Problem, research strategy, and findings: We draw on a multidisciplinary body of research to consider how planning for urban agriculture can foster food justice by benefitting socioeconomically disadvantaged residents. The potential social benefits of urban agriculture include increased access to food, positive health impacts, skill building, community development, and connections to broader social change efforts. The literature suggests, however, caution in automatically conflating urban agriculture’s social benefits with the goals of food justice. Urban agriculture may reinforce and deepen societal inequities by benefitting better resourced organizations and the propertied class and contributing to the displacement of lower-income households. The precariousness of land access for urban agriculture is another limitation, particularly for disadvantaged communities. Planners have recently begun to pay increased attention to urban agriculture but should more explicitly support the goals of food justice in their urban agriculture policies and programs.
Takeaway for practice: We suggest several key strategies for planners to more explicitly orient their urban agriculture efforts to support food justice, including prioritizing urban agriculture in long-term planning efforts, developing mutually respectful relationships with food justice organizations and urban agriculture participants from diverse backgrounds, targeting city investments in urban agriculture to benefit historically disadvantaged communities, increasing the amount of land permanently available for urban agriculture, and confronting the threats of gentrification and displacement from urban agriculture. We demonstrate how the city of Seattle (WA) used an equity lens in all of its programs to shift its urban agriculture planning to more explicitly foster food justice, providing clear examples for other cities.
The aim of our review is to draw from a multidisciplinary literature to suggest ways in which urban planners can structure urban agriculture in support of food justice. Food justice brings attention to the significant disparities embedded in the food system, which are often reproduced in movements to change that system. Food justice advocates engage in a wide array of strategies and practices, from place-based projects to political change efforts. Urban agriculture, or cultivating food within metropolitan areas, is one place-based strategy frequently associated with attempts to address food injustice (Santo, Palmer, & Kim, 2016Santo, R., Palmer, A., & Kim, B. (2016). Vacant lots to vibrant plots: A review of the benefits and limitations of urban agriculture. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future. [Google Scholar]).
The interdisciplinary literature in the past 15 years has focused on the multiple social benefits of urban agriculture, including its contributions to food security, health, skill building and jobs, community development, and food systems change. The focus on the benefits of urban agriculture has led to an association of urban agriculture with food justice. Fully assessing urban agriculture’s contributions to food justice, however, requires us to examine whether socioeconomically disadvantaged communities benefit. Urban agriculture alone cannot fully resolve many of the fundamental causes of food injustice, which include economic disparities, poverty, and historical and structural racism. Worse, some urban agriculture projects may perpetuate existing inequities, for example by benefitting already privileged communities, contributing to the ongoing marginalization and even displacement of disadvantaged groups. It is critical to address these concerns if urban agriculture is to foster food justice.
Planners have become increasingly involved in urban agriculture in the past 15 years. Common planning strategies have been to adopt supportive policies and remove regulatory barriers; incentivize urban agriculture through reduced utility fees and taxes; and offer funding, programming, land, and infrastructure. Without explicit valuation of food justice, however, urban agriculture strategies may primarily benefit the propertied class and newcomers rather than disadvantaged communities.
In this review, we first define food justice and note how urban agriculture is one potential strategy to foster food justice. We then discuss the range of urban agriculture forms and activities, though we ultimately focus here on food cultivation. In the following sections, we synthesize the main social benefits of urban agriculture, emphasizing both the possible contributions to food justice and the limitations. Finally, we examine the role of planning by first discussing the common strategies used by planners to foster urban agriculture and their limitations for improving food justice.
Planners can play a stronger role in the movement for food justice by explicitly considering whether the urban agriculture efforts they plan and promote really do benefit disadvantaged communities. First, planners can embed urban agriculture into long-term planning efforts so that urban agriculture is viewed as a priority, not just a placeholder for future developments on the land. Second, planners can develop mutually respectful relationships with food justice organizations to better understand their constraints and needs. A third strategy is to target outreach, programming, funding, and infrastructure for urban agriculture to organizations led by and benefitting members of historically disadvantaged communities. Fourth, planners can increase the amount of land permanently available for urban agriculture. Finally, planners must confront and counter urban agriculture’s contributions to displacement. We discuss Seattle (WA), where municipal government staff used an equity lens to better target their urban agriculture policies and programming to benefit low-income communities of color. Seattle prioritized new community garden and farm investments in neighborhoods with a high proportion of low-income people of color and has adopted more culturally inclusive outreach and programming.
