used to feed the plants” (emphasis in original).20 On its blog, Freight Farms asserts that hydroponics has a rich history: “Hydroponics ­isn’t a new farming technique—­there’s evidence that hydroponic growing methods ­were used as early as 600 b.c. in Mesopotamia at the famous Hanging Gardens of Babylon! Over the last 300  years, scientists and farmers have experimented with several dif­fer­ent ways of growing plants without soil.”21 In this telling, the history of hydroponics is not explic­itly linked to the history of American cities or the myriad of challenges that many urban farmers hope to address. Nor does gesturing to this three-­hundred-­year history account for the development of technologies at the center of Freight Farms’ LGM and other commercial hydroponics vertical growing systems. To better understand t­ hese systems, and the vision of the ­future they represent, I visited Corner Stalk Farm,

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touted by local media as “Boston’s newest, most futuristic, and arguably most productive farm” (emphasis added).22

Corner Stalk Farm Corner Stalk Farm is located on a lot owned by a towing com­pany in East Boston. As one approaches, the only indication that the lot holds a farm are the bright-­green labels on four shipping containers sitting on the concrete (see figure 5.1). The faint mechanical whir coming from the containers is more reminiscent of the sounds of a laboratory than what I think of when I think of a farm. I knock tentatively on the metal door, which is opened by Sean Cooney, arguably Boston’s most famous freight farmer. I arrived at the doorstep of Corner Stalk ­after hearing about Cooney from planners and policy makers in Boston, who described freight farms as “the biggest surprise” they encountered during the review pro­cess that led to Article 89: “We ­were halfway through Article 89, drafting it, and this came up. [We thought,] ‘­You’re kidding me!’ ” (Interview 16). Initially, freight farms w ­ ere not included in the zoning amendment, as one city official recounted: “We had not included freight farms, and that was sort of a big step forward for the city. I think at a certain point we came to the conclusion that we wanted to create inclusive zoning, and if w ­ e’re r­ eally ­going to do that, then we need to include every­thing.

Figure 5.1. ​Corner Stalk Farm, East Boston. Photo credit: Sara Shostak

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And this [Freight Farms] is a Boston-­based com­pany . . . ​so they ­were added in . . . ​during the community meeting pro­cess” (Interview 17). Cooney was one of the most committed participants in that pro­cess, as a Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) planner remembered: “He . . . ​came to e­ very meeting, and he said, ‘By the time ­you’re done, I am g­ oing to be operating out of a freight farm, and I’m ­going to be looking for space.’ Sure enough, he got a USDA grant to buy two or three freight farms, and he’s on some auto mechanic’s lot in East Boston” (Interview 16). Cooney—­like so many of the farmers I met during this proj­ect—­tells me that he has familial connections to farming: “I had spent my summers from the time I was a ­little kid ’til the time I was in college in Nova Scotia, working at my ­uncle’s subsistence farm, like six to eight acres, growing potatoes and carrots, and peas and beans—­t hat kind of stuff.” His ­career, however, has been as a tech entrepreneur; he has started—­and sold—­companies that developed software now used in copyright protection, audio and video compression, and video systems. Cooney first learned about freight farming as a participant in a tech forum for entrepreneurs at the Mas­sa­chu­setts Institute of Technology (MIT). Some years l­ater, as he recalls, a­ fter selling his third software com­pany, he began writing up business plans for pos­si­ble next proj­ects, and freight farming kept “kept popping up” as one of “the most in­ter­est­ing” options. From Cooney’s perspective, its appeal included the fact that his wife, Connie—­a former schoolteacher—­was interested in the proj­ect, and they could launch it together, likely without needing to raise venture capital (Interview 37).23 Additionally, as Cooney recalls, “­t here was a ­whole bunch of urban agriculture stuff starting to happen at the same time,” and freight farming seemed to address what he perceives as the major challenges facing efforts to grow food in cities. First, it can be done in the kind of space available in densely developed urban areas. As suggested by the name, freight farms are built in sal­vaged freight containers. As Cooney explains: “­These are freezer containers . . . ​that you would [use to] ship meat across the world on a boat. So, t­ hey’re very energy efficient. They keep heat out. . . . ​­They’re unbelievably expensive new. But ­t here’s ­ ecause of the standard business millions of them that get tossed off e­ very year, b cycle, ­they’re depreciated [or] ­there’s . . . ​a small freezer unit in the back, that costs like $30,000, that breaks. All of a sudden, it’s like, well, this is junk.” Freight Farms salvages this “junk” as the container space for computerized, hydroponic growing systems that allow farmers to grow “an astronomical number of plants” in compact spaces and with small amounts of ­water and electricity: “Astonishingly, all this green abundance is powered by a nickel’s worth of electricity and a re-­circulating watering system that consumes only 25 gallons of ­water in a week. Less ­water than you’d use in one good long shower.”24 Gesturing t­oward the vertical “towers” that line the walls of the freight container, Cooney explains that they are “growing fifteen to twenty plants per

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square foot of ground space” and “turning t­ hose plants e­ very three to five weeks.” This contrasts with what he calls “in the dirt” urban growing, in which one could expect about two plants per square foot of ground space, and three “turns” during the summer growing season.25 The five containers in which Cooney is growing give him approximately 2,500 square feet of growing space. Consequently, at a given moment, he is cultivating 4,000–6,000 plants, including lettuce, mustard greens, arugula, and herbs. Further, the indoor growing system means that the Cooneys can grow year-­ round; production at Corner Stalk is not ­limited by the harsh winters of New ­England. Rather, “it’s always springtime at Corner Stalk Farms, 62 degrees, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.”26 ­Under the glow of the LED “sun” in the freight container, Sean tells me that if ­these techniques ­were used to grow in the 500–800 acres estimated to be available for cultivation across Boston, “that could actually produce enough to realistically make a difference” in the local food system. By contrast, Cooney’s back-­of-­the-­envelope calculations suggest that putting that same acreage into standard modes of production would provide Boston with “one serving of something, per person, per year, if you farmed all 800 acres.” Relatedly, Cooney emphasizes that freight farming is clearly ­v iable as a for-­ profit business. ­There are real start-up costs, notably the purchase of the freight farm units themselves, which cost approximately $85,000 each.27 Sean and Connie have invested some of their own money in Corner Stalk, but they also qualified for a low-­interest USDA loan for beginning farmers—­the first ever granted to freight farmers—­which allowed them to get up and ­running.28 The time from purchasing the freight containers to productivity was very short, Sean tells me; nine months ­after buying their first freight container, the Cooneys began selling basil to Katsiroubas ­Brothers, a local ­wholesaler. Soon thereafter, Corner Stalk was selected as a retail vendor at the Boston Public Market, where they sell greens and herbs year-­round. Within its first two years, Corner Stalk Farm began turning a profit. In comparison, it takes an estimated five to seven years of start-up before “traditional” farms become profitable (Urban Agriculture Working Group, April 7, 2015). Cooney is proud of the quality of Corner Stalk’s produce, as well as its productivity. He offers me tastes of lettuce, arugula, and mustard greens as we talk, pausing to make sure that I “catch the wasabi” undertones of the mustard greens and commenting that “if you grew mustard greens in the place where ­you’re supposed to be growing mustard greens, that’s the kind of flavor you’d get out of it.” He explains that they use “a ­really wide range” of “minerals and chemicals” to create “the terroir” of the plants. Smiling, Cooney takes a moment to note, wryly, that “terroir” is “the snotty way of talking about” taste; I am struck also by the irony of using a term that specifically refers to how the natu­ ral environment shapes a food’s special qualities and unique taste to refer to the

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products of a growing system that is designed to be completely removed from the local soil and climate. Yet, ­t here is no question that the greens that Cooney hands me—­from plants being grown in peat moss plugs in vertical racks fed via water-­based systems—­are delicious and have ­great texture. Despite the appearance of technological complexity supporting t­hese outcomes, Cooney describes freight farms as something that most p ­ eople could operate: “It’s like buying a car. It’s set up.” The software that runs the unit requires no programming knowledge: “If you can use your iPhone, I think ­you’re okay.” The software monitors the pH and levels of nutrients in the hydroponic system, which require careful calibration. But even so, Cooney insists that nothing more than “high school reading” is required: “You have to be able to read the t­hing that says okay. To calibrate this, you take that out. You put in ­water. You clean it. You put it in the solution, and watch that ­thing. When it tells you it’s this, you hit the button. And it’s just basically sequential, following instructions. . . . ​If you follow the instructions . . . ​and you pay attention when ­you’re lifting this ­here, what they are, what they do . . . ​I ­don’t think it’s anything exotic.” Sean and Connie can operate the system e­ ither from within the freight containers, using builtin computers, or from their laptops, anywhere they may be. Each unit is equipped with cameras, which allow them to do visual check-­ins whenever they might want to make sure, for example, that the correct lights have come on at specific times. This is impor­tant, in part, ­because the LED lights in each container are used at nighttime and turned off by 10 a.m., essentially reversing the cycle of day and night. This practice modulates the temperature within the containers and saves energy: “In the winter the light generates some heat, so it helps keep this place at a reasonable temperature without having to heat it. And in the summer, ­there’s no sense making extra heat in the daytime.” As noted above, the media coverage of Corner Stalk frames it as “futuristic.” However, like that of many a farmer, Cooney’s temporal focus is relatively near term. He is looking forward to being able to start hiring staff at Corner Stalk, which he sees both as an indication of the success of his enterprise and a way that he can give back to the community, that is, through job creation. Further, Cooney emphasizes that freight farming offers a means of “actually changing the food system” in urban areas. He recognizes that community-­based (often nonprofit) urban farms and gardens offer “social benefits” but believes that it is only if you “grow enough” to “make a business of it” that “­you’re actually changing the food system.” Other­w ise, as Cooney stated in a dif­fer­ent interview, “farming is just about green space and getting your hands in the dirt.”29 He predicts that if more p ­ eople ­were “growing fifteen to twenty plants per square foot, and a bunch of ­people do it, ­t hey’d be making a vis­i­ble [change]” in local food production. Certainly, being able to grow year-­round in Boston is a transformative change as well. Cooney sends me home from my visit to Corner Stalk with a box of

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greens—­“extras,” he tells me, from the week’s harvest—at a time of the year when most urban farmers are just beginning to put seedlings into the ground.

Freighted ­Futures Given the many advantages of high-­tech growing systems like freight farms, one might expect strong support for their role in the ­future of urban farming. However, in both future-­oriented discussions and individual interviews, I more often heard critiques and concerns. While some of t­ hese critiques, as described below, focus on technical aspects of indoor growing, more often they centered on the ways that systems like freight farms fail to deal with issues of access, equity, and community benefits, and that they do not address the legacies of the past that so many community-­based urban farmers have put at the center of their work. To be sure, many participants in the broader urban agriculture domain acknowledged and appreciated that freight farms—­and other indoor hydroponic growing systems—­offered some meaningful advantages for urban food production. First, policy makers noted that it is pos­si­ble to locate enclosed growing systems on land that is contaminated, thereby freeing farmers from spending “like a gazillion dollars to be able to remediate” urban soil and increasing the overall amount of land available for farming in cities (Interview 28). In Boston, freight farms w ­ ere described as concordant with the identity of the city, with its focus on innovation and technology, as well as being “necessary ­because we ­don’t have two acres of land [available for each farm]” (Interview 16). Even farmers who ­were other­wise skeptical of enclosed growing acknowledged the strength of the under­lying business model, noting that “one t­hing that h ­ asn’t changed in agriculture over the years is that it takes five to seven years to turn a profit. . . . ​If urban farming is ­going to fly at a for profit level, then [­we’re] talking about high tech systems, freight farms, ­etc. ­These ­things that make use of very ­limited open space” (Field notes, April  7, 2015). For individuals primarily focused on the benefits of local food production, the technique of production ­ hether it is grown in the ground or via hydroponics) may be less of a con(i.e., w cern: “­There’s lots of ways that you can grow food in the city that would increase the degree to which we get food locally, and also that provide lots of other benefits, like ­people being more connected to food, more connected to the planet, the kind of learning that goes on for c­ hildren, being r­ eally more grounded in this world. . . . ​Young ­people, especially, getting to have their hands in the dirt, or be at a green­house . . . ​or learn about hydroponics; [it] is all r­eally impor­tant” (Interview 36). Additionally, indoor growing systems have been incorporated into some schools, where they most often are part of science education programs. For example, in 2014, with support from a STEM education grant, Somerville opened a hydroponics “Innovation Farm” at the Edgerly School. Nonetheless, high-­tech approaches to urban food production have generated a range of concerns among urban farmers. Some of ­t hese concerns center on

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the technologies themselves, which farmers viewed with skepticism, in part ­because they perceive them as removed from the necessary complexity of biological systems and therefore vulnerable to “epic” system failures (Field notes, April 7, 2015). Relatedly, participants in the Working Group expressed concern that the “capital investment and training know-­how for ­these models” make “secondary” the environmental stewardship that is typically a part of “growing the plants” (Field notes, April 7, 2015). That said, the preponderance of concerns and critiques of high-­tech growing systems center on the extent to which they ­either ignore or exacerbate the long-­ standing inequities that are a focal concern of many of the individuals and organ­izations engaged in urban farming in Mas­sa­chu­setts. For example, urban farming advocates are concerned that the venture capital required to start high-­ tech growing enterprises ­will put them out of the reach of many aspiring urban farmers. A speaker at the 2016 Urban Farming Conference made this case most starkly when he warned: “As we do this, [we] have to careful that we d ­ on’t do ­things that are beyond the reach of ­people we want to be part of system. We ­can’t do capital-­intensive strategies that leave ­people out. Freight farms are ­great, but most p­ eople ­can’t raise money to do that” (Field notes, UFC 2016, emphasis added). A Worcester-­based urban farmer was making a similar point when she noted that recent refugees and immigrants who come from cultures that have “been farming for a bazillion years” and for whom “this is our heritage” need “a space for us at the t­able to ensure that this is pos­si­ble, that we can enter into this industry without needing a million dollars” (Interview 21). At the Boston Urban Agriculture Visioning Group, such tensions ­were sometimes framed as a consequence of the division between for-­profit and community-­based urban agriculture (Field notes, April 15, 2015). It is in this context that urban farmers and advocates express concern that the venture capital flowing to high-­tech proj­ects may result in the displacement of urban agriculture proj­ects that explic­itly seek to benefit low-­income communities and communities of color. Such concerns often ­were expressed in terms of who owns the land and the farms themselves. For example, an urban agriculture entrepreneur commented that he remains “agnostic” about dif­fer­ ent systems: “Rooftop, aquaponics, freight—­it’s all urban growing . . . ​from the ­ ere, and grow high-­quality prodenterprise side . . . ​­we’re all trying to survive h uct to the marketplace, right?” He is concerned, however, about large hydroponics ventures that are “VC [venture capital]-­driven . . . ​t hey have Wall Street money ­behind them” (Field notes, August 8, 2015). The assumption ­here is that venture capital-­driven urban agriculture—­w ith its expectation of returns to investors—­will have fewer community benefits. As a longtime urban agriculture advocate put it, “We look at urban ag from nonprofit perspective, as benefiting communities. But now t­ here are p ­ eople who get it that this is g­ oing to a money-­maker. They want to lock this in now” (Field notes, July 1, 2015). At a

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meeting of the Urban Agriculture Working Group, a longtime farmer suggested that freight farms highlight the question of “what urban ag is.” Specifically, he posited a difference between “on-­the-­ground programs” that “could have larger societal benefit” and “computerized businesses” like freight farms (Field notes, April 7, 2015). At an urban agriculture event in Somerville, a local entrepreneur stated that “having communities engaged with local food production is an essential part of the potential physical and ­mental health benefits of community gardens and farming. And, it’s easier to have community involvement with low tech, DIY, than with high tech and hydroponics” (Field notes, May 29, 2013). A Boston farmer drew a distinction between high-­tech local growing with the “deeper” ethos of community-­based farming. He began by noting, “I see a lot of t­ hese businesses coming up. . . . ​A lot of [them] use the most kind of like technological, and least accessible ways to make the highest profit off . . . ​ the very deep interest in supporting local [food].” However, he contrasted simply “buying local” with “actually caring” about “well-­being of farms” and the communities in which they are located (Interview 35). Sean Cooney is certainly aware of ­these debates. During my visit to Corner Stalk, he tells me that “some ­people are into it [freight farming]. And some of the ­people who are in the . . . ​Boston urban ag [discussions] ­were very negative, for what­ever reasons.” He sees most of ­these critiques as being about a certain “romanticization” of growing in the dirt: “It’s like back to nature, and open space, and beautiful growing ­things, which is lovely,” but, in his assessment, less likely to transform the local food economy (Interview 37). Cooney’s perspective highlights the tensions between approaches to urban agriculture that prioritize local food production and ­those that prioritize health and social benefits related to, but not coterminous with, increasing access to locally grown food. Broadly speaking, many advocates for “dirt-­based” urban farming see themselves as not only increasing local, healthy food production, but also healing the land (for example, by restoring the health of the soil) and city dwellers’ relationships to it. Indeed, the significance of ­human relationships to urban nature—­often represented by “the dirt”—is part of what is at stake in debates about the f­ uture of urban farming.

The Nature of Cities What is the role of nature in the city of the f­ uture? How is nature impor­tant to ­human health? Alongside concerns about the ways that urban farming may exacerbate or redress long-­standing racial and economic injustices, dif­fer­ent answers to t­hese questions shape divergent orientations to the f­uture of food production in cities. In one answer, urban farming is positioned as a mechanism for urban greening that w ­ ill contribute to long-­term urban “sustainability,” varyingly defined. In a second, urban farming represents a means by which urban dwellers may reconnect with nature.

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Urban Sustainability Sustainability is inherently a forward-­looking concept. It is also a remarkably elastic concept, leading to ongoing debates about how best to define, mea­sure, and assess it (Moragues-­Faus and Marceau 2018).30 In fact, recent scholarship describes the term “sustainability” as “so vague . . . ​that it invites skepticism” and raises the possibility that it is the very ambiguity of the term “that has contributed to its widespread ac­cep­tance as a framework for environmental and social action” (Sze 2018, 3).31 In Mas­sa­chu­setts, at sites as diverse as visioning meetings, symposiums for city planners, farm tours, and harvest festivals, farmers and advocates also describe urban agriculture as “impor­tant for sustainability” in general (Field notes, June 9, 2014) and for the “health and sustainability of cities” in par­tic­u ­lar (Field notes, UFC 2014). However, while sustainability is a consistent theme in narratives about the f­ uture of urban agriculture, ­here too what it means is quite variable. As we have seen, a wide variety of stakeholders describe urban agriculture as a strategy both for mitigating and adapting to climate change. In this context, advocates often emphasize that growing food in the city means that it is not being shipped in from “other parts of the world,” reducing the need for petroleum for transport and decreasing green­house gas production. Consequently, they contend that “locally grown food is the most sustainable practice. With climate change, t­here are challenges to getting food, and right now only 10–18 ­percent of food we eat in Mas­sa­chu­setts is local” (Field notes, UFC 2014). Looking ahead, then, they predict that “if cities are to be sustainable in the ­f uture, we need to think about local food production” (Interview 38). Advocates also point to the possibility that by addressing a myriad of challenging social issues, urban agriculture ­w ill increase the overall “sustainability” of urban life: urban agriculture “has an impor­tant role also in addressing economic, educational, social and health issues in urban settings—­increasing sustainability” (Field notes, UFC 2015). To be sure, not all urban farming advocates focus exclusively on sustainability in terms of cities. For some advocates, it refers to environmentally friendly farming practices, which are “sustainable and organic, and so t­ hey’re not using pesticides or anything, or harmful fertilizers” (Interview 44). O ­ thers focus on the sustainability of the food system itself: “We want a sustainable food supply” (Field notes, Somerville, April 4, 2014). A policy maker explained that she sees a more “sustainable” food system as being in the interest of small farmers across the state and the region, and not just in cities: “Food and land policy need to be discussed within the broad context of urban sustainability, which is intertwined with [and] inseparable from, regional sustainability. If we become a state where small farmers give up farming, b ­ ecause it’s too tough, and not sufficiently financially feasible, or the ability to sell out for more tract housing

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is too strong, and aspiring farmers c­ an’t acquire agricultural land, then w ­ e’re headed in a very bad direction” (Interview 13). Relatedly, some advocates are interested in how urban farmers and rural farmers could partner to make farming a “sustainable enterprise,” by which they refer primarily to long-­term economic viability (Field notes, February 3, 2016). As we have seen, concerns about both environmental conditions and the economic viability of urban agriculture have to be understood in the context of long-­standing structures of racism, exclusion, and municipal neglect that disproportionately affect communities of color in Mas­sa­chu­setts cities. In this context, I was surprised not to hear more discussion of “climate justice” or “just sustainability” (Agyeman 2013)—­both concepts that link sustainability, equity, and justice—in discussions of the importance of urban agriculture in Mas­sa­ chu­setts. Likewise, discussion of other aspects of urban sustainability, such as affordable housing, living wages, and gentrification, ­were largely absent from ­t hese discussions. Rather, it appears that the interpretive flexibility of terms like “greening” and “sustainability” has enabled multiple stakeholders to get b ­ ehind the idea that urban agriculture has a role in “driving a bargain for urban sustainability” (Field notes, UFC 2014) without yet confronting the very real dynamics of power and privilege that have been at the center of controversies about specific sites (see chapter 4).

“The Natu­ral Calling” A second framing of the ­f uture of nature in the city insists that connection with growing food, and with the soil in which plants and trees are rooted, meets a deeply held h ­ uman need for connection to the earth. How this idea is identified and expressed is ­shaped by both collective histories and visions for the ­f uture. The notion that city dwellers are diminished by their alienation from nature has long been part of the rationale for urban food production. In this framing, urban gardens and farms are places where “nature can teach all her lessons,” not just through didactic instruction, but through the pro­cess of growing food: “digging in the soil, witnessing worms, seeing detritus become rich soil, watching plants grow, and marveling at the production of fruit and flower” (Lawson 2005, 290). Across the commonwealth, urban farmers and advocates had a lot to say about the value of growing in the soil, which they described as “intuitive,” “primal,” and essential to ­human nature (Field notes, December 9, 2014). Connecting to nature was also framed as both “instinctual” and “intergenerational” by a speaker at UFI’s event on the history of Black urban farming, who commented that “­people used to learn gardening and farming from their families. Now when we ask, ‘Where does your food come from?,’ it’s ‘crickets.’ It’s therapeutic to be outdoors. We need food, so it’s instinctual to be outside. We need to move ­towards nature” (Field notes, February 27, 2016). Such connections ­were also occasionally framed in religious terms, as when one advocate

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commented: “God made us so that we eat from the land, and also that we use our bodies. So, for me, this is the natu­ral calling” (Interview 44, emphasis added). Reflecting on the difference between the UFI’s approach to farming in vacant urban lots and freight farming, urban farming advocate Glynn Lloyd noted that growing in the soil may be perceived as comparatively “backwards” but it is also more “natu­ral”: “So typically, ­we’re the more backwards, right, ­because we grow in soil, open fields [but] ­we’re ­doing it . . . ​the more natu­ral way. . . . ​I think that ­t here’s something to be said about that” (Interview 41). In ­t hese narratives, urban agriculture is a means by which instinctive and universal needs for relationship to nature and to the earth can be established, shared, and expressed. Advocates for urban farming also describe it as a means of “healing” aspects of the past that shape relationships to food, nature, and health. As we have seen (chapter 3), farmers of color emphasize how connections between ­people and the land have been disrupted by generations of dispossession, exploitation, and abuse. In ­t hese narratives, urban farming offers a means of reclaiming and healing p ­ eople’s relationship to the land, and thereby supporting both individual and community health. Advocates describe demand for urban farming as coming, in part, from elders who know the healing power of connection to the land: “­W hether ­you’re coming from the South or coming from the Islands,” ­t here are elders who are still “in direct connection . . . ​[­because] ­you’ve touched the soil in your lifetime” (Interview 41, emphasis added). They also describe a return to Black and Indigenous practices of farming as a means of healing the collective trauma that is an under­lying cause of both physical and m ­ ental health issues in communities of color (Penniman 2018). Quite a few respondents emphasized that interacting with earth itself is part of what makes urban food production healing. For a variety of reasons, ranging from the embodied experience of feeling connected to their ancestors when they touch the earth to reading popu­lar science articles about the health benefits of exposure to the soil microbiome,32 urban farmers speak of having “a passion for working with dirt” (Field notes, UFC 2014) and of valuing “connection to dirt and land and food” (Field notes, February 27, 2016). Consequently, many urban growing enthusiasts describe loving having “my hands in the dirt” (Interview 36) or their “fin­gers in the dirt” (Interview 30), which some described as “soil therapy” (Field notes, November 10, 2015). They also describe interacting with the dirt as impor­tant for c­ hildren: “A child is changed forever. Th ­ ere’s no turning back, when they get their hands in the dirt” (Interview 12). Even respondents who are well aware of hydroponics noted that they preferred to “stick to dirt”: “When you think about agriculture, ­t here’s something that you ­can’t—­it’s a feeling. It’s a knowing. It’s intuitive. It’s primal. And when you get your hands into the dirt . . . ​you understand that this is part of a cycle. And yeah, ­there’s hydroponics, but let’s just stick to dirt. You understand—­when you plant

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that seedling, or when you weed that garden, or when you pick that first tomato, ­t here’s just something that resonates in t­ here” (Field notes, December 9, 2014, emphasis added). It was quite striking that many farmers speak about the relationships “to dirt and farming” as if the two are synonymous (Field notes, February 27, 2016). Of course, t­ hese narratives stand in stark contrast to the stories of the soil at the center of the heated controversies of urban farming in Boston neighborhoods (see chapter 4). In t­ hose narratives, the presence of toxic contaminants in the soil of postindustrial cities—­and especially in low-­income neighborhoods and communities of color—­was used to highlight the material legacies of deindustrialization, municipal disinvestment and neglect, and environmental racism in Boston neighborhoods. In contrast, in the narratives detailed above, “the dirt” stands in for nature and connection to the earth and its rhythms. Indeed, ­whether urban farming w ­ ill help to heal the soil, or simply bypass it, is also emerging as an axis of contention in debates about the f­ uture of urban farming.

“Dirt-­Firsters” When I visit the Corner Stalk Farm booth at the Boston Public Market in the fall of 2016, I learn that the meanings and value of “dirt” are a frequent topic ­t here as well, albeit in a very dif­fer­ent context. Elizabeth—­who describes herself as the farm’s “brand consultant”—­tells me that she often gets questions about the nutritional content of hydroponics-­grown greens. She has to explain to ­people that “the microbiome ­isn’t the same, since they are growing in a peat moss plug that is watered with nutrients, rather than growing in the ground.” However, she continues, “You also ­don’t get all the environmental exposures, the toxins that you might get from growing in the ground.” She emphasizes ­ ere that “you can tell” by looking at the greens how healthy they are: “If they w lacking in ­water, UV, or nutrients, they ­wouldn’t look this gorgeous.” Also, she offers that they “have all the nutritional information” for all of their products (Field notes, October 29, 2016). That is, by altogether bypassing the soil—­a nd its pos­si­ble contaminants—­hydroponics-­grown greens offers urban dwellers a locally realized vision of better living through technology. My conversation with Elizabeth points to a heated debate about indoor growing more broadly. Should food grown indoors using “ponics” technology be certified as organic? So-­called dirt-­firsters argue that “you ­can’t have organic food without soil” and maintain that “one of the appeals of organic food is that it is grown in a biologically active, fertile soil.”33 In fact, the original USDA definition of “organic” pointed to “soil biological activity” as one of the pro­cesses enhanced by organic practices. However, in 2002, when the USDA rewrote that definition, it removed any reference to the word “soil.”34 In 2010, the National Organic Standards Board—­t he group of farmers, scientists, and public interest advocates in charge of recommending changes to the organic standards—­strenuously

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objected to the inclusion of soil-­free farming in the standards. Organic farmers opposed to certification for ponics farming contend that while indoor growing systems may meet the certification requirements that they are “protecting natu­ ral resources, conserving biodiversity, and using only approved substances,” they nonetheless violate the ethos of organic growing. However, the National Organic Program nonetheless de­cided to allow organic hydroponics. ­After years of controversy, in November  2017, the National Organic Standards Board, which advises the USDA on labeling rules, voted 8–7 to continue to allow organic certification for hydroponic and aquaponic grown produce.35 In the wake of the controversy following this ruling, some policy makers have suggested that it is time for the USDA to consider certifications for dif­fer­ent modes of organic food production, specifically, to distinguish between hydroponics-­and soil-­based techniques. Among the new categories that advocates have suggested for certification is “regenerative agriculture,” which refers to methods of growing that explic­itly aim to sequester CO2 as a means of reducing or reversing climate change.36 As with urban agriculture more broadly, at stake in t­hese debates is the question of our relationships with nature—­and their implications for the health of ­human bodies and of the earth. As we have seen, ­t here are enclosed growing systems that provide options for producing healthy local food that neither support ­human relationships with the earth nor “heal” it (Field notes, September 25, 2015). If food contributes to ­human health by providing essential vitamins, nutrients, and calories, then nothing is lost when that food is grown in shipping containers. Further, t­ hese methods of growing offer a way of creating a local food supply that is not vulnerable to the vagaries of changing weather patterns; nor do they require soil remediation. However, if food contributes to well-­being not just as a source of calories and nutrients, but by providing opportunities for ­people to reclaim their relationship to the earth, then making it pos­si­ble (and safe) for urban dwellers to “touch the soil” is an essential aspect of the ­f uture of urban food production.

Just ­Futures Farming is always a forward-­looking venture. Seeds go into the ground (or into the peat moss plugs) with anticipation of a ­future harvest. As such, “urban growers, through their actions, make a statement about the f­ uture they want to see” (Rosan and Pearsall 2017, 161). At the same time, in a variety of hyperprojective settings, diverse stakeholders are “asking what cities should look like in the ­f uture” (Rosan and Pearsall 2017, 160) and articulating their hopes for the ­future not only of food, but for their communities. Across Mas­sa­chu­setts, visions of the ­f uture of farming promote local food production as a response to widely shared assumptions about the challenges posed by urbanization and cli-

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mate change. Advocates for hydroponics, for example, point out that indoor growing systems ­w ill allow year-­round local food production, even in cities with harsh and increasingly uncertain climates. At the same time, they require no pesticides or petroleum-­based fertilizers, which, supporters contend, make them more environmentally friendly. In the words of Freight Farms cofounder Brad McNamara: “Technology in agriculture is by no means a new concept, but it is one of increasing importance. As we seek to increase food production for the growing global population in a sustainable way, it is crucial to consider alternative production methods to mitigate some of the environmental effects of traditional farming. Transforming the global food system requires continuous improvements and advancements in the field of agriculture technology” (Freight Farms Blog, 2015).37 Advocates for urban farms and community gardens point to the myriad of contributions that green spaces and infrastructure can make to both providing food access and mitigating climate change, including improvements in carbon sequestration, storm ­water management, organic waste recycling, and urban biodiversity. Such shared visions, albeit of a challenging f­ uture, support collaboration—­among not only urban farmers but also policy makers and funders—in the pre­sent. ­There are also tensions at play in ­t hese narratives, focused, in large part, on the possibility that the ­future w ­ ill carry forward the inequities of the past. After all, “cities are not blank slates”; rather, their “long histories of racial and social strug­gles” enter into debates about their ­futures (Rosan and Pearsall 2017, 160). In Mas­sa­chu­setts, community-­based farmers and advocates express concern that long-­standing issues of access, equity, and justice ­w ill be exacerbated by high-­tech indoor farming enterprises. At the center of their critique is the perception that hydroponics farming is less often community-­based, with investment, owner­ship, and profits leaving the neighborhoods where the farms are located; recent empirical studies of urban agriculture “in and on buildings” provide support for ­these concerns (Bohm 2017). Relatedly, they note that the initial investment required by large-­scale indoor farming proj­ects makes them much less accessible to aspiring urban growers without significant financial resources or networks. Therefore, while enthusiasts of local food production—­a nd their investors—­celebrate the advantages of hydroponic systems for transforming urban food systems, community-­based farmers and ­ ill be exaceradvocates express concern that historically based inequities w bated by such ventures. Alongside ­these serious concerns about equity are differences in opinion about the importance of nature in the ­f uture of urban life. Freight farms functionally replace natu­ral systems, with LED “suns,” computer-­calibrated water-­ based nutrient systems, and floor-­to-­ceiling growing racks holding thousands of plants and the peat moss plugs that serve in place of soil. Such systems can produce beautiful and delicious greens, which one can already find being sold

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year-­round at the Boston Public Market. However, for advocates who see urban agriculture as a means of healing the relationship between ­people and the earth, technology is more often seen as part of the prob­lem than as a solution. Theoretically, ­t here is no reason that indoor vertical growing systems, community farms in previously vacant lots, and backyard gardens cannot coexist. Of course, they already do. In June 2014, Somerville hosted ribbon-­cutting ceremonies at the hydroponic Innovation Farm at the Edgerly School and at the South Street Farm, built in formerly vacant lots owned by the city. Speaking at the Innovation Farm, then Commissioner of Agriculture Greg Watson commented that “Mas­sa­chu­setts is on the cutting edge of defining the f­ uture of agriculture for the country, defining how we are g­ oing to feed ourselves sustainably.” The superintendent of schools then predicted that “we are moving ­towards a time where ­every Somerville ­house ­w ill have a garden. This is the ­future for urban areas” (Field notes, June  9, 2014, emphasis added). The two sites—­one hydroponic, one on a reclaimed lot—­were inaugurated as seamless parts of a shared proj­ect, and this is how students are learning about them as well. Young p ­ eople, including t­ hose who learn about both systems in their schools and communities, may be particularly open to the idea that ­these two approaches to urban food production are not mutually exclusive. In 2017, on a tour of Nuestras Raíces’s farm and gardens in Holyoke, Mas­sa­chu­setts, a young urban farmer excitedly told me that he is “super into” hydroponics, which he describes as “the ­future of farming.” Given the focus of Nuestras Raíces on promoting “agriCulture”—­including honoring the farming and foodways of the city’s large Puerto Rican community38—­I was surprised to hear his enthusiasm for hydroponics, rather than growing “on the land.” When I asked him about this, he replied with confidence, “Of course, it is impor­tant that we are on the land . . . ​but . . . ​we should also be growing in buildings. We need to be growing in buildings” (Field notes, August 5, 2017, emphasis added). In 2018, Nuestras Raíces partnered with the city of Holyoke and Holyoke Community College on a proj­ect to grow vegetables year-­round in two shipping containers “that have been outfitted with hydroponic farming technology and set up on a vacant lot in downtown Holyoke.”39 The proj­ect, which cost $208,000, was supported by a grant from MassDevelopment, through the agency’s Transformative Development Initiative, which is intended to promote economic growth in Gateway Cities. Hilda Roque, the director of Nuestras Raíces, described it as a “blessing,” as the shipping containers would allow for year-­round growing. The coordinator of Holyoke’s Innovation District, Insiyah Mohammad Bergeron, was somewhat more circumspect, describing the proj­ect as “a big experiment”: “It is an emerging but very expensive technology, so we want accessibility and equity to be a big part of the proj­ect” (emphasis added).40 ­After the freight farms arrived in Holyoke, local media described them as looking “more like a futuristic science lab rather than a farm.” The grant that supports

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the proj­ect includes internships for local residents so that they can “think about what farming could look like” (emphasis added).41 As Greg Watson observed at the CABA event on the ­f uture of urban farming, however, while dif­fer­ent modes of food production “can work together,” it is “impor­tant to recognize that each requires dif­fer­ent infrastructure . . . ​ including soils”—or the enclosed systems that replace soil (Field notes, May 25, 2017). This chapter demonstrates that issues about the cost, accessibility, and distribution of benefits generated by dif­fer­ent infrastructures have emerged as focuses of contention in sites where stakeholders discuss and debate the ­f uture of food, and farming, in Mas­sa­chu­setts. In such settings, future-­oriented narratives invoke not only the legacies of inequitable relationships between p ­ eople, but also our relationships to nature, bringing both the meaning and the materiality of the past into debates about the ­f uture of urban life.

Conclusion We ­can’t start from now and pretend the past ­didn’t happen. —­Leah Penniman (Field notes, June 6, 2019)

On a sunny Friday after­noon in early September, elders, ­children, and their families walk up a brick-­lined path at the Fowler Clark Epstein Farm (FCE Farm) in Mattapan, on their way to the Urban Farming Institute of Boston’s (UFI) weekly farm stand (see figure C.1). Under­neath a large white awning, just in front of the barn, UFI farmers and farmer trainees are selling a wide variety of vibrant vegetables—­zucchini, carrots, tomatoes, cucumbers, okra, hot peppers, tomatillos, garlic, three kinds of eggplant, and overflowing baskets of greens—­a ll grown at farms that UFI has built in the neighborhoods of Dorchester, Roxbury, and Mattapan. Next to the vegetables, arrayed on long t­ ables covered with green cloths, are also a few pale-­turquoise half-­pints of blackberries and a large cardboard box full of peaches. Several of the vegetables, including callaloo, have been grown by UFI’s farmers in response to specific requests for items that are impor­tant to the cuisines of the neighborhood’s residents but ­ thers are using hard to find in its stores. Many customers pay with cash, while o their EBT (SNAP) cards. The UFI farm stand is an authorized Healthy Incentive Program (HIP) vendor, which means that families shopping with SNAP are getting a dollar back for each dollar they spend (up to a monthly limit based ­ ouse­hold). From this vantage point, the multiple contribuon the size of their h tions of the farm to food access in the neighborhood could not be more clear (Field notes, September 7, 2018). If you talk with shoppers at urban farm stands, not only in Mattapan, but in neighborhoods across the Commonwealth of Mas­ sa­chu­setts, they ­will tell you that ­these are life-­changing, and sometimes even life-­saving, interventions (Field notes, UFC 2018). The weekly farm stand—­and the development of the farm sites that make it pos­si­ble for UFI farmers to grow thousands of pounds of vegetables each year—­ are just two of UFI’s current initiatives. In my visits to the FCE Farm, I have met participants in UFI’s Farmer Training Program, who are both learning how to 146

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Figure C.1. ​The weekly farm stand at the Fowler Clark Epstein Farm, Boston. Photo credit: Sara Shostak

farm and planning for their own food-­focused enterprises. I’ve chatted with local high school students who are participating in UFI’s summer program for youth. In recent years, UFI also has been building out its programming to engage further with the neighborhoods where it farms. From March through October, UFI now offers “Fit around the Farm” exercise and nutrition classes for elders. UFI staff visit local schools and also host a coffee hour for families with young ­children, which includes breakfast, reading, and conversation about food and farming. Through the year, UFI provides workshops on canning and pickling, container gardening, beekeeping, and mushroom cultivation. UFI also welcomes neighbors to informal gatherings at the farm, including barbeques, potlucks, and drumming circles. Additionally, neighbors frequently drop by to chat with the staff and trainees. “This is your place,” UFI’s executive director, Pat Spence, tells every­one she greets ­here. “You are part of this” (Field notes, September 7, 2018). UFI’s many programs and forms of community engagement orient t­oward goals that a wide range of stakeholders have identified as impor­tant potential contributions of con­temporary urban agriculture in North Amer­i­ca; ­these include increasing access to healthy food, providing education and job training, greening urban areas, and increasing interactions among neighbors (Santo, Palmer, and Kim 2016). T ­ oward ­these ends, both public and private funders

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invest in community-­based urban agriculture organ­izations, and in return they require regular reports on a myriad of mea­sures meant to track pro­gress ­toward ­t hese goals: pounds of food grown, total revenue from sales of produce, pounds of food donated, square feet or acres of land put into production, number of paid positions for youth, number of programs offered each year, and counts of program participants, among many ­others (Shostak 2018). The analy­sis presented in Back to the Roots suggests that urban agriculture is ­doing much more than can be captured in ­t hese quantitative mea­sures. In part, this is ­because ­there are so many deeply meaningful interactions and exchanges that ­will never show up in the required metrics. For example, in cities across the commonwealth, I have heard stories about recent immigrants who come to urban farms and gardens to ask for herbs that they want for a ­family member who is ill. The mere weight of a thyme plant, stalks of lemon balm, or some echinacea flowers do not begin to tell us what it means to p ­ eople when they are given the herbs that they seek for healing and/or are invited to join a community garden where they can collectively cultivate the foods of their country of origin. Similarly, while the UFI’s farmer training program has consistently impressive outcomes—in six years, UFI has graduated six cohorts of trainees, 80–85 ­percent of whom go on to work in the farming or food industry—­these mea­sures fail to capture the deeply supportive environment of the program, which leads successive classes of farmer trainees to return, year ­after year, to volunteer and stay connected with their “­family” at the farm. Recent research suggests that the multi-­cohort and multigenerational network being created by UFI ­will be especially impor­tant to the success of “food entrepreneurs who are ­people of color . . . ​­because they are less likely than their white counter­parts to be able to draw on f­ amily resources to start their businesses, or to receive traditional loans and equity investments” (Alkon, Cadji, and Moore 2019, 794–795). Likewise, counting the acres of urban land being used to grow vegetables does not adequately convey “the impact of . . . ​owning land—­not ­because vegetables can be grown, but ­because of the reversal of hundreds of years of racism in a community that historically was not able to own land” (Field notes, July 5, 2017). Indeed, the narratives at the center of Back to the Roots suggest that the contributions of ­today’s urban agriculture only become clear when we take into account how it addresses long-­standing and systemic inequalities. As we have seen, across the Commonwealth of Mas­sa­chu­setts, urban farmers, gardeners, and advocates are reclaiming cultural traditions linked to food, farming, and health, challenging racism and injustice in the food system, remediating local legacies of municipal neglect and environmental racism, and moving t­ oward their visions of more equitable urban ­futures. As such, Back to the Roots proposes that creating spaces in which ­people recollect and reckon with the meanings and materiality of the past, and their consequences, may prove to be one of the most power­ful impacts of con­temporary urban agriculture in the United States.

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To be sure, urban farmers and gardeners are not “living in the past or for the past” (Twitty 2017, 405). As demonstrated in Back to the Roots, their memory proj­ects are not primarily about commemoration, but about moving ­toward greater health, justice, and equity in the pre­sent and the ­f uture. They recognize and remind us that, in the words of ­legal theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw, “the work of social justice is the work of narrative reconstruction, building new stories around facts that are often disregarded, invisibilized, and taken for granted as acceptable and unremarkable features of social life.”1 The work of narrative reconstruction may be especially impor­tant in the context of policy making, where “dehistoricized explanations for in­equality” have for too long served as a wholly inadequate basis for “long-­term, often costly policy decisions” (Jenson, Polletta, and Raibmon 2019, 158). As such, narratives that offer a “more deeply historical understandings of difference” are vitally impor­tant for efforts to redress in­equality (Jenson, Polletta, and Raibmon 2019, 137; see also Stone 1989). As we have seen, the memory proj­ects that are part of urban agriculture evince both the deep histories of con­temporary inequalities and how they are understood and experienced by individuals and communities burdened by their legacies. I conclude Back to the Roots by considering the implications of urban agriculture’s memory proj­ects and politics for our understandings of cities, health, and the environment. Most broadly, t­ hese implications invite social scientists to reconsider disciplinary divisions that tend to separate, for example, “relationships to the land” from “the social determinants of health,” and “collective memory” from “soil contamination.”2 As such, the narratives of urban farmers, gardeners, and advocates offer also critically impor­tant expertise, analy­sis, and insight for policy makers and prac­ti­tion­ers in the fields of urban and environmental planning, food systems, and public health.

Urban Memory Politics Social scientists who view urban farming primarily through the lens of gentrification raise impor­tant questions about w ­ hether urban farms actually serve the communities in which they are located; some suggest that they more often advance the interests of urban growth co­a li­tions (Reynolds and Cohen 2016; Sbicca 2019). As we have seen, food in general, and urban agriculture in par­tic­ u­lar, feature in branding narratives that focus on local food, health, and “green living” as marketable aspects of the identity of a city or neighborhood. Food is unquestionably a part of the urban branding and growth strategies of postindustrial cities, serving as “the new art” in economic development plans. Branding narratives are deployed by cities and their branding con­sul­tants to dispel lingering negative reputations and stigma and to attract new businesses, residents, and tourists. For example, Gateway Cities may leverage their immigrant histories to attract the interest, and spending power, of “foodies” (Johnston and Baumann

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2015). Urban agriculture may contribute also to “green gentrification,” however inadvertently, by remediating and revalorizing vacant lots; efforts to improve and rehabilitate “unused spaces” often precede more extensive commercial and residential development (Gould and Lewis 2017). The historical preservation of local “heritage” is a high-­profile part of urban redevelopment strategies that may lead to gentrification (Brown-­Saracino 2006; Hyra 2017; Zukin 1995). Consequently, branding narratives that highlight a neighborhood’s agrarian history and/or its green spaces are rightly scrutinized as part of strategies that may lead to the displacement of longtime residents and businesses. Many of the urban farmers and gardeners I met in the course of this proj­ect are deeply concerned about gentrification in their communities.3 This was evident not only in the interviews I conducted across the state, but in the power­ful opposition to the pi­lot farms that the city of Boston initially proposed siting in the neighborhood of Dorchester. As we learned from following the changing perspectives of neighborhood residents regarding the possibility of urban farming near their Dorchester homes, part of the opposition to the proposed farms was rooted in the perception that urban agriculture itself represented a form of gentrification. Residents vigorously opposed the possibility that the city might give outside agricultural interests (often represented in their narratives as “Monsanto”) access to long-­vacant lots in their neighborhoods. They demanded that the city develop a pro­cess that would ensure community voice in the disposition of land and deliver on the promise of local advocates that urban agriculture could support “local access to land, entrepreneurship, and empowerment” (Field notes, April 8, 2015). As such, the memory proj­ects embedded in urban agriculture already have had implications for urban politics and policy in Boston. In this way, Back to the Roots demonstrates that urban proj­ects and policies outside of the strategies of urban growth coalitions—­and, indeed, sometimes in opposition to them—­a lso can build on “cultural associations between history, community, and place” (Hunter, Loughran, and Fine 2018, 331). As we have seen, urban farmers in Boston’s neighborhoods of Roxbury, Dorchester, and Mattapan often share with volunteers the racialized histories of their neighborhoods, including blockbusting, redlining, abandonment, and arson. They point out, for example, that many of the lots currently available for urban farming ­were created ­because homes burned to the ground in the 1970s and ­were never rebuilt. In contrast to initiatives that lack “the po­liti­cal consciousness” necessary to “address the histories of discrimination that are at the roots of systemic economic and environmental inequity” (Broad 2016, 197), their narratives raise urgent questions about “who pays for the past”—­especially when that past includes de­cades of racialized inequities, disinvestment, and perceived municipal neglect. They also provide a clear rationale for initiatives such as the Boston Farms Community Land Trust, which aims to ensure that farmers from Dorchester, Roxbury, and Mattapan ­w ill have long-­term access to land to farm

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in their neighborhoods. Across the United States, such narratives serve also as a foundation for calls for reparations for a long history of “stolen land and exploited ­labor” and the enduring racial inequities in land and wealth thereby created (Field notes, June 6, 2019; see also Penniman 2018).4 Indeed, the available scholarship and media coverage indicate that it is not only in Mas­sa­chu­setts that urban farmers and gardeners are calling attention to how neighborhoods and cities have been ­shaped by racialized historical pro­ cesses, discriminatory urban development policies, and environmental racism, as well as by community-­based collective action to advance equity, justice, and healing.5 As such, we have much to learn about the connections being made between collective memory and place history (Frickel and Elliot 2018, 28; see also Sampson 2013) in community-­based agriculture proj­ects across the United States. Likewise, f­uture research should consider when and how historicized accounts of in­equality, which call attention to the “deeper roots of the prob­lem at hand,” succeed as a basis for advocacy for “more thoroughgoing reforms” and more equitable community development (Jenson, Polletta, and Raibmon 2019, 157, emphasis added; see also Hunter, Loughran, and Fine 2018).6

Reclaiming “Lost Roots” In addition to raising up the pasts of cities and neighborhoods, the narratives of urban farmers and gardeners are ­shaped by collective memories and identities linked to more distant times and places. Their stories not only recollect individual and collective pasts; they also leverage them to critique dominant narratives that fail to take into account how the past shapes pre­sent opportunities for individual and community health. In their narratives, food is linked to health not just through its nutritional content, but ­because of its centrality to identity, culture, and sovereignty. Many current city dwellers are the descendants of former farming families. Especially among white urban farmers, the history of small family-­owned farms, the ideals of demo­cratic agrarianism, and dearly held memories of the gardens and farms of their parents and grandparents serve as motivation for growing food in the city. Invoking the trope of farming being “in the blood” (Wuthnow 2015), ­t hese urban farmers and gardeners hail urban food production as a means of connecting not only with their roots, but with an alternative food movement that seeks to transform the food system, often by creating local and regional food economies. Central to ­t hese efforts is the idea that “knowing where your food comes from” ­w ill lead to a transformation of the American food system into “one that is ecologically sustainable and socially just” (Guthman 2008, 387).7 In contrast, farmers and gardeners of color often turn this injunction on its head, asserting that growing food is a means of reconnecting not only with

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“where food comes from” but also “where we come from”; it is a way of reclaiming “lost roots” (Field notes, UFC 2016). On a warm spring eve­ning in June 2019, farmer, activist, and award-­w inning author Leah Penniman powerfully makes this case to a gathering of more than 150 p ­ eople at the FCE Farm.8 Standing at a podium in front of the barn, Penniman weaves together stories, historical evidence, and her own lived experience to argue that “our history precedes slavery” and holds knowledge of how to “be in right relationship with each other and with the land.” Her talk highlights a myriad of practices—­vermicomposting, planting in mounds, collective work parties, community credit unions—­that have roots in Africa. Penniman challenges the notion that Africans ­were stolen from their homes and forced into slavery simply for their “biceps and triceps”; rather, she argues, “we w ­ ere stolen for our agricultural genius. They needed our expertise to grown in the South” (Field notes, June 6, 2019; see also Nelson 2016, 103; Twitty 2017, 193, 239ff.; White 2018, 11–14). She explains that “colonialism and white supremacy . . . ​[are] about making us forget who we ­really are and taking away the resources we need for our sovereignty” (Field notes, June  6, 2019). Farming, then, is a practice of remembrance, of reclaiming relationships to the land, agricultural practices, foodways and herbal knowledge disrupted, appropriated, and undermined by colonialism, slavery, sharecropping, and other forms of exploitation that have disproportionately harmed Black, Indigenous, and ­People of Color; it is a practice of liberation, of sovereignty, and of healing (Penniman 2018; see also Twitty 2017, 265–281; White 2018). At the same time, urban agriculture offers possibilities for cultural continuity and connection for more recent immigrants to U.S. cities. As we have seen, Lowell’s urban agriculture programs, led by Mill City Grows, have prioritized the foodways of the city’s immigrant families, while also endeavoring to support their integration into civic life. Similarly, immigrant gardeners in Lynn and Boston emphasize how impor­tant community gardens have been to their transitions to American cities and to their ability to share with their ­children the food and herbs that are impor­tant to their cultures. Urban farming, from this perspective, not only makes impor­tant contributions to food access in Mas­sa­ chu­setts’s Gateway Cities; it also specifically serves the needs of recent immigrants and their families (see figure C.2). “Food is medicine”9 in ­these narratives, not only ­because nutrition is an impor­tant component of individual health, but b ­ ecause food is linked to collective histories, foodways, and sovereignty. Food production is part of “the means of survival” in urban areas, observes Leah Penniman, where “food apartheid . . . ​dictates that your zip code ­w ill determine your life expectancy” (Field notes, June 6, 2019; see also Williams 2012). While increasing food access is a valued outcome of urban agriculture proj­ects—­and certainly one that organ­ izations are most often asked by funders to report—­food justice and sovereignty often are no less central to their understandings of their missions. Many

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Figure C.2. ​A ­woman buying callaloo at a farmers’ market. Photo credit: Sara Shostak

community-­based urban agriculture organ­izations reject the notion that their work is about “changing how somebody e­ lse behaves” and seek rather to “create space for community members to articulate” what a better food system and a healthier city “looks like” (Field notes, December 5, 2017).10 In recalling the past, ­t hese narratives make urgent claims on the pre­sent. To begin, they challenge the “whitening” of narratives of urban farming, which erase the ingenuity, leadership, and l­abor of ­people of color who have been at the forefront of urban farming and gardening initiatives for generations (Reynolds and Cohen 2016; White 2018). They also offer a counternarrative to ­t hose “coming from the acad­emy and research institutions” that focus on deficits in communities of color. Food justice activist Dara Cooper indicts the “food desert” narrative, in par­tic­u­lar, for making invisible “community-­based assessments of their own conditions and diminish[ing] support for community-­based assertions of their own power and solutions” (quoted in R ­ eese 2019, xi).11 Similarly, LaDonna Redmond critiques “the predominantly white food movement” for proposing “food pantries, classes to teach healthy eating, and other remedies that tended to pathologize the culture,” rather than trying to change the food system (quoted in White 2018, xv). Not only in Mas­sa­chu­setts, but across the United States, urban farmers and activists are insisting that any diagnosis of diet-­related health issues, especially among ­people of color, must address long-­ standing structures of racism and oppression and their consequences for individual and community health. Indeed, while I came to this proj­ect with a broad interest in how urban agriculture addresses the social determinants of health, I conclude it with a deepened

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appreciation of the importance of historicizing ­these determinants. For many urban farmers and advocates, urban agriculture is not just about bringing healthy food and green jobs to their neighborhoods; it is also about opening up a space for asking why “our neighborhoods d ­ on’t look like other neighborhoods” (Interview 41) and changing policies, including but not l­ imited to ­t hose related to food and agriculture, so that they better “align with what ­people are saying they need” (Interview 01). As such, the narratives of urban farmers offer an impor­tant counterpoint to the pervasive presentism and individualizing tendencies of dominant biomedical and public health narratives, with their tendency to ignore the past. This is critically impor­tant, as “when we ignore the past, we risk overlooking how the forces that shape our lives and our world also shape health across generations. It makes us less likely to address ­t hese conditions, feeding the sense (and the myth) that health is solely a product of our individual choices and the medicine we take” (Galea 2019, 6). It is essential that public health education, as well, engage with ­these deeper histories. When my students and I partnered with UFI to do oral histories focused on food, health, and community in Mattapan, students observed that “it was ­really valuable that we learned about blockbusting and redlining and how housing discrimination generated the cyclical poverty that is seen in Mattapan. It’s not just an isolated neighborhood that . . . ​ [has] markers that are red flags for public health . . . ​[­there’s] a history which has put [it] in this place now” (Shostak, Corral, et  al. 2019, 198). In so many ways, “history is the missing piece” (Stevenson, quoted in Twitty 2017, 277). Moving forward, it ­w ill be impor­tant to examine how narratives rooted in the past may shape a wide variety of practices associated with health and healing. In narratives that recall, for example, a grand­mother’s herb garden and how she made tinctures that helped with a variety of ailments, gardeners are not only remembering their f­amily members; they are suggesting that we can reach back into the past to learn how to care for and heal our bodies. Similarly, in the farming practices of the past, suggests Leah Penniman, we can find techniques that ­will sequester carbon in the soil, thereby caring for and healing the planet (Field notes, June 6, 2019). In ­t hese narratives, the past is not something to be commemorated, but a rich and vital source of knowledge that we need to reclaim. How such knowledge enters into, and possibly reshapes, a wide variety of emerging practices related to individual and population health, ranging from integrative medicine to regenerative farming, is an impor­tant consideration across fields.

“The Land Holds Our Memories . . .” For urban farmers across Mas­sa­chu­setts cities, both access to land and strategies for remediating and improving the health of the soil are fundamental con-

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cerns. ­Every farmer I spoke with in the course of ­doing this research emphasized the importance of land access to the overall proj­ect of urban agriculture. Especially in urban areas, demonstrating that food production is the “highest and best use” of often scarce land is a significant challenge (Cahn and Segal 2016). Even in cities with a multitude of vacant lots, however, preparing sites for farming is a costly venture, and long-­term tenure may not be guaranteed. For many urban farmers, however, the land is not simply material, but also carries profound meanings. “The land holds our memories,” writes urban farmer and food justice activist LaDonna Redmond (quoted in White 2018, xviii). As we have seen, t­ hese meanings are deeply s­ haped by collective histories and experiences of vio­lence, exclusion, and oppression that continue to shape the lives of ­people of color. As powerfully demonstrated by sociologist Monica White, relationships to the land also have been central also to “the collective agency and resilience of the black rural poor” (2018, 3); her research supports a “dif­fer­ent kind of narrative” about “black ­people’s complex relationship to the land” by “revealing multiple narratives of re­sis­tance that illustrate how and in what ways land has mattered to black p ­ eople’s strug­gles against marginalization [and] for in­de­pen­dence” (2018, 141–142). Together, ­these narratives raise questions about the meanings of land, in both rural and urban life, and, relatedly, our understandings of nature. As with the urban gardens of the past (Lawson 2005), con­temporary urban agriculture proj­ ects si­mul­ta­neously leverage and challenge deeply held cultural assumptions about the differences between urban and rural life, the nature of the city and of the country. As sociologist David Wachsmuth astutely observes, the organ­ ization of knowledge production in sociology has mirrored t­ hese assumptions: “Although this is starting to change, environmental sociology has historically had ­little to say about urbanization except to treat it as a machine for consuming nature . . . ​and urban sociology has had ­little to say about nature except as a background or a meta­phor” (2012, 520). Especially as cities begin to confront climate change, that is, the challenges of a rapidly changing socio-­natural world, urban agriculture proj­ects offer an impor­tant opportunity for environmental sociologists to bring to the city questions about our relationships to nature, and for urbanists to engage with nature as much more than a meta­phor. For example, the value placed on the land and the meanings of the soil help to make sense of current debates about hydroponics growing systems. Urban farmers who grow in high-­tech, enclosed indoor systems tout their ability to provide food, regardless of the weather, that is unaffected from heavy metals and chemicals in urban soils. In contrast, many urban farmers see having their “hands in the dirt” as essential to the benefits of urban farming. Indeed, along with the cost of high-­tech, enclosed growing systems and the issues this raises in terms of access and equity, urban farmers point to the value of “touching the soil” as a basis for their preference for growing “the more natu­ral way.” While

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some farmers pointed to scientific studies about the positive health effects of exposure to the soil microbiome, I more often heard farmers and gardeners speak of the deep healing offered by being in direct relationship with nature—­ especially for p ­ eople whose ancestors’ relationships to the land w ­ ere disrupted by vio­lence and dispossession. The “nature” of the city, however, also carries material traces of its past. In neighborhood narratives about urban farming in Boston, urban soil was described as not merely “contaminated,” but “poisoned” as a consequence of de­cades of municipal neglect and environmental racism. From this perspective, urban farms ­were seen not as a valued economic development opportunity, but as yet another threat to residents’ health and well-­being. Then, as their visions and understandings of urban farming changed—­not just ­because of the city’s responses to their objections, but as a consequence of advocacy by entrepreneurs and farmers of color—­residents became concerned that their neighborhoods ­were being “stigmatized” through what they perceived as excessive regulation of their soil, especially as compared to soil brought in from other locations. Soil, in t­hese narratives, is both a material rec­ord of injustices and a pos­si­ble mechanism of stigma. ­These narratives raise intriguing questions about how soil has come to be such a power­ful medium for both meaning and memory. Further, the meanings of soil—­and its role in collective identity and memory proj­ects—­are not ­limited to con­temporary urban farming (B. Cohen 2009). As one horrifying example, in recent years, white nationalist groups have resurrected the Nazi slogan “Blood and soil.”12 In vivid contrast, soil also plays an impor­tant role in the Equal Justice Initiative’s (EJI) Community Remembrance Proj­ect, which asks communities across Amer­i­ca to confront and reckon with their histories of lynching and commit to working t­ oward a more just and equitable f­ uture.13 As part of this proj­ect, EJI invites communities to collect soil from sites where lynching occurred; the jars of collected soil are part of an exhibit at the Legacy Museum. As EJI director Bryan Stevenson writes: “In this soil, ­there is the sweat of the enslaved. In the soil t­ here is the blood of victims of racial vio­lence and lynching. ­There are tears in the soil from all ­t hose who labored ­u nder the indignation and humiliation of segregation. But in the soil ­t here is also the opportunity for new life, a chance to grow something hopeful and healing for the ­f uture.”14 While soil does not “speak” in the same way as DNA, the EJI Community Remembrance Proj­ect evokes sociologist Alondra Nelson’s brilliant description of DNA as “an agent in the politics of repair and reconciliation . . . ​a burden of proof and a bridge across time” (2016, 27). Together, and in their differences, ­these examples point to the importance of understanding how objects and practices that bridge across time and place—­including seeds and plants, soil and land, food and farming—­become mechanisms for preserving, carry­ing forward, and contesting collective memories and identities, and with what consequences (Jordan 2015).

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Telling the Stories By locating urban agriculture in multiple narratives, Back to the Roots offers one explanation for the question of how it is that urban agriculture has come to mean so many t­hings to so many ­people. Simply put, urban agriculture is a “multifunctional proj­ect” (Lovell 2010), not only ­because of its varied and hybrid orga­nizational forms, but b ­ ecause farmers, gardeners, policy makers, and advocates locate urban farming in a diverse array of narratives. If events—­and institutions—­take their meaning from their location in a series of events (Bearman, Faris, and Moody 1999), then how one narrates the story of ­today’s urban farms and gardens powerfully shapes the meanings and significance of con­ temporary urban agriculture. The analy­sis offered in Back to the Roots highlights especially the power of how, and where, narratives begin, the aspects of the material world they encompass, and the pasts that they thereby remember, recollect, and “lift up” as critical contexts for urban farming ­today, as well as in the ­f uture (Penniman 2018). To be sure, if you ask most urban farmers why they are growing food in cities, you first w ­ ill hear about their passion and commitment to improving food access in their communities, creating new opportunities for employment in their neighborhoods, cleaning up too long vacant lots, and bringing nature back to the city. If you listen just a l­ ittle longer, you w ­ ill learn that many of t­ hese goals have roots in some aspect of the past, w ­ hether of the individual farmer and her ­family, the neighborhood, or the nation. At many sites, you ­w ill be invited to see traces of local history, right ­t here, where you are sitting together— in the provenance of a vacant lot they turned into a quarter-­acre urban farm, the barrier they are using used to keep lead and other heavy metals from leaching into the topsoil where they are growing vegetables, and also the herbs that they are cultivating ­after learning about their healing properties from a neighborhood elder. The narratives of urban farmers remind us that the past is always pre­sent, an intrinsic part of our lives and life chances. Urban farming both evokes deeply held cultural meanings linked to food and farming and unearths the material consequences of prior urban land uses. Consequently, it has become an arena in which multiple actors are learning about, and seeking to redress, structural inequities in access to land, food, and health that have persisted over many generations. Health and healing, in t­ hese narratives, is not just about food access, but about reckoning with the past, reclaiming identities, seeking reparations for racialized inequalities, and establishing new understandings of how we live together and in relationship with the land. Recollecting multiple aspects of the past, highlighting their con­temporary consequences for individuals and communities, and making them available for engagement and action are among the essential contributions of ­today’s urban farmers and gardeners.

Epilogue

The COVID-19 pandemic began as I was completing the final revisions to this book. Across the nation, and in Mas­sa­chu­setts’s cities, Black, Indigenous, and ­People of Color are suffering disproportionately higher rates of illness and death than other population groups.1 Within the city of Boston, the neighborhoods of Mattapan, Roxbury, and Dorchester are among t­ hose with the highest burdens from this devastating disease.2 Although the virus, SARS-­CoV-2, is novel, the conditions that have made it disproportionately deadly for communities of color certainly are not. As sociologist Sabrina Strings powerfully argued in the pages of the New York Times, the ­causes of the pandemic’s devastation of African American communities, in par­tic­u­lar, “are rooted in a shameful era of American history that took place hundreds of years before this pandemic” (emphasis added): “The era of slavery was when white Americans determined that black Americans needed only the bare necessities, not enough to keep them optimally safe and healthy. It set in ­ eople’s diminished access to healthy foods, safe working condimotion black p tions, medical treatment and a host of other social inequities that negatively impact health.3 Writing from the Brookings Institution, sociologist Rayshawn Ray pointed to the more recent history of redlining to explain that “structural conditions that inform pre-­existing conditions and health disparities are the main culprit for the epidemic within the pandemic which is ravaging Black communities across the U.S.” 4 Both scholars are arguing against dehistoricized and acontextual explanations of the disproportionate burden of COVID-19 that suggest, for example, that African Americans are at higher risk due to ge­ne­tics or lifestyle choices.5 At the same time, in response to the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor (among so many o ­ thers), ­people across the United States, and across the world, took to the streets of our cities to protest police brutality and systemic 158

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racism. Writing in the New E ­ ngland Journal of Medicine, leading public health and medical researchers called attention to the role of history in shaping threats to Black lives ­today: “We got ­here ­because we live in a country established by indigenous dispossession and genocide. ­Because slavery and the racial ordering of ­humans and goods it established constructed a po­liti­cal economy predicated on devaluing black ­labor, demeaning black bodies, and denying black humanity” (Hardeman, Medina, and Boyd 2020). They suggested that in order to “dismantle structural racism and improve the health and well-­being of the black community and the country,” it is critical that “mastering the health effects of structural racism” be seen as a “professional medical competency” in which clinicians would “learn, understand, and accept Amer­i­ca’s racist roots” (Hardeman, Medina, and Boyd 2020, emphasis added; see also Hardeman, Medina, and Kozhimannil 2016). As I read ­these calls to more seriously engage with history and its consequences, I thought of the narratives of urban farmers and gardeners about the deep roots of the challenges facing their communities. Indeed, even as they have worked ceaselessly to grow and distribute urgently needed food ­under extraordinarily challenging conditions, urban farmers and advocates in Mas­ sa­chu­setts have been at the forefront of efforts to make clear the connections between long-­standing structural conditions and the inequitable impacts of COVID-19. In the power­f ul words of Liz Wills-­O’Gilvie, chair of the Executive Committee of the Springfield Food Policy and Action Council,6 “Diet-­related diseases ­were already killing Black and Brown p ­ eople. COVID-19 accelerates this. When we talk about ‘­people with preexisting conditions,’ we are talking about ­people with food-­related preventable diseases who are therefore more vulnerable to the effects of the coronavirus” (personal communication). We are in the midst of what social scientist Damon J. Phillips describes as a “century-­defining moment.” In his poignant letter to “young scholars,” Phillips encourages ­today’s students to “help transform how we think about the world.”7 As we seek such transformations across our institutions—in public health and medicine, urban planning and policy, the food system, and so on—it is critically impor­tant that we engage seriously with narratives through which Black, Indigenous, and ­People of Color articulate how the past continues to constrain, sometimes fatally, the possibilities of the pre­sent.

Appendix A

;

Into the Field: Data and Methods On a sunny eve­ning in May 2012, I walked up the stairs of city hall to attend a joint meeting of the Somerville Planning Board and the Board of Aldermen’s Land Use Committee, the purpose of which was to invite public comment on a recent proposal to allow community farms and other forms of urban agriculture in Somerville. I had moved to Somerville the previous year, and, in an effort to get to know my new city, signed up for the Somerville Patch, where I had seen the meeting advertised.1 I attended out of desire to get to know my new hometown, and a vague professional interest in the increasingly popu­lar focus on healthy food access as a component of public health. As I took a seat in the back of the room, I had no idea that what I was about to observe would be the beginning of a multiyear research proj­ect on urban agriculture in cities across the Commonwealth of Mas­sa­chu­setts. As I listened to the farmers, planners, advocates, and policy makers assembled ­there, however, I became fascinated not only by urban farming itself, but by all the ­ eople had vested in it. memories of the past and hopes for the ­future that p ­ ngland” urban agriculture ordinance and its variety With its “first in New E of volunteer opportunities, Somerville was a ­great place to launch a proj­ect on urban agriculture. Indeed, it was in Somerville that I first became fascinated by how the past was being encountered in urban agriculture proj­ects. Initially, this fascination emerged from what seemed to me like a paradox: while much media coverage of urban farming seemed to focus of “cities of the f­uture” or “the ­future of food,” the conversations I heard “on the ground” drew heavi­ly on images and stories of the past. Local politicians, in par­tic­u ­lar, seemed to enjoy reminiscing about the idyllic gardens of their immigrant parents and grandparents. At the same time, it struck me that the histories that left postindustrial northeastern cities like Somerville with soil contaminated with lead and vacant lots strewn with debris w ­ ere less often discussed, though they are absolutely central to the material practices of urban farming ­today. 161

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Nonetheless, I quickly expanded my focus across the Commonwealth of Mas­sa­chu­setts, for several reasons. First, I was aware that Somerville is, in the words of a colleague, “quirky.” That is, the meanings and practices of urban agriculture in Somerville should not be expected to tell us much about urban agriculture in Mas­sa­chu­setts cities that are less quickly gentrifying, less “hipster,” and/or where mayoral administrations have been less supportive. In fact, interviewees in cities such as Lowell and Springfield made clear that they see Somerville as a very par­tic­u ­lar and privileged example of con­temporary urban agriculture. Second, at a volunteer day at Somerville’s South Street Farm in 2013, I had talked at length with high school students on Groundwork Somerville’s Green Team as we planted seedlings in raised beds around the site and scrubbed graffiti from a large aluminum fence. They told me about how much they valued not only their work in Somerville, but trips to other cities in Mas­sa­chu­setts, where they met with youth to talk about the prob­lems they face—­“­things like ­there being nowhere for youth to hang out a­ fter school, and not enough green space, and ­people who c­ an’t afford healthy food ­because the stuff at the grocery store is too expensive”—­and how to solve them (Field notes, April 27, 2013). This heightened my curiosity about what was happening in other cities and w ­ hether and how they ­were connected to each other. Moreover, very soon ­after beginning fieldwork in Somerville, I learned that Boston had begun an extensive planning and neighborhood consultation pro­cess focused on making urban agriculture a permissible commercial land use; p ­ eople I had met in Somerville ­were participating in Boston’s planning pro­cess, which they intriguingly mentioned was “a lot more complicated” than what I had observed in Somerville. ­Doing interviews and attending neighborhood meetings in Boston—­where urban agriculture was, in fact, quite controversial—­very much brought to the foreground questions about how the histories of cities and their neighborhoods shape their engagements with and responses to urban agriculture policies and programs. My growing interest in how local contexts, past and pre­sent, shape urban agriculture initiatives provided a warrant for considering a broader range of places and proj­ects. Given the varied histories and current realities of cities across Mas­sa­chu­setts, this one small state offered abundant and impor­tant sites for fieldwork. From 2013 to 2016, I did interviews not only in rapidly (if unevenly) gentrifying cities like Somerville and Boston but in cities such as Holyoke, Lawrence, Lowell, Springfield, and Worcester, that have strug­gled following the collapse of the industries that w ­ ere once at the center of their economies and identities. By studying urban agriculture across the commonwealth, I was able to see the tremendous variation in how city governments do (or do not) support urban farming proj­ects, how dif­fer­ent neighborhoods may welcome or resist proposals to use long-­vacant land for urban farms, and how community-­based urban agriculture organ­izations connect power­ful social justice agendas to the work of

Appendix A

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growing fruit and vegetables. At the same time, it was analytically useful to do research in just one state, as this meant that aspects of state policy—­including programs that fund urban agriculture and food system planning—­were shared across locations. Likewise, t­ here are statewide networks that have been impor­ tant to the emergence of urban agriculture in Mas­sa­chu­setts. For example, Mas­sa­chu­setts’s urban agriculture organ­izations come together for a yearly conference, which began in 2013, as well as for food system planning and advocacy. They also are brought together by the convenings of both state and private funders and by regional and national conferences and meetings. Some participate in regional collaborative training programs and food hubs. Organ­izations in neighboring cities partner on a variety of proj­ects, including both mentoring and policy advocacy. The urban agriculture organ­izations that have youth programs often bring young ­people into conversation, and action, with each other. Indeed, many of the urban farmers I met while ­doing this proj­ect see themselves as connected to each other in a “movement” to address histories of in­equality and transform “our ailing food system” (Field notes, UFC 2015). As much as pos­si­ble, across locations, I wanted to see urban agriculture through the eyes of multiple stakeholders. ­Toward that end, I conducted interviews with forty-­five urban farmers and leaders of urban farming organ­ izations, members of city and state government, food policy experts, public health advocates, foundation program officers, and land trust coordinators. I identified potential interviewees first by mapping out the arena of urban agriculture in Mas­sa­chu­setts (Clarke 2005). Drawing on the member list of vari­ous urban agriculture–­focused working groups, conference proceedings, grant announcements, and a variety of websites, I generated a list of organ­ izations across domains, including state and local governments, nonprofit organ­izations, commercial enterprises, and funders. I then wrote to individuals at each of t­ hese organ­izations requesting an interview and/or a referral to a more appropriate respondent. On the ­whole, ­people ­were interested in the proj­ect and incredibly generous with their time. Interviews often ran well past ­ eople for me the hour I had requested and ended with suggestions for other p to contact. Following a protocol approved by the Brandeis Committee for the Protection of H ­ uman Subjects (#14009), I asked all interviewees w ­ hether they wished to speak with me on or off the rec­ord. Quotes from interviewees who chose to be “on the rec­ord” may be identified with the name of the respondent and/or the organ­izations with which they are affiliated. Quotes from interviewees who chose to be “off the rec­ord” are kept confidential and never identified with an individual’s name or orga­nizational affiliation. Throughout, I use numbers to identify interviews (e.g., Interview 18), as this both protects the confidentiality of participants and makes it pos­si­ble for the reader to differentiate among the myriad of voices and perspectives represented in this work.

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Over a somewhat more extended period of time (2012–2017), I conducted hundreds of hours of fieldwork at vari­ous city council and board of aldermen meetings, neighborhood meetings about city-­level policy initiatives, food policy council meetings, groundbreaking ceremonies for new farms, community garden cleanup days, harvest festivals, cooking classes, and farmers’ markets. I was fortunate that during the time I was “in the field,” ­there ­were several impor­tant public pro­cesses focused on the food system in general, and urban agriculture in par­tic­u­lar, ­underway at the state and local level. I was able to attend many of the neighborhood meetings focused on the proposed urban agriculture ordinance that became Article 89, in Boston, in the summer of 2013. Throughout 2015, I attended the meetings of the Urban Agriculture Working Group, which was part of the development of the commonwealth’s local food system plan, and the monthly public sessions of the city of Boston’s Urban Agriculture Visioning Group. I also did participant observation as a volunteer for urban farming organ­ izations. Sometimes this meant ­doing the hard work of farming—­spreading fertilizer, digging rows, planting seedlings, and weeding. Sometimes this meant volunteering my research skills. For example, in 2014, I assisted Groundwork Somerville with an evaluation of their mobile farmers’ market (Shostak, Blum, et al. 2017). In collaboration with the Food Proj­ect, in 2015, I did a focus group study of the motivations and experiences of community gardeners in Boston and Lynn, Mas­sa­chu­setts (Shostak and Guscott 2017). In 2016, my students and I did a multi-­methods proj­ect, in partnership with the Urban Farming Institute of Boston, focused on the history of the Fowler Clark Epstein Farm and the neighborhood of Mattapan, in which it is located (Shostak, Corral, et al. 2019). In 2017, I partnered with several urban agriculture organ­izations to consider how they are asked to evaluate their programs, and the degree to which funders’ metrics may obscure or even distract from their missions (Shostak 2018); this work is ongoing. As I describe in appendix B, this collaborative research agenda was both an effort to answer questions that urban agriculture organ­izations identified as impor­tant to them and an expression of my commitment to leverage resources to support community-­based urban agriculture organ­izations in Mas­sa­chu­setts. While I searched the Boston Globe and local (e.g., city-­specific) papers for articles about urban agriculture, many of the documents included in this analy­ sis are linked to my fieldwork. For example, I downloaded and saved public rec­ords associated with the formation and approval of an urban agriculture zoning ordinance, Article 89, in Boston; ­t hese included transcripts from several years of working group meetings, and from twelve neighborhood meetings, many of which I also observed firsthand. Similarly, during the development of the Mas­sa­chu­setts Local Food Action Plan, I not only attended meetings, but also gathered drafts of relevant sections of the plan, and public comments, as well as the final document.

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Throughout the text, I refer to data from my fieldwork as “Field notes,” followed by the date of the observation. I refer to data from publicly available transcripts of meetings as “Meeting Notes,” and indicate the source as well as the date; for example, the notation “BRA Meeting Notes, November 29, 2010” means that the text comes from a transcript provided by the Boston Redevelopment Authority for a meeting on that date. While I initially felt hesitant to rely on transcripts from meetings I had not observed myself, my confidence in such transcripts was enhanced greatly during the summer of 2013, when I had the opportunity to compare my field notes with the official BRA meeting transcripts. While ­there ­were details in my notes that ­were not reflected in the meeting transcripts, t­ here ­were no substantive discrepancies in our accounts of the pre­sen­ta­tions, comments, questions, and conversations that occurred therein. When I am writing from my field notes about public figures speaking in the public domain (e.g., politicians or the leaders of an urban farming organ­ization speaking at the groundbreaking of a new farm site), I refer to them by their full names. When I am writing about individuals who are not public figures speaking in the public domain, I use only their first name, if it is known to me, or describe something general about their position in the field (e.g., “a food justice advocate from Holyoke”). In all cases, my commitment has been to provide the utmost re­spect and, as requested, confidentiality to the p ­ eople whom I have met in d ­ oing this research, while making the empirical basis of my analy­sis available to readers. My approach to analyzing all of the data gathered for this proj­ect combines ele­ments of grounded theory (Charmaz 2006) and abductive analy­sis (Timmermans and Tavory 2012; Tavory and Timmermans 2014). Both methods insist that the data—­not a preexisting commitment to a specific theory—­drive the analy­sis and that the researcher should allow herself to be “surprised” by her data. One such surprise had profound implications for the organ­ization of this book. My original intention was to structure the analy­sis by comparing cities to each other. For example, one of my initial analytic hunches was that urban agriculture in rapidly gentrifying cities would be importantly dif­fer­ent from urban agriculture in per­sis­tently eco­nom­ically disadvantaged cities. However, as I analyzed my data, it became clear that using cities as my unit of analy­sis obscured ­ ese include differences differences that ­were critically impor­tant in this field. Th in the missions and methods of urban agriculture organ­izations (chapters 1 and 5), differences in the racial and ethnic backgrounds of urban farmers and gardeners (chapter 3), and differences in the histories of the neighborhoods (i.e., within cities) in which they grow food (chapter 4). Therefore, while one chapter does leverage a comparison of two cities (chapter  2), subsequent chapters shift both the focus and scale of analy­sis to maintain fidelity with the data. At the same time, organ­izing the book around dif­fer­ent kinds of narratives well reflects the centrality of stories in the daily practices of urban farmers, gardeners, and advocates.

Appendix B

;

Research and Reflexivity

A key tenet of con­temporary qualitative research is that the researcher herself—­ her identity, body, emotions—is an inextricable part of the work (Harrington 2003; Reinharz 1997). Consequently, being able to reflect on how one’s self has ­shaped the possibilities, pro­cesses, and outcomes of qualitative research has become an expected—­and sometimes intensely scrutinized—­part of methodological appendixes in books such as this one. As sociologists, we rightly tend to focus our reflexivity on where we are located vis-­à-­vis impor­tant aspects of social structure, including gender, race, socioeconomic status, age, and/or sexual identity. Our understanding of what kinds of identities ­matter has expanded in recent years; for example, “consumption identities” may be especially impor­ tant for scholars who study new social movements focused on food (Cherry, Ellis, and Desoucey 2011). This appendix provides reflections on who I was in the field. Additionally, building on the analytic focus of Back to the Roots, I suggest the importance of considering how researchers’ narratives shape our fieldwork. Urban agriculture is an arena in which a wide variety of social actors are actively grappling with legacies of in­equality and their con­temporary consequences. Especially salient in t­hese conversations and confrontations are privileges conferred by race and socioeconomic status. As I did the interviews and fieldwork that are at the heart of this proj­ect, I was often aware of the privilege that I hold by virtue of my race (white), education (postgraduate degrees in public health and sociology), and employment (tenured professor at a private university). In part, I was aware of ­these sources of privilege ­because they ­were being called out directly in discussions about who got a seat at the ­table, whose stories and visions of urban farming w ­ ere being honored, and w ­ hether and how p ­ eople ­were willing to confront racism in the food system and in our communities. In this context, being mindful of my positionality and privilege requires not only reflection, but action. Volunteering my time for urban agriculture 167

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organ­izations and generating resources (i.e., applying for both intramural and extramural grants) to do research to answer their questions (and to adequately compensate research participants) have been part of this effort. Prompted, in 2015, by a conversation with one of UFI’s board members, who critiqued an Institutional Review Board (IRB) protocol that would give me sole owner­ship of interview data, I have also committed to finding ways to make sure that the organ­izations with which I collaborate ­w ill co-­own the products of our research (Shostak, Corral, et al. 2019). The overarching goal of my current collaborative proj­ects is to lift up the expertise and insights of urban farmers, as a corrective to an audit culture that centers, rather, quantitative metrics developed far from the communities served by urban agriculture organ­izations. That said, I also have made m ­ istakes. For example, in an attempt to establish a relaxed mood during a focus group in 2015, I introduced myself using only my first name. This raised concerns for the participants in the group, mostly ­women of color, who wanted to know a lot more about me before we began—­ What is my last name? Where did I grow up? Do I have a f­ amily? What classes do I teach? I had never before been asked to offer information about myself before beginning a group interview, and this was a humbling and impor­tant experience for me. I now reflect on my failure in this interaction when I teach research methods, which I offer to students as an example of how white researchers’ attempts at “informality” evade impor­tant issues of equity.1 That morning, and always, it felt like an honor when ­people chose to engage with and trust me with their stories. Categories of gender, sexuality, and age are much less often called out in the spaces in which I did this research. Many urban agriculture organ­izations are led by ­women, as are many state and local government offices focused on food and health. However, if ­there is a gendered division in the physical ­labor of urban agriculture, I did not see it or experience it as a volunteer (though I did, very occasionally, hear female farmers express concern about their safety working a­ fter dark). The intersection of age and gender was more often commented ­ omen among the ranks upon, especially in regard to the prevalence of young w of aspiring urban farmers. This is salient especially as it contrasts with rural farming, which is dominated by older white males. Relatedly, age is invoked in regard to the perceived absence of a “next generation” ready to take on rural farms, and fears that absent clear succession planning, even more farmland ­will be lost to development. If t­ hese aspects of my identity affected how I did this work, my hunch is that the fact that at the time I was ­doing this proj­ect I was also—­like many of the ­women whom I met—­trying to balance my professional commitments with the gendered work of caregiving provided a basis for a more personal connection. Similarly, I rarely heard discussion of religion or religious differences, although many ­people speak of their connections to the earth and to farming

Appendix B

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in spiritual terms. The exception to this was at the Fowler Clark Epstein Farm, where both the history of the farm and of Mattapan directed my attention to the history of Boston’s Jewish community. As a Jew and a professor at Brandeis University, with its foundational ties to the Jewish community, I was fascinated to learn more about this history. I was grateful for the opportunity to partner with the Urban Farming Institute to do research in Mattapan, and to engage Brandeis students in this proj­ect. It also occurred to me, as I prepared a Passover seder at our home in 2018, that the experience of growing up in a culture that relies on a ritual meal to tell one of its most central stories prob­ably well prepared me for conversations with farmers and activists whose organ­izing mottos include “Our food holds our story.” Indeed, as culinary historian Michael W. Twitty observes, “In Jewish culture, much like continental African and African Diaspora cultures, food is a mnemonic device. W ­ hether it’s matzo or hoecake, our civilizations value symbolic food, and passing down food and food memories, from generation to generation” (2017, 72). While I am mindful of the power and salience of ­t hese social identities, this book points to the importance of aspects of self and culture that are not well addressed by my reflections above. Indeed, the preceding analy­sis suggests that researchers include in their reflexive practices how aspects of their experiences of time and place also shape how we choose, implement, and write up our research proj­ects. We not only “start where we are” (Lofland, et al. 2006), we also start with where, and with whom, we have been, and how we carry ­t hose places and persons with us (Halbwachs 1992). In contrast to the farmers and gardeners whose narratives I pre­sent in chapter 3, I do not have a farming lineage. I am sure that my ancestors, who lived in poverty in shtetls in the Pale of Settlement, grew vegetables and kept (kosher) livestock. However, this was not an aspect of ­family history that was ever referenced as I was growing up. Nonetheless, I see how my own experiences of ­family, food, community, and home have contributed to my interest in this proj­ect and ­shaped my experiences in the field. ­There is no question in my mind that this proj­ect emerged, in part, out of my grief at my ­mother’s death in May 2011. I had been one of my ­mother’s primary caregivers in the two and a half years before she died, including during an intense and demanding period of time when we did hospice at home for her. When she died, I strug­gled to return to my “normal” life and to a world in which she no longer existed. What brought me back to the world that first summer was cooking. In my tiny galley kitchen, I turned pounds of tomatoes into sauce, baked bread, boiled corn on the cob, peeled endless peaches for pies. Looking back, cooking—­and especially cooking with vibrantly colored fruits and vegetables—­was a way of affirming, first, that I had survived this devastating loss, and second, that ­there was still much beauty in the world. As I grieved, and ­after having spent many months at my ­mother’s bedside in vari­ous hospitals, I was

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very aware that I wanted to do research in places that felt hopeful and alive to me. Like many of the p ­ eople I met at urban farms and gardens in the subsequent years, I was looking to a par­tic­u­lar kind of “nature” as a form of healing. Still, why a proj­ect on urban farming (especially given the array of peri-­ urban and rural farms across Mas­sa­chu­setts)? I believe that the answer to this question also traces back to the months of my m ­ other’s illness, during which a friend sent me the book Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer, by Novella Carpenter. A memoir, Farm City describes Carpenter’s experiences as she gradually establishes a farm in Oakland, California, not far from where I  had lived during gradu­ate school. My friend, herself an urban beekeeper, thought I would enjoy Carpenter’s self-­effacing humor and vivid descriptions of the East Bay, and I did. Moreover, Farm City raised questions for me about who was farming in cities, and with what consequences for individuals and neighborhoods. I was especially excited about the “urban” aspect of urban agriculture. I take from my ­father’s side of the ­family a fascination with cities and neighborhoods. My grandparents, Milton and Bessie Shostak (z”l), owned a corner store in the neighborhood now called East New York. I visited the store only a few times as a child, when I was young enough to think that anyone who owned all ­t hose cans of food must be extraordinarily rich; this, of course, was not my grandparents’ real­ity (many years ­later, my ­uncle Art once told me that one of the only times he saw my grand­father cry was when he had to dump down a drain gallons of milk and ice cream that had spoiled during a power outage; it would take them months to recover the revenue lost as a consequence). I grew up hearing stories about the role of the store in the life of the neighborhood. In addition to selling groceries and sundries, the store had a deli c­ ounter, where p ­ eople from the neighborhood sometimes gathered to talk politics with my grand­ father or get medical advice from my grand­mother, who was a nurse. Long before I learned about “social networks,” “social capital,” or the importance of “third spaces” for interaction, I had images of the Neighborhood Store, as it was called, rich with ­t hese possibilities. I had planned to study cities and health when I was in gradu­ate school at UCSF. Indeed, I have vivid memories of my absolute delight as I retrieved the early works of Chicago School sociologists from the stacks in the lower levels of the UCSF library. I recall fondly a meeting with Adele Clarke to review a seminar paper I had written about differing conceptualizations of “the neighborhood” across the writings of mid-­twentieth-­century sociologists, including ­t hose by her mentor, Anselm Strauss, whom we both ­were sorry I never met. I fell in love with science studies soon thereafter, however, and focused my research in the sociology of science, technology, and medicine for over a de­cade. So, as I began considering a proj­ect about cities, ­t here was a sense of coming home to long-­ standing interests, in multiple ways.

Appendix B

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Once I was “in the field,” it was my experiences of gardening with my f­ ather, Peter Shostak (z”l), that most often came up in conversation. My parents left New York City soon ­after they married, and I grew up in the suburbs, which they preferred. My ­father proved to be a fantastic gardener and kept our summer dinner t­ able loaded with tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, lettuce, and radishes. In addition to helping my f­ather in his huge vegetable garden, each summer I was given my own small plot and freedom to grow what­ever I wished; usually, I planted sunflowers. Nonetheless, I had enough experience from planting, weeding, and harvesting with my f­ ather to be a somewhat competent volunteer when I showed up at vari­ous urban farms across Mas­sa­chu­setts; I was pleasantly surprised at the “muscle memory” that took over when it was time to plant. This meant also that I was able to participate in the frequent storytelling that took place in the fields, as farmers and volunteers alike shared their prior experiences of growing food. Despite my f­ather’s mentoring, I am a decidedly mediocre gardener. Nonetheless, I have seen firsthand how gardening can provide the scaffolding for bridges between p ­ eople. The first summer a­fter I moved in with my then-­ boyfriend-­now-­husband, Matt Glaser, in Somerville, one of our neighbors, Rick, gifted me ten tomato seedlings, with the name of each variety carefully marked on a Popsicle stick rising up from its small container. Throughout the summer, Rick and I compared notes on our plants (his thrived, mine strug­gled valiantly) and talked about what we ­were cooking with our tomatoes. I learned from Rick and his wife Donna about the informal neighborhood farm that once spanned an area, just across from both of our h ­ ouses, that now contains three condos and a parking lot. Together, they helped me feel connected to this new place that was becoming my home. A few summers ­later, my step-­daughter, Kauany, then just ten years old, came to visit us from Brazil. At that time, Kauany spoke only Portuguese, and my one semester of Portuguese class was proving wholly insufficient to the occasion. Somehow, one day, I managed to convey that she was welcome to pick any tomato that was red (roja!), and this piqued her interest in the plants growing in our backyard. E ­ very morning thereafter, Kauany took me by the hand out to the garden to investigate ­whether ­t here ­were red tomatoes waiting for us to pick. She ate them, with salt, for breakfast (and through the day), which made me deeply happy. Likewise, I was thrilled, two years l­ater, when she sent me a picture of the cherry tomatoes she had grown in pots on her back porch—­a part of her new home, in a suburb of Chicago. Indeed, the meaning of place, including the meaning of “home,” is unquestionably part of what brought me to this proj­ect. I grew up in California, and my sense of place is deeply rooted in the colors, sounds, seasons (or relative lack thereof), and year-­round agricultural offerings of the San Francisco Bay Area. Orienting to the East Coast—­w ith its dense cities, intense seasons, and beloved

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and highly specific local foodways—­has been a challenge for me. I have been drawn to farms as a way of understanding the place that has slowly become my home. I am grateful to my friend Wendy, who first took me to Waltham Fields Community Farm; I still remember how relieved I felt, out in the fields picking green beans, to have found a place where I could learn the seasons, having arrived in Mas­sa­chu­setts just a few weeks ­earlier. Though I may never fully adjust to winter, I have slowly oriented to the rhythm of agricultural life in Mas­sa­chu­setts and now revel in not only the patterning of produce across the spring and summer (maple, garlic, greens, zucchini, tomatoes, potatoes, winter squash), but the won­ders of apples (and all one can bake with apples) in the fall. This proj­ect, with its focus on farms in cities across the commonwealth, is in a real way an expression of my desire to learn even more about my a­ dopted home state; it is no accident that I began it in earnest just a­ fter I earned tenure at Brandeis. While the design of the proj­ect was driven by my research questions, my joy in ­doing the research came also from the opportunity to learn so much more about Mas­sa­chu­setts and its cities, past and pre­sent. As part of this exploration, I have met many ­people for whom I have tremendous re­spect and affection. Consequently, another part of my reflexivity has concerned my personal connections to my research participants, especially as some have become close colleagues and dear friends. One way that I have noted this was in my reflections on my participation in the annual Mas­sa­chu­setts Urban Farming Conference. When I first attended the conference in March 2014, I knew no one. In 2015, I noticed both that I knew many p ­ eople at the conference and that I received quite a few hugs when I arrived. At the 2016 conference, I was a presenter on a panel about urban agriculture and public health. In two years, I had traversed the continuum of participant observation, beginning as a fairly removed observer and then becoming an active participant (though as soon as my session was over I went back to taking field notes). Certainly, t­here are other places I see the consequences of t­hese relationships as well. I have invited urban farming colleagues to Brandeis, where they have given power­ful guest lectures to several of my classes. As noted above, I have undertaken collaborations with several urban agriculture organ­izations. I have ongoing collaborations on issues of metrics and mea­sure­ment that ­w ill extend well past the publication date for this book. Practically, this means that I have never fully “left the field” and that the boundary between my field sites and my professional and personal life is not as clear as it was when I began this work. On the ­whole, I believe that ­these relationships strengthen this proj­ect. Importantly, as a consequence, the analy­sis presented h ­ ere is informed by ongoing conversations, rather than relying entirely on one-­off interviews between strangers. Similarly, I have been able to visit many urban farms and gardens multiple times over the past years, watching them grow over successive seasons. Moreover, having sustained rela-

Appendix B

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tionships with urban farmers and advocates meant that I was able to ask for their comments on the penultimate draft of the manuscript; ­every chapter of this book was significantly improved by the expertise and insights of individuals whom I met while conducting this research. Relatedly, as I recognize the many profound contributions that the staff and leadership of UFI made to this proj­ect, I ­will be sharing with UFI the royalties from Back to the Roots. Together, ­these reflections point to the importance of practices that allow researchers to be reflexive about our relationships to our proj­ects. ­These include practices that orient to rigor, such as study design, questionnaire construction, coding, memo-­writing, and engaging both academic and research participants in reviews of our analyses. They also include practices of reflection, such as writing notes on interviews, including oneself in field notes, and an ongoing commitment to theorizing the multiple dimensions of one’s positionality and privilege. Lastly, such practices ­will undoubtedly be enhanced through open dialogues, both “in the field” and in our writings, about the array of identities, experiences, and narratives that are an intrinsic part of our work as researchers.

Acknowl­edgments

I have learned so much in the pro­cess of ­doing this research, and I am deeply grateful to every­one who has been part of this proj­ect. My thanks, first and foremost, to the many ­people who participated in interviews (sometimes more than once), welcomed me into meetings and working groups, let me dig and plant and harvest, shared stories and ­recipes, and served as brilliant interlocutors throughout. And a special thanks to Ruth Goldman, who almost immediately became a mentor and has opened so many doors (and gates) for me. Being able to partner with urban agriculture organ­izations to answer some of their questions has been a gift. For their willingness to trust me with early collaborative proj­ects (2013–2016), I am profoundly grateful to Groundwork Somerville and Shape Up Somerville, The Food Proj­ect (especially J. Harrison, Sutton Kiplinger, John Wang, and Cindy Davenport), and the Urban Farming Institute of Boston (especially Patricia Spence and Barbara Knecht). I thank Lisa Berkman, who helped to envision the collaboration with The Food Proj­ect, and Norris Guscott, whose passion for community-­based research (and knowledge about how to grow garlic) was essential its success. My thanks also to the students in the 2016 capstone class on Neighborhoods and Health for their research on food, health, and community in Mattapan. ­ ere drew to a close, another set of proj­ects was As the research presented h beginning to emerge. The collaborative work on missions and metrics I have begun with urban agriculture groups across the Commonwealth of Mas­sa­chu­ setts is a source of inspiration (and, again, so much learning) for me. My thanks first to the advisory committee that lifted up revisioning evaluation as a priority in the field: Ibrahim Ali, Casey Burns, Jessica Del Rosario, Neftali Duran, J. Harrison, Winton Pitcoff, Jennifer Rushlow, Lydia Sisson, and Pat Spence. And then, much appreciation to the Urban Farming Institute of Boston (especially Pat Spence, Linda Palmer, Nataka Crayton, and Barbara Knecht), Gardening the 175

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Community (especially Ibrahim Ali and Anne Richmond), and the Urban Agriculture Co­ali­tion (especially Elizabeth Wills-­Ogilvie and Lydia Sisson) for collaborating with Catherine Sands and me to design new ways forward. The Merck ­Family Fund is generously supporting this work, for which I am grateful. I have received so much from Brandeis University. To begin, I am grateful for funding from the Theodore and Jane Norman Fund for Faculty Research, a Provost Research Award, and a Teaching Innovations Grant. I thank Susan Birren, Dorothy Hodgson, and Lisa Lynch for their steadfast support of my research, teaching, and leadership. I thank Rich Levitt for supporting faculty research on environmental issues, and Lucas Malo for all he does to build bridges between the university and community-­based organ­izations. I could not have asked for better guides to the history of Jewish Boston than Jonathan Sarna and Ellen Smith, whom I thank for sharing with me their time and expertise (and a few other­w ise hard to find DVDs). Indeed, I am grateful to my students and colleagues across the university, and especially in the Department of Sociology and the Health: Science, Society and Policy Program, for their support, encouragement, and many helpful suggestions. My heartfelt thanks to Tamar Harrison for her brilliant research assistance. The Department of Sociology at Harvard University hosted me during a wonderful sabbatical semester in 2015; I am grateful to Jason Beckfield and Mary ­Waters for the generous invitation that made this pos­si­ble. I was fortunate to receive invitations to pre­sent papers from this proj­ect at Northeastern University’s Feeding the City Conference, the Mas­sa­chu­setts Urban Farming Conference, the Bridging the Two Cultures Seminar at Brandeis University, the Urban In­equality Workshop at Boston University, the Tufts University Department of Sociology, the Rutgers University Department of Sociology and Institute for Health, Health Care Policy, and Aging Research, the American So­cio­log­i­cal Association Annual Meeting, the Boston Gardeners’ Gathering, and the Social Science Environmental Health Research Institute at Northeastern University. I appreciate the excellent questions and suggestions that I received at each of ­these talks. My colleagues and friends contributed to this proj­ect in a myriad of ways. For insightful conversations—­most often during long walks or ­great meals—­ and for links to impor­tant sources, I thank Aja Antoine, Peter Bearman, Jason Beckfield, Susan Bell, Rina Bliss, Camie Bontaites, Phil Brown, Wendy Cadge, Sarah Calvo, Jeremy Cantor, Chip Clark, Adele Clarke, Cindy Colen, Jeremy Freese, Kim Godsoe, Carrie Graham, Leslie Kantor, Joanna Kempner, Rachel Kimerling, Seth Kleinman, Rebecca Lave, Mercedes Lyson, Heather Macdonald, Molly Martin, Sabrina McCormick, Debra Minkoff, Margot Moinester, Dan Navon, Andy Perrin, Brea Perry, Rebeca Plank, Jennifer Reich, Laura Senier, Janet Shim, Art Shostak, Veena Siddharth, Kristen Springer, Stefan Timmermans, Cat Turco, Jocelyn Viterna, and Sara Wylie. I have been lucky and grateful to participate in spring writing retreats in Truro with Sarah Lamb,

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Elizabeth Ferry, and Janet McIntosh. I offer much gratitude to my writing group—­Debbie Becher, Japonica Brown-­Saracino, and Leslie Hinkson—­for critiquing and cheering, in perfect mea­sure, each and ­every chapter. Likewise, I am deeply grateful to J. Harrison, Tristram Keefe, Barbara Knecht, Linda Palmer, Lydia Sisson, Pat Spence, and Elizabeth Wills-­O’Gilvie, who read chapters for me, and Ruth Goldman, who gave me comments on the entire manuscript, thereby enhancing the integrity and the relevance of the work. I thank Adam DeTour and Maureen White for generously granting me permission to include their extraordinary photo­graphs of urban farms and farmers. I am grateful to Jen Bloomer of Radici Studios and Groundwork Somerville1 for the power­ful image on the front cover. The Green Team, Groundwork Somerville’s youth employment program, designed this logo with Radici Studios and Jen Bloomer to represent the World Crops Proj­ect, through which they engage mentor farmers from the community to teach young ­people how to grow nutritious, culturally relevant food. I came to the Rutgers University Press seeking an intellectually engaged editorial pro­cess and am grateful for the experience. I thank Micah Kleit for his early enthusiasm for the proj­ect and for obtaining incisive reviews that helped guide the development of the manuscript ever since. Scott Frickel read a complete draft of the manuscript and provided detailed suggestions that deepened the analy­sis; perhaps the best way to express my gratitude to Scott is to note that it took me almost a year to make the revisions that he proposed, and I am glad for ­every moment I spent ­doing so. I’m grateful to Peter Mickulas for his thoughtful stewardship of the Nature, Society, and Culture series. I thank Elisabeth Maselli for being incredibly patient with my many questions and for skillfully moving the book into production. Daryl Brower and Gregory Hyman made the final product beautiful, and Amron Gravett did a fantastic job crafting the index. My thanks to you all for being my university press dream team. For teaching me how to garden, I thank my ­father, Peter Shostak, of blessed memory. For teaching me to find joy amidst mixing bowls and mea­sur­ing cups, I thank my ­mother, Myra Shostak, of blessed memory. For reminding me why we plant trees (see Talmud Bavli, Ta’anit 23a), I thank Arabella and Jackson Beckfield and Kauany Costa Penna. For making the best cups of tea and being the love of my life, I thank my husband, Matt Glaser. This one is for you, sweetheart.

Notes

introduction 1. ​Boston city workers first cleared the land and cleaned out the buildings in 2013. 2​.­ ​http://­historicboston​.­org​/­fowler​-­clark​-­epstein​-­farm​-­is​-­open​/­, accessed July 20, 2018. See also https://­w ww​.­baystatebanner​.­com​/­2018​/­06​/­27​/­mattapan​-­urban​-­farm​-­renovation​ -­complete​/­, accessed July  20, 2018, and http://­w ww​.­edibleboston​.­com​/­blog​/­2019​/­6​/­25​/­a​ -­farm​-­g rows​-­i n​-­mattapan​-­t he​-­u rban​-­farming​-­i nstitute​-­at​-­fowler​-­clark​-­epstein​-­farm, accessed July 24, 2019. 3. ​The Boston Landmarks Commission report notes that a 1977 survey of the neighborhood suggested that Norfolk Street, where the FCE Farm is located, was “an early road following the path of a Native American trail” (Boston Landmarks Commission 2005, 18). Even so, the absence of rec­ords of indigenous ­peoples’ relationship to the land is a resounding silence, which Pat Spence, the director of the UFI, is committed to redressing (Field notes, December 19, 2017). 4. ​Frickel and Elliott (2018) document the ways that such histories are lost—­t hough also still recoverable. 5. ​As detailed in a l­ater section of the report, the site is impor­tant to the study of “Boston’s development, and by extension to the development of the Commonwealth and the New ­England region, including its settlement patterns, architectural influences, and agricultural practices” (Boston Landmarks Commission 2005, 20). 6​.­ ​https://­h istoricboston​.­org​/­mattapans​-­fowler​-­c lark​-­e pstein​-­f arm​-­l isted​-­on​-­t he​ -­national​-­register​-­of​-­historic​-­places​/­, accessed April 29, 2020. 7. ​In 2019, the Mas­sa­chu­setts Historical Commission presented HBI, UFI, and their partners with an award for “the rehabilitation and restoration of the historic Fowler-­Clark-­ Epstein Farm, the only existing farm in Boston . . . ​truly a success story.” https://­w ww​.­sec​ .­state​.­ma​.­us​/­mhc​/­mhcpdf​/­pressreleases​/­2019​-­06​-­18​-­Galvin​-­Presents​-­Preservation​-­Award​ -­to​-­Fowler​-­Clark​-­Epstein​-­Park​-­Mattapan​.­pdf, accessed July 24, 2019. 8. ​Epstein’s salvage business was “heavi­ly criticized by ­t hose interested in preservation and by the more traditional antique businesses.” https://­historicboston​.­org​/­the​ -­epstein​-­legacy​-­at​-­fowler​-­clark​-­farm​/­, accessed March 25, 2020.

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9. ​A U.S. Senate subcommittee that came to Boston to investigate what had gone wrong concluded that instead of promoting home owner­ship, BBURG had effectively created a “ghetto enlargement” program (Vrable 2014, 99). 10. ​Ida Epstein died in 2010. 11. ​Reportedly, the Epsteins had been offered $1 million for the property by a developer who planned to raze the farm­house and stable to make room for town­houses (Clark 2015). 12​.­ ​https://­w ww​.­dotnews​.­com​/­2013​/­city​-­defends​-­taking​-­mattapan​-­farm, accessed March 26, 2020. 13​.­ ​https://­s avingplaces​.­org ​/­s tories​/­a​-­revitalized​-­h istoric​-­f arm​-­t hrives​-­i n​-­one​-­of​ -­bostons​-­oldest​-­neighborhoods, accessed March 26, 2020. 14​.­ ​https://­w ww​.­b ostonglobe​.­c om​/­metro​/­2 018​/­07​/­05​/­s eeds​-­p ast​-­g row​-­i nto​-­f arm​ -­f uture​/­g XNfZSrK1yAbTZODUYywqO​/­story​.­html, accessed July 6, 2018. 15. ​In 2017, the median ­house­hold income in Mattapan was $43,500, and the neighborhood’s poverty rate was 31.2 ­percent. https://­statisticalatlas​.­com​/­place​/­Massachusetts​ /­Boston accessed March 20, 2018. 16. ​Mattapan’s population is 95 ­percent ­people of color, 80 ­percent of whom are African and African American. https://­statisticalatlas​.­com​/­place​/­Massachusetts​/­Boston/Race​ -­a nd-­Ethnicity#data-­map/neighborhood, accessed March 20, 2018. 17​.­ ​https://­w ww​.­mattapanfoodandfit​.­org​/­, accessed March 26, 2020. 18​.­ ​https://­w ww​.­wbur​.­org​/­news​/­2010​/­10​/­13​/­mattapan​-­and​-­the​-­media, accessed March 26, 2020. 19​.­ ​https://­w ww​.­mattapanfoodandfit​.­org​/­, accessed March 26, 2020. 20​.­ ​https://­w ww​.­b ostonglobe​.­c om​/­metro​/­2 018​/­07​/­05​/­s eeds​-­past​-­g row​-­i nto​-­f arm​ -­f uture​/­g XNfZSrK1yAbTZODUYywqO​/­story​.­html, accessed July 6, 2018. 21​.­ ​https://­w ww​.­b ostonglobe​.­c om​/­metro​/­2 018​/­07​/­05​/­s eeds​-­p ast​-­g row​-­i nto​-­f arm​ -­f uture​/­g XNfZSrK1yAbTZODUYywqO​/­story​.­html, accessed July 6, 2018. 22. ​Seven of nine of UFI’s distinguished board members are ­people of color. Five of six of UFI’s staff members are African American, all of whom live in Roxbury, Dorchester, or Mattapan. As a UFI staff member notes, “UFI’s staff and leadership do not have ‘connections’ in the community. They are the community” (personal communication, June 2020, emphasis in original). 23​.­ ​https://­urbanfarminginstitute​.­org​/­, accessed July 2, 2017. 24​.­ ​https://­urbanfarminginstitute​.­org​/­, accessed July 2, 2017. 25. ​Throughout this manuscript, I use the phrases “communities of color” and “person/people of color” to refer to African American, Asian, Ca­rib­bean, Indigenous, and Latinx communities and individuals, except when I have more specific information on their racial and/or ethnic identity. I use this phrasing primarily ­because this is what I most often heard when I was ­doing the fieldwork for this proj­ect. I also appreciate that this phrasing acknowledges and re­spects the complexity of racial and ethnic identities, which cannot be ascertained from observation (e.g., a public health professional who moved to the United States from Jamaica explained to me that she is often misperceived as being African American; however, she identifies as Black and from the Global South). 26. ​Norgaard argues powerfully that the very notion that nature is separated from culture is a “direct product of the colonial worldview” that “erases not only the presence of Indigenous ­peoples but also the ecologies within which they are embedded and, indeed, the relevance of ecol­ogy itself” (2019, 88).

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27. ​See, for example, https://­www​.­nytimes​.­com​/­2019​/­05​/­17​/­dining​/­top​-­chef​-­eric​-­adje​pong​ -­west​-­african​-­food​.­html, accessed June 10, 2019; https://­www​.­inquirer​.­com​/­news​/­our​-­mothers​ -­k itchens​-­black​-­women​-­authors​-­cooking​-­w riting​-­vertamae​-­grosvenor​-­20190603​.­html, accessed June 20, 2019. On the politics of “gastro-­diplomacy” and “culinary justice,” which activist chefs pose as alternatives to cultural appropriation, see https://­garden​warriors​goodseeds​.­com​/­, accessed July 1, 2019, and Twitty (2017, 401–416). 28. ​Twitty’s remarkable book weaves together “ele­ments of genealogical documentation, ge­ne­tic genealogy, firsthand accounts from primary courses, the most recent findings of culinary and cultural historians, and personal memoir” to create a “bric-­a-­brac mosaic that is the average African American’s experience when he or she attempts to look back to recapture our cultural and culinary identities obscured by the consequences of racial chattel slavery” (2017, 417). 29. ​Terroir was first used as a way to classify wine, emphasizing the importance of region (e.g., Champagne), as compared to grape varietal, in creating a wine’s unique taste. Over time, terroir became the basis for France’s appellation d’origine contrôlée system, which provides rules about the making and labeling of foods such as wine and cheese (Beriss 2019). Ironically, the only time I heard terroir referenced by urban farmers was when I visited Corner Stalk Farm, where greens are being grown not in soil but ­ nder LED in peat moss plugs, fed through a computer-­controlled “ponics” system u lights (see chapter 5). 30. ​As DeSoucey describes, ­these nostalgic images—­and the “terroir tourism” they support—­actually mask the real­ity of how most foie gras is produced ­today (2016, 83–84). 31. ​­There are traces of this extension in some of the popu­lar writing and scholarship about food as well. Michael Twitty, for example, notes that the transformation of vacant lots into “urban agriculture spaces” is impor­tant in neighborhoods where “fresh produce and jobs are scarce” (2017, 21). 32. ​This title was inspired first by a booth hosted by the National Park Ser­v ice at a 2014 harvest festival in Lowell that asked ­people to “draw their roots,” where “roots” could refer to their gardens, ­family histories, and/or the history of the city (see chapter 2). Likewise, it echoes “Back to Its Roots,” the title of an article about the FCE Farm published in Preservation Magazine in winter 2019. I am mindful that this title also is ­ amily. Published in 1976, reminiscent of Alex Haley’s Roots: The Saga of an American F this Pulitzer Prize–­w inning and best-­selling book was the basis for the 1977 tele­v i­sion miniseries Roots, which “started a revolution in how we access and interpret the past”: ­ iddle Passage became an urtext—or primary narrative “Haley’s account of the M source—of African diasporic reconciliation for a generation of Americans. The story provided a narrative about slavery and its afterlives on the two hundredth anniversary of a nation that had never fully acknowledged its past” (Nelson 2016, 70–71). Further, “for African Americans, deprived for centuries of their ancestral homes and families, ­ uman and civil rights . . . ​t his book . . . ​offered a enslaved and exploited, denied basic h fresh perspective on their history, community, and genealogy” (Taylor 1995, quoted in Nelson 2016, 70). In The Cooking Gene, culinary historian Michael W. Twitty explains ­ eople of that “­because of ‘Haley’s comet,’ slavery became a story to tell on the terms of p color. The dream of finding Africa and claiming a piece of it to connect to a place and a ­people became the holy grail of black genealogy” (2017, 402). In her pathbreaking account, The Social Life of DNA, Nelson describes the focal importance of Haley’s work

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for genealogists of African descent: “Many genealogists with whom I spoke—­t ypically aged 40 years or older, college educated, predominantly female—­were inspired by Haley’s example as teen­agers or young adults” (2016, 71–72). In contrast, I did not hear any direct references to Haley’s Roots in my fieldwork. That said, the multiple legacies of slavery, as well as con­temporary forms of institutionalized racism, discrimination, and disenfranchisement, are at the center of the narratives of BIPOC farmers who frame urban agriculture as both a practice of cultural reclamation and a locus for long overdue reparations (e.g., Penniman 2018; and see Nelson 2016, 110–120). 33. ​As I volunteered at vari­ous urban farming proj­ects, I also experienced this motivation, sharing in farmers’ appreciation for the opportunity to put my hands in the soil and get seedlings on their way into a summer of growing. I also enjoyed feeling more attuned to the seasons and got excited when I saw that something I had helped to plant was being harvested. I also learned, quickly, that it was much easier to get farmers to sit down for ­ ere not in the midst of Mas­sa­chu­setts’s relatively short growing interviews when they w season.

chapter 1  Cultivating the Commonwealth 1​.­ ​https://­w ww​.­boston​.­gov​/­neighborhood​/­dorchester, accessed May 30, 2017. 2​.­ ​http://­w ww​.­sportsmenstennis​.­org​/­about​/­, accessed May 30, 2017. 3. ​In 2015, City Growers was farming also on Glenway Street (see chapter 4) and Bullard Street in Dorchester and at the Shirley-­Eustis House in Roxbury. 4​.­ ​https://­citygrowers​.­wordpress​.­com​/­mission​-­v ision​/­, accessed April 20, 2015. 5​.­ ​http://­w ww​.­cityofboston​.­gov​/­news​/­default​.­aspx​?­id​= ­6446, accessed April 12, 2017. 6​.­ ​http://­w ww​.­baseball​-­a lmanac​.­com​/­teams​/­rsoxatte​.­shtml, accessed June 13, 2017. 7​.­ ​http://­w ww​.­recovergreenroofs​.­com​/­, accessed June 13, 2017. 8​.­ ​http://­g reencitygrowers​.­com​/­fenway​-­farms​/­fenway​-­farms​-­i nstallation​/­, accessed June 13, 2017. 9. ​Spring crops include arugula, broccoli, carrots, greens, herbs, radish, scallions, snap peas, and strawberries. Summer crops include beans, broccoli, cucumbers, eggplant, greens, flowers, greens, herbs, peppers, strawberries, tomatoes, and zucchini. The Green City Growers website features maps that show what is growing at Fenway Farms through the season. http://­greencitygrowers​.­com​/­fenway​-­farms​/­whats​-­growing​-­fenway​ -­farms​/­, accessed June 13, 2017. In 2016, Green City Growers also began production on the Strega Deck, a Fenway event venue that is rented out as part of ticket packages and for special events. The produce grown on the Strega Deck is donated to Lovin’ Spoonfuls, a local food rescue organ­ization. 10​.­ ​https://­w ww​.­cityofboston​.­gov​/­i mages ​_­documents​/ ­boston​-­u rban​-­ag​-­v ision​-­fi nal​ _­tcm3​-­52791​.­pdf, accessed June 13, 2017. 11​.­ ​http://­greencitygrowers​.­com​/­, accessed June 13, 2017. 12. ​Boston Properties is “one of the largest o ­ wners, man­ag­ers, and developers of first-­ class office properties in the United States, with significant presence in five markets: Boston, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and Washington, DC.” http://­w ww​ .­bostonproperties​.­com​/­, accessed June 14, 2017. 13​.­ ​https://­w ww​.­thedaviscompanies​.­com​/­property​-­management​/­, accessed June 14, 2017. 14​.­ ​http://­greencitygrowers​.­com​/­pricing​/­, accessed June 14, 2017. 15​.­ ​http://­greencitygrowers​.­com​/­urban​-­farming​-­services​/­education​/­school​-­gardens​/­, accessed June 14, 2017.

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16​.­ ​http://­g reencitygrowers​.­c om​/­u rban​-­f arming​-­s ervices​/­e ducation​/ ­businesses​/­, accessed June 14, 2017. 17​.­ ​http://­g reencitygrowers​.­c om​/­u rban​-­f arming​-­s ervices​/­e ducation​/­s enior​-­l iving​ -­healthcare​-­providers​/­, accessed June 14, 2017. 18​.­ ​http://­greencitygrowers​.­com​/­fenway​-­farms​/­fenway​-­farms​-­faq​/­, accessed June  13, 2017. 19​.­ ​https://­g reencitygrowers​.­com​/­u rban​-­farming​-­services​/­property​-­management​/­, accessed April 30, 2019. 20​.­ ​https://­w ww​.­nytimes​.­com​/­2019​/­01​/­15​/ ­business​/­office​-­buildings​-­nature​-­biophilia​ .­html, accessed April 30, 2019. 21. ​Much of this lit­er­a­ture draws from Thomas Lyson’s conceptualization of “civic agriculture” as “the emergence and growth of community-­based agriculture and food production activities that not only meet consumer demands for fresh, safe, and locally produced foods, but create jobs, encourage entrepreneurship, and strengthen community identity” (2004, 2). 22​.­ ​https://­w ww​.­iatp​.­org​/­sites​/­default​/­fi les​/­2013​_­02​_­08​_­FoodJusticePrinciples ​_­v2​_­0​ .­pdf, accessed June 10, 2018. 23. ​Della Porta and colleagues (2018) offer a wonderful comparative analy­sis of the relationships between memory and social movements more broadly. 24. ​This region is sometimes referred to as the Rust ­Belt, which has become a sort of  “epitaph for cities large and small.” http://­w ww​.­economist​.­com​/­news​/­united​-­states​ /­2 1657381​-­do​-­former​-­i ndustrial​-­c ities​-­m idwest​-­h ave​-­f uture​-­reinvention​-­r ust​-­b elt, accessed June 10, 2016. 25​.­ ​https://­massinc​.­org​/­our​-­work ​/­policy​-­center​/­gateway​-­c ities​/­about​-­t he​-­gateway​ -­cities​/­, accessed July 11, 2018. 26. ​Large and very large ­family farms produce over 63 ­percent of the value of all products sold, while nonfamily farms produce approximately 21 ­percent, and the nearly 2 million small farms and ranches (sales ­under $250,000) produce approximately 15 ­percent. https://­nifa​.­usda​.­gov​/­family​-­farms, accessed May 22, 2019. 27​.­ ​https://­w ww​.­g uernicamag​.­com​/­karen​-­washington​-­its​-­not​-­a​-­food​-­desert​-­its​-­food​ -­apartheid​/­, accessed April 18, 2019. 28​.­ ​http://­w ww​.­usda​.­gov​/­w ps​/­portal​/­usda​/­k nowyourfarmer​?­navid​=­k yf​-­urban​-­agric, accessed June 3, 2016. 29​.­ ​ http://­w ww​.­m ass​.­g ov​/­e ea​/­a gencies​/­a gr​/­u rban​-­a griculture​-­p rogram​.­h tml, accessed February 28, 2014. 30. ​Such claims contrast, for example, with advocacy for local production of food that emphasizes the importance of terroir (DeSoucey 2016; Bowen 2011). In four years ­ oing fieldwork—­planting spinach seedlings in Dorchester, attending meetings of of d the Mas­sa­chu­setts Working Group on Urban Agriculture, attending groundbreakings and harvest festivals—­I never heard anyone claim that food grown in urban areas tastes better (though certainly farmers talked about the plea­sure of eating and sharing food that they had grown). In my observations—­and as documented by research on perceptions of urban agriculture (Santo, Palmer, and Kim 2016)—­urban residents rather express concern that the pervasive contamination of urban soil in postindustrial cities ­will make urban-­grown produce less safe for consumption (see especially chapter  4). While some high-­end consumers express preference for “hyper-­local” foods—­grown in raised beds and on rooftops in their communities—­such preferences are typically

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linked to an ecological agenda rather than to the notion of “a taste of place” in which “the characteristics of specific places purportedly combine with ­human know-­how to produce inimitable flavors” (DeSoucey 2016, 29). 31​.­ ​http://­w ww​.­bostonplans​.­org ​/­planning ​/­planning​-­i nitiatives​/­u rban​-­a griculture​ -­rezoning, accessed May 17, 2018. 32​.­ ​https://­w ww​.­mass​.­gov​/­service​-­details​/­healthy​-­incentives​-­program​-­hip, accessed May 17, 2018. 33​.­ ​http://­t hefoodproject​.­org​/­dudley​-­greenhouse, accessed April 23, 2019. 34​.­ ​http://­w ww​.­highergroundrooftopfarm​.­com​/­services​.­html, accessed April 23, 2019. 35. ​As one advocate commented, “We tend to look at urban ag from [a] nonprofit perspective, benefiting communities. But now ­there are ­people who get it that this is ­going to [be] a money maker, and they want to lock this in now” (Field Notes, July 1, 2015). 36​.­ ​https://­w ww​.­freightfarms​.­com​/­media​-­k it#grow​-­food​-­anywhere, accessed April 23, 2019. 37​.­ ​https://­w ww​.­freightfarms​.­com​/­media​-­k it#all​-­systems​-­grow​-­2, accessed April  23, 2019. 38​.­ ​https://­w ww​.­freightfarms​.­com​/­home#farming​-­network, accessed April 23, 2019. 39. ​In 2018, Higher Ground Farms shifted its model to focus on growing for institutions, such as the Boston Medical Center, rather than maintaining its own farm. http://­w ww​.­highergroundrooftopfarm​.­com​/­boston​-­design​-­center​-­farm​.­html, accessed April 23, 2019. 40​.­ ​https://­montreal​.­lufa​.­com​/­en​/­farms, accessed April 23, 2019. 41​.­ ​http://­w ww​.­gothamgreens​.­com, accessed April 23, 2019. 42​.­ ​http://­w ww​.­cityfarmer​.­i nfo​/­2015​/­1 2​/­1 2​/­u sda​-­to​-­publish​-­u rban​-­farming​-­toolkit​ -­says​-­usda​-­secretary​-­tom​-­v ilsack ​/­, accessed December 12, 2015. 43​.­ ​http://­w ww​.­usda​.­gov​/­w ps​/­portal​/­usda​/­k nowyourfarmer​?­navid​=­k yf​-­urban​-­agric, accessed June 3, 2016. 44. ​See, for example: http://­ucanr​.­edu​/­sites​/­UrbanAg/ and http://­w ww​.­mass​.­gov​/­eea​ /­agencies​/­agr​/­urban​-­agriculture​-­program​.­html, accessed June 3, 2016. 45. ​Even smaller urban agriculture organ­izations have part-­time grant writers, while larger organ­izations have teams devoted to development, which often includes both cultivating private gifts and applying for grants. 46​.­ ​https://­w ww​.­harvardpilgrim​.­org ​/­public​/­about​-­u s​/­our​-­foundation​/­our​-­healthy​ -­food​-­f und, accessed May 16, 2018. 47​.­ ​http://­w ww​.­merckff​.­org​/­urbanfarmingandyouthleadership​/­, accessed May 16, 2018. 48. ​Other partners in this proj­ect include Prudential Financial, the RBH Group, and the city of Newark. http://­w ww​.­nytimes​.­com​/­2015​/­04​/­08​/­realestate​/­commercial​/­in​-­newark​ -­a​-­vertical​-­i ndoor​-­farm​-­helps​-­a nchor​-­a n​-­a reas​-­revival​.­html​?­, accessed January  12, 2016. 49​.­ ​http://­w ww​.­goldmansachs​.­c om​/­w hat​-­we​ -­d o​ /­i nvesting​ -­a nd​-­lending ​ /­i mpact​ -­investing​/­case​-­studies​/­makers​-­v illage​-­newark​.­html, accessed June 2, 2016. 50​.­ ​https://­bostonurbanag​.­wordpress​.­com​/­, accessed July 15, 2015. See chapter 5. 51. ​The USDA defines a ­family farm as “any farm or­ga­nized as a sole proprietorship, partnership, or f­ amily corporation. ­Family farms exclude farms or­ga­nized as nonfamily corporations or cooperatives, as well as farms with hired man­ag­ers.” ­These farms are

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classified as small, large, and very large based on their annual sales (i.e., not on their physical size). According to the USDA, “While a size-­based mea­sure seems intuitive, farm acreage can mean very dif­fer­ent t­ hings in dif­fer­ent places.” https://­nifa​.­usda​.­gov​ /­family​-­farms, accessed May 22, 2019. 52​.­ ​https://­w ww​.­mass​.­gov​/­files​/­documents​/­2016​/­08​/­rf​/­snapshot​-­of​-­ma​-­ag​-­presentation​ .­pdf, accessed May 22, 2019. 53​.­ ​https://­w ww​.­mass​.­gov​/­i nfo​-­details​/­a gricultural​-­resources​-­facts​-­a nd​-­statistics, accessed April 18, 2019. 54. ​The closure of over ten thousand dairy farms across New ­England over the past fifty years, and the difficulties facing Mas­sa­chu­setts’s 142 remaining dairy farmers are a par­tic­ u­lar concern of local food and farming advocates. Mas­sa­chu­setts dairy farms steward 18 ­percent of all agricultural land in the state and account for 14 ­percent of the region’s farm product sales. https://­w ww​.­buylocalfood​.­org​/­localdairy​/­, accessed May 22, 2019. 55​.­ ​https://­w ww​.­f armlandinfo​.­org ​/­sites​/­default​/­f iles​/­A FT​_ ­Farms ​_­Under​_­T hreat​ _­May2018%20maps%20B​_­0​.­pdf, accessed May 22, 2019. 56​.­ ​https://­civileats​.­com​/­2018​/­06​/­04​/­a​-­reparations​-­map​-­for​-­farmers​-­may​-­help​-­r ight​ -­historical​-­w rongs​/­, accessed May 22, 2019. 57​.­ ​https://­bfnmass​.­org​/­resources​/­emasscraft​-­collaborative​-­regional​-­a lliance​-­farmer​ -­training, accessed April 23, 2019. 58​ . ­ ​https://­w ww​.­wcvb​ .­c om​ /­a rticle​ /­c ommercial​ -­f arming​ -­s tarts​ -­t o​ -­t ake​ -­r oot​ -­i n​ -­boston​/­10217137, accessed April 24, 2019. 59​ .­ ​https://­m apublichealth​.­org​/­2 017​/­04​/­2 8​/­2​ -­8​-­m illion​-­residents​ -­l ack​-­a dequate​ -­access​-­to​-­healthy​-­food​-­endure​-­economic​-­burden​/­, accessed April 1, 2018. 60. ​For ­house­holds of one or two persons, the cap is $40; for ­house­holds of three to five persons, the cap is $60; for ­house­holds of six or more persons, the cap is $80. https://­ www​.­mass​.­gov​/­healthy​-­incentives​-­program​-­hip, accessed May 22, 2019. 61​.­ ​https://­mafoodsystem​.­org​/­media​/­projects​/­pdfs​/­HIPfactsheet​.­pdf, accessed May 22, 2019. 62. ​Of course, this division precedes the rise of American cities (R. Williams 1973). Aesop’s fables include a tale of “the town mouse and the country mouse,” which depicts the former as possessed of “luxuries and dainties” while the latter enjoys “plain food and ­simple life in the country with the peace and security that go with it.” http://­w ww​ .­read​.­gov​/­aesop​/­004​.­html, accessed May 22, 2019. 63. ​As Cronon notes in a ­later work, “The dream of an unworked natu­ral landscape is very much the fantasy of ­people who have never themselves had to work the land to make a living—­urban folk for whom food comes from a supermarket or a restaurant instead of a field, and for whom the wooden ­houses in which they live and work apparently have no meaningful connection to the forests in which trees grow and die” (Cronon 1996, 16–17). 64. ​Similarly, Lawson observes, “It is common to see farming imagery in urban gardens—­scarecrows, hay bales, gazebos, and so forth” (2005, 290). 65. ​As Kojola (2019) describes, rural spaces are often i­ magined as white (see also Agyeman and Spooner 1997; Holloway 2007). Celebrated musician, composer, and MacArthur Fellow Rhiannon Giddens has been among ­t hose at the forefront of efforts to challenge popu­lar assumptions about bluegrass and country ­music and whiteness; see, for example, https://­w ww​.­economist​.­com​/­prospero​/­2020​/­02​/­06​/­rhiannon​-­g iddenss​-­music​-­starts​ -­conversations​-­about​-­race​-­and​-­culture, accessed June 3, 2020.

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chapter 2  The Powers of Food 1​ . ­ ​https://­w ww​ .­b oston​ .­c om​ /­n ews​ /­b usiness​ /­2 012​ /­0 7​ /­19​ /­a ssembly​ -­s quares​ -­f ord​ -­factory, accessed July 11, 2018. 2​.­ ​http://­w ww​.­millcitygrows​.­org​/­, accessed July 10, 2018. 3. ​The first round of awards went to proj­ects in Everett, Lawrence, Lowell, Springfield, and Worcester, all Gateway Cities, as well as proj­ects in Boston neighborhoods (see chapter 4). Somerville, technically not a Gateway City, though it shares many ele­ ments thereof, was also a 2014 recipient. In subsequent rounds of funding, both t­ hese and other Gateway Cities have received awards. 4. ​Specifically, Gateway Cities are defined as municipalities with populations greater than 35,000 and less than 250,000, in which the median ­house­hold income and rates of educational attainment (of a bachelor’s degree or above) are below the state average (M.G.L. c. 23A section  3A). https://­massinc​.­org​/­our​-­work​/­policy​-­center​/­gateway​-­cities​ /­about​-­t he​-­gateway​-­cities​/­, accessed July 11, 2018. 5. ​https://­massinc​.­org ​/­our​-­work ​/­p olicy​-­c enter​/­gateway​-­c ities​/­a bout​-­t he​-­gateway​ -­cities​/­, accessed July 11, 2018 (emphasis added). 6. ​Although I focus ­here on Somerville and Lowell, the role of urban agriculture in changing the reputation of postindustrial urban cities was a theme across the commonwealth. As just one other example, in Lawrence, an urban farming advocate spoke directly to the city’s “negative” reputation, pointing to a Boston Magazine article titled “City of the Damned” that opened with the following sentence: “Crime is soaring, schools are failing, government has lost control, and Lawrence, the most godforsaken place in Mas­sa­chu­setts, has never been in worse shape” (https://­w ww​.­bostonmagazine​.­com​ /­2012​/­02​/­28​/­city​-­of​-­t he​-­damned​-­lawrence​-­massachusetts​/­, accessed April 2015). As she commented, “I mean, if you read anything about Lawrence in the past, five, seven years, and ­you’re outside of the city, it’s always negative, right?” (Interview 31). ­People inside the city also are well aware of its negative reputation. “Many ­people see Lawrence as a bad place,” commented a young man involved in Groundwork Lawrence’s urban greening program for youth, “but it’s not.” As he told the audience at the 2016 Urban Farming Conference, he got involved in urban agriculture as a way “to show ­people that we can become leaders and mentors” (Field notes, UFC 2016). 7. ​As Greenberg (2008) demonstrates, “authenticity” is an essential component of con­ temporary urban branding strategies (see also Brown-­Saracino 2006; Gotham 2007) In his study of Chicago’s blues clubs, sociologist David Grazian provides a compelling description of the cultural production of authenticity (2003). Johnston and Baumann’s analy­sis of foodie culture includes a wonderful overview the multiple rationales for “au­t hen­tic” cuisine, including history (2015, 61–85). 8​.­ ​https://­commonwealthmagazine​.­org​/­economy​/­gateway​-­cities​-­discover​-­t he​-­power​ -­of​-­food​/­, accessed July 11, 2018. 9​ . ­ ​https://­c ommonwealthmagazine​ .­org​ /­e conomy​ /­w here​ -­t he​ -­food​ -­d eserts​ -­a re​ /­, accessed April 4, 2018. 10​.­ ​https://­w ww​.­sweetwaterfoundation​.­com​/­, accessed March 19, 2018. 11​ . ­ ​https://­w orldpopulationreview​ .­c om​ /­u s​ -­c ities​ /­s omerville​ -­m a​ -­p opulation​ /­, accessed June 4, 2020. 12​ . ­ ​https://­w ww​.­c ensus​ .­gov​ /­q uickfacts​ /­f act​ /­t able​ /­s omervillecitymassachusetts​ /­PST045217, accessed July 16, 2018. For a history of settlement and population trends, see

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http://­w ww​.­somervillema​.­gov​/­sites​/­default​/­fi les​/­CompPLan​/­Population%20Trends%20 Report%205​-­19​_­Final1​.­pdf. 13​.­ ​http://­w ww​.­massbenchmarks​.­org​/­publications​/­issues​/­vol17i1​/­5​.­pdf, accessed July 13, 2018. 14. ​The attempt of a Somerville-­based brewery to reclaim this moniker initially was contested. http://­w ww​.­slumbrew​.­com​/­, accessed July 12, 2018. 15​.­ ​https://­w ww​.­b ostonmagazine​.­com​/­news​/­2 014​/­1 1​/­25​/­s omerville​-­v ideo​-­harvard​ -­kennedy​-­school​/­, accessed July 11, 2018. This article was controversial in Somerville, in ­ ecause it attributed the city’s success to a collaboration with faculty and students part b at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, ignoring both the community-­ based organ­izations d ­ oing work to revitalize the city and the perceived cost to long-­ term residents who increasingly find the city unfamiliar and unaffordable. 16​.­ ​https://­w ww​.­nytimes​.­com​/­2014​/­10​/­05​/­t ravel​/­out​-­of​-­t he​-­shadow​-­of​-­boston​-­a nd​ -­cambridge​.­html, accessed July 11, 2018. Emphasis added. 17​.­ ​https://­w ww​.­somervillema​.­gov​/­departments​/­health​-­a nd​-­human​-­services​/­shape​ -­up​-­somerville, accessed July 13, 2018. 18. ​Of course, city newspapers themselves are known to play an impor­tant role in boosterism and placemaking. https://­w ww​.­bostonglobe​.­com​/­lifestyle​/­style​/­2014​/­10​/­16​ /­boston​-­area​-­communities​-­v ie​-­next​-­somerville​/­j56PBWBoCNvX0bpUDmgw1M​/­story​ .­html, accessed October 16, 2014. 19. ​The Environmental Protection Agency defines brownfields as “real properties, the expansion, redevelopment, or reuse of which may be complicated by the presence or potential presence of a hazardous substance, pollutant, or contaminant.” https://­ www​.­epa​.­gov​/­brownfields​/­overview​-­epas​-­brownfields​-­program, accessed May  23, 2019. According to the Mas­sa­chu­setts Department of Environmental Protection, t­here are 542 known brownfield sites in Somerville; of ­t hese, 118 are open sites, meaning that they have not yet been thoroughly assessed or remediated. https://­w ww​.­somervillema​.­gov​ /­n ews​ /­e pa​ -­g rant​ -­b oosts​ -­a vailable​ -­f unding​ -­b rownfield​ -­a ssessment​ -­a nd​ -­c leanup​ -­somerville, accessed May 28, 2019. 20​.­ ​https://­a rchive​.­epa​.­gov​/­region1​/­brownfields​/­web​/­pdf​/­somerville​_­ma ​_­121107​.­pdf, accessed May 28, 2019. 21​.­ ​https://­w ww​.­s omervillema​.­gov​/­sites​/­default​/­f iles​/­a bc​-­u rban​-­a griculture​.­p df, accessed May 28, 2019. 22​.­ ​http://­w ww​.­somervillema​.­gov​/­sites​/­default​/­fi les​/ ­boh​-­u rban​-­agriculture​-­policy​ -­regulations​.­pdf, accessed May 28, 2019. 23. ​Between 2003 and 2013, the median price for a single-­family ­house in Somerville ­rose from $125,500 to $544,350. https://­w ww​.­bostonglobe​.­com​/­lifestyle​/­style​/­2014​/­10​/­16​ /­boston​-­area​-­communities​-­v ie​-­next​-­somerville​/­j56PBWBoCNvX0bpUDmgw1M​/­story​ .­html, accessed July 16, 2018. 24. ​At an event on the history of agriculture in Somerville, Vilma ­Sullivan—an avid gardener and amateur historian—­began her pre­sen­ta­tion by noting that while it is “difficult to believe” that Somerville was “once a quiet area of farmland,” in fact, “the crowded place we live in ­today . . . ​t his densely populated city was bucolic farmland.” To help us envision this bucolic moment past, ­Sullivan distributed a map that showed the “rangeways” that connected farms to major roads in the late 1600s; rangeways ­were spaced out about ­every quarter mile, ­running north-­south through the city. As the map made clear, rangeways ­were the pre­de­ces­sors of the main streets that currently run

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north-­south through the city. As with other participants, I noted the street that I drive on each day to get to my h ­ ouse. Attendees also received copies of the agriculture listings from the 1850 census, showing the value of farms in Somerville (ranging from $4,000 to $80,000), the animals being raised (swine, sheep, ­horses, milch cows [sic], oxen, and other ­cattle), and the crops being grown (rye, Indian corn, barley, hay, potatoes, and other orchard and garden products). ­Sullivan’s slides included pictures of farm­houses that still exist in Somerville. Her conclusion was that “farming has never completely dis­appeared from Somerville,” as ­there are traces of farming throughout the city—­ including the city’s “new ordinance,” which means “we can have chickens! Right ­here!” (Field notes, May 15, 2015). 25​.­ ​http://­s omervilleurbanag​.­t umblr​.­c om​/­p ost​/­38968438533​/­heres​-­s omething​-­to​ -­warm​-­your​-­heart​-­on​-­a​-­cold, accessed July 20, 2016. 26. ​Guy Amara passed away in 2018. See https://­somervilleurbanag​.­tumblr​.­com​/­post​ /­170659041613​/­live​-­every​-­day​-­g uy​-­a mara​-­somervilles​-­tomato, accessed May 23, 2019. 27​.­ ​http://­a rchive​.­boston​.­com​/­yourtown​/­somerville​/­a rticles​/­2012​/­07​/­29​/­somervilles​ _­tomato​_ ­g uy​_ ­shares​_­t he​_­bounty​/­, accessed July 20, 2016. 28. ​The Liaison Interpreter Program of Somerville (LIPS) is a program for youth or­ga­nized by the Welcome Proj­ect. LIPS “provides opportunities for bilingual high school students to learn language interpretation skills and to practice ­those skills at community meetings and events throughout the city.” http://­w ww​.­welcomeproject​.­org​ /­content​/­liaison​-­interpreters​-­program​-­somerville​-­lips, accessed February 25, 2015. 29. ​The Mystic Housing Development includes a 240-­unit state ­family housing development, the Mystic River Development, and a 215-­unit federal ­family housing development, the Mystic View. In 2012, 62 ­percent of families at the Mystic Housing Development earned less than $20,000 per year (less than half of the median ­house­hold income of the ­ ouse­hold census tract in which it is located, and less than one-­third of the city’s median h income), and 78 ­percent of residents of the Mystic ­were ­people of color. 30. ​Conflicts about aesthetic issues have been documented also in more recent studies of power and in­equality in community gardens (Aptekar 2015). 31. ​At about the same time, another visitor noted that “plot fences are made from ­every material—­bright orange snow fencing, chicken coop wire, white metal shoe trees, plywood, rusty mattress springs, weathered wood, picket fence staves painted yellow with folksy vines and flowers, a brown knobbed baby crib, blue industrial pipes, wrought iron porch railings, white plastic plumbing piping” (SAC 1999, 75). 32​.­ ​http://­w ww​.­groundworksomerville​.­org​/­programs​/­food​-­a nd​-­farms​/­world​-­crops​/­, accessed April 5, 2017. 33​.­ ​http://­w ww​.­groundworksomerville​.­org​/­programs​/­food​-­a nd​-­farms​/­world​-­crops​/­, accessed April 5, 2017. 34​.­ ​https://­w ww​.­nps​.­gov​/­lowe​/­learn​/­photosmultimedia​/­i mmigrant​_­communities​ .­htm, accessed October 11, 2016. 35​.­ ​http://­library​.­uml​.­edu​/­clh​/­OH​/­ETHNO​/­Ethnicity%20in%20Lowell​.­pdf, accessed July 16, 2018. 36​.­ ​http://­library​.­uml​.­edu​/­clh​/­OH​/­ETHNO​/­Ethnicity%20in%20Lowell​.­pdf, accessed October 11, 2016. 37​.­ ​http://­a rchive​.­b oston​.­c om​/­news​/­e ducation​/­h igher​/­a rticles​/­2 007​/­0 9​/­0 9​/­w hat​ _­renaissance​/­, accessed July 17, 2018. Stanton (2006) provides a compelling account of the tensions embedded in this strategy.

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38. ​Private developers promulgate their own mottos. For example, “Mills to Martinis” was the tag­line for a condo complex in downtown Lowell. http://­archive​.­boston​ .­com​/­news​/­education​/­higher​/­articles​/­2007​/­09​/­09​/­what​_­renaissance​/­, accessed July  17, 2018. 39​.­ ​http://­w ww​.­likelowell​.­com​/­cultural​-­heritage​/­, accessed July 16, 2018. 40​.­ ​https://­w ww​.­census​.­gov​/­quickfacts​/­fact​/­table​/­lowellcitymassachusetts​/­IPE120216, accessed July 16, 2018. 41. ​http://­a rchive​.­boston​.­com​/­news​/­education​/­h igher​/­a rticles​/­2007​/­09​/­09​/­what ​_­re​ naissance​/­, accessed July 17, 2018. 42. ​I learn l­ ater that one of the city’s guidelines for community gardens in Lowell is that “garden-­quality soil must be purchased and brought into the garden. The City reserves the right to request proof of sale. Gardeners are forbidden from planting edible produce within soil that is currently on site.” https://­w ww​.­lowellma​.­gov​/­DocumentCenter​/­View​ /­1531​/­Garden​-­Guidelines​-­and​-­Release​-­Form​-­PDF, accessed July 17, 2018. 43. ​This was also a power­f ul theme in a focus group that we conducted with community gardeners in nearby Lynn, Mas­s a­chu­setts, many of whom had recently emigrated from countries in western Africa. For example, one gardener commented (via a translator) that “he thought when he came to Amer­i­c a he would never eat the food he left back ­behind . . . ​[then] but he heard [about] the garden [where] ­we’re growing some vegetables from our countries and he ­really appreciate[s] ­t hose meals that [we] had together.” Another stated, “We grew up in the farm. We ­c an’t survive without that. No ­matter where we go, we need that, it’s like our culture” (see Shostak and Guscott 2017). 44. ​By 2017, MCG was growing on five acres across the city (Interview 02). 45​.­ ​http://­w ww​.­millcitygrows​.­org​/­mill​-­city​-­grows​-­markets​/­, accessed July 17, 2018. 46​ .­ ​https://­w ww​.­b ostonglobe​ .­c om​ /­metro​ /­2 017​ /­0 9​ /­05​ /­lowell​ -­c rossroads​ /­C C8x18​ fTTIQE8J3DcHasZO​/­story​.­html, accessed July 16, 2018.

chapter 3  Lineages and Land 1. ​The article also mentioned a nonprofit educational organ­ization working in the Cambridge Public Schools, City Sprouts, which aims to address “an im­mense need for ­children to understand where their food was coming from.” https://­w ww​.­t heguardian​ .­c om​ /­s ustainable​-­business​/­2 017​/­a pr​/­16​ / ­b oston​-­organic​-­food​-­f arming​-­a griculture​ -­startups, accessed April 18, 2017. 2​.­ ​https://­w ww​.­t heguardian​.­com​/­us​-­news​/­2017​/­apr​/­2 4​/­black​-­entrepreneurs​-­a re​-­t he​ -­driving​-­force​-­behind​-­urban​-­farming​-­in​-­boston, accessed April 25, 2017. 3. ​Appearing in the Sustainable Business section of The Guardian, this article exemplifies aspects of urban agriculture, in par­tic­u ­lar, and (neoliberal) alternative food systems, more broadly, that have been extensively criticized by scholars and activists (see, for example, Alkon and Guthman 2017; Broad 2016). 4. ​I was not alone in noticing the prevalence of family-­focused narratives. In describing the “resounding interest” in urban farming among the l­awyers who volunteer their time to support the Conservation Law Foundation’s (CLF) ­Legal Ser­v ices Food Hub, two ­lawyers commented on the prevalence of stories of personal connections to farming: “I mean, they all have, like, a personal story, too. . . . ​Like, ‘I grew up as a farmer’ [or] ‘My dad was a farmer’ ”; “­there’s so many good stories that come up when y­ ou’re working on ­t hese proj­ects” (Interview 22).

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5. ​Moreover, the exceptions seemed to prove the rule; ­people who did not have a familial link to farming seemed to feel a need to explain its absence, often noting rather a connection to nature or to cooking in its place. 6. ​In 2010, Congress allocated $1.2 billion for a second part of the case, often referred ­ ere not settled to as Pigford II, brought by the seventy thousand farmers whose claims w in the original consent decree. 7. ​To be sure, this movement is not ­limited to Mas­sa­chu­setts. As part of its effort to end racism and injustice in the food system, Soul Fire Farm, in New York State, is leading efforts to return Black farmers to the land and to reclaim Black agrarian practices. ­There is an annual national meeting of Black Farmers and Urban Gardeners. And see also http://­w ww​.­yesmagazine​.­org​/­people​-­power​/­a fter​-­a​-­century​-­i n​-­decline​-­black​-­farmers​ -­are​-­back​-­and​-­on​-­the​-­rise​-­20160505, accessed June 2, 2016. 8. ​https://­statisticalatlas​.­com​/­place​/­Massachusetts​/­Boston/Race-­and-­Ethnicity#data-­ map/neighborhood; https://­statisticalatlas​.­com​/­neighborhood​/­Massachusetts​/­Boston​ /­Rox​bury​/­Household​-­Income, accessed July 10, 2018. 9​.­ ​https://­w ww​.­yesmagazine​.­org ​/­issues​/­d irt​/ ­by​-­reconnecting​-­w ith​-­soil​-­we​-­heal​-­t he​ -­planet​-­a nd​-­ourselves​-­20190214, accessed February 19, 2019. 10. ​As we ­w ill see in chapter 4, the ­actual state of the soil in postindustrial cities complicates ­t hese claims and has been at the center of controversies about urban agriculture, especially in Boston. 11. ​At the time that we did t­ hese group interviews, the neighborhood from which the green­house takes its name was known as Dudley Square. To distinguish between participants who gardened in the green­house and t­hose who gardened at other sites through the community, we differentiated between “Dudley Green­house growers” and “Dudley Neighborhood growers” (see Shostak and Guscott 2017). In 2019, Boston’s Public Improvement Commission voted unanimously to rename Dudley Square—­a part of the neighborhood of Roxbury—­Nubian Square, “an effort that garnered robust support from the neighborhood’s black community.” https://­w ww​.­bostonmagazine​.­com​/­news​ /­2019​/­12​/­19​/­dudley​-­square​-­name​-­change​-­nubian​-­square​/­, accessed February 20, 2020. 12. ​With an aim to accelerate efforts and to assist collaboration among Boston’s urban ag community, in October 2014, Mayor Martin J. Walsh and the city of Boston’s Office of Food Initiatives announced the receipt of a $25,000 planning grant from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Local Food Promotion Program (LFPP). The funds provided by LFPP supported the hiring of an in­de­pen­dent facilitator to convene an Urban Agriculture Visioning Group to develop a vision for food production in Bos­ hole. This work was anticipated to build on efforts to align Boston’s diverse ton as a w urban growing sector, and to establish a common goal meeting the needs of all stakeholders. https://­w ww​.­cityofboston​.­gov​/­images​_­documents​/­boston​-­urban​-­ag​-­v ision​-­final​ _­tcm3​-­52791​.­pdf, accessed June 28, 2018. 13. ​In collaboration with Karuk researchers, sociologist Kari Norgaard describes in detail how this pro­cess has worked in the context of settler-­colonialism, resulting in ­ eople being “denied access to traditional foods,” with devastating health conseNative p quences (2019, 129–164). 14​.­ ​http://­w ww​.­b ostonredevelopmentauthority​.­org ​/­news​-­c alendar​/­news​-­updates​ /­2012​/­01​/­1 2​/­come​-­envision​-­t he​-­f uture​-­of​-­u rban​-­a griculture​-­i n​-­b, accessed July  15, 2016. 15​.­ ​https://­urbanfarminglandtrust​.­wordpress​.­com​/­, accessed May 23, 2019.

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16​.­ ​https://­urbanfarminglandtrust​.­wordpress​.­com​/­faqs​/­, accessed May 23, 2019. 17​.­ ​https://­urbanfarminglandtrust​.­wordpress​.­com​/­, accessed May 23, 2019.

chapter 4  Stories of the Soil 1. ​The name of the Orchard Park public housing development, in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston, was changed as part of its revitalization and redevelopment, with support from a Hope IV grant. https://­w ww​.­bostonhousing​.­org​/­en​/­Departments​/­Planning​ -­a nd​-­Real​-­Estate​-­Development​/­Mixed​-­Finance​-­Development​/­Orchard​-­Gardens​.­aspx, accessed July 6, 2016. 2. ​I strug­gled to find publicly available data on soil contamination at specific sites in Mas­sa­chu­setts cities. ­There are publicly available data on brownfields, however. See URL: https://­w ww​.­mass​.­gov​/­service​-­details​/­find​-­brownfields​-­sites, accessed April 19, 2019. 3. ​See http://­w ww​.­dorchesteratheneum​.­org​/­pdf​/­Pear%20bottling%20Boston%20Globe​ %​208​-­22​-­2010​.­pdf, accessed July 8, 2016. 4​.­ ​http://­archive​.­boston​.­com​/­yourtown​/­news​/­roxbury​/­2013​/­10​/­hold​_­roxbury​_­historical​ _­society​_­to​_­explore​_­history​_­of​_­neighb​_­1​.­html; and http://­w ww​.­foodday​.­org ​/­scadorette​ /­t he​_ ­roxbury​_ ­r usset​_ ­a merica​_ ­s ​_ ­oldest​_ ­apple​_ ­a nd​_­t he​_­history​_­of​_­the​_­orchards​_­of​ _­massachusetts, accessed April 17, 2017. 5​.­ ​https://­w ww​.­bostonglobe​.­com​/­lifestyle​/­food​-­dining​/­2016​/­04​/­26​/­with​-­roxbury​-­cider​ -­a rtifact​-­reclaims​-­apple​-­t hat​-­has​-­h istory​/­H WTnQV25231tvM2VkIKyTO​/­story​.­html, accessed July 8, 2016. 6. ​As Krista Paulsen observes, we “all engage in this work e­ very day as we describe our home places or other areas, continually reproducing or revising their meanings as we do” (2004, 244). 7​.­ ​https://­w ww​.­v pi​.­org​/­revision​/­, accessed April 12, 2015. 8​.­ ​https://­patch​.­com​/­massachusetts​/­backbay​/­v ictory​-­programs​-­boston​-­living​-­center​ -­honors​-­mayor​-­t homas​-­m​-­menino, accessed April 12, 2015. ­ ecause I did this work relatively soon a­ fter Menino’s 9. ​This is perhaps, in part, b death; many of the ­people whom I interviewed ­were clearly mourning his loss, and interviews provided a means of memorialization. One interviewee wept as she told me, “Mayor Menino was focused on constituent concerns. It was never a numbers game with him. He cared about each individual person.” Another described to me, at length, the mayor’s funeral. 10​.­ ​https://­w ww​.­bostonglobe​.­com​/­metro​/­massachusetts​/­2013​/­03​/­28​/­mayor​-­menino​ -­has​-­long​-­championed​-­public​-­health​/­7t9mGv3WBhoY1tN1hXasTM​/­story​.­html, accessed April 12, 2017. 11​.­ ​http:// ­bphc​.­org ​/­a boutus​/­Pages​/­Tom​-­Menino​-­The​-­P ublic​-­Health​-­M ayor​.­a spx, accessed April 12, 2017. 12​.­ ​http://­cityfresh​.­com​/­cultivating​-­urban​-­farming​-­initiatives​/­, accessed November 12, 2014. 13. ​Indeed, the primary focus of Article 89 is commercial urban agriculture; both backyard and community gardens are exempted from its provisions. 14. ​Recall the Guardian article discussed in detail in chapter  2, which proclaimed that Boston might be “the next paradise” for urban agriculture, due to its wealth of recent college gradu­ates, start-up culture, and “entrepreneurial spirit.” https://­w ww​.­t he​ guardian​.­c om​/­sustainable​-­business​/­2 017​/­apr​/­16​/ ­b oston​-­organic​-­food​-­f arming​-­a gri​ culture​-­startups, accessed April 18, 2017.

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15. ​One of Menino’s final acts as mayor of Boston was to sign Article 89. In fact, several ­people involved with the pro­cess confided that ­t here was a “rush” at the very end to make sure that it would be finalized during his tenure. In the press release that announced Article 89, Mayor Menino stated: “Urban agriculture is an innovative way to improve city life. Boston’s new zoning creates opportunities for entrepreneurs, decreases the distance food travels from farm to t­ able, and betters our communities. . . . ​ Growing food within our city limits means better access to food and economic empowerment, all while cultivating a sense of neighborhood unity, and greening our city.” http://­w ww​.­cityofboston​.­gov​/­news​/­default​.­aspx​?­id​= ­6446, accessed April 12, 2017. 16​.­ ​http://­w ww​.­cityofboston​.­gov​/­news​/­Default​.­aspx​?­id​= ­5371, accessed May 10, 2017. 17​.­ ​http://­julianagyeman​.­com​/­2014​/­12​/­silence​-­not​-­consent​-­pesticides​-­poison​-­politics​ -­planning​-­boston​/­, accessed May 10, 2017. 18​.­ ​http://­julianagyeman​.­com​/­2014​/­12​/­silence​-­not​-­consent​-­pesticides​-­poison​-­politics​ -­planning​-­boston​/­, accessed May 10, 2017. 19. ​­There is variation in the racial/ethnic composition of the three neighborhoods at the center of this chapter. According to census data, Mattapan’s population is 95 ­percent ­people of color, 80  ­percent of whom are African and African American; Roxbury’s population is 91 ­percent ­people of color, with 60 ­percent African and African American; and South Dorchester’s population is 74 ­percent ­people of color, with 45 ­percent African and African American. Certainly, t­ hese neighborhoods are more diverse than ­ hole, in which 50  ­percent of residents are p ­ eople of color (25.1  ­percent the city as a w African American; 15.7 ­percent Hispanic; 9 ­percent Asian). https://­statisticalatlas​.­com​ /­place​/­Massachusetts​/­Boston/Race-­a nd-­Ethnicity#data-­map/neighborhood, accessed March 20, 2018. 20​.­ ​https://­w ww​.­youtube​.­com​/­watch​?­v ​= ­33bcYPjg7oY&feature​= ­youtu​.­be, accessed May 10, 2017. 21​.­ ​http://­w ww​.­universalhub​.­com​/­2011​/­zoning​-­commission​-­goes​-­scientists​-­over​-­city​ -­counci, accessed May 20, 2017. 22​ . ­ ​http://­s eedstock ​ .­c om​ /­2 012​ /­0 5​ /­10​ /­pilot​ -­u rban​ -­a gricultural​ -­z oning​ -­program​ -­serves​-­as​-­model​-­for​-­integration​-­of​-­farming​-­into​-­city​-­life​/­, accessed May 10, 2017. 23​.­ ​http://­w ww​.­cityofboston​.­gov​/­news​/­Default​.­aspx​?­id​= ­5371, accessed May 10, 2017. 24​.­ ​http://­w ww​.­u niversalhub​.­c om​/­2 011​/­z oning​-­c ommission​-­goes​-­s cientists​-­over​ -­city​-­counci, accessed May 10, 2017. See also http://­archive​.­boston​.­com​/­yourtown​/­news​ /­dorchester​/­2011​/­11​/­dorchester​_­w ill​_ ­soon​_ ­see​_­urban​.­html, accessed May 10, 2017. 25. ​­There ­were ten neighborhood meetings held that summer, in each of the following locations: (1) Inner Core: Beacon Hill, Charlestown, Chinatown, Downtown, North End, West End; (2) South Boston; (3) Dorchester; (4) East Boston; (5) Jamaica Plain; (6) Roxbury / Mission Hill; (7) Allston/Brighton; (8) Roslindale / West Roxbury; (9) Hyde Park / Mattapan; (10) Back Bay, South End, Audubon Circle / Fenway. 26. ​In fact, the first question at the first of ­these meetings centered on who would be responsible for ensuring that vegetables ­were being grown in clean soil (BRA Meeting Notes,, June 3, 2013). ­Toward the end of the series of meetings, when asked about the “flavor” of discussion across the city—­“Are ­people excited about this zoning initiative?”—­ BRA planners commented that ­there was “a lot of excitement” but that “in some meetings, we got hung up on soil safety” (BRA Meeting Notes, July 31, 2013). In part, this was ­because staff from Councilor Yancey’s office attended several neighborhood meetings, where they

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repeatedly raised questions about ­whether ­there needed to be a more robust regulatory pro­cess focused on the city’s soil. Initially, ­these questions echoed concerns raised during the hearings about the pi­lot farms in Dorchester regarding the history of environmental injustice in specific Boston neighborhoods and its toxic consequences. However, as the summer unfolded, I heard one staff member, in par­tic­u­lar, voice concerns not only about the legacy of industrial contaminants and lead paint, but also about excrement from pets and “wild animals contaminating the soil” (Field notes, July 17, 2013). Soil had become a medium through which Councilor Yancey’s office expressed its objections to a pro­cess that it felt “has had very few checks and balances. It’s been driven by the Mayor’s appointees. It seems nearly impossible to stop it” (Field notes, July 17, 2013). 27. ​In fact, the soil safety protocols incorporated in Article 89 require that the soil brought into the city be tested as well. However, this is not how meeting participants understood the requirements. 28. ​As sociologist Jeremy Levine points out, it is noteworthy also that during this controversy, community-­based organ­izations ­were making arguments on behalf of “the neighborhood” that ­were at odds with the positions taken by elected representatives (2016). 29. ​This history is invoked also debates on issues other than urban agriculture. In 2017, Reclaim Roxbury—­a community-­based group that advocates for “a community guided and formed pro­cess for the disposition of public land and development in Roxbury”—­announced a meeting to “work together to envision the ­f uture of our community by ­doing ­t hings like creating our own working definition of ‘affordable housing.’ ” The announcement of the meeting noted that “the city is currently deciding how to build on public land in Roxbury, land that used to be housing that was destroyed by the city during Urban Renewal in the 1960–70’s” (emphasis added). http://­reclaimroxbury​ .­org​/­, accessed June 20, 2017. 30​.­ ​https://­w ww​.­mass​.­gov​/­regulations​/­310​-­CMR​-­4000​-­massachusetts​-­contingency​ -­plan, accessed May 31, 2019. See also the federal Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA): https://­w ww​.­epa​.­gov​/­superfund​/­superfund​ -­cercla​-­overview, accessed May 21, 2019. 31. ​The final cost was even higher: “In Boston, a vacant lot that gathered trash for 30  years was transferred to a non-­profit farming organ­ization ­after new zoning rules ­were passed. It then took 18 months, and $300,000  in start-up costs to get the farm ­running.” http://­w ww​.­mafoodsystem​.­org​/­stories​/­39UrbanGarden​/­, accessed June 5, 2017. 32. ​As noted in chapter 3, UFI has led efforts to establish a community land trust for urban farmland, the first of its kind in the United States. In part, this guarantees that when UFI and the cohorts of urban farmers graduating from its training program invest in the remediation of vacant lots in Dorchester, Roxbury, and Mattapan, they ­w ill be able to hold onto the land, and benefit from their investment, for years to come. 33. ​A recent study that investigated why residents of Detroit, Michigan, declined an offer from a nonprofit organ­ization to plant a tree on their street (and/or expressed dissatisfaction with the tree that was planted) similarly highlights how de­cades of perceived municipal neglect and subsequent mistrust in the city may shape a community’s response to “greening” initiatives (Carmichael and McDonough 2019). 34. ​In her call for a “sociology of gardens,” sociologist Pierrette Hondagneu-­Sotelo asks, “How does a sociologist study something that is not seen as falling within the purview of sociology?” and “Are we sociologists scared of nature?” (2010, 502, 512).

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chapter 5 

Urban ­Futures

1​.­ ​https://­cabaus​.­org​/­about​-­caba​/­our​-­process​/­, accessed May 26, 2017. 2​.­ ​https://­cabaus​.­org​/­programs​/­projects​/­, accessed May 26, 2017. In addition to urban agriculture, CABA has written “emerging market reports” on hydropower, solar, geothermal energy, wind power, ­water access, and sustainable business practices (among other topics). 3. ​Climate change was front of mind for many p ­ eople at this time, as the Trump administration moved forward with its denialist agenda. A week following the event described ­here, on June 1, 2017, President Trump announced that he would withdraw the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement. Governors and mayors across the United States responded by committing their states and cities to the agreement. 4. ​All quotes and descriptions of this event come from my field notes (May 25, 2017). 5. ​The Mas­sa­chu­setts Food System Collaborative notes that “more than 1,500 ­people, many of whom represented food system organ­izations, businesses, and agencies, participated directly” in the planning pro­cess, by engaging “at public forums around the State, in topic specific working groups, and in a range of other ways.” The Boston Urban Ag Visioning Group sought to engage “representatives from all aspects of urban growing in the city . . . ​including community gardeners, traditional farmers, gleaners, edible forest developers, farmers’ market reps, traditional and rooftop farmers, as well as food production folks.” In addition to holding monthly public meetings, the Boston group attempted a citywide survey to engage stakeholders. Similarly, among the goals of the Food Solutions New E ­ ngland vision is “to engage diverse voices and create new inspiration that ­w ill lead to healthy food and thriving communities.” This emphasis on engagement meant that each group brought together stakeholders in conversation about their shared, and competing, interests. 6​.­ ​https://­bostonurbanag​.­wordpress​.­com​/­, accessed July 15, 2015. 7. ​Similarly, in an interview, she commented, “­People are moving into cities, and ­t hey’re g­ oing to keep moving into cities, so we better start thinking about ways to feed ­people in cities” (Interview 07). 8. ​As I am completing this book in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is clear that its impacts on the food system also ­will also be a bellwether event. I am in awe of the ways that urban agriculture organ­izations across Mas­sa­chu­setts have responded to the challenges (e.g., to beginning the growing season, safely organ­izing community ­ eople who can no longer come out to markets) and gardens, distributing food to p urgent needs for food assistance wrought by this public health crisis and its economic consequences. 9​.­ ​http://­icic​.­org ​/­w p​-­content​/­uploads​/­2016​/­04​/­ICIC ​_ ­Food ​_ ­Systems ​_ ­fi nal ​_ ­revised​ _­post​.­pdf, accessed July 24, 2017. 10​.­ ​http://­icic​.­org ​/­w p​-­content​/­uploads​/­2016​/­04​/­ICIC ​_ ­Food ​_ ­Systems ​_ ­fi nal ​_ ­revised​ _­post​.­pdf, accessed July 24, 2017. 11​.­ ​https://­ca​.­water​.­usgs​.­gov​/­data​/­drought​/­, accessed July 24, 2017. 12​.­ ​http://­icic​.­org ​/­w p​-­content​/­uploads​/­2016​/­04​/­ICIC ​_ ­Food ​_ ­Systems ​_ ­fi nal ​_ ­revised​ _­post​.­pdf, p. 11, accessed July 26, 2017. 13. ​See, for example, http://­w ww​.­usa​.­lighting​.­philips​.­com​/­products​/­horticulture​/­press​ -­releases​/­growwise​-­center, accessed July 11, 2017. 14​.­ ​http://­w ww​.­usa​.­lighting​.­philips​.­com​/­products​/­horticulture, accessed July 11, 2017.

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15​.­ ​http://­w ww​.­u sa​.­l ighting​.­philips​.­com​/­products​/­horticulture, accessed July  11, 2017. 16​.­ ​http://­w ww​.­usa​.­lighting​.­philips​.­com​/­products​/­horticulture​/­city​-­farming, accessed July 11, 2017. 17​.­ ​http://­w ww​.­goldmansachs​.­com​/­citizenship​/­environmental​-­stewardship​/­market​ -­opportunities​/­green​-­bonds​-­impact​-­investing​/­index​.­html​?­view​=­mobile, accessed December 1, 2017. 18​.­ ​https://­w ww​.­freightfarms​.­com​/­articles​/­, accessed December 1, 2017. 19​.­ ​https://­w ww​.­freightfarms​.­com​/­articles​/­, accessed December 1, 2017. 20​.­ ​https://­w ww​.­freightfarms​.­com​/­articles​/­, accessed December 1, 2017. 21​.­ ​https://­w ww​.­freightfarms​.­com​/­articles​/­, accessed December 1, 2017. 22​ . ­ ​http://­w ww​ .­e dibleboston​ .­c om​ / ­b log ​ /­f resh​ -­f reight​ -­f rom​ -­c orner​ -­s talk​ -­f arm, accessed December 18, 2017 (emphasis added). 23. ​­Unless other­wise noted, all quotes and observations from Corner Stalk Farm come from my visit and interview with Sean Cooney. 24​ . ­ ​http://­w ww​ .­e dibleboston​ .­c om​ / ­b log ​ /­f resh​ -­f reight​ -­f rom​ -­c orner​ -­s talk​-­f arm, accessed December 18, 2017 (emphasis added). 25. ​In its comparison between production capacities of “traditional farms” and the LGM, Freight Farms posits only one “turn” per year on traditional farms, contending that few states have growing seasons long enough to allow for multiple turns. However, many urban farmers use intensive growing practices that include two to three turns per season. https://­w ww​.­f reightfarms​.­com​/­blog​/­data​-­f rom​-­our​-­g rowers​-­how​-­t he​-­lgm​-­stacks​-­up, accessed December 28, 2017. 26​ . ­ ​http://­w ww​ .­e dibleboston​ .­c om​ / ­b log ​ /­f resh​ -­f reight​ -­f rom​ -­c orner​ -­s talk​ -­f arm, accessed December 18, 2017. 27​.­ ​https://­w ww​.­freightfarms​.­com​/­faq​/­, accessed December 28, 2017. 28​ . ­ ​http://­w ww​ .­e dibleboston​ .­c om​ / ­b log ​ /­f resh​ -­f reight​ -­f rom​ -­c orner​ -­s talk​ -­f arm, accessed December 18, 2017. 29​ . ­ ​http://­w ww​ .­e dibleboston​ .­c om​ / ­b log ​ /­f resh​ -­f reight​ -­f rom​ -­c orner​ -­s talk​ -­f arm, accessed December 18, 2017. 30. ​Scholars of urban agriculture, for example, have observed that the famed “­triple bottom line” used to mea­sure sustainability belies an agenda of preserving economic growth while selectively pursuing environmental and social benefits (S. Walker 2015). 31. ​See also Sze (2018) for a thoughtful engagement with the history of the concept of sustainability and a framework for situating its relationships to social justice. 32. ​See examples at https://­qz​.­com​/­993258​/­dirt​-­has​-­a​-­microbiome​-­a nd​-­it​-­may​-­double​ -­a s​-­a n​-­a ntidepressant​/­, accessed June  4, 2017; https://­w ww​.­gardeningknowhow​ .­c om​/­garden​-­how​-­to​/­soil​-­fertilizers​/­a ntidepressant​-­m icrobes​-­soil​.­htm, accessed January  24, 2019; and https://­neurosciencenews​.­com​/­d irt​-­fat​-­a nxiety​-­1 4108​/­, accessed June 6, 2019. 33​.­ ​http://­civileats​.­com​/­2015​/­04​/­13​/­why​-­you​-­c ant​-­have​-­organic​-­food​-­w ithout​-­soil​/­, accessed July 1, 2017. 34​.­ ​http://­civileats​.­com​/­2015​/­04​/­13​/­why​-­you​-­c ant​-­have​-­organic​-­food​-­w ithout​-­soil​/­, accessed July 1, 2017. 35​.­ ​http://­w ww​.­slate​.­c om​/­a rticles​/­technology​/­f uture ​_­tense​/­2 017​/­1 1​/­a ​_­battle ​_­over​ _­hydroponics​_­shows​_­t hat​_­t he​_­usda​_­organic​_­certification​_­program​.­html, accessed December 1, 2017.

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n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 4 2 –15 1

36​.­ ​http://­regenerationinternational​.­org​/­why​-­regenerative​-­agriculture​/­, accessed July 20, 2018. 37​.­ ​https://­w ww​.­f reightfarms​.­com​/­blog​/­co​-­founder​-­i nside​-­scoop​-­what​-­i s​-­a gtech, accessed December 1, 2017. 38​.­ ​https://­nuestras​-­raices​.­org​/­en​/­, accessed August 4, 2017. 39​.­ ​ https://­w w w​.­m assdevelopment​.­c om​/­n ews​/­f arming​-­i n​-­a​-­b ox​-­c omes​-­t o​ -­downtown​-­holyoke​/­, accessed July 20, 2018. 40. ​Though Freight Farms was not mentioned by name in the initial media coverage ­ ere built by of the initiative, the photos of the shipping containers suggested that they w Freight Farms; this was confirmed in l­ater media coverage (see next note following). http://­w ww​.­wamc​.­org​/­post​/­farming​-­box​-­comes​-­downtown​-­holyoke, accessed July  20, 2018. 41​.­ ​https://­w ww​.­gazettenet​.­com​/­HCC​-­Freight​-­Farms​-­hg​-­120718​-­21970375, accessed June 6, 2019.

conclusion 1. ​Crenshaw is a law professor and theorist whose writings on critical race theory and intersectionality have been central to the emergence of not only ­whole fields of study but con­temporary social movements for racial justice. This quotation comes from “­Under the Blacklight: Narrating the Nightmare and (Re)Imagining the Pos­si­ble,” Intersectionality ­Matters, May 20, 2020, https://­w ww​.­youtube​.­com​/­watch​?­v​=­E0ppfjbESV4, accessed June 1, 2020. 2. ​Indeed, Norgaard reminds us that “it is only through the alienated cosmology of Western colonial thought that food, health, identity, and environment become separate ‘topics.’ To see their profound connections is to begin the proj­ect of decolonizing or ‘unsettling’ academia” (2019, 15; see also Hoover 2017). 3. ​Both the pos­si­ble unintended consequences of urban agriculture and emerging alliances between food justice activists and anti-­gentrification activists are critical topics for ongoing research (Alkon, Cadji, and Moore 2019). For example, drawing on their work in Oakland, California, Alkon and colleagues highlight the potential of “radical allyship” in which “food justice activists develop strong relationships with long-­term community members, and together, they work to avoid the latter’s displacement in a variety of ways,” including the development of po­liti­cal agendas that aim to create “socially and eco­nom­ically diverse healthy and livable communities” (2019, 799–800). 4​.­ ​http://­w ww​.­soulfirefarm​.­org​/­get​-­involved​/­reparations​/­. See also https://­w ww​.­black​ foodjustice​.­org​/­, accessed June 2, 2020. 5. ​See, for example, recent publications on Milwaukee (at https://­newfoodeconomy​ .­org ​/­milwaukee​-­community​-­garden​-­deep​-­roots​/­) and Baltimore (at https://­w ww​.­balti​ moresun​.­c om​/­m ar yland​/ ­b altimore​-­c it y​/ ­b s​-­m d​-­c i​-­b liss​-­m eadows​-­2 0190826​ -­d47jegag6ze7ff4a6t7m7rilsu​-­story​.­html (both accessed September  2, 2019), as well as outstanding scholarship on proj­ects in Detroit (White 2011, 2018) and Cleveland (Lindemann 2019). Relatedly, the names of some farms and gardens serve as a means of commemorating community members who have been impor­tant leaders, healers, and advocates for social justice. For example, Alice’s Garden, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is named ­a fter Alice Meade-­Taylor, the first African American director of the Milwaukee County Cooperative Extension; https://­newfoodeconomy​.­org​/­milwaukee​-­community​ -­garden​-­deep​-­roots​/­, accessed September 2, 2019. In Boston, the Garrison-­Trotter Farm,

n o t e s t o pa g e s 15 1 –15 6

197

the first farm established in Boston ­under Article 89, honors two prominent antislavery activists with deep connections to Boston, William Lloyd Garrison and William Monroe Trotter (to be clear, Garrison-­Trotter is also the name of the neighborhood in which the farm was built and of the neighborhood association that was a key partner in its establishment). 6. ​Such investigations may lend themselves to partnerships between urban farming and food justice organ­izations and community-­engaged researchers, including public historians (Moon and Stanton 2018). For example, scholars have partnered with urban agriculture organ­izations on oral history proj­ects that locate con­temporary farms and gardens in the pasts of specific neighborhoods and the memories of their residents (Lindemann 2019; ­Reese 2019; Shostak, Corral, et  al. 2019; White 2011). Moving forward, such proj­ects could serve as a basis for civic engagement and activism that makes clear how the materiality and meanings of the past are being excavated and remediated in con­temporary urban farming proj­ects. Reynolds and Cohen offer impor­tant guidelines and suggestions regarding such engagements, which aim to ensure that they ­w ill “disrupt power dynamics; be relevant in and needed by communities involved in the research; recognize and make use of community knowledge and community assets; engage activists and other community members in all stages of research; and ensure that findings and benefits come back to the community” (2016, 137). 7. ​In an agenda-­setting critique, geographer Julie Guthman describes how this mantra of the alternative food movement implies that “an unveiling of the American food ­ eople would be supply would necessarily trigger a desire for local, organic food and p willing to pay for it . . .” (2008, 387). Such assumptions, Guthman asserts, are part of the elitism and the whiteness of the alternative food movement. 8. ​The event was promoted as a book talk for Penniman’s Farming while Black, “a comprehensive how-to guide for aspiring African-­heritage growers to reclaim their dignity as agriculturists and for all farmers to understand the distinct, technical contributions of African-­heritage ­people to sustainable agriculture.” https://­dorchester​ .­c omunicas​.­org ​/­2 019​/­05​/­30​/­forum​-­a bout​-­f arming​-­w hile​-­black​-­b ook​-­to​-­b enefit​-­t he​ -­urban​-­farming​-­institute​/­, accessed June 4, 2019. It was cosponsored by Boston Medical Center, CommonWealth Kitchen, Higher Ground Farm, Impact Hub Boston, the Food Proj­ect, and the Urban Farming Institute of Boston. On Penniman’s founding and stewardship of Soul Fire Farm, see http://­w ww​.­soulfirefarm​.­org​/­meet​-­t he​-­farmers​/­, accessed June 7, 2019. 9​.­ ​https://­foodismedicinema​.­org​/­, accessed June 18, 2019. 10. ​In my more recent work with urban agriculture organ­izations in Mas­sa­chu­setts, prac­ti­tion­ers have expressed frustration that “equity work,” “radical change,” “social transformation,” and helping communities “moving ­towards health and justice” are typically more difficult to fund than food access proj­ects (Shostak 2018; see also Kohl-­ Arenas 2016; Reynolds and Cohen 2016). 11. ​Likewise, “health studies rarely start with Indigenous perspectives on health, theorize the impacts of colonialism on Indigenous physical or ­mental health, or account for how health prac­ti­tion­ers and researchers themselves enact colonial vio­lence on communities” (Norgaard 2019, 225). 12. ​Coined in the early 1930s by Richard Walther Darre, who went on to become Hitler’s minister of food and agriculture, “blood and soil” expressed the belief that ­ ecause of Germany’s farmers had an essential role in preserving the Nordic race b

198

n o t e s t o pa g e s 15 6 –1 6 1

connections between the body of the nation (blood) and its land (soil); it was codified in policies that made farmland hereditary and available only to farmers who could document their Aryan heritage. When hundreds of white men marched, carry­ing torches, on the University of ­Virginia campus on the eve­ning of August 11, 2017, “Blood and soil,” ­ ill not replace us” w ­ ere among the most prominent “White lives ­matter,” and “Jews w chants. https://­w ww​.­cnn​.­com​/­2017​/­08​/­12​/­us​/­charlottesville​-­unite​-­t he​-­right​-­rally​/­index​ .­html, accessed July 1, 2019. 13​.­ ​https://­eji​.­org​/­community​-­remembrance​-­project, accessed July  1, 2019. Importantly, “EJI’s version of ‘Never again’ ­doesn’t simply warn against a hy­po­t het­i­cal recurrence of past wrongs or instill in visitors a vague notion that society must be vigilant lest it succumb to the pitfalls of ­human nature. It ­doesn’t allow for that kind of distance or the satisfaction that comes with learning about terrible events and telling oneself, ­ ill never, stand by and let this happen.’ Instead, it pre­sents a shame‘I could never, and w ful history that never ended, but rather evolved into new forms that are still causing pain and injustice ­today.” https://­forward​.­com​/­culture​/­421540​/­how​-­the​-­holocaust​-­is​-­echoed​ -­in​-­t he​-­legacy​-­museum​-­in​-­a labama​/­, accessed July 5, 2019. 14​ . ­ ​https://­d ocs​ . ­g oogle​ . ­c om​ /­f orms​ /­d ​ /­e ​ /­1 FAIpQLSeTf bjMlTVa9Z7Snwt​ _­w MD​ dXfXJphMGctOS9BKZzH​_ ­JqeAdkg​/­v iewform, accessed July 25, 2019. See also https://­ www​.­nationalgeographic​.­com​/­magazine​/­2018​/­04​/­race​-­lynching​-­museum​-­katie​-­couric​ -­a labama​/­, accessed September 24, 2019.

epilogue 1​.­ ​https://­w ww​.­mass​.­gov​/­doc​/­weekly​-­covid​-­19​-­public​-­health​-­report​-­june​-­10​-­2 020​ /­download, accessed June  11, 2020. See also https://­w ww​.­statnews​.­com​/­2020​/­06​/­09​ /­systemic​-­racism​-­black​-­health​-­d isparities​/­, accessed June 11, 2020. 2. ​As of June 2020, only East Boston had been more direly affected. https://­w ww​.­bphc​ .­org​/­onlinenewsroom​/­Blog​/­default​.­aspx, accessed June 11, 2020. 3​.­ ​https://­w ww​.­nytimes​.­c om​/­2 020​/­05​/­25​/­opinion​/­coronavirus​-­r ace​-­obesity​.­html, accessed June 11, 2020. 4​.­ ​https://­w ww​.­brookings​.­e du​/ ­blog ​/­f ixgov​/­2 020​/­04​/­09​/­w hy​-­a re​-­blacks​-­dying​-­at​ -­higher​-­rates​-­from​-­covid​-­19​/­, accessed June  11, 2020. Recent research had identified exposure to air pollution—­which, like so many environmental exposures in the United States, is disproportionately experienced by communities of color—as a risk f­ actor for death from COVID-19 (Wu et al. 2020). 5. ​Scholarship in the history and sociology of science, technology, and medicine provides critical histories and critiques of such arguments (Benjamin 2013; Bliss 2012; Hatch 2016; Roberts 2011). 6​.­ ​https://­w ww​.­springfieldfoodpolicycouncil​.­org​/­, accessed October 26, 2020. 7​.­ ​https://­w ww8​.­gsb​.­columbia​.­edu​/­a rticles​/­ideas​-­work ​/­open​-­letter​-­young​-­scholars​ -­covid​-­19​-­crisis, accessed April 12, 2020.

appendix a 1​ . ­ ​http://­p atch​ .­c om​ /­m assachusetts​ /­s omerville​ /­s peak​-­out​ -­u rban​ -­a griculture​ -­i n​ -­somerville​-­public​-­heard6f42d2541, accessed June 2, 2016.

n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 6 8 –17 7

199

appendix b 1​.­ ​https://­w ww​.­wokeatwork ​ .­org ​ /­p ost​/­w hite​ -­women​-­d oing​-­w hite​-­s upremacy​-­i n​ -­nonprofit​-­culture, accessed March 19, 2020.

acknowl­edgments 1. ​Groundwork Somerville is a  nonprofit organ­ization making change happen in Somerville, Mas­sa­chu­setts, through community engagement, environmental and open space improvements, fresh food access, youth education, and employment initiatives (Jennifer Lawrence, personal communication). See http://­w ww​.­groundworksomerville​ .­org​/­, accessed August 11, 2020.

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Index

Note: Page references in italics refer to illustrative ­matter. Aerofarms, 40, 130 African Americans: COVID-19 and, 158, 159, 198n4; culinary history of, 9, 169, 181nn27–28, 197n8; enslavement of, 15, 47, 83–85, 152, 181n28, 181n32; familial farming lineages of, 82–83, 93–94, 98, 151–152, 189n4; farmland loss of, 41, 94; ­Great Migration of, 27, 84, 91; history of Black urban farmers, 6, 82–88; as leaders in urban agriculture, 31, 77, 92; lynching of, 85, 156; Mattapan history and, 3, 4–5; reclaiming African agricultural practices, 14, 84, 87, 152; re­sis­tance and healing through farming, 13, 85–86, 140, 152–155; sharecropping by, 15, 85, 97, 152. See also Black agrarianism; discriminatory urban policies; names of specific organ­izations and persons; race and racism age. See young farmers agriculture. See animal husbandry, urban; food systems; rural farms and farmers; urban agriculture ag-­tech, 16, 38–39, 129–137, 141–142, 155 Ali, Ibrahim, 86 Alice’s Garden, Milwaukee, 196n5 Allen, ­Will, 85, 96 alternative food movement, 197n7 Amara, Guy, 58, 188n26 American Farmland Trust, 41 animal husbandry, urban, 27; bees, 33, 45, 106, 147, 170; chickens, 33, 46, 56, 81, 106, 121, 187–188n24; sheep, 46, 47, 187–188n24

apples, 10, 102, 191nn4–5 aquaponics, 33, 142. See also hydroponic gardening Arria, Carmelo, 58 arson, 3, 14, 28, 103, 114, 117, 118, 150. See also housing discrimination; urban redevelopment proj­ects Article 89, Boston city ordinance on urban agriculture, 19, 101, 105, 164, 191n13, 193n27 Assembly Row, Somerville, 48 authenticity, 8, 51, 66, 102, 186n7. See also branding narratives; place identities Banhazl, Jessie, 23–24, 122 beekeeping, 33, 45, 106, 147, 170. See also animal husbandry, urban Bergeron, Insiyah Mohammad, 144 BIPOC communities. See African Americans; Indigenous communities; names of specific immigrant communities Black agrarianism, 84, 88, 93, 190n7 Black Farmers and Urban Gardeners (organ­ization), 190n7 blockbusting, 3, 14, 103, 150, 154. See also housing discrimination “blood and soil,” as phrase, 156, 197n12 boosterism. See branding narratives; place identities; urban branding; urban growth co­a li­tions

213

214 i n d e x Boston, Mas­sa­chu­setts: city ordinance on urban farming in, 19, 101, 105, 109, 164, 191n13, 192n15; Department of Neighborhood Development, 106; history of community gardens in, 88–92; history of Jewish community in, 3; Office of Food Initiatives, 45–46, 96, 105, 106–107, 190n12; place identity of, 76–79; soil contamination in, 99, 190n10; Urban Agriculture Initiative and Working Group, 20, 105, 109–111; urban agriculture leaders and organ­izations in, 34, 77; Urban Agriculture Visioning Group, 22–23, 43, 46, 90, 164, 190n12, 194n5; urban redevelopment proj­ects in, 3. See also Dorchester, Mas­sa­chu­setts; Mas­sa­chu­setts; Mattapan, Mas­sa­chu­ setts; Roxbury, Mas­sa­chu­setts Boston Banks Urban Renewal Group (BBURG), 3, 180n9 Boston Farms Community Land Trust, 98, 150–151 Boston Food Policy Council, 105 Boston Globe, 55, 66, 104 Boston Landmarks Commission (BLC), 2, 4, 179n3 Boston Magazine, 54, 186n6 Boston Medical Center (BMC), 38 Boston Properties (com­pany), 23, 182n12 Boston Public Health Commission (BPHC), 101, 104, 110–111 Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA), 101, 106–109, 118 Boston Urban Gardeners Program, 89 Bounty Bucks program, 104–105 branding narratives, 51–53. See also urban branding Brazilian immigrants, 27, 59, 61, 63. See also immigrant communities breweries, 54, 102, 187n14 bridging narratives, 77–79, 83, 93, 104, 107. See also mnemonic bridging Brockton, Mas­sa­chu­setts, 32 brownfields, 28; EPA on, 67, 187n19; FCE Farm as, 2, 115; publicly available data on, 191n2; in Somerville, 55, 187n19. See also soil contamination Burmese immigrants, 70, 72. See also immigrant communities CABA (Climate Action Business Association), 120–122, 129 California: agricultural industry of, 20, 127, 128–129; immigrant factory ­labor in, 82

callaloo, 43–44, 146, 153 Cambodian immigrants, 61, 66, 71. See also immigrant communities carbon sequestration, 143, 154 CBRE (com­pany), 25 Census of Agriculture (USDA), 40 chicken keeping, 33, 46, 56, 81, 106, 121, 187–188n24. See also animal husbandry, urban city branding. See urban branding City Growers (Boston com­pany), 18–21, 99, 109, 182n3 City Harvest, 127 city ordinances on urban farming: in Boston, 19, 101, 105, 109, 164, 191n13, 193n27; in Somerville, 48, 161 City Sprouts, 189n1 civic agriculture, as concept, 183n21 Clapp pear, 99, 102 Clark ­family, 2–3. See also Fowler Clark Epstein (FCE) Farm Cleveland, Ohio, 196n5 Climate Action Business Association (CABA), 120–122, 129 climate change: hydroponics and, 130; Paris Climate Agreement, 194n3; regenerative agriculture and, 142; Trump’s policies on, 194n3; urban agriculture and, 16, 25, 120–129, 138, 143. See also sustainability Collaborative Regional Alliance for Farmer Training (CRAFT) program, 42–43 collective memory: defined, 7; farming and historical narratives, 77–83, 151–154, 157; food and, 9–12; land access and, 155; “mentality” of farming and, 93–94; redevelopment proj­ects and, 7–9; social movements and, 183n23; soil and, 156; visions of the ­future, 8–9. See also branding narratives; bridging narratives; familial farming lineages; f­ uture narratives; memory politics; place identities colonialism. See settler colonialism commercial urban farming, 22–24, 37, 38–39, 122, 184n35, 191n13. See also freight farming Commonwealth Magazine, 49–50 community-­based urban agriculture, 33–38. See also urban agriculture community garden proj­ects, 30; Boston history of, 88–92; in Lowell, 68–73; scavenging and aesthetics in, 61, 188nn30–31; in Somerville, 60–63. See also school gardens

index community land trusts, 6, 16, 97–98, 193n32. See also displacement and land loss; land access Community Remembrance Proj­ect (EJI), 156, 198n13 Connors, Margaret, 19, 99 Conservation Law Foundation, 32, 189n4 consumerism and urban redevelopment proj­ects, 8 container farms. See freight farming Cooking Gene, The (Twitty), 181n28, 181n32 Cooney, Sean, 81, 131–135, 137 Corner Stalk Farm, 39, 123, 130–135, 141, 181n29 COVID-19 pandemic, 158, 159, 194n8, 198nn1–2, 198n4 CRAFT (Collaborative Regional Alliance for Farmer Training) program., 42–43 Creating Eden (publication), 57, 61 Criminal Offender Rec­ord Information (CORI) Act, 32 crops, immigrant communities and cultural, 13, 43–44, 58, 60–61, 63, 70, 73. See also healing power of food and farming; immigrant communities Cuba, 122 culture-­based development strategies, 49–51, 56–57 Curtatone, Joseph: ­family history of, 59, 80; on ­f uture of urban agriculture, 125–126; on health and food access, 48; leadership and policies of, 48, 54–55, 74 dairy farming, 81, 185n54 Davis Marcus Management, 23 demo­cratic agrarianism, 13 Detroit, Michigan, 193n33, 196n5 dirt-­firsters, 141–142 discriminatory urban policies, 3, 28, 83. See also housing discrimination; race and racism displacement and land loss, 41, 83, 90–92, 95, 190n13. See also community land trusts; economic implications of farming; housing discrimination; land access; urban redevelopment proj­ects distrust, 106–108, 193n33 Dorchester, Mas­sa­chu­setts, 2, 96, 101–111, 158 drought, 127, 128 Dudley Neighborhood Green­house, 37, 87, 190n11 Dudley Neighbors, Inc., 98

215 economic implications of farming, 19–21, 42, 93–94, 101, 110, 113–117, 122, 193n31. See also displacement and land loss; poverty Edgerly School, 56, 63, 135, 144. See also school gardens environmental ­hazards. See soil contamination environmental justice, defined, 16, 47 environmental justice movement, 29, 36, 103. See also food justice movement; social justice movement; sustainability Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), 67, 114, 187n19 environmental racism, 6, 101, 103, 117, 141, 148, 156, 198n4. See also race and racism; soil contamination environmental sociology, 155 Epstein ­family, 3–4, 179n8, 180nn10–11 Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), 156, 198n13 erasure, 52, 179n3, 180n26. See also settler colonialism Essington, Kevin, 125 familial farming lineages, 77–83, 93–94, 98, 151–152, 189n4, 190n5. See also collective memory ­family farms, defined, 184n51 Farm City (Carpenter), 170 farmers markets, 21, 43–44, 59. See also grocery stores farmer training programs, 146–147, 148. See also Urban Farming Institute of Boston (UFI) farming imagery and ste­reo­t ypes, 46–47, 185n64. See also race and racism; whiteness Farming while Black (Penniman), 197n8 Fenway Farms, 22–23, 24, 38, 122 Fenway Park, 21–22 fields theory, 25, 37 fois gras industry, 10, 181n30 food and collective memory, 9–12 food apartheid, 30–31, 152. See also health and food access food as development strategy, 8, 49–51. See also urban redevelopment proj­ects food as healing. See healing power of food and farming food deserts, 30–31. See also health and food access food is medicine, meanings of, 50, 85, 152, 197n9 food justice, defined, 36

216 i n d e x food justice movement, 36–37, 196n3, 197n6. See also environmental justice movement; social justice movement; sustainability Food Proj­ect, The (organ­ization), 34, 35, 37, 81, 100, 164 food security, 126–129. See also food justice movement; sovereignty Food Solutions New ­England, 123m 194n5 food systems: ­f uture of, 120, 122–125, 137, 142–145, 152–153; industrialization of, 30, 82, 121–122. See also health and food access; Mas­sa­chu­setts Local Food Action Plan; urban agriculture Fowler, Holly, 90 Fowler Clark Epstein (FCE) Farm, 5; early history of, 2; farm stand of, 146, 147; location of, 125; Penniman at, 152; recent history of, 1–5, 115, 179n1; UFI and, 83. See also Mattapan, Mas­sa­chu­setts Fowler ­family, 2. See also Fowler Clark Epstein (FCE) Farm freedom farmers, 26 freight farming, 13, 16, 38–39, 130–137, 143, 144. See also commercial urban farming; high-­tech urban farming proj­ects; hydroponic gardening Freight Farms (com­pany), 38–39, 76, 122, 143, 195n25, 196n40 funding sources for urban agriculture, 39–40, 42, 184n45, 190n12, 197n10 ­f uture narratives, 120, 122–129, 139–145, 155. See also collective memory; high-­tech urban farming proj­ects; sites of hyperprojectivity “­Future of Farming: How Urban Agriculture is Revitalizing Local Economies, The” (CABA event), 120–122 garden awards programs, Somerville, 57–58 Gardening the Community (organ­ ization), 34, 86, 88 garden tour programs, Somerville, 57–58 Garrison, William Lloyd, 196n5 Garrison-­Trotter Farm, 79, 87, 116, 120, 125, 196n5 gastropolitics, 10 Gateway Cities, 29, 49–50, 149–150, 186nn3–4. See also names of specific cities gender and urban agriculture, 43, 96, 168. See also young farmers

gentrification: health and, 15, 74; in Lowell, 74; re­sis­tance to, 106–108, 150, 196n3; in Somerville, 56–57, 63–64; sustainability and, 139; urban agriculture as mechanism of, 25, 49; urban branding and, 8, 52–53, 103, 149. See also branding narratives; green gentrification; memory politics Georgia, 85, 98 Germany, 156, 197n12 Giddens, Rhiannon, 185n65 Goldman, Ruth, 90–91 Goldman Sachs, 130 Goldstein-­Gelb, Warren, 60 Gotham Greens, 39, 122 ­Great Migration, 27, 84, 91. See also African Americans Greek immigrants, 27, 65. See also immigrant communities Green City Growers (Somerville com­ pany), 22–25, 38, 76, 122, 182n9 green gentrification, 52–53, 150. See also gentrification; urban branding; urban growth co­a li­tions grocery stores, 23, 30, 50, 91, 104. See also farmers markets; food apartheid; health and food access Groundwork Lawrence, 34, 186n6 Groundwork Somerville, 12, 34, 61–62, 164, 199n1 (acknow.) Growing Power (organ­ization), 96 Guardian, The (publication), 76, 189n3, 191n14 Haitian immigrants, 27, 61. See also immigrant communities Haley, Alex, 181n32 Harrison, J., 35 Harvard Pilgrim Healthcare, 40 harvest festivals, 7, 46, 47, 67, 68, 138, 164, 181n32 Hashley, Jennifer, 42, 121 healing power of food and farming, 13, 15, 84–86, 91, 140, 148, 152–153, 156. See also crops, immigrant communities and cultural; herbs; wellness garden programs health, social determinants of, 13, 15, 91–92, 149, 151–154, 158–159, 197n11. See also healing power of food and farming; health and food access; in­equality; race and racism health and food access, 15, 30, 50, 84–86, 88–93, 114, 194n8. See also food

index apartheid; food justice, defined; grocery stores; health, social determinants of; public health initiatives Healthy Incentives Program (HIP), 44, 146 herbs, 71, 80, 86–87, 148. See also crops, immigrant communities and cultural; healing power of food and farming Higher Ground Farm, 38, 39, 184n39 high-­tech urban farming proj­ects, 16, 38–39, 129–137, 141–142, 155. See also freight farming; ­f uture narratives; hydroponic gardening Historic Boston Inc. (HBI), 1, 4, 179n7 Holmes, Russell, 4 Holyoke, Mas­sa­chu­setts, 27, 144, 162. See also Mas­sa­chu­setts housing discrimination: blockbusting, 3, 14, 103, 150, 154; farm land access, 13, 90, 92, 96–98, 112, 150, 154–155; redlining, 3, 14, 28, 91, 103, 117, 154, 158; urban redevelopment proj­ects and, 3, 28, 29. See also discriminatory urban policies; displacement and land loss; race and racism; urban redevelopment proj­ects Hurricane Sandy (2012), 126–127. See also climate change hybrid organ­izations, 37, 157 Hyde Park, Mas­sa­chu­setts, 111–113 hydroponic gardening, 33, 38, 56, 130–135, 141–142, 143. See also aquaponics; freight farming; high-­tech urban farming proj­ects Hynes, Roberta Lynn, 61 hyperprojectivity, 122, 123–125. See also f­ uture narratives immigrant communities: benefits of farming by, 13, 148, 152; cultural crops and, 43–44, 58, 60–61, 63, 70; culture-­ based development strategies and, 49–51; in Lowell, 65–66, 69–73; to Mas­sa­chu­setts, 27, 50–51; of Somerville, 55–57, 59–64; urban branding narrative and, 149–150. See also names of specific groups; race and racism Immigration and Nationality Act (1965), 65–66 Indigenous communities: displacement and land loss of, 190n13; erasure of, 179n3, 180n26, 197n11; re­sis­tance and healing through farming, 13, 140. See also race and racism

217 indoor farming technologies. See freight farming; high-­tech urban farming proj­ects; hydroponic gardening industrialized food systems, 30, 82, 121–122 industries in Mas­sa­chu­setts cities, history of, 27, 64–65. See also postindustrial cities in­equality: in cities and neighborhoods, 6, 14, 84, 90–98, 103; in food systems, 14, 30–31, 82, 86, 90, 95, 148, 151; policy responses to, 148–149, 151, 163; systems of, 36, 79, 82. See also environmental racism; health, social determinants of; health and food access; housing discrimination; settler colonialism; slavery; soil contamination intersectionality, 196nn1–2. See also gender and urban agriculture; race and racism Irish immigrants, 27, 50, 56, 65. See also immigrant communities Italian immigrants, 27, 50, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 80. See also immigrant communities Jamaican immigrants, 46, 88–89, 92, 180n25. See also immigrant communities Karuk communities, 190n13 Keefe, Tristram “Tris,” 18–19, 20–21, 25, 47 King, Mel, 77, 87, 89, 97 land, memories and meanings of, 5, 13–15, 26, 78, 83–88, 91–92, 139–141, 154–157 land access, 13, 90, 92, 96–98, 112, 150, 154–155. See also community land trusts; housing discrimination; vacant lots land loss. See displacement and land loss language diversity and urban agriculture proj­ects, 50, 61, 70, 71–72 Lawrence, Mas­sa­chu­setts, 27, 34, 162, 186n6. See also Mas­sa­chu­setts Le, Hanh, 60 lead paint and poisoning, 99, 110, 118. See also soil contamination Leafy Green Machine (Freight Farms), 130, 195n25 Legacy Museum, 156 Let’s Move program, 55 Liaison Interpreter Program of Somerville (LIPS), 188n28 Lloyd, Glynn, 19–20, 43, 96, 97, 113, 121, 140

218 i n d e x Local Food Promotion Program (USDA), 22, 39, 190n12 Lowell, Mas­sa­chu­setts: industrial history of, 27, 64–65; place identity of, 50, 65–67, 74, 189n38; urban agriculture in, 34, 35, 48–49, 51, 68–73, 100, 152. See also Mas­sa­chu­setts; Mill City Grows (MCG) Lowell National Historical Park, 66 Lufa Farms, 39 lynching, 85, 156. See also race and racism Lynn, Mas­sa­chu­setts, 152, 164, 189n43 Madan, Dave, 77 manufacturing waste, 5–6, 14, 28–29. See also brownfields; soil contamination markets, 43–44. See also farmers markets Mas­sa­chu­setts: demographics of farming in, 121–122; industrial history of, 27; migration waves to, 27–28; overview of urban farming in, 161–163. See also names of specific cities Mas­sa­chu­setts Department of Agricultural Resources (MDAR), 39, 40, 41, 42 Mas­sa­chu­setts Environmental Protection Agency (MA EPA), 110 Mas­sa­chu­setts Food Policy Council, 40 Mas­sa­chu­setts Food System Collaborative, 194n5 Mas­sa­chu­setts Historical Commission, 179n7 Mas­sa­chu­setts Local Food Action Plan, 164 Mas­sa­chu­setts Public Health Association, 44, 50 Mas­sa­chu­setts Urban Farming Conference (UFC): organ­ization of, 40, 42; speakers at, 32, 46, 77, 97, 99, 128, 136, 186n6 MassDevelopment, 144 Mattapan, Mas­sa­chu­setts: community organ­izing in, 4–5; demographics of, 180n16, 192n19; housing discrimination in, 103; overview of town history, 2, 3–5; poverty in, 154, 180n15; urban agriculture proj­ects in, 21, 86, 97, 101, 111–112, 113, 117–118, 150. See also Fowler Clark Epstein (FCE) Farm Mattapan Food and Fitness Co­a li­tion (MFFC), 4 MCG. See Mill City Grows (MCG) McNamara, Brad, 143 MDAR. See Mas­sa­chu­setts Department of Agricultural Resources (MDAR) Meade-­Taylor, Alice, 196n5

media coverage and place identities, 187n18; on Boston, 76–77; on Gateway Cities, 49–50; on Lawrence, 186n6; on Lowell, 66–67; on Somerville, 54, 55, 187n14. See also place identities memory and history. See collective memory memory politics: as term, 8–9; urban agriculture and, 149–151. See also collective memory Menino, Thomas, 20, 101, 104–105, 191n9, 192n15 Merck ­Family Fund, 40, 90 metrics, 49, 124, 148 Mill City Grows (MCG), 34, 35, 48–49, 67–73, 152. See also Lowell, Mas­sa­chu­setts Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 196n5 mnemonic bridging, 78–79, 83, 84, 93, 94, 98, 117. See also bridging narratives Morris, Vivien, 5 municipal neglect, 4, 6, 16, 25, 114, 139, 141, 150. See also distrust; race and racism; soil contamination Murnane, Edith, 96, 113 Mystic Housing Development and Garden, Somerville, 60–62, 63, 188n29 narratives, overview, 11–12, 98, 149, 157. See also branding narratives; bridging narratives; familial farming lineages; ­f uture narratives; neighborhood narratives; place identities National Organic Standards Board, 141 National Park Ser­v ice, 65, 68, 181n32 National Register of Historic Places, 2–3. See also Fowler Clark Epstein (FCE) Farm Native Seeds/SEARCH, 10 natu­ral disasters, 126–127 nature: as basis of identities, 9, 13, 46; in narratives about ­f uture of cities, 143–144; need for connection with, 13, 139–141, 155–156; romaniticization of, 46; urban/rural distinctions of, 44–47, 180n26, 184n51, 185n63, 193n34 Nazism, 156, 197n12 neighborhood narratives, 101–103, 117–119, 193n28. See also place identities neoliberalism, 25, 26, 189n3 Nepalese immigrants, 60 New ­England Journal of Medicine, 159 New Entry Sustainable Farming Proj­ect, 42, 96, 121, 122

index New Jersey, 127 New York, 126–127 New York City, New York, 33, 51, 77, 127 New York Times, 54, 158 Nuestras Raíces (organ­ization), 34, 90, 144 Obama, Michelle, 55 obesity prevention programs, 55. See also Shape Up Somerville (SUS) program Office of Food Initiatives (Boston), 45, 105, 106, 190n12 Orchard Gardens (formerly Orchard Park), 99, 191n1 organic food, 141–142, 197n7 Otis, Harrison Gray, 27 Paris Climate Agreement, 194n3 pears, 99, 102, 191n3 Penniman, Leah, 85, 146, 152, 154, 197n8. See also Soul Fire Farm Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 52 Philips (com­pany), 38, 129–130 Pigford v. Glickman, 83, 190n6. See also displacement and land loss; race and racism place, defined, 119 place identities: of Boston, 76–79; of Lowell, 65–67, 189n38; neighborhood narratives, 102–103, 117–119, 193n28; of Somerville, 53–54, 55, 187n14; urban branding, 8, 15, 21, 49–53, 73–75, 149–150. See also authenticity; collective memory Plant, Thomas, 110 police brutality, 158–159 Polish immigrants, 65. See also immigrant communities pollution. See soil contamination ponics. See hydroponic gardening Portuguese immigrants, 27, 50, 56, 57, 58, 60, 69–70, 72. See also immigrant communities postindustrial cities, 6, 14, 28–29, 46, 49. See also Gateway Cities; names of specific cities poverty, 31, 44, 53, 91, 154, 180n15. See also economic implications of farming; food security Pratt, Emmanuel, 52 Provost, Denise, 61, 80–81 public health initiatives, 15, 50, 74, 99, 104–105, 194n8. See also health and food access Puerto Rican mi­grants, 27, 144. See also immigrant communities

219 race and racism: community gardening and, 90–91; farmers markets and, 91; health consequences of, 13, 15, 91–92, 151–154, 158–159, 197n11; protests against, 158–159; terms for, 180n25; in urban farming narratives, 36, 77–83, 94–96, 98, 148, 182n32, 190n7. See also African Americans; environmental racism; health, social determinants of; housing discrimination; immigrant communities; Indigenous communities; settler colonialism; slavery; whiteness radical allyship, 196n3 rangeways, 187n24 Read, Tad, 109, 118 real estate industry and racism. See housing discrimination Reclaim Roxbury, 193n29 Recover Green Roofs, 22, 38 redlining, 3, 14, 28, 91, 103, 117, 154, 158. See also housing discrimination regenerative agriculture, 142 religion, 139–140, 168–169 reparations, 16, 151, 157, 182n32. See also race and racism; slavery ReVision Urban Farm (Dorchester), 104, 109 rooftop gardening, 22–23, 33, 38, 39, 122 Roots (Haley), 181n32 roots, as term and concept, 12–14, 159, 181n32 Roque, Hilda, 144 Roslindale Village Farmers Market, 104 Rotary Park Community Garden (Lowell), 68–70, 72 Roxbury, Mas­sa­chu­setts, 98; demographics of, 192n19; healthy food access in, 84–85; housing discrimination in, 103; public land and development in, 193n29; soil contamination in, 114, 118; urban agriculture proj­ects in, 102, 150 Roxbury Russet apple, 102, 191nn4–5 rural farms and farmers, 30, 40–44, 71 rural/urban agriculture distinctions, 40–43, 44–47, 95–96, 184n51, 185n62. See also nature; urban agriculture Rus­sian Jewish immigrants, 65. See also immigrant communities Rust ­Belt, 28, 183n24. See also postindustrial cities SARS-­CoV-2, 158. See also COVID-19 pandemic scavenging, 61, 188nn30–31

220 i n d e x school gardens, 23, 24, 35, 63, 67, 189n1. See also community garden proj­ects; Edgerly School settler colonialism, 9, 52, 82–83, 152, 180n26, 190n13, 196n2, 197n11. See also erasure; race and racism; slavery; whiteness 7AC (com­pany), 38 Shape Up Somerville (SUS) program, 55, 59–60 sharecropping, 15, 85, 97, 152 Shaw, Klare, 77 sheep grazing, 46, 47, 187–188n24. See also animal husbandry, urban Sisson, Lydia, 36, 69 sites of hyperprojectivity, 122, 123 Slater, Francey, 67, 69 slavery: farming as healing from, 13–14, 85–87, 107, 140, 152; farming narratives and, 15, 89, 152, 181n32; legacies of, 9, 13, 156, 158–159, 198n13; reparations for, 16, 151, 157, 182n32. See also African Americans; race and racism Sliwoski, Grace, 36 SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), 44, 146 social justice movement, 36–37; high-­tech farming and, 135, 143, 144, 155; memory and, 82–83, 151–154, 183n23; on reparations, 16, 151, 182n32; urban farming proj­ects as, 18–21, 26, 103. See also environmental justice movement; food justice movement Social Life of DNA, The (Nelson), 181n32 soil contamination, 5–6, 14, 28–29, 99–102; in Boston, 99, 101, 117–119, 190n10; in Dorchester, 106–107, 117, 118, 192n26; economic implications of, 110, 113–117, 193n31; in Lowell, 67, 189n42; neighborhood stigma and, 111–113, 156; protocols and proposed solutions for, 109–111, 191n13, 193n27; in Somerville, 55. See also brownfields; environmental racism; health and food access; urban agriculture proj­e cts soil health, 156, 183n30. See also terroir solidarity economy, 122 Somali immigrants, 95. See also immigrant communities Somerville, Mas­sa­chu­setts: city ordinance on urban farming in, 48, 161; industrial history of, 27, 48; place identity of,

53–54, 55, 187n14; ­Sullivan on farming history of, 187n24; urban agriculture proj­ects in, 12, 34, 55–64, 135, 164. See also Mas­sa­chu­setts Somerville Arts Council (SAC), 57, 64 Somerville Innovation Farm, 56 Somerville Mobile Farmers Market (SMFM), 59–60, 62, 63 Somerville Urban Agriculture Ambassador (UAA) program, 58, 61 Sommerville Innovation Farm (Edgerly School), 56, 63, 135, 144 Soul Fire Farm, 190n7. See also Penniman, Leah sour leaf, 70 South Dorchester, Mas­s a­c hu­s etts, 192n19 South Street Farm, Somerville, 62–64, 144 sovereignty, 13–14, 86, 89, 93, 96, 151–152. See also food justice movement; food security; healing power of food and farming; land access Spence, Patricia, 5, 86, 88–89, 147 Sportsmen’s Tennis and Enrichment Center, 18, 19 Springfield, Mas­sa­chu­setts, 27, 28, 95. See also Mas­sa­chu­setts Stevenson, Bryan, 156 stigma and soil contamination, 111–113, 156. See also soil contamination ­Sullivan, Rick, 31 ­Sullivan, Vilma, 187n24 sustainability: food justice movement on, 26, 32; of food systems, 122, 126, 143, 144, 151; urban agriculture and, 34–35; urban development strategy and, 23, 24; of urban environments, 25, 125, 137–139. See also climate change; environmental justice movement; food justice movement Sweetwater Foundation, 52 technology. See high-­tech urban farming proj­ects terroir, 10, 133–134, 181n29, 183n30. See also soil health tomatoes, 10, 41, 58, 80 toxic waste. See soil contamination Transformative Development Initiative, 144 Trotter, William Monroe, 196n5 Trust for Public Land (TPL), 1, 125 Tsongas, Nicky, 69–70

index UFC. See Mas­sa­chu­setts Urban Farming Conference (UFC) UFI. See Urban Farming Institute of Boston (UFI) United Nations, 129–130 United States Department of Agriculture. See USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) urban agriculture: city ordinances on, 19, 48, 161, 164, 191n13, 192n15; climate change and, 16, 25, 120–129, 138, 143; as empowerment, 88, 96–97, 112, 150; expectations of, 31–33; farmers markets, 21, 43–44; as field of study, 25–27; freight farming, 13, 16, 38–39, 130–137, 143, 144; funding for, 39–40, 42, 184n45, 190n12, 197n10; f­ uture narratives on, 120, 122–129, 139–145, 155; gender and, 43, 96, 168; healthy food access through, 15, 50, 84–86, 88–93, 114; history of, 27–29; place identity for, 73–75; as practice of reclamation, 13, 85–87, 140, 152–155; qualitative benefits of, 146–149; religion and, 139–140, 168–169; rural/urban distinctions, 40–43, 44–47, 95–96, 184n51, 185n62; sustainability and, 138–139; whiteness and narrative on, 13, 77, 79–83, 94–95, 151, 153. See also animal husbandry, urban; urban agriculture proj­ects Urban Agriculture Initiative (Boston), 20, 105, 109–111 urban agriculture proj­ects: ag-­tech and, 16, 38–39, 129–137, 141–142, 155; in commercial sector, 22–24, 37, 38–39, 122, 184n35, 191n13; community-­based, 18, 19, 20–21, 33–38; community gardens, 30, 60–63, 68–73, 88–92, 188nn30–31; community land trusts for, 6, 16, 97–98, 193n32; culture-­based development strategies for, 49–51, 56–57; demographics of, 42–43, 96, 168, 180n22; in Dorchester, 104–111; gentrification and, 52–53, 150; language diversity and, 50, 61, 70, 71–72; in Lowell, 34, 35, 48–49, 51, 68–73, 100, 152; in Mattapan, 21, 86, 97, 101, 117, 150; motivations for, 25, 85–86, 164, 182n33; past vs. pre­sent focus of, 6–7, 161; priorities of, 13–14; religion and, 168; in Roxbury, 102, 150; soil testing and site research for, 113–117; in Somerville, 12, 34, 55–64, 135, 164. See also Fowler Clark Epstein (FCE) Farm; soil contamination; urban agriculture Urban Agriculture Toolkit (USDA), 31

221 Urban Agriculture Visioning Group (Boston, Mas­sa­chu­setts), 22–23, 43, 46, 90, 123, 164, 190n12, 194n5 urban animal husbandry. See animal husbandry, urban urban branding, 8, 15, 16, 21, 49–53, 73–75, 102–103, 149–150. See also branding narratives; gentrification; green gentrification; place identities; urban redevelopment proj­ects Urban Farming Institute of Boston (UFI), 34; farm stand of, 146, 147; FCE Farm and, 1; on local empowerment, 96–97, 117; as organ­ization, 5, 77, 96, 179n7, 180n22; programs of, 19, 83–84, 97–98, 146–147, 193n32 urban growth co­ali­tions, 8, 51, 74. See also branding narratives; gentrification; urban branding; urban redevelopment proj­ects Urbanism as a Way of Life (Wirth), 45 urbanization, 129–130, 155, 194n7 urban redevelopment proj­ects, 91, 149–150; consumerism and commodification in, 8; farming and, 22–25, 49, 106–117; food as development strategy, 8, 49–51; in­equality and discriminatory practices in, 3, 28, 29, 180n9; in postindustrial cities, 29. See also displacement and land loss; place identities; urban agriculture proj­ects; urban branding USDA (United States Department of Agriculture): Census of Agriculture, 40; Local Food Promotion Program, 22, 39, 190n12; on organic food, 141; Urban Agriculture Toolkit, 31 vacant lots: in Boston neighborhoods, 19–20, 28, 89, 97, 99, 106, 112, 193n31; meanings attributed to, 6, 14, 47, 114, 117; postindustrial cities and, 29, 100–101; revalorization of, 49, 90, 150; as sites for urban farms and gardens, 2, 3, 5, 19–20, 23, 30, 50, 181n31. See also arson; community land trusts; land access vertical farming technologies. See freight farming Victory Programs, 90, 104, 109 Viet­nam­ese immigrants, 60, 61, 63, 66, 72. See also healing power of food and farming Vilsack, Tom, 39 Walker, Bobby, 89–90, 95 Walsh, Martin, 1, 79–80, 126, 190n12

222 i n d e x Washington, Karen, 31, 61, 77, 92 Watson, Greg, 122, 144, 145 Welcome Proj­ect, 60 wellness garden programs, 50; by Green City Growers, 23–25; in Somerville, 55. See also healing power of food and farming White, Monica, 26, 155 white nationalism, 156, 197n12 whiteness: of alternative food movement, 197n7; in rurality and farming ste­reo­ types, 46–47, 185nn64–65; in urban agriculture narrative, 13, 77, 79–83, 94–95, 151, 153. See also race and racism; settler colonialism Whole Foods Foundation, 63

Whole Foods Market (Lynnfield, Mas­sa­chu­setts), 23 WIC (­Women, Infants, and ­Children) nutrition program, 91 Wills-­O’Gilvie, Liz, 159 Wilson-­R ich, Noah, 45 Worcester, Mas­sa­chu­setts, 27, 35, 36, 136, 162, 186n3. See also Mas­sa­chu­setts Worcester Regional Environmental Council, 34, 36 World Crops Proj­ect (Somerville), 12, 63, 74, 177 Yancey, Charles, 106–107, 193n26 young farmers, 40, 43, 86, 93, 94, 96, 168. See also gender and urban agriculture

About the Author

Sara Shostak is an associate professor at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, where she teaches in the Department of Sociology and the Health: Science, Society, and Policy Program.

Available titles in the Nature, Society, and Culture series: Diane C. Bates, Superstorm Sandy: The Inevitable Destruction and Reconstruction of the Jersey Shore Elizabeth Cherry, For the Birds: Protecting Wildlife through the Naturalist Gaze Cody Ferguson, This Is Our Land: Grassroots Environmentalism in the Late Twentieth ­Century Aya H. Kimura and Abby Kinchy, Science by the ­People: Participation, Power, and the Politics of Environmental Knowledge Anthony B. Ladd, ed., Fractured Communities: Risk, Impacts, and Protest against Hydraulic Fracking in U.S. Shale Regions Stefano B. Longo, Rebecca Clausen, and Brett Clark, The Tragedy of the Commodity: Oceans, Fisheries, and Aquaculture Stephanie A. Malin, The Price of Nuclear Power: Uranium Communities and Environmental Justice Kari Marie Norgaard, Salmon and Acorns Feed Our ­People: Colonialism, Nature, and Social Action J. P. Sapinski, Holly Jean Buck, and Andreas Malm, eds., Has It Come to This? The Promises and Perils of Geoengineering on the Brink Chelsea Schelly, Dwelling in Re­sis­tance: Living with Alternative Technologies in Amer­i­ca Sara Shostak, Back to the Roots: Memory, In­equality, and Urban Agriculture Diane Sicotte, From Workshop to Waste Magnet: Environmental In­equality in the Philadelphia Region Sainath Suryanarayanan and Daniel Lee Kleinman, Vanis­hing Bees: Science, Politics, and Honeybee Health Patricia Widener, Toxic and Intoxicating Oil: Discovery, Re­sis­tance, and Justice in Aotearoa New Zealand