Cannabis Grow

Interestingly, prior studies in the region found that organic fertilizer use in the early organic movement was potentially more widespread. For example, early organic farmers in Yolo County who were interviewed by Guthman et al. in the early 1990s used high nitrogen-based organic fertilizers such as pelleted chicken manure, seabird guano, and Chilean nitrate to supply fertility to soil in their organic production; based on interviews here, several decades later, farmers appear to have significantly cut back on the use of such high nitrogen-based organic fertilizer products. Several of these farmers have explicitly realized that “more is not better” when it comes to organic fertilizers; as discussed above, the majority of farmers interviewed here have shifted towards implementing a synergy of management practices that promotes good soil structure, increased soil microbial activity and soil organic matter, and adequate soil moisture rather than using high nitrogen-based organic fertilizers. Third, these organic farmers unanimously agreed that soil test results could be more useful to them if the numerical results were also provided with meaningful interpretation, ideally in the form of a direct conversation—and that importantly, moved beyond prescriptive recommendations for nutrient additions and organic fertilizer application. Farmers interviewed used a variety of rich metaphors to elaborate on this point, cannabis grow equipment such as likening soil test results to the fuel gauge in a car; both provide little insight into the actual mechanics of how well the system, be it an engine or a soil ecosystem, is actually functioning.

This key takeaway from farmers in this study suggests that available soil indicators do not fully account for the complexity of their ecological farming systems, and that farmers see the interpretation of soil test results as an essential part of addressing the underlying complexity, and holistic soil function in their broader agricultural ecosystem. Our study provides an initial window into farmer knowledge of soil function in relation to soil fertility; however, as PetrescuMag et al. emphasize, deeper research on this particular gap in farmer knowledge of soil function is essential to determine the specific content of interpretations accompanying soil test results that would be practical and informative to farmers. Another potential way to bridge this gap in applicability for farmers would be to incorporate descriptive indicators for soil fertility in conjunction with available quantitative soil indicators. As Romig et al. suggested several decades ago, descriptive indicators can integrate well with existing soil metrics, and therefore provide mutually acceptable alternatives to discuss soil health and fertility among farmers and scientists alike. Finding a common language through which to engage is at the heart of this current gap in soil health research . Indicators for soil fertility measured here provided limited effectiveness in differentiating between fields deemed by farmers as “most challenging” and “least challenging” , which suggests that current scientifically developed metrics for measuring soil fertility do not align well with farmer developed benchmarks for soil fertility. This outcome additionally suggests that nutrient availability was not the driving factor for farmer perceptions of soil performance, at least in terms of soil fertility.

Of the eight indicators for soil fertility measured in this study, total soil nitrogen was the only indicator that was able to detect differences in soil fertility ; however, fields selected by farmers as “most challenging” showed on average higher values of total soil nitrogen than fields selected by farmers as “least challenging.” Because higher total soil nitrogen values are generally equated with higher soil fertility in the soil health literature, we hypothesized that the “least challenging” fields would show on average higher values of total soil nitrogen . This alternative outcome here suggests that while this soil chemical property shows sensitivity to differences perceived by farmers in their selected fields, this commonly used indicator does not adequately capture the direction of farmer knowledge of soil fertility between their selected fields. On the one hand, it is not surprising that total soil nitrogen was the only soil indicator able to detect differences between farmer-selected “most challenging” and “least challenging” fields, especially given that after nearly a century of research total soil nitrogen remains one of the most predictive measures of soil fertility status . However, the contradictory direction of our results for total soil nitrogen between farmer-selected “most challenging” and “least challenging” fields emphasizes that current scientific application of this soil indicator does not readily transfer for use on-farm. One potential reason for this inconsistency may be because as a soil indicator, total soil nitrogen reflects both the amount of chemically stable organic matter and more active organic matter fractions, and therefore gives a rough indication of nitrogen supplying power in the soil.

However, in practice it is possible that fields deemed by farmers as “least challenging” have depleted their nitrogen supplying power due to more frequent crop plantings, for example— compared to fields that are “most challenging” and therefore may be less frequently planted with crops throughout the year. This finding underscores the current lack of interpretation of soil test results in community with both agricultural researchers and farmers present together; the current gap in interpretation of soil testing results was repeatedly emphasized by farmers during interviews, and suggests that— moving forward, contextualizing and interpreting soil test results in local farming contexts is key to disentangling potential mismatches between farmer knowledge systems and agricultural researcher knowledge systems. To move toward this outcome requires deep listening and relationship building on the part of agricultural researchers not currently widely applied . Whereas another similar study found that active carbon was the singular most sensitive, repeatable, and consistent soil health indicator able to differentiate between fields in their study on organic farms in Canada , we highlight that one potential reason for this difference in our results might be as a result of differences in management in each study. While our study consisted of farms along a gradient of organic management , the prior study focused on three organic farms with similar management. This divergence in results highlights the importance of accounting for a gradient in management when evaluating the efficacy of soil health indicators on working farms. Much remains to be learned about how inherent soil properties and dynamic soil processes interact with complex management systems on working farms . Limited prior research that has looked at the effects of multiple soil management practices indicates that metrics for soil health are a product of both inherent soil properties and dynamic soil properties . Whether available soil indicators could translate these soil properties and processes when management systems are complex remains unclear. As an added layer of complexity, field variability is hard to distinguish from management-induced changes in soil properties . To address this challenge, prior studies have suggested increasing samples, the number of sites, and sampling strategies that account for spatial and temporal variability ; however, as farmers themselves expressed in this study, such an approach requires additional time and resources, and may not increase their utility—at least to farmers—in the end. In this sense, vertical grow rack farmer knowledge may serve as an important mechanism for ground-truthing soil health assessments, particularly when management is synergistic and does not rely heavily on organic fertilizers. As emphasized by our results above, farmer involvement in soil health assessment studies is imperative to better converge soil indicators with farmer knowledge of their soil. Lastly, our results also highlight the utility of incorporating information about nitrogen-based fertilizer application on sampled field sites, particularly when assessing soil indicators on working farms with a large variation in the quantity of N-based fertilizers applied . Farms on the low end of additional organic fertilizer application showed minimal differences between farmer selected fields for soil fertility, particularly in terms of soil inorganic nitrogen —which suggests that differences in soil fertility in fields with more circular nutrient use may be less detectable using commonly available soil indicators. This cursory finding here corroborated farmer observations touched on in the previous section above, and requires further investigation to see if similar trends extend to other organic systems. Here, we have identified several gaps in the utility of commonly available indicators for soil fertility among a unique group of organic farmers in Yolo County, California using interviews with farmers and field surveys. Our study highlights that if available soil indicators are to be considered effective by farmers, they must be grounded in farmers’ realities. Moving forward, working in collaboration with farmers to close this continued gap in soil health research will be essential in order to ground widely available soil indicators in real working farms with unique management systems and variable, local soil conditions. This approach is particularly needed among organic farms that do not rely extensively on nitrogen-based organic fertilizers and additional nutrient input to supply their fertility, as available soil indicators do not adequately reflect farmers’ descriptive metrics for soil fertility.

Moreover, our research elevates concerns that currently available soil indicators used in soil health and fertility assessments may not fully capture the complex plant-microbe-soil interactions that regulate soil fertility, particularly on organic farms that use minimal organic fertilizer application. Moving forward, additional studies that pursue a deeper dive into nutrient dynamics across a gradient of management and varying nitrogen-based fertilizer input is needed. Overall, the strong overlap between farmer knowledge in this study and ongoing soil health research speaks to the opportunity to further engage with farmers in developing useful indicators for soil health and fertility that are better calibrated to local contexts and draw on local farmer knowledge. A deeper investigation of farmers knowledge systems, in particular farmer understanding of soil function in connection with crop productivity, soil health, and soil fertility, represents a critical path forward for this research arena. Additionally, we recommend placing greater emphasis on developing descriptive indicators for soil health and fertility in collaboration with farmers that are better integrated with ongoing qualitative soil health and fertility metrics. These descriptive indicators should not be developed in isolation to ongoing research on soil health and fertility assessment, but rather as an integrated research process among scientists, farmers, and extension agents—importantly, with scientists as listeners working toward a shared language. The Tanaka Farm is located in Skagit County, Washington, employing approximately 500 people during the picking season, May through November. During the winter and early spring, the farm employs approximately 80 workers. The farm is well known for strawberries, many from the ‘‘Northwest variety’’ cultivated by the founder of the family farm. The business is vertically integrated, from seed nursery to berry fields to processing plant, with almost all berries produced on the farm sold under larger labels. The farm consists of several thousand acres, much of the land visible west of Interstate-5. Most of the land consists of long rows of strawberry plants, although several fields are dedicated to raspberries, apples, and organic or ‘‘traditional’’ blueberries. At the base of a forested hill on the edge of the farm lies the largest migrant labor camp on the farm, housing approximately 250 workers and their families during the harvest . Immediately above this camp are five large houses partially hidden by trees with floor-to-ceiling views of the valley. Two other labor camps are partially hidden behind the large, concrete processing plant and the farm headquarters. The camp closest to the road houses 50 year-round employees and the other, a few hundred yards away, holds almost 100 workers and their families during the harvest. Diagonally across from these two labor camps and the processing plant are the houses of some of the Tanaka family. The one most visible from the main road is a semi-Jeffersonian, one-story, brick house with white pillars behind a white, wooden fence. The Tanaka Farm advertises itself as ‘‘a family business spanning four generations with over 85 years experience in the small fruit industry.’’ On a more subtle level, farm work is produced by a complex segregation, a conjugated oppression . In Bourgois’s analysis of a Central American banana plantation, ethnicity and class together produce an oppression phenomenologically and materially different than that produced by either alone. In contemporary US agriculture, the primary lines of power fall along categories of race, class, and citizenship. The complex of labor on the Tanaka Farm involves several hundred workers occupying distinct positions from owner to receptionist, crop manager to tractor driver, berry checker to berry picker . People on the farm often describe the hierarchy with vertical metaphors, speaking of those ‘‘above’’ or ‘‘below’’ them or of ‘‘overseeing.’’ Responsibilities, anxieties, privileges, and structural vulnerability differ from the top to the bottom of this hierarchy .

While not significant, SOM indicators were also selected in the development of the LMM for gross mineralization rates as well. These results are congruent with previous research looking across ecosystem types that reported a relationship between N cycling rates and SOM indicators. For example, a meta-analysis published by Booth et al. that examined woody, grass, and agricultural ecosystems found a strong positive relationship between indicators for SOM and gross N mineralization. It is likely that in this prior study, the range of ecosystem types analyzed were sufficiently broad to detect a significant trend between indicators for SOM and N cycling. However, in our context, which encompasses agricultural systems only—it is possible that previously established trends are less detectable within this narrower range of ecosystem type. As shown in Figure 1 , if the range of ecosystem type is constrained to include only agricultural systems, the relationship between indicators for SOM and gross N mineralization is less evident. In summary, our results suggest that SOM indicators, while not significant, do play a role in influencing N cycling across the farm systems studied here. While initially, we found it surprising that N cycling soil indicators were not strongly linked to SOM indicators, one known limitation of measuring gross N mineralization and nitrification in the field is that while gross N production of inorganic N relay supply of available N to crops, gross rates in our case represent potential rates standardized to temperature and moisture—and therefore do not represent in situ rates found directly in the field. Moreover, using gross N production of inorganic N as an indicator for soil N cycling also poses inherent limitations for determining actual available N beyond those created by field conditions, as discussed above.

However, cannabis grow racks while measuring gross N production of inorganic N may provide a more limited applicability for quantifying N cycling than originally hypothesized, the lack of a strong relationship between common soil indicators for organic matter levels and gross rates of soil N cycling does not necessarily mean that building organic matter with intentional management does not lead to greater N availability for crops. For example, a recent study by Wade et al. that used identical indicators to measure soil organic matter levels in the midwestern region of the US found that these indicators for soil quality do indeed influence supply of N—based on crop responses . While this recent study focused on yield response to fertilizers and their relationship to soil health and soil quality and considered biogeochemical processes as intact , we speculate that the influence of soil quality on N supply determined by Wade et al. is not as detectable when measuring gross N cycling directly. We suggest that there may be circumstances where N cycling indicators are not as responsive to N supply, but soil quality is still improving. Such circumstances can arise for example when minerals in the soil lock up available N or when soil microsites create differences in N cycling that is not reflective of actual N supply to crops. In this sense, soil organic matter indicators better reflect local soil conditions, such as soil structure and root structure of crops, that overcome limitations imposed by mineralogy and/or soil microsites. For this reason, these soil organic matter indicators are both more comprehensive and more responsive for measuring N availability than N cycling indicators. As Grandy et al. point out, after a century of research, few indicators provide better insight to N availability than total soil N content . Grandy et al. also highlighted that indicators for soil organic matter, such as those used in our study, represent soil metrics with a slow turnover rate as compared to the fast turnover rate among indicators for N cycling.

This difference in soil indicator turnover rate may also be useful to consider in our study, as it is possible that gross N flows may have a faster turnover rate than SOM indicators and are therefore less responsive when compared to soil quality indicators and existing management regimes. Because our study focused on within season dynamics, the incongruity between soil indicator turnover rates is likely intensified. In addition, because our on-farm study examined cumulative impacts of diverse management approaches on N availability, it is also possible that these differences in soil indicator responsiveness lacked sensitivity not only due to differences in indicator turnover rates but also because the indicators for available N measured here may be more sensitive to management practices not explicitly captured in this study . Likewise, given the strong influence of soil texture we found, soil clay content and mineralogy may play a more dominant role in influencing N cycling, potentially obscuring links to management in this context . In particular, clay content strongly influences stabilization of organic N through the formation of aggregate protected organic matter and through the preservation of microbial biomass, which ultimately limits bioavailable N . In recent years, the concept of “soil health” in the United States has become codified as a research and policy tool to unify efforts towards 1) improving soil function on farms, and more broadly 2) building on-farm resilience . While the exact definition of “soil health” continues to evolve, the concept generally refers to “the continued capacity of soil to function” in a way that sustains ecological, environmental, and human needs . On the technical front, soil health research has focused on effective and efficient ways to measure and improve soil health, and on quantifying benefits associated with building soil health .

Concurrent research has also placed particular emphasis on the role of “innovative” on-farm management practices in building soil health and promoting on-farm resilience . This research has taken a practice-centric approach that primarily uses social science methods to examine farmers’ views or farmers’ uses of specific practices, and has— importantly—generated insight into the adoption of key management practices related to soil health . Despite this work, to date, very few studies in the US explicitly incorporate farmer knowledge of soil health and soil management beyond farmer perspectives on the topic and/or farmer motivations for adopting soil health practices . However, farmers possess wide and deep place-based knowledge of their soils that has the potential to advance work on soil health beyond its currently limited scope . Inclusion of farmer knowledge is integral if one outcome of ongoing research on soil health is to address both social and ecological resilience. Farmers are uniquely positioned to share their onthe-ground social realities and their local ecological knowledge of their soils and farming systems . To be clear, inclusion of farmers in this research arena is essential if only to contribute farmer knowledge and farmer voices to the existing body of work—which to date has been lacking . This call for inclusion of farmer knowledge represents: 1) a departure from the majority of prior research in the US that tends to emphasize the advancement of research and policy agendas aimed at behavioral change ; and 2) simultaneously, a shift towards explicit inclusion of farmer knowledge in the knowledge-making of emergent soil health research. While farmer knowledge is certainly important and underutilized, cannabis drying racks consideration for quantitative assessments of soil health remains a critical component of advancing soil health. Available indicators to quantify soil health already exist and are widely applied both on farms and in scientific studies. These soil indicators prioritize so-called “principles of soil health” to assess health through evaluating soil function, usually emphasizing metrics for organic matter quality, nitrogen availability, soil biological activity, and water cycling . Currently, our understanding of how local farmer knowledge of soil To investigate these questions, we applied a case study approach, engaging in on-farm research of 13 organic farms and their respective farm owners in Yolo County, California, USA—a region where this type of farmer inclusive soil health research has been limited to date. We used qualitative, in-depth field interviews in combination with quantitative field sampling and subsequent laboratory analysis. This research focused on Yolo County in particular, because of its unique role as a hub for innovative, high-value organic vegetable production . These thirteen organic farmers specifically—because of their historical relationship to their land and their intimacy with the physical place they farm—collectively represented a salient case study through which to understand soil health and fertility from a grounded perspective. More broadly, we led this work with a Farmer First approach in order to give voice to organic farmers of this region, and to provide a model for future inclusivity of farmer knowledge in the growing body of work on soil health.We conducted our experiment on 13 farms in Yolo County, California, on unceded Patwinspeaking Wintun Nation tribal lands—located along the western side of the Sacramento Valley between late March 2019 and December 2020. The region is characterized by Mediterraneantype climate with cool, wet winters and hot, dry summers. Precipitation in the 2019 water year 2019 was 807 mm—the fifth wettest winter on record.

The mean maximum and minimum temperatures were 33.9oC and 15.5oC, respectively for July 2019. Mean annual maximum and minimum temperatures for 2019 were 24oC and 9.8oC, respectively. All farm sites were on similar parent material . Most farms were situated on either loam, clay loam, or silty clay loam. All 13 farms selected for this soil health study were located in Yolo County . The organic farms represent a majority of the farms in the region with a diversified array of vegetable and fruit crops that sell to a variety of consumer markets, including farmers’ markets, wholesale markets, and restaurants. The 13 farmers interviewed represent 13 individuals who oversee management and operations on their farms. These individuals were most often the primary owner and operator of the farm, and made key management decisions on their farm. To identify potential participants for this study, we first consulted the USDA Organic Integrity database and assembled a comprehensive list of all organic farms in the county . Next, with input from the local University of California Cooperative Extension Small and Organic Farms Advisor for Yolo County, we narrowed the list of potential farms by applying several criteria for this study: 1) organic operation on the same ground for a minimum of 5 years; 2) a minimum of 10 years of experience in organic farming; and 3) a focus on growing diversified fruit and vegetable crops. These requirements significantly reduced the pool of potential participants. In total, 16 farms were identified to fit the criteria of this study . These 16 farmers were contacted with a letter containing information about the study and its scope. To establish initial trust with farmers identified, we worked directly with the local UCCE advisor. Because this research is informed by a Farmer First approach—which emphasizes multiple ways of knowing and challenges the standard “information transfer” pipeline model that is often applied in research and extension contexts—farmers were viewed as experts and crucial partners in this research . As a result, farmers were considered integral to field site selection, and were not asked to change their management or planting plans. In addition to the Farmer First approach, we intentionally used a two-tiered interview process, in which we scheduled an initial field visit and then returned for an in-depth, semi-structured interview at a later date—after summer field sampling was complete. The overall purpose of the preliminary field visit was to help establish rapport and increase the amount and depth of knowledge farmers shared during the semi-structured interviews. The initial field visit typically lasted one hour and was completed with all 13 participants. Farmers were asked to walk through their farm and talk generally about their fields, their fertility programs, and their management approaches. The field interview also provided an opportunity for open dialogue with farmers regarding specific management practices and local knowledge . Because local knowledge is often tacit, the field component was beneficial to connect knowledge shared by each farmer to specific fields and specific practices. During the initial field visit, field sites were selected in direct collaboration with farmers. First, each farmer was individually asked to describe their understanding of soil health and soil fertility. Based on their response, farmers were then asked to select two field sites within their farm: 1) a field that the farmer considered to be exemplary in terms of their efforts towards building soil fertility ; and 2) a field the farmer considered to be a challenge in terms of their efforts towards maintaining soil fertility .

Farmers thus provide an important node in the research and policy making process, whereby they determine if scientific findings or policy recommendations apply to their specific farming context—through direct observation, personal experience, and experimentation. Understanding the mechanisms of farmer knowledge formation and precisely how farmers learn is essential to integrating farmer knowledge into the scientific literature. As outlined in the farmer knowledge formation framework, farmer ecological knowledge is accumulated over time based on continuous systematic assessment through direct observation, personal experiences, or experimentation. This iterative feedback approach to learning among organic farmers is akin to the scientific method and parallel in approach to adaptive management in agriculture . As highlighted in the results, it is possible for a farmer to acquire expert knowledge within one or two generations of farming alternatively. Documenting this farmer knowledge within the scientific literature—specifically farmer knowledge in the context of relatively new farmers in the US—represents a key way forward for widening agricultural knowledge both in theory and in practice . This finding is significant because it underscores the importance of farmers not as subjects of science but as actors within the scientific community. This study provides one example for documenting farmer knowledge in a particularly unique site for organic agriculture. Future studies may expand on this approach in order to document other contexts with recent but deep agricultural knowledge on alternative farms.

For example, pipp mobile systems when farmers were asked to talk about soil management specifically, several farmers struggled with this format of question, because they expressed that they do not necessarily think about soil management specifically but tend to manage for multiple aspects of their farm ecosystem simultaneously. This result aligns with similar findings from Sūmane et al. across a case study of ten different farming contexts in Europe, and suggests that farmers tend to have a bird’s eye view of their farming systems. Such an approach allows farmers to make connections across diverse and disparate elements of their farm operation and integrate these connections to both widen and deepen their ecological knowledge base.For most farmers, maintaining ideal soil structure was the foundation for healthy soil. Farmers emphasized that ideal soil structure was delicately maintained by only working ground at appropriate windows of soil moisture. Determining this window of ideal soil moisture represented a learned skill that each individual farmer developed through the iterative learning process elaborated in Figure 1. This knowledge-making process was informed by both social mechanisms gained through inherited wisdom and informal conversations and ecological mechanisms through direct observation, personal experiences, and experimentation . As farmers developed their ecological knowledge of the appropriate windows of soil moisture, their ethos around soil management shifted. In this way, over time , these farmers learned that no amount of nutrient addition, reduced tillage, cover cropping, or other inputs could make up for damaged soil structure. Destroying soil structure was relatively easy but had irreversible, long-term consequences and often took years, in some cases even a decade, to rebuild.

This key soil health practice voiced by a majority of farmers interviewed represented a different framing compared to messaging about soil health vis-a-vis extension institutions , where soil health principles focus on keeping ground covered, minimizing soil disturbance, maximizing plant diversity, keeping live roots in the soil, and integrating livestock for holistic management. While these five key principles of soil health were mentioned by farmers and were deemed significant, for most farmers interviewed in this study, the foundation and starting point for good soil health was maintaining appropriate soil structure. Though soil structure is clearly important in NRCS conception of soil health, soil structure is not explicitly considered in the core soil health principles. The results of this study emphasize that the most successful entry point for engaging farmers around soil health is context specific, informed directly by local knowledge. Among farmers in Yolo County—a significant geographic node of the organic farming movement—soil structure is a prevalent concept; however, in another farming context, this entry point may significantly diverge for social, ecological, economic, or other reasons. Each farming context therefore necessitates careful inquiry and direct conversation with local farmers to determine this entry point for engagement on soil health. For this reason, in most cases it may be more relevant to tailor soil health outreach to the local context rather than applying a one-size-fits all model.The capacity to learn and pass on that learning are essential for organic farms to be able to adapt to ever changing social and ecological changes ahead . Across all farmers interviewed, including both first- and second-generation farmers, farmers stressed the steep learning curves associated with learning to farm alternatively and/or organically.

While these farmers represent a case study for building a successful, organic farm within one generations, the results of this study beg the question: What advancements in farm management and soil management could be possible with multiple generations of farmer knowledge transfer on the same land? Rather than re-learning the ins and outs of farming every generation or two, as new farmers arrive on new land, farmers could have the opportunity to build on existing knowledge from a direct line of farmers before them, and in this way, potentially contribute to breakthroughs in alternative farming. In this sense, moving forward agriculture in the US has a lot to learn from agroecological farming approaches with a deep multi-generational history . To this end, in most interviews—particularly among older farmers—there was a deep concern over the future of their farm operation beyond their lifetime. Many farmers lamented that no one is slated to take over their farm operation and that all the knowledge they had accumulated would not pass on. There exists a need to fill this gap in knowledge transfer between shifting generations of farmers in order to safeguard farmer knowledge and promote adaptations in alternative agriculture into the future.Most studies often speak to the scalability of approach or generalizability of the information presented. While aspects of this study are generalizable particularly to similar farming systems in California such as the Central Coast region, the farmer knowledge presented in this study is not generalizable and not scalable to other regions in the US. To access farmer knowledge, relationship building with individual farmers leading up to interviews as well as the in-depth interviews themselves require considerable time and energy. While surveys often provide a way to overcome time and budget constraints to learn about farmer knowledge, this study shows that to achieve specificity and depth in analysis of farmer knowledge requires an interactive approach that includes—at a minimum—relationship building, multiple field visits, and in-depth, multi-hour interviews. Accessing farmer knowledge necessitates locally interactive research; this knowledge may not be immediately generalizable or scalable without further locally interactive assessment in other farming regions. Local knowledge among farmers in US alternative agriculture has often been dismissed or overlooked by the scientific community, policymakers, industrial drying rack and agricultural industry experts alike; however, this study makes the case for inclusion of farmer knowledge in these arenas. In-depth interviews established that farmers provide an important role in translating theoretical aspects of agricultural knowledge into practice. It is for this reason that farmer knowledge must be understood in the context of working farms and the local landscapes they inhabit. As one of the first systematic assessments of farmer knowledge of soil management in the US, this research contributes key insights to design future studies on farmer knowledge and farmer knowledge of soil. Specifically, this study suggests that research embedded in local farming communities provides one of the most direct ways to learn about the substance of farmer knowledge; working with the local UCCE advisor in combination with community referrals provided avenues to build rapport and relationships with individual farmers—relationships that were essential to effective research of farmer knowledge. Farmer knowledge of soil management for maintaining healthy soils and productive, resilient agriculture represents an integral knowledge base in need of further scientific research. This study provides a place-based case study as a starting point for documenting this extensive body of knowledge among farmers. It is our hope that this research will inspire future studies on farmer knowledge in other contexts so that research in alternative agriculture can widen its frame to encompass a more complete understanding of farming systems and management motivations—from theory to practice.

A fundamental challenge in agriculture is to limit the environmental impacts of nitrogen losses while still supplying adequate nitrogen to crops and achieving a farm’s expected yields . To balance among such environmental, ecological, and agronomic demands, it is essential to establish actual availability of nitrogen to crops . A holistic, functional understanding of plant N availability is particularly imperative in organic agriculture, as in this farming context, synthetic fertilizers are not applied and instead, production of inorganic N—the dominant form of N available to crops—depends on internal soil processes . In organic agricultural systems, farmers may seasonally apply cover crops or integrate livestock as alternative sources of nitrogen to crops—in addition to or in place of using organic fertilizers. In applying these alternative sources of nitrogen to soil, organic farmers rely on the activity of soil microbes to transform organic N into inorganic forms of N that are more readily available for crop uptake . Currently, the predominant way crop available N is measured in organic agricultural systems tends to examine pools of inorganic N in soil . Inorganic N, or more specifically ammonium and nitrate , represents the predominant forms of N taken up by crop species in ecosystems where N is relatively available, such as in non-organic agricultural systems that apply inorganic fertilizers . However, in organic systems, crop available N is largely controlled by complex soil processes not adequately captured by simply measuring pools of ammonium and nitrate. First, because nitrogen made available to crops is controlled by soil microbes—wherein crops only have access to inorganic forms of N after microbial N transformations occur to first meet microbial N demand—pinpointing the flow of N moving through inorganic N pools as a result of these microbial N transformations is necessary to accurately measure actual N availability to crops . Second, extensive recycling of N among components of the plant-soil-microbe system complicates relying solely on measurements of inorganic N pools, which do not reflect these dynamics . As an example, one previous study in organic vegetable systems showed examples where inorganic N pool sizes in the soil were measured to be low, yet there existed high production and consumption rates of inorganic N . This outcome highlighted that if the turnover of inorganic N is high—for instance, high rates of soil ammonium production exist in the soil with simultaneously high rates of immobilization by soil microbes and high rates of uptake by plants—measured pools of inorganic N may still be low . This study also showed that conversely, there may also exist situations when inorganic N pools are low and rates of ammonium and nitrate production are also low, in which case N availability would limit crop production. In organic systems especially, higher carbon availability as a result of organic management can increase these microbially mediated gross N flows, thereby increasing N cycling and turnover of inorganic N . Thus, we hypothesize that measuring total production of ammonium from organic N, or gross N mineralization, and subsequent total production of nitrate from ammonium, or gross N nitrification, may provide a more complete characterization of crop available N in the context of organic systems . Though the application of such diverse management practices on organic farms is known to affect rates of N cycling in soil , measuring N flow rates as a proxy for crop available N is currently uncommon on working organic farms. The current historical emphasis on measuring inorganic pools of N in organic agriculture was originally imported from non-organic farming, wherein the Sprengel-Liebig Law of the Minimum was a widely accepted agronomic principle . In practice, this Law of the Minimum placed particular importance on using artificial fertilizers to overcome so-called “limiting” nutrients—namely, inorganic forms of N. Because inorganic N is relatively straightforward to measure, focus on quantifying pools of inorganic N has since become common practice among agronomists and agricultural researchers . However, the continued acceptance of the Law of the Minimum in organic agriculture underscores the gap in a functional understanding of organic agricultural systems, in particular the role of soil microbes in mediating N cycling.

For example, Theobroma cacao seeds, rinds, branches, and other plant parts were identified in areas surrounding both Households 2 and 4 and ceramic vessels were recovered that contained cacao residue. Cacao was a prized plant in Mesoamerica, with its value translating into both beverages and as a form of currency . Cacao resources are typically associated with ceremonial activities, which are generally believed to have been practiced mainly by elite individuals . Yet, Cerén demonstrates that rural households in Mesoamerica had access to valued and prized plant resources. The above depictions of Cerén allows one to envision the small village as a comfortable place to reside. Privacy was not a priority in that walls or barriers were not created to block visibility of households and human activities within them. The visibility and openness of the Cerén household gardens is apparent through visual recreations of the settlement . This is not to say that the ancient inhabitants were open with all aspects of their lives. Sharp tools like obsidian blades were consistently stored up high in the thatch roofing, out of reach from children who could easily injure or cut themselves. Food that was stored within ceramic vessels was almost entirely found within structures and was neatly organized into various jars containing maize, manioc, beans, cotton, and squash , pipp grow rack demonstrating that collected food items were hidden in that they were not readily visible to a passerby. The Cerén people certainly kept many of their belongings in specific locations so that they would not be visible to just anyone—but their gardens were evidently not hidden or demarcated with proprietary intentions.

Gleason defines gardens and fields as spaces that are cultivated and bounded. However, no evidence has been found for fences surrounding house gardens or even fields at Cerén. Clear boundaries between households were not necessarily marked with physical materials or through strategic placement of cultivated flora. The closest evidence for any physical boundaries are the rows of agave outside Household 4, but the spatial location of these suggest more of a garden patch, which provided a source of fiber rather than a natural fence. Fencing is often utilized to keep animals out of cultivated spaces. Identified zooarchaeological remains recovered from the site suggest that the residents of Cerén did consume white-tailed deer , domesticated dog , peccary , and duck . Household 1 exhibited the largest concentration of unmodified animal remains as well as obsidian blades which tested positive for nonhuman animal protein, suggesting that this household processed more meat that the others excavated thus far . All of these animals were certainly capable of disturbing cultivated spaces, yet this must not have been of great concern to the ancient residents since no regular barriers were put in place surrounding the gardens or fields. Besides the fruit trees surrounding the homes, which would have concealed a bit of the space around each dwelling, the Cerénians did not bother to hide their wealth in terms of the foodstuffs growing in their immediate surroundings. Since the Cerén households were able to see other neighboring gardens and fields, this suggests something about the intimate relationships these inhabitants had with each other . Large quantities of beneficial wild and domesticated plants encompassed their entire village, just waiting to be transformed into collected food, goods, and tools that could be stored to ensure a prosperous future, supporting a sense of regular landscape management.

There has been no indication that the gardens within the village were blocked off, with access denied to neighboring households or even views blocked. If we view the household gardens as a form of wealth at Cerén, each household’s potential was readily visible, and each villager would have had a basic knowledge of everyone’s relative wealth in terms of plant goods. This becomes more significant when we consider that each household likely had a surplus of certain plant products. For example, Household 4 had a courtyard garden consisting of rows of agave plants, whose fiber was transformed into rope and clothing material. It was probably well known among the inhabitants that this domestic unit provided the main fiber resources for the village . Such important aspects of their livelihoods were not kept secret, with the knowledge of each households’ belongings visible yet controlled with the use of storehouses. Each household at Cerén produced surplus goods that could be exchanged within the community and perhaps at nearby marketplaces. The kitchen gardens demonstrate that each household also produced their own basic commodities for the household’s consumption, thus creating a dual role for the kitchen gardens as both subsistence and market production . Even if we consider the perspective that collected food was stored almost entirely inside the structures, away from the public eye, recent spatial distribution studies by Farahani et al. show that food was stored throughout the village in domiciles, bodegas, and kitchens. Most structures contained ceramic vessels that would have been used to hold foodstuffs, so these materials were not necessarily hidden or private. It is important to note that preservation is not perfect at Cerén, leaving much to be imagined by archaeologists. Granted, foodstuffs that were in ceramic vessels were preserved well when the thatch roofs collapsed during emplacement of Unit 3 tephra.

However, foods stored in organic containers such as gourds and baskets did not preserve, and those containers themselves did not preserve except for the painted surface of a single gourd under the bench in Structure 2 . Gourds, for example, could have been good storage containers for manioc or malanga flour as it could be kept dry under the roofs. While the archaeological preservation only allows a glimpse of the most durable storage containers, it is still clear that subsistence and diet were not hidden aspects among the social lives of Cerén inhabitants; they were very prevalent in their day to day routine and view of neighboring households through the presence of productive garden plots. Since 2007, excavations at Cerén have focused on the agricultural contexts south of the village, beyond the immediate vicinity of the structures excavated thus far and reveal extensive fields of staple crops that serve as an extension of the fields found adjacent to the household gardens. Infields of maize were situated close to the village. The maize, belonging to the Chapalote-Nal-Tel race, has been identified within the milpa through plaster casts of entire stalks, as well as carbonized kernels, cupules, and larger cob fragments . Farther south of the main village center, just past the maize agricultural fields were outfields of manioc. All of the agricultural fields were cultivated in a series of ridges oriented parallel to the ground slope to help with moisture removal and drainage, just as the kitchen gardens were within the village. The mean precipitation in the Cerén area is at the maximum ideal range for manioc, so drainage was necessary for productive manioc yields. Excavations of the extensive manioc fields strongly suggest that this root crop likely comprised a significant portion of the diet in this region during the Late Classic period, pipp horticulture racks cost suggesting that this food regime could have been widespread throughout Mesoamerica . The unique preservation of agricultural fields at Cerén allows us to view both maize and manioc as staple crops that greatly contributed towards the diet of these Late Classic inhabitants in Mesoamerica. The inter-ridges of the maize fields—i.e. the smaller ridges that did not contain plaster casts of maize stalks—showed evidence of squash and common beans . This conclusion was determined through paleoethnobotanical recovery efforts that utilized both plaster cast techniques and water flotation of soil samples. These inter-ridges were not as large as the maize ridges, but were nevertheless distinct ridges and were located in an alternating manner in between the larger maize ridges. A plaster cast of a squash gourd was recovered in between the maize ridges in an inter-ridge within the milpa of Operation AE, along with multiple bean cotyledons that were identified from soil samples originating from other inter-ridges . Multiple common bean populations have been found throughout Cerén, appearing in storage containers, middens, and floor surfaces . Squash seeds and rinds have also been identified previously at the site, within ceramic vessels, a basket, and even atop a metate inside the kitchen structure . For the first time the presence of both beans and squash is now verified within the milpas and shows that farmers at Cerén practiced inter-planting within their agricultural fields . The eruption apparently occurred in August when maize was mature, yet common practices today in El Salvador suggest that squash and beans would not have been planted yet.

The paleoethnobotanical remains propose that in the past these three annual plants were cultivated simultaneously at Cerén, especially considering that all three were recovered in a mature form. Inter-cropping maize, beans, and squash is advantageous in that it aids in an efficient and prosperous harvest; crop yields are prolonged into subsequent growing seasons, which is a common feature of many agricultural systems in the tropics. For example, the Kekchi Maya incorporate various plants in their milpas immediately after maize begins to sprout . The leguminous beans would have replenished the soil with nitrogen that had been depleted from maize, while the maize created a sturdy structure for the Phaseolus to climb upon and be supported. The squash likely served as a cover crop, helping to retain soil moisture by reducing the total surface exposed to sunlight and also helping to prevent soil erosion. Squash residues incorporated into soil also aids in the prevention of seed germination for many weed species . These ancient villagers were successfully maintaining an agroecological system that today we would describe as resilient and sustainable. Flotation samples taken directly and regularly from the interior of these agricultural ridges show that a great variety of plants were growing and thriving in the infields, not just the domesticates recovered and discussed above. These milpas are not just simple agricultural fields dominated by a single crop, they incorporate a variety of plants that could serve as food, medicine, and pesticides . The maize fields at Cerén had over a dozen weedy species growing in or around the well-maintained maize agricultural ridges, amounting to over 140,000 seeds and achenes . The varied floral assemblage within the infields reflects the effort that the Cerén residents made to diversify their agricultural production, a continuation from what can be seen in the household gardens. It was previously hypothesized that the Cerén residents had well maintained agricultural fields, with few intrusive plants growing among the domesticated crops. The intensification of paleoethnobotanical recovery has made the overwhelming abundance of weedy species visible archaeologically. The majority of the weedy species recovered from the agricultural fields have seeds with an average width of less than a millimeter, which makes water flotation an essential collection strategy to broaden the understanding of this complex agricultural system. Weeds are generally referred to as unwanted pests in agricultural fields and are defined as plants that grow predominantly in disturbed areas and are fast growing . This view regards weeds as problematic due to the competition for nutrients and moisture from soil within a field that weeds take part in, often contributing to a decline in yields, soil fertility, and an increase in other pests such as insects . However, many ethnobotanical studies that report weeds as a problem dealt with invasive species introduced from the Old World post-conquest, which would not have been a concern at the ancient village of Cerén. If competition for resources between weeds and food crops were a major factor, this obstacle could have been eradicated through laborious weeding. While it is possible that the farmers worked to remove weedy plants, the overwhelming abundance of weedy seeds and achenes suggests that the weeding process was not intensive. Perhaps the households at Cerén did not have an abundance of labor to devote to weed removal, which would have been done through manual labor at this ancient village with the use of stone and wooden tools which limit the ability to control the growth of unwanted plants . Alternatively, the residents of Cerén may have been knowledgeable of the multitude of applications for these ‘weedy’ plants, especially as nutritious herbs, given their strong presence among other food crops.

From a conceptual standpoint, there has been considerable debate in recent decades over how to best maintain agricultural productivity while also achieving systems that can maintain long-term productivity through resilience to environmental stress. These conversations often pivot around the idea of replacing industrial input-intensive agricultural practices with ecologically-based, knowledge-intensive systems. These ecologically-based systems are typically depicted as relying on on-farm biological diversity as a mechanism for increasing crops’ resilience to environmental conditions, whereas industrial systems are maintained with off-farm inputs. Even as biological diversification enters the agricultural ethos, there continues to be a pull towards achieving these biological outcomes through off-farm inputs. We typically think of chemicals and energy as the off-farm additions to conventional systems; however, products that mimic the biological effects of diversification practices can similarly be introduced from external sources rather than fostered on the farm. While AMF inoculation has indeed shown some benefit in more industrially managed systems, in the present study we observe that in a more diversified system, augmenting a field’s endogenous AMF community does not improve plant outcomes. Rather than replacing one external input with another , flood and drain hydroponics we find that farmers who already practice diversified management will likely have better luck pairing local climatic conditions with locally-adapted microbial communities.

More broadly, the full fungal community in dry farm, irrigated, and non-cultivated soils were distinct, indicating different selective pressures in each soil condition. Irrigation seems to be a filter on agricultural soils, resulting in a smaller community that overlaps substantially with dry farm soils. Given that in this study only tomatoes were present in dry farm soils, while crops on irrigated soils varied from field to field, we likely overestimate the diversity of irrigated soils relative to dry farm, making this community shrinkage in irrigated soils even more pronounced. While fungal community responses to drought vary widely in the literature, there is precedent for deficit irrigation shifting bacterial communities in processing tomato fields, and natural experiments with drought conditions have led to increased fungal diversity in cotton rotations. This lower fungal diversity in irrigated systems may be driven by lower soil temperatures that are less conducive to fungal growth, or directly linked to changes in fungal competition induced by water stress that enhance diversity in dry farm systems. On the other hand, agricultural soils and non-cultivated soils seem to be distinct communities with roughly equal magnitudes of taxa numbers despite high levels of disturbance that might act as a narrowing selective pressure. Dry farm fungal diversity may be caused by external inputs that introduce non-endogenous taxa to cultivated soils. Dry farm soils were not only distinct from the other soil locations, but consistently enriched in taxa in the class Sordariomycetes.

These indicator taxa formed a dry farm “signature” that was not only present in dry farm soils, but increased in magnitude in soils that had gone multiple years without external water inputs. This signature showed positive associations with fruit quality outcomes, which is of particular importance to farmers in this quality-driven system. Sordariomycetes were also associated with an increased likelihood that a plot would not have any marketable tomatoes on a given harvest day; however, as this was a rare occurrence that happened almost exclusively in the first/last weeks of harvest when yields were low for all plots, we do not expect that farmers will see an association between Sordariomycetes and yield declines. If anything, farmers may notice a slight truncation of harvest season duration in fields that have been dry farmed for several years. Sordariomycetes themselves may not be causing these outcomes, but rather point to the fact that soil microbial communities–possibly including bacteria and other microorganisms in addition to fungi–are consistently adapting to dry farm management. Sordariomycetes enrichment may indicate other community shifts that are ultimately the cause for enhanced fruit quality. Endophytes in the Hypocreales class, which was enriched in dry farm fields, are known to increase drought resistance and decrease pest pressure in their hosts, though none of the specific species known to exhibit this behavior were enriched in dry farm soils. On the other hand, Nectriaceae, the family that contains the Fusarium genus, was found to be enriched, though similarly no known pathogenic species were enriched in dry farm soils.

Our study explored dry farm management practices and their influence on soil nutrient and fungal community dynamics in 7 fields throughout the Central Coast region of California, allowing us to explore patterns across a wide range of management styles, soil types, and climatic conditions. Though we were able to sample from a large swath of contexts in which tomatoes are dry farmed, we are also aware that conditions will vary year to year, especially as climates change and farmers can no longer rely on “typical” weather conditions in the region. While we are confident in the patterns we observed and the recommendations below, we also encourage further study across multiple years to better understand the full scope of the decision space in which dry farm growers are acting.Given the scope of our current findings, we outline several management and policy implications for dry farmers and dry farming. Though we aim these implications towards the context of dry farm tomatoes in coastal California, we expect that they are likely to generalize to other dry farm crops grown in other regions with Mediterranean climates. First, given the expense and possibility that it is detrimental to fruit quality, we do not advise AMF inoculation for dry farm tomato growers. Second, we note the importance of nutrients below 60cm and the complexities of subsurface fertility management, and we recommend experimentation with organic amendments and deeply rooted cover crops that may be able to deliver nutrient sources that persist at depth, as well as planning several seasons in advance to build nutrients deeper in the soil profile. Finally, given our finding that dry farm soils develop a fungal signature that increases over time and its association with improved fruit quality, we encourage farmers to experiment with rotations that include only dry farm crops and even consider setting aside a field to be dry farmed in perpetuity. However, fully dry farmed rotations currently do not exist, likely due to a lack of commercially viable options for crops to include in a dry farm rotation. In order to experiment with potential dry farm rotations, as well as cover crops that can best scavenge excess nitrates and soil management regimes that can increase soil fertility at depth, farmers must be given both research support and a safety net for their own on-farm experimentation. Funding to mitigate the inherent risk in farmers’ management explorations will be key in further developing high-functioning dry farm management systems. Expanding land access to farmers who are committed to exploring dry farm management can additionally benefit these explorations. Dry farm tomato systems on the Central Coast point to key management principles that can both help current growers flourish and provide guidance for how irrigation can be dramatically decreased in a variety of contexts without harming farmer livelihoods. In these systems, managing nutrients at depth–at least below 30cm and ideally below 60cm–is necessary to influence outcomes in fields where surface soils dry down quickly after transplant. Fostering locally-adapted soil microbial communities that are primed for water scarcity can improve fruit quality. Farmers can otherwise manage nutrients to maximize either yields or quality, indoor vertical farming giving latitude to match local field conditions to desired markets. As water scarcity intensifies in California agriculture and around the globe, dry farm management systems are positioned to play an important role in water conservation. Understanding and implementing dry farm best management practices will not only benefit fields under strict dry farm management, but will provide an increasingly robust and adaptable example for how farms can continue to function and thrive while drastically reducing water inputs.Small, diversified farms on California’s Central Coast have been dry farming for decades, a practice that allows farmers to grow tomatoes and other vegetables with little to no irrigation in summers without rainfall, relying instead on water stored in soils from winter rains. Though dry farming was originally developed in this region to allow farmers to grow crops on land that had no water access, it has thrived from consumer demand for dry farmed tomatoes.

Superior flavors have enticed customers, allowing farmers to charge a premium for dry farm tomatoes and develop markets for this regional specialty. Tomato dry farming in the region has been notably devoid of involvement from academic researchers and extension agents; however, policy groups and the general public have shown growing interest in dry farming in recent years as water shortages in California force a reckoning with the precarity of the state’s agricultural water supply. Amidst growing urgency to develop low-water agricultural systems in the state, we interviewed ten Central Coast dry farmers, representing over half of the commercial dry farm operations in the region where the practice was developed, to collaboratively answer two central research questions: 1. What business and land stewardship practices characterize successful tomato dry farming on California’s Central Coast? 2. What is the potential for dry farming to expand beyond its current adoption while maintaining its identity as a diversified practice that benefits small-scale operations? We summarize farmers’ wisdom into nine themes about current dry farm practice, the potential for expansion, and future opportunities. We also synthesize farmer-stated environmental constraints on where dry farm management may be feasible into a map of areas suitable for dry farming in California. As we consider the process by which dry farming might expand to new areas and new operations, we highlight dry farming’s history as an agroecological alternative to industrial farming in the region and the need for careful policy planning to maintain that identity. Because policies that encourage dry farm expansion could change the economic landscape in which dry farming operates, we warn against the possibility that well-intentioned policies will edge small growers out of dry farm markets. At the same time, we emphasize the opportunity for dry farm tomato systems to model an agroecological transition towards water savings in California.Unlike other forms of dryland farming , in this region dry farm tomatoes are grown over a summer season where there is a near guarantee of no rainfall. Farmers plant tomatoes into moisture from winter rains, counting on soils to hold on to enough water to support the crops over the course of the entire dry summer and fall. While some farmers irrigate 1-3 times in the first month after transplant, severe water restriction is what gives the fruits their intense flavor, and farmers trade water cuts that lower yields for price premiums that consumers are more than willing to pay for higher quality fruits. Beyond Bay Area consumer’s enthusiasm for high-quality local produce, dry farm tomatoes also trace their origins to a richer food culture of justice-oriented and farmer-centric food distribution in the region . From the Black Panther Party’s Free Breakfast Program to strong community support for worker-owned and consumer food cooperatives , the Bay Area has become a hub of alternative values-based supply chains in a country largely dominated by an industrialized food system . Following this tradition, dry farm tomatoes originally found their footing in the United States in the Central Coast region 30 miles south of the Bay. In the 1970’s and 1980’s, innovative growers in small-scale cooperatives and teaching farms adapted an Italian and Spanish legacy of vegetable dry farming to the region’s Mediterranean climate, maritime influence, and high-clay soils . While these environmental features were necessary to grow tomatoes under dry farm management, the movement that sparked the reemergence of local farmer’s markets in the 1980’s also provided the access to direct to-consumer marketing that small farms needed to win consumer attention and loyalty, allowing farmers to both grow and sell this niche product. With their origins in local food distribution networks and local adaptations to a unique climate, dry farm tomatoes are now a signature of small, diversified, organic farms on the Central Coast and are a feature of many such operations’ business models. To this point, dry farming has largely followed its initial course and is only practiced at a small scale in the region, both in terms of geographic scope, and farm size.

Hannah’s mentorship has been invaluable at inflection points in my PhD process, and I can’t overstate how lucky her new grad students will be to have her as an advisor. I feel incredibly privileged to have the community support of more people than I can thank individually without making my acknowledgements longer than my dissertation. Communities that have given me particular encouragement, joy, and solace include the 2018 ESPM cohort, Friendship Village, the Sunset/Pomona/floating/CCST crew, my Park Palace queens, my sweet childhood friends, and every last Sheline and Socolar. You all make me feel connected to something I want to be accountable to. Within these communities, a few people stand out as being particularly instrumental in helping me thrive throughout this PhD. The folks at Rat Village–Abby, Alli, Brendan, and Charley–made a beautiful house into a beautiful home. You taught me how organization and communication can create abundance, and gave new meaning to what it can mean to live communally. Everything from fridge leftovers to card nights to casual kitchen encounters carried me through this experience, and I hope you will see my use of the term “Rat Village” in my dissertation as indicative of the lengths I am willing to go to to express my gratitude. Two dear friends, Erin Curtis Nacev and Claire Woodard, flood drain tray have been cornerstones of my PhD experience. They were both my gateway to the Bay Area–I would never even have arrived here if Berkeley hadn’t felt like the homecoming that you created.

Through med school, residency, and raising a child, Erin found time for visits and calls, and is my–and perhaps the entire world’s–best model for what a can-do attitude can be. She is generous, loyal, principled, a source of such joy, and capable of everything. Plus she and Zach made Evie, which is really the highest praise you can give a person. Of the narratives I have watched unfold over the course of my PhD, few have made me happier than watching Claire transform from the best of friends to the best of collaborators. It was her overwhelming loyalty as a friend and endless capacity for hard work that brought her to my first tomato field, and my own incredible luck that has kept her farming ever since. I marvel that the person I’m most likely to call crying on the phone is the same person I’m most likely to call about transplanting techniques. Claire’s accompaniment through this entire experience has been so thorough that it’s alarming to remember there was a time before Claire was a farmer, and to imagine what my field seasons would have looked like without her there. I have also been lucky to have the deep support of many family members on this journey. That my brother, sister-in-law, and sister-cousin all had PhDs when I arrived at Berkeley meant that my PhD did not have to be demystified, but rather was never mystified in the first place. Jacob, Bethanne, and Annelle’s guidance, encouragement, and commiseration have been the sweetest set of bumper rails as I ricocheted through this experience. Jacob in particular has fielded enough “hi how are you, but actually can we talk about statistics?” phone calls from me that you might think “random effect” is a family member we desperately need to gossip about. Luckily my niece, Isabelle, has been the most brilliant distraction when things get too heady–my heart remembers to refocus when I see her shining eyes. Though none of my grandparents are here to read this dissertation, I can see the way their faces would beam if I could show it to them. Their influences are almost comically obvious in my career choices–Grandpa Ray’s determination and proclivity for natural sciences, Grandma Yvonne’s steadfast commitment to social justice, Grandpa Milt’s philosophy and politics, and Grandma Molly’s effortless ability to connect to everyone she met.

From antiracism to interviews, DNA work to policy ideas, they have created a foundation that I want to build on, and their obvious pride in me has given me the confidence to start building. For my mom and dad, I reach the limits of what I know how to do with words. To say that your love and support for me was unwavering suggests the possibility that it might have wavered, and the knowledge that that is not possible is baked into the bedrock of my existence. You are the people I want to consult with every conundrum that comes my way, and the people who most celebrate my every success. Dad, you know it’s not possible to fill the space Mom left in our lives, and you fill every space around that. My luck at having Varun, my partner, in my life can be measured in the mornings I wake up happy, my growing ability to process out loud , the days my grump melts into grins, the times I go backpacking, the plants in our living room, the edited drafts of each chapter below, the width of our couch, and the number of dissertation-fueling treats in our cupboard. He is patient, joyful, loving, smart as all get-out, and an inspiration to me. His curiosity has brought a new perspective to the work I do, and I can navigate my decisions more clearly in the paths he reflects back to me. Varun, you extend yourself to nurture my growth, and you can see that growth written in these pages. I want to be with you everywhere. My final gratitude is to the land that made this work possible and its generations of stewards. These soils continue to inspire, feed, and live through millennia of care, and I am indebted to those who built relationship with these places. I want to acknowledge and pay my respect to the Awaswas speaking Uypi Tribe and Chochenyo-speaking Ohlone people, whose unceded territory encompasses the field sites and laboratories where this work took place. My work has benefited from the occupation of this land, and thus, with this land acknowledgement, I affirm Indigenous sovereignty.Over 70% of the 62 million ha of cropland in the Midwestern United States is grown in corn-based rotations. These crop rotations are caught in a century-long simplification trend despite robust evidence demonstrating yield and soil benefits from diversified rotations. Our ability to explore and explain this trend will come in part from observing the biophysical and policy influences on farmers’ crop choices at one key level of management: the field. Yet field-level crop rotation patterns remain largely unstudied at regional scales and will be essential for understanding how national agricultural policy manifests locally and interacts with biophysical phenomena to erode— or bolster—soil and environmental health, agricultural resilience, flood and drain tray and farmers’ livelihoods. We developed a novel indicator of crop rotational complexity and applied it to 1.5 million fields across the US Midwest. We used bootstrapped linear mixed models to regress field-level rotational complexity against biophysical and policy-driven factors. After accounting for spatial autocorrelation, there were statistically clear negative relationships between rotational complexity and biophysical factors , indicating decreased rotation in prime growing areas. A positive relationship between rotational complexity and distance to the nearest bio-fuel plant suggests policy-based, as well as biophysical, constraints on regional rotations. This novel rotational complexity index is a promising tool for future fine-scale rotational analysis and demonstrates that the United States’ most fertile soils are the most prone to degradation, with recent policy choices further exacerbating this trend.Biological simplification has accompanied agricultural intensification across the world, resulting in vast agricultural landscapes dominated by just one or two crop species. The Midwestern US is a prime example1, where corn currently dominates at unprecedented spatial and temporal scales. An area the size of Norway is planted in corn in the Midwest in any given year with little variation in crop sequence; over half of Midwestern cropland is dedicated to corn-soy rotations and corn monoculture. Directly and indirectly, this agricultural homogeneity causes environmental degradation that harms ecosystem health while also contributing to climate change and increasing vulnerability to climate shocks. Agricultural diversification in space and time reverses this trend towards homogeneity with practices like crop rotations that vary which harvested crops are grown in a field from year to year.

Crop rotations are a traditional agricultural practice with ample evidence that complex rotations— ones that include more species that turn over frequently—benefit farmers, crops, and ecosystems. As one of the principles underlying agricultural soil management, diverse crop rotations promote soil properties that provide multiple ecosystem services including boosting soil microbial diversity, enhancing soil fertility, improving soil structure and reducing pest pressu. These soil benefits combine to increase crop yields and stabilize them in times of environmental stress. Crop rotations’ environmental and economic benefits typically increase with the complexity of the rotation , while conversely, biophysical aspects like soil structure and microbial populations are degraded as rotations are simplified. Despite its benefits, crop rotational complexity continues its century-long decline in the Midwestern US. Corn-soy rotations increasingly dominate over historical crop sequences that included small grains and perennials, with corn monocultures also on the rise. This increasing simplification is in part the result of a set of interlocking, long-standing federal policies aimed at maximizing production of a handful of commodity crops that distort farmers’ economic incentives. Regional rotation simplification is clear from analyses of crop frequency, county-level data, and farmer interviews. However, fine-grained patterns that more completely reflect farmers’ rotational choices across the region, and how those choices relate to influences from policy and biophysical factors that play out across agricultural landscapes, remain largely unstudied. This knowledge is essential for understanding how national agricultural policy manifests locally and interacts with biophysical phenomena to erode—or bolster—soil and environmental health, agricultural resilience, and farmers’ livelihoods. Bio-fuel mandates and concerted efforts to craft industrial livestock systems as end-users of these corn production systems make corn lucrative above other commodities, while federal crop insurance programs push farmers to limit the number of crops grown on their farms. These policies, along with the current corporate food regime, drive pervasive economic incentives to grow corn, and farmers must increasingly choose between growing corn as often as possible to provide a source of government guaranteed income, and maximizing soil benefits and annual yields through diversified rotations. These policies both alter agricultural economics at a national level by boosting corn prices and manifest locally in grain elevators and bio-fuel plants that create pockets of high corn prices with rising demand closer to each facility. Biophysical factors like precipitation and land capability that are highly localized and spatially heterogeneous can catalyze or impede this simplification trend. For example, increasing rotational complexity is one strategy that farmers may employ to manage marginal soils or greater probability of drought, while ideal soil and climate conditions allow for rotation simplification to be profitable, at least in the short run. As these top-down and bottom-up forces combine, we ask: how do farmers optimize crop rotational diversity in complex social-ecological landscapes, with top-down policy pressures to simplify intertwined with bottom-up biophysical incentives to diversify? Because biophysical factors and even policy influences vary greatly at the field scale at which management decisions occur, an approach is needed to assess patterns of crop rotation that can capture simplification and diversification at this scale. Though remotely sensed data on crop types can now show fine-scale crop sequences, previous approaches to quantifying rotational complexity have relied on classifying rotations based on how often a certain crop appears in a region over a given time period, aggregating over large areas, or examining short sequences. To date, methods to capture rotational complexity have therefore been unable to address management decisions at the field scale , and/or lose valuable information about the number of crops present in a sequence and the complexity of their order . At the other end of the spectrum, farmer surveys have impressively detailed the economic and biophysical considerations that go into farmers’ rotation decisions, yet are limited by the number of farmers they can reach and who chooses to respond. Here, we explore how aspects of farm landscapes influence field-scale patterns of crop rotational complexity across the Midwestern US. We developed the first field-scale dataset of rotational complexity in corn-based rotations, covering 1.5 million fields in eight states across the Midwest and ranking crop sequences based on their capacity to benefit soils. We examined rotations from 2012-2017 to coincide with the introduction of the Renewable Fuel Standard, or “bio-fuel mandate,” which took full effect in 2012.

With little grant funding to help maintain existing gardens, many of the projects that were developed through Philadelphia Green did decline over time. At the same time, the Neighborhood Gardens Trust has begun to target its garden preservation efforts at rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods where gardens appear to be the most threatened; however, preserving the gardens does not prevent the demographic change and possible displacement that are associated with gentrification. Results for Seattle provide a contrasting example of what can happen when garden preservation becomes the rule rather than the exception, and when organizational priorities shift over time toward developing gardens closer to people who ostensibly need them more. As in Philadelphia, with interaction terms added to the Seattle model, a higher poverty rate is associated with the nearest P-Patch being further away . However, unlike Philadelphia, the interaction term is also significant, and it moves in the opposite direction. That is, for every passing year, a 1% increase in the poverty rate is associated with a decrease of about 0.7 meters to the nearest P-Patch, with all other factors being equal. Taken together, these coefficients suggest that Seattle’s gardens were originally distributed further away from high-poverty neighborhoods and closer to low-poverty ones, but the relationship reversed after about 22 years, grow racks and from 2002 onwards gardens are increasingly likely to be found closer to high-poverty neighborhoods than low-poverty ones.

As explained in chapter 3, the leaders of the P-Patch program in the 1990s were responsive to the public concern that the gardens were a private use of public space and to city officials’ appreciation for evidence showing how the gardens benefitted low-income and other marginalized residents. The program leaders undertook a concerted effort to expand the program in neighborhoods with greater socioeconomic need, an effort which gained traction especially after the 2000 Pro-Parks Levy infused the program with $2 million. This effort included working with the Seattle Housing Authority to build gardens in low-income housing developments specifically for use by their residents. The changing organizational priorities in the 1990s and influx of resources in 2000 would logically explain why the interaction model shows gardens’ proximity to poor neighborhoods equalizing around 2002 and growing gradually closer since then. The interaction model’s results suggest that P-Patch gardens have become more accessible to poor neighborhoods over time, but also that they have become less accessible to immigrants. Similar to the pattern observed with percent Black residents in Philadelphia, the coefficient for percent foreign born in Seattle is negative and significant while the coefficient for interaction between year and percent foreign born is positive and significant—in fact, it is the largest coefficient of any interaction term across the three models, suggesting a relatively fast pace of change. The model estimates that in 1980, the nearest garden would be about 60 meters closer for every 1% increase in the immigrant population, with all other factors held constant. With every additional year, a 1% increase in the immigrant population relative to otherwise identical tracts would predict 1.4 meters further to the nearest garden, suggesting that after about 42 years the percent foreign born in a tract will have no impact on garden proximity, and ultimately after 2022 gardens will be further away from communities with higher shares of immigrants. As in Philadelphia, the gradual attenuation of garden accessibility for immigrants in Seattle may be linked to gentrification, as higher housing costs push vulnerable groups further from the more desirable areas, but this explanation cannot be verified from the model alone.

What the model can tell us is the relationship between housing costs and garden locations in Seattle, as well as how this relationship changed over time. The coefficient for housing costs is significant and positive, suggesting that gardens were originally built further from high-demand real estate. With the coefficient for interaction between year and housing costs being negative, this relationship appears to be gradually weakening over time. Chapter 3 describes the widespread garden preservation that P-Patch advocates accomplished with the passage of Initiative 42, which offers a plausible explanation for why this pattern would be seen in Seattle: gardens were initially built where more land was available, and most of them have not been removed as property values in the surrounding neighborhoods have increased.Spatial analysis indicates that the citywide programs in Milwaukee, Philadelphia, and Seattle have generally developed gardens closer to marginalized communities than to more privileged ones. That said, significant historical trends and a few deviations from the overall pattern are important to note, especially given their apparent relation to organizational decisions and political-economic factors described in previous chapters. First, while the models suggest that community gardens in all three cities have generally been closer to neighborhoods with more Black and Hispanic residents, their accessibility for Asian and Pacific Islander residents and for immigrants is not as consistent. On the one hand, studies of urban food access indicate that Black and Hispanic communities are the ones most impacted by lack of healthy, affordable food options , so if organizations are prioritizing the food-security benefits of urban agriculture, then building access for Black and Hispanic residents more than for Asian and Pacific Islander populations may genuinely reflect understandings of local need and equitable use of the organizations’ resources. On the other hand, food insecurity is just as acute in some Asian American and immigrant communities, and there is a chance these communities are being overlooked. Furthermore, food access isn’t the only benefit that community gardens bring; the organizations in this study have also emphasized social, cultural, and economic benefits of urban agriculture. Advocates for Seattle’s P-Patch program were the most explicit in touting the ability of gardens to build community among diverse people and to provide cultural continuity for immigrants from agrarian backgrounds.

Perhaps because of this recognition, Seattle’s gardens have been the most accessible to immigrants according to the spatial error models. However, the P-Patches’ proximity to immigrants is eroding over time. In Milwaukee, gardens appear to be further away from communities with higher foreign-born populations, and in Philadelphia the relationship does not register as significant in the spatial error models. According to my interviews and review of organizational documents, in all three cities, immigrants—and in particular Southeast Asian immigrants—have been heavily involved in building gardens and organizing the labor required to keep them going. Yet it appears that immigrant gardeners may have to travel further than others to reach their sites, and they may lose access altogether if they or their garden is displaced when a neighborhood gentrifies. Qualitative researchers have drawn attention to some ways that immigrant gardeners may be undervalued by urban agriculture organizations and media accounts . My research suggests that this oversight may influence organizational priorities in development and preservation efforts, grow table extending inequity to the physical siting of gardens. When community garden organizations do identify the benefits they want their spaces to provide and identify neighborhoods to prioritize in receiving those benefits, they can achieve desired outcomes over time. One example is the expansion of Seattle’s P-Patch network through the 1990s and 2000s, which was undertaken with conscious attention to increasing garden access for the city’s low-income residents. The spatial error model with interaction terms shows that initially, P-Patches were less accessible for communities with higher poverty rates, but this relationship flipped over time such that communities with higher poverty rates are now likely to be closer to the nearest garden than otherwise similar communities with lower poverty rates. Philadelphia Green provides another example of how programs can achieve clear outcomes by prioritizing a certain benefit that they want urban agriculture to provide in their city. In this case, the benefit has been economic. As explained in Chapter 2, Pennsylvania Horticultural Society secured grant funding for its Philadelphia Green program to undertake concentrated neighborhood greening initiatives in the 1980s and 1990s; these initiatives included tracking how the greening affected the target neighborhoods, which helped the Society to make a broader case for public investment in their greening services. Scholarship based on the greening initiatives and organizational publications from the time highlight how the program’s community gardens and greening intervention improved neighborhood attractiveness and increased local property values. One organizational brochure includes a map showing, for different neighborhoods, the percentage of vacant lots involved in the program which had subsequently been sold and developed. Building and preserving green space for the benefit of disadvantaged neighborhoods was not the goal, and it has not been the primary outcome. Compared to Milwaukee and Seattle, Philadelphia has seen the highest rate of garden attrition, so a longitudinal analysis based on the distribution of existing gardens at given points in time misses some of the story. Still, even by examining the spatial error models and maps of garden locations over time, we can see distributional outcomes that are likely related to Philadelphia Green’s prioritization of economic benefits and limited efforts toward long-term garden preservation. The program’s gardens tended to be developed in neighborhoods with higher housing costs and lower poverty rates, but this relationship with housing costs has gradually diminished over time. Maps of garden locations in successive decades show that gardens have disappeared in neighborhoods where housing costs have increased and poverty rates have decreased. This pattern reflects the program’s overall weak commitment to maintaining gardens for the long term, allowing market forces to displace gardens from more desirable areas.

Meanwhile, garden proximity to neighborhoods with a higher share of Black residents has decreased over time, which suggests that either gardens are disappearing at higher rates in neighborhoods with more Black residents, or that as neighborhoods themselves are changing through gentrification, those that keep their gardens are nevertheless seeing decreases in the proportion of Black residents. The pattern of garden distributions over time in Milwaukee demonstrates an outcome likely to result from program management without the resources or a clear strategy to direct garden development toward specific communities. The model with interaction terms did not yield any significant interactions with year, suggesting that garden distributions over time have not moved toward or away from communities with any of the characteristics analyzed. Instead, the static model shows that the nearest garden is likely to be closer to neighborhoods with higher poverty rates, higher percentages of Black, Hispanic, and/or Asian and Pacific Islander residents, and lower percentages of immigrants. Given what we know about the potential benefits of urban gardens and the communities most in need of those benefits, the distribution of Milwaukee’s gardens seems to produce equitable outcomes other than the lower proximity to neighborhoods with more immigrants. However, the historical analysis in preceding chapters demonstrates the ongoing vulnerability of most gardens in Milwaukee to potential removal in the face of development pressure. In other words, the gardens are close to the populations where they are needed because that is where land is available and development pressure is low; the process of displacement and disappointment that unfolded in Philadelphia is likely to be repeated in Milwaukee if and when market conditions change. Underscoring the limits to garden accessibility in Milwaukee, distance to the nearest garden appears to be increasing over time. While gardens appear to be distributed in a way that makes them more accessible for marginalized groups than for more privileged ones, the gardens are becoming less accessible in general.In Seattle, Philadelphia, and Milwaukee, the primary organizations involved in building, maintaining, and defending the city’s gardens worked to gain legitimacy for themselves and, in the process, served to legitimize urban agriculture as a land use—selecting from among its many potential benefits to construct a narrative that served their organizational interests and priorities. The organizations discussed in this dissertation identified different target audiences for their legitimizing efforts, faced different challenges in gaining or maintaining legitimacy, and ultimately advanced the legitimacy of urban agriculture along different lines. As this dissertation demonstrates, variations in how urban agriculture has been legitimized have impacted the socio-natural spaces constructed in each city and the strength of arguments for long-term site preservation in the face of potential redevelopment. As it worked to gain legitimacy, Milwaukee Urban Gardens found more success as a garden support organization than it did as a land trust; as it has undertaken more programming and site maintenance over the years, Milwaukee Urban Gardens has joined with other organizations in the city to frame urban agriculture as a legitimate land use for its job training, employment and commercial potential.

Having experienced the city’s tangled land ownership, patchy records and hazy bureaucracy in their efforts to preserve threatened gardens, urban agriculture advocates had hoped the creation of a Land Bank would streamline the process in a way that would speed garden preservation in the face of rapid gentrification. Beginning around 2010, housing developers, community groups, urban agriculture advocates and others interested in Philadelphia’s land disposition process began organizing to pass a land banking policy. Two coalitions formed: the Land Bank Alliance , made up of design, construction, community development and realtor industry associations, the environmental advocacy group PennFuture, Regional Housing Legal Services, the Sustainable Business Network, Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, and the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia. Another group, the Coalition to Take Back Vacant Land , was led by a North Philadelphia community organization called the Women’s Community Revitalization Project and included numerous faith, community development, social justice, urban agriculture, and labor organizations. While the LBA was constituted of entities more closely associated with the typical centers of power in growth coalitions, 4×4 flood tray the breadth of constituencies sharing a common goal in this effort highlights how widely shared urban growth goals tend to be, despite the uneven share in returns on growth .

The LBA and the CTBVL worked toward the same goal of establishing a land bank that would consolidate the city’s vacant property holdings and streamline its disposition process. According to development professionals interviewed who were active in each of the groups, the LBA emphasized insider strategies to advocate for the land bank in private meetings with elected officials, while the CTBVL used an outsider strategy by mobilizing large numbers of people to pressure key decision makers—in this case the members of city council who would put forth and vote on the Land Bank bill. Characteristic of their respective organizational orientations, PHS participated in the LBA while Soil Generation participated in the CTBVL. While the interests of their member organizations were slightly different, both coalitions framed the need for a land bank in essentially the same way, amplifying a narrative that PHS had been constructing for decades. As PHS contracted to green vacant lots throughout the city in the 1990s, they developed and helped disseminate arguments for the city to invest more in urban greening. They collaborated with local researchers and the Pew Charitable Trusts to produce Urban Vacant Land: Issues and Recommendations, a 1995 report that highlighted their successes in greening vacant lots and also stressed the need for city agencies to “simplify and depoliticize the acquisition process by establishing public policy that supports the transfer of city-owned vacant land into community or private ownership” . Reiterating these findings, PHS’s 2000 Managing Vacant Land report advocated for the creation of an “Office of Vacant Land Management” within the Redevelopment Authority , and the 2002 Reclaiming Vacant Lots report was published as a technical manual for anyone looking to repurpose vacant lots that highlighted the work that PHS had already accomplished in collaboration with community groups across the city .

Through these reports and other communications at the time, PHS framed the city’s vacant lots as public problems that could become assets if community groups and developers faced fewer barriers to access and ownership. Similarly, in 2010, one of PHS’s collaborators in the Land Bank Alliance, the Philadelphia Association of Community Development Corporations, commissioned a report that found the city was spending $20 million a year to maintain vacant lots, while losing $2 million annually in uncollected property taxes as the blighted lots dragged down overall property values by an estimated $3.6 billion. Prominent voices from both the housing and greening constituencies highlighted the same issues, framing vacant lots as an economic drag that could be lifted through government reorganization. Both of the land bank coalitions argued that with 40,000 vacant lots around the city, some could be preserved as gardens and open spaces while others could be developed into housing at various price points. The abundance of vacant property made possible a shared vision among groups who might otherwise have been competitors, but who instead were all in agreement that the city’s process for land disposition was too slow and uncoordinated. The details of who would acquire what land did not need to be worked out until the Land Bank bill was passed. While lamenting the apathy in Philadelphia’s cynical civic conventions, this reporter simultaneously echoes the framing of the vacant lot problem that PHS was disseminating for years through its research collaborations: land left unused was a source of crime and depreciation, but this trend could be reversed through better maintenance that would simultaneously discourage crime, increase property values, and build a sense of community ownership among those in the neighborhood. This vision—the potential for people to see their neighborhoods improve and appreciate while realizing the uses they wanted—is part of what brought so many residents out to the Land Bank bill hearings.

But this vision, like the breadth of the coalitions supporting the land bank effort, elided the contradiction in increasing property values and building a sense of ownership for the existing community. At the end of 2013, Philadelphia City Council passed the Land Bank bill, and Mayor Kenney signed it into law in January 2014. The bill established the Philadelphia Land Bank, which was given the charge of consolidating land held by other city agencies “with due speed and diligence” and making it available to the public “through a unified, predictable, and transparent” disposition process. The Land Bank is explicitly permitted to sell land below market value if the property is to be used for community benefit, defined to include “affordable or mixed-income housing… economic development that creates jobs for community residents; community facilities that provide needed services to residents; side and rear-yards; innovation in design and sustainability; urban agriculture; [and] community open space”. The bill sets out the structure of the Land Bank Board, and in addition to the charge of land acquisition and disposition, the law requires the agency to 1) maintain and make publicly available a map of all properties available for sale; 2) post notices and take public comments on proposed sales; 3) submit an annual strategic plan with neighborhood-level needs assessments, market analysis, and mapping of vacant lots along with five-year goals for acquisition and disposition; 4) hold a public hearing before adopting its annual strategic plan;and 5) keep track of whether properties sold below fair-market value are put to the use for which they were sold. In proposing its five-year goals every year, the Land Bank is supposed to align these goals with the city’s Comprehensive Plan and also to “encourage equitable redevelopment” by defining targets for the various community benefits—including urban agriculture. Critically, the bill does not provide dedicated funding for the Land Bank to fulfill these numerous required functions, hydroponic tray but it does allow for flexible financing and explicitly states that the agency can use the money from selling properties in order to fund its operations. In the process specified for the Land Bank to sell properties, a resolution by City Council is still required for each transaction. The passage of the Land Bank bill was celebrated as a victory by Philadelphia’s urban agriculture advocates, but they were quickly disillusioned and confronted anew with the strong political-economic headwinds in the city. Given Philadelphia’s tight budget, council members did not robustly fund the agency; instead they allocated only $500,000 for the agency’s first year . Without a budget big enough to provide for its sprawling mandate, the Land Bank was slow to get up and running and even slower to respond to the many Expressions of Interest submitted by community groups seeking to buy land. Because the City of Philadelphia is an under-resourced organization operating in a financialized environment, where its fiscal balance sheet has a huge impact on the ability to secure funding that may be needed to keep city services running, the City is unwilling to forgive tax liens in order to make land more accessible to community groups. Thus, residents and nonprofit organizations that would put land to use improving life for low-income people are faced with high cost barriers and intense competition from well-financed developers. In the political campaign mobilized to create the Philadelphia Land Bank, problem framing placed a strong emphasis on the financial drawbacks of the city’s large number of vacant lots, and the resulting Land Bank policy was designed in a way that worked to address the vacant lot problem as framed. Urban agriculture advocates, affordable housing developers, churches and community groups got behind the Land Bank bill because it created a pathway for them to obtain land cheaply for community benefit. However, since the Land Bank needed to generate revenue to fund its own operations and was not empowered to zero out tax debt, the new agency worked to facilitate a great deal more market-rate development and fewer community-controlled land uses than many in the coalition were expecting. On the one hand, hindsight may suggest that the social movement framing around financial efficiency was flawed; on the other hand, this framing was effective because it resonated so well with council members and a public concerned about the city’s dire economic condition.

The Land Bank bill got passed as written, whereas anything more explicitly prioritizing use-value over than exchange-value would have had less support. In this sense, the political-economic realities in Philadelphia constrained the possibilities for enacting a truly transformative Land Bank bill.The 2019 draft report reflects many of the concerns that interviewees expressed about the Land Bank’s efficacy, and it seems to indicate the agency is working to improve its function. Compared to the 2015 and 2017 strategic plans, the 2019 draft plan provides far more precise reporting about the ownership of vacant lots across the city, and unlike the previous plans, the 2019 document reports the actual numbers and types of transactions that the Land Bank has completed. These changes suggest that the agency has begun, albeit slowly, to address key political elements of the vacant lot problem in Philadelphia . The Land Bank also published new policies for its land disposition process in 2020, which help clarify what an Expression of Interest does, how fast the agency will respond to them, and how different kinds of requests are evaluated. The 2019 draft strategic plan and 2020 disposition policies both demonstrate how the urban agriculture movement continues to influence land use planning in Philadelphia. Toward the end of 2019, the City made another major change to its land use planning in response to organized political pressure and mounting public scrutiny. For years, a Vacant Property Review Committee that was created by City Council had exercised an additional layer of control over land sales . In the initial process of deliberating the Land Bank bill, Council President Darrell Clarke insisted that the VPRC—along with City Council—would continue to have a say in each land disposition transaction . Then this unelected committee was implicated in Kenyatta Johnson’s eyebrow-raising land deals, while simultaneously being targeted as unnecessary by campaigners for the more streamlined Land Bank process. In response to the increased scrutiny of the VPRC and ongoing public pressure for a standardized process, in 2019 City Council passed a bill to eliminate the VPRC and consolidate the Land Bank, the Redevelopment Authority, and the Philadelphia Housing Development Corporation into one entity. Eliminating the VPRC was hailed as a way to reduce corruption and standardize land disposition into the more transparent process that the Land Bank had established . With the Land Bank and the Redevelopment Authority consolidated under PHDC and now answering to one executive, in theory they may coordinate land transactions with less friction. However, the PHDC is a private nonprofit corporation rather than a government agency; this means decisions at the highest level of the consolidated organization are exempt from some public transparency requirements. Normal government operations were disrupted during the pandemic, so it remains to be seen whether this new organizational structure is more responsive, transparent, and/or effective. Furthermore, additional changes to the Land Bank may not satisfy critics continuing to call for more disposition to community groups. As part of the 2020 disposition policies, new standards have been set up which allow for a non-competitive bidding process if applicants propose to use parcels for housing development where at least 51% of units will be affordable .

As others have stated, the citizens of Philadelphia have notably little faith that their government is going to support resident ideas that serve the public interest. Philadelphia politics have long been dominated by the Democratic Party, which uses a ward system to organize voters and control which candidates get the party’s endorsement; this dynamic seems to have contributed to civic conventions in which corruption is commonplace. In 1903, Lincoln Steffens detailed the corruption of machine politics in US cities, describing Philadelphia as “the most corrupt and the most contented” [quoted in Fiorillo 2021]. Political corruption has not abated in the century since, with an ongoing parade of congressional representatives, state senators, and members of the Philadelphia City Council being convicted of fraud, bribery, conspiracy, and other corruption charges . Just in 2020, City Council member Kenyatta Johnson and his wife were indicted for corruption related to a land deal in his council manic district . In Philadelphia’s civic conventions, honest governance is not to be expected, and the public is widely cynical about the local government’s ability to function fairly or efficiently. Alongside the history of corrupt and inefficient governance runs a history of dispossession, violence and abandonment with clear racial patterns. Black Philadelphians are well aware of this history, which fosters an additional layer of cynicism that Brownlow calls “the collective resentment over the politics and geographies of race-based neglect” . As noted in chapter 1, racial inequality in public resources, capital investment, indoor weed growing accessories and urban environments is not unique to Philadelphia, nor is the extra skepticism in the Black community’s civic conventions engendered by their understanding of institutional racism.

For example, Beamish found that civic discourse in response to plans for a biodefense research facility in Roxbury, Massachusetts built on widely understood narratives about social injustice in the racialized distribution of environmental hazards and a history of “institutional recreancy.” In Philadelphia, the Black community’s historically rooted mistrust in city institutions has impacted the shape and direction of social movement activities to secure urban land for community gardens. As mentioned in chapter 2, PHS prioritized gaining legitimacy for its Philadelphia Green program in the eyes of its white elite donor base and has cultivated close ties with city officials who sign large contracts for the program’s greening work. Maintaining legitimacy with these audiences helped keep the program financially viable, but institutionalization with city elites also works to undermine the organization’s legitimacy with those skeptical of the prevailing order . In Philadelphia, the dynamics of cynical civic conventions and the legitimation strategy of the city’s main gardening organization have informed a split in organizational trajectories—one that provides a nominally “community-based” service , and one that is explicitly oriented to social movement work —rather than a hybridization from CBO to SMO within one entity.Evidence from interviews and historical documents shows that urban agriculture advocates involved in land preservation efforts understand the widely-shared ideas regarding cynicism and mistrust of the government. The code for appearance of impropriety was more common in Philadelphia materials than in those from Milwaukee or Seattle. Cynicism about government was expressed in Philadelphia twice as frequently as in Milwaukee and three times as often as in Seattle. One community organizer opined regarding the city’s land disposition process, “their institutional structure, and the way that power flows, is not meant to be understood. That’s the way it is” .

Such sentiments were especially common among advocates affiliated with Soil Generation, but even interviewees affiliated with more “insider” nonprofits like PHS expressed some degree of exasperation with the city’s land use governance. Especially given the high number of cultivated parcels the city has put up for auction without notice, urban agriculture advocates in Philadelphia have little faith that the local government will look out for their interests by default. One specific element of Philadelphia’s civic conventions stands out for its impact on land disposition, a political idea known as “council manic prerogative” that has become infrastructure over time. Closely related to Kenyatta Johnson’s corruption indictment and the cynicism that many urban agriculture advocates expressed in interviews, this convention gives district council members an especially firm grip over land deals. City Council must pass an ordinance to approve any land dispensation, and all of the other council members almost invariably vote the same way as the council member whose district contains the parcel in question. Using council manic prerogative, council members supportive of urban agriculture can help expedite sale of publicly owned garden lots that have the resources and wherewithal to access the council member and navigate the rest of the bureaucratic process for a land transfer . However, unsupportive council members can single handedly block a sale in their district—no matter what resources or legitimacy a garden group may bring. Virtually everyone I interviewed who works to secure land for urban agriculture in Philadelphia identified council manic prerogative as a barrier to preservation, but they see little chance of changing it because the council members themselves would need to vote for a policy change, and they have no incentive to reduce their own power. As development pressure has increased, with insider strategies out of reach for most of the city’s gardeners, urban agriculture advocates affiliated with Soil Generation have responded with sustained social movement mobilization to increase the legitimacy and tenure of the city’s community gardens. In short, local cynicism regarding governance has opened a discursive opportunity structure for promoting collective action and securing other forms of policy change. As described in chapter 2, Philadelphia’s urban agriculture movement started to get organized in 2012 and 2013 around changes to the city’s zoning code.

After hearing directly from city officials that they did not consider urban agriculture to be a constituency, advocate Amy Laura Cahn set out to make this constituency more vocal and visible by funding a community organizing effort through the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia . Her group initiated the Campaign for Healthier Foods and Greener Spaces to oppose a proposed zoning amendment that would have restricted garden activities. As the campaign launched, Cahn was quoted in PlanPhilly arguing against the proposed amendment by saying, “Creating this level of bureaucracy and legislating community participation is just a barrier. It’s not adding value” . This framing of the proposal appealed to the negative views of government that created a discursive opportunity structure within the local civic conventions—that is, high levels of bureaucracy creating barriers to community participation. The coalition that Amy Laura Cahn helped to build, Healthy Foods Green Spaces, brought together many organizations from across the city, rolling benches including PHS and the Neighborhood Gardens Association, to advocate for maintaining community gardens as a land use in Philadelphia. While PHS and the Neighborhood Gardens Association had been able to preserve a handful of community gardens over the years, they recognized that the lengthy, costly, parcel-by-parcel strategy they had relied upon until then was not enough to meet the citywide need. For one thing, the professional skills and working relationships with city officials that made the organizations’ efforts successful could not be scaled up easily. For another, their efforts could succeed only for gardens that the city was willing to preserve; in other situations, the council member whose district contained a garden might have other plans for the land, and because of council manic prerogative, preservation without their assent would be impossible. While gardeners or other urban agriculture organizations might take on a strategy of public pressure to overcome council member obstinance, PHS was unwilling to risk its close relationships with city officials— and the large maintenance contracts they approve—in order to preserve an individual garden. Nevertheless, recognizing the growing threat to garden tenure, they joined with other organizations in Healthy Foods, Green Spaces to advocate for a more streamlined land disposition process. As this coalition organized numerous constituencies and mounted a high visibility campaign to establish the Philadelphia Land Bank, PHS participated mostly in the background, donating professional skills such as graphic design to the coalition—but not mobilizing their gardeners to get involved in the civic process. With a long history in the city and roots in its elite social circles, PHS would be more likely to take for granted the city’s existing way of operating than to question or publicly challenge this system; moreover, outsider social movement tactics and vocal political organizing might threaten PHS’s legitimacy with city agencies and with its elite donor base. Yet, as noted above, civic conventions among everyday residents of Philadelphia— especially the city’s nonwhite majority—differ from the perspectives held by the social elite, and cynicism about government is high. Organizations and activists with less history of collaboration with city agencies and an outsider’s perspective on how the city functions have taken a more explicitly critical stance than PHS regarding the city’s governance. In the realm of urban agriculture advocacy, Soil Generation embodies this stance.

As described in chapter 2, leaders of the Healthy Foods Green Spaces coalition evolved it into Soil Generation, which is “a Black and Brown led coalition of gardeners, farmers, individuals, and community-based organizations working to ensure people of color regain community control of land and food, to secure access to the resources necessary to determine how land is used, address community health concerns, grow food and improve the environment” . As this statement makes clear, Soil Generation is focused on changing power relations in Philadelphia so that people of color have a seat at the table in decisions about land use and the local food system. In framing garden loss as a lack of community control, Soil Generation links the struggle to preserve urban agriculture to broader concerns that are reflected in local civic conventions, and also highlights the legacies of colonialism and racism that have displaced and oppressed Black and Brown people, immigrants, and indigenous communities in Philadelphia and beyond going back centuries. With this critical perspective, Soil Generation called for changes in the distribution of power—not only changes in the city’s land use policy, but also in the relationships that cohered among local community groups and large nonprofit organizations. As of 2021, this effort is ongoing. Soil Generation has been integral in bringing the voices of urban growers directly to public officials, remaining active in advocating for more garden preservation in the Land Bank’s biennial strategic plans and organizing a public hearing with City Council dedicated to urban agriculture in 2016. At that hearing, impressed with the diversity of testimonials—both the demographics of the speakers and the reasons they expressed for valuing urban agriculture—council members committed to pay more attention to the issue. The current process underway to formalize urban agriculture planning in the city is the product of Soil Generation’s efforts to re-legitimize urban agriculture through a rights- and justice-based framing, and the dynamics of this process are illustrative of how Soil Generation’s outsider status and social movement strategies have pushed the city to go further in revising land use policy than city officials would have through insider advocacy efforts alone.Compared to Milwaukee and Philadelphia, Seattle’s civic conventions hold the highest expectation of citizens’ participation in the political process. Long-held values for bottom-up rather than top-down governance have supported the establishment of a dense infrastructure for civic participation. Yet even with all of the participatory infrastructure they have achieved, Seattle residents remain distrustful of elites, and ideas about the need for active political engagement are still widely shared. The city’s political opportunity structure has offered numerous opportunities for residents to assert their interest in community gardens and to draw public resources for administration, site improvements, and even land acquisition; at the same time, the city’s discursive opportunity structure has enabled social movement mobilization through a framing of the need to safeguard public interests from potential government abuse.Seattle’s civic conventions around challenging elite control through political engagement have deep roots in the city’s history . The Seattle General Strike of 1919 was one of the most successful union actions of its time. More recently, the 1999 Battle in Seattle—mass protests against the meeting of the World Trade Organization that brought together labor unions, environmentalists, and other civil society groups—made international news and soured the public on the mayor at the time due to his heavy-handed response.

Garden support continued, but it came to be described more in terms of educational classes offered and trainings to help neighborhoods self-organize to start gardens. Eventually, the Philadelphia Green program ended as its functions were divided into new, more focused programs including Garden Tenders , City Harvest , Public Landscapes , and Philadelphia LandCare . Comparative analysis of documents and interviews provides evidence for how Philadelphia Green’s transformation into an urban development program affected the narrative for urban agriculture’s value in the city. The codes for investment, city beautification, city reputation, revitalization, cleanup, and neighborhood reputation were all more frequent in Philadelphia documents and interviews than in Milwaukee or Seattle. While narratives were present in all three cities describing urban agriculture as a way to beautify neighborhoods and thereby improve the city’s reputation, this beautification was most closely connected to economic impacts in Philadelphia. In this model, if gardens on vacant lots were replaced with housing or commercial development, the end goal of economic improvement would be achieved and the removal of the garden not as much of a loss. In PHS documents and in interviews with current and former PHS staff, the code for organizing and mobilization was present mainly in reference to the way that Philadelphia Green trained urban residents to organize their neighbors around identified needs, pruning cannabis particularly greening projects that PHS could support with materials and technical knowledge.

The organization did not focus on organizing gardeners to preserve their spaces or engage in much mobilization to increase security for garden sites . Over time, many of the gardens that PHS helped to build disappeared; some ceased to be tended as gardens, but many were lost to development as the city ramped up its efforts to sell off vacant lots . In the Greene Country Townes and other neighborhoods that had benefitted from Philadelphia Green’s concentrated revitalization efforts, property values did increase, but most gardens were lost along the way. Philadelphia Green was founded as a garden support program rather than a land trust, as Milwaukee Urban Gardens had been. The problem of garden loss did become evident to Philadelphia Green’s leadership, however, as did the problem of garden attrition which, in the case of MUG, has saddled the organization with some unused properties. In the case of Philadelphia Green, responding to the threats of garden loss and garden attrition took on two forms that have ultimately come to structure the broader efforts to preserve urban agricultural land in the city today. In response to garden loss, PHS never took on ownership of sites; their board of directors had long been averse to owning property. Instead, in the 1980s when the threat of garden loss became apparent, Philadelphia Green director Blaine Bonham worked with a network of urban planners, garden advocates and others to start a new organization, the Neighborhood Gardens Association, which was founded as a land trust in order to purchase and preserve threatened community gardens. Now called the Neighborhood Gardens Trust , this organization has remained close to PHS—and since a PHS-led board shakeup around 2010, NGT has essentially operated as a subsidiary of PHS.

As of 2021, NGT has preserved over 40 community gardens in Philadelphia. Most of the organization’s early acquisitions were large, well-established gardens in which PHS had invested significant resources over time. In recent years, NGT has taken a new approach by prioritizing sites for preservation that are in gentrifying neighborhoods, even if they aren’t among the most well established. As will be discussed more in chapter 4, NGT and similar professionalized nonprofits are able to navigate the city’s complex land disposition process relatively effectively because of their expertise and good relationships with city officials. However, NGT’s professionalism, association with PHS, and collegial relationships with city officials also work to repel some gardeners seeking help with preservation. As noted at the start of this section, PHS sought legitimacy primarily from its donors and funders, rather than from the gardeners; skepticism of the organization among some Black Philadelphia gardeners endures to this day. One garden advocate explained why some gardeners were hesitant to seek preservation through NGT, “I do have a lot of people because especially in Black communities, in Black and Brown communities as well… there’s a lack of trust in regards to other organizations holding title to the land” . Despite not being seen by some Black and Brown gardeners as a legitimate solution for garden preservation, NGT undoubtedly serves as an important part of efforts to secure agricultural land in Philadelphia, and the organization would not exist if it weren’t for leadership at PHS in the 1980s and 1990s who saw the need and helped get the land trust started. While playing a large role in garden preservation efforts, NGT is decidedly not a social movement organization.

They meet individually with city council members when seeking to preserve sites in their districts rather than organizing public political pressure in an outsider strategy. The same approach characterizes PHS overall, although in a roundabout way the Philadelphia Green program has helped spur social movement activity for pro-garden policy change in Philadelphia. Philadelphia Green was founded as a garden support program, not as a land trust like MUG, so systematizing its operations in response to garden attrition took on a different form in Philadelphia Green than it did in MUG. While MUG had to overhaul its goals and activities to avoid investing in gardens that might dissolve due to lack of leadership, Philadelphia Green’s managers simply had to fine-tune their garden support activities to ensure they were building leadership that would endure at the gardens they invested in. To this end, they established clear criteria for sites to qualify for their garden support services, and they developed programs to cultivate the management and organizing skills that aspiring community gardeners would need in order to lead their sites effectively. Media accounts and two interviewees affiliated with the Philadelphia Green program noted that the leadership development work of their garden support classes has activated civic participation in other neighborhood concerns, such as crime reduction. And while PHS and NGT tend to engage mostly in insider political advocacy, another coalition has emerged, from efforts that PHS was originally involved with, that is dedicated to organizing Philadelphia’s growers for outsider strategies that pressure the city to overhaul its land disposition process and policy making. This organization’s radical perspective and outsider tactics constitute the strongest and most effective sustained social movement activity in any of the three case-cities. Beginning around 2012, an urban agriculture movement in Philadelphia began to get politically organized, and these efforts have evolved and been sustained over the last decade. Amy Laura Cahn, a lawyer with the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia, drying room established a program called the Garden Justice Legal Initiative to help gardeners gain ownership of land they had been cultivating for years. Through her advocacy, she learned that city officials did not view urban growers as a “constituency” and therefore did not consider their needs in policy making . She hired a community organizer to begin outreach and mobilization, with a goal of mapping the city’s gardens and convincing the city to stop selling them . When revisions to the city’s zoning code were proposed that would have banned urban agriculture in certain areas, the GJLI was able to quickly demonstrate that the changes threatened roughly 20% of the city’s community gardens . They were also able to mobilize gardeners to show up to hearings opposing the zoning change, in partnership with representatives from other organizations in a coalition that the GJLI initiated called the Campaign for Healthier Foods and Greener Spaces. PHS participated in the Campaign, and many of the gardeners that GJLI sought to organize had previously received some form of support through Philadelphia Green. It’s possible that PHS trainings had imparted skills in neighborhood organizing that proved valuable as the growers got mobilized, but it was GJLI that organized a citywide network of gardeners and staked out a political agenda. As noted earlier, PHS had always erred on the side of insider advocacy and had never cultivated political participation among gardeners.

After the zoning proposal was successfully defeated, Kirtrina Baxter, the organizer of the Campaign for Healthier Foods and Greener Spaces, took the coalition in a new direction that did not include PHS. The group evolved into Soil Generation, a movement organization explicitly led by the city’s Black and Brown growers.As is common in alternative food movements, the organizational culture of PHS and some of the other original coalition members reflected professionalized white upper-class perspectives and ways of engaging that alienated many of the city’s growers, who are far more likely to be lower income, people of color, and/or immigrants. Despite PHS’s long history of working with and providing support for gardeners of color throughout Philadelphia, the organization did not prioritize gaining legitimacy from these gardeners, and its more elite-facing orientation likely prevented the organization from being seen as a legitimate representative of or advocate for gardeners’ interests. Soil Generation was formed in conscious opposition to the PHS modus operandi that had long been the public face of urban agricultural activities in Philadelphia. Seeking its legitimacy from Black and Brown growers and community members, Soil Generation has worked to put forth a narrative that gives more voice to growers of color, who have long made up the majority of the city’s community gardeners and urban farmers. They have also taken a more critical approach to the city’s land use policy, working to reframe political struggles around urban agriculture in terms of equity and community control rather than economic development and revitalization. In Philadelphia, more than in Milwaukee or Seattle, stark contrasts are evident in the way urban agriculture is framed by different organizations , which points to Soil Generation’s efforts to re-legitimize urban agriculture in a way that proves more resilient in the face of development pressure. Codes for social cohesion and fairness, justice, equity were not applied at all to PHS documents; they were only applied in the Philadelphia case when brought up by gardeners testifying at public hearings or by Soil Generation as they advocated for policies such as the Land Bank . PHS did sometimes emphasize social benefits that community gardens offered; however, these social benefits tended more toward characteristics that city officials and elite philanthropic funders would appreciate, such as skill acquisition , self-reliance , and a sense of pride in one’s neighborhood . While these social benefits are undoubtedly important, they are less reflective of what gardeners themselves have found valuable about the city’s community gardens. In Philadelphia’s urban agriculture movement today, PHS looms large because of its long history, its citywide reach, and its well-funded public relations; nevertheless, the organization is seen as problematic by a portion of the city’s gardeners because it is more representative of white, professionalized, and upper-class conceptions of urban agriculture than those of the majority of Philadelphia’s urban growers. As PHS adapted its Philadelphia Green program over time in pursuit of available funding, the organization increasingly legitimized urban agriculture for its blight-removal and neighborhood revitalization potential, a framing which has resonated well with city officials and the wider public and which has shaped the big policy victories that urban agriculture advocates have achieved. PHS’s emphasis on greening as a tool for neighborhood redevelopment has also brought the negative effects of gentrification to the forefront of the public conversation around urban agriculture. PHS is not leading the charge to preserve gardens or counteract the negative effects of gentrification, but their activities have indirectly influenced organizing and mobilization in the city . Of all the organizations in the three case-cities, Soil Generation is arguably doing the most to challenge the logic of the growth machine and assert the interests of marginalized residents in its efforts to mobilize a social movement and secure permanent gardens.In Seattle, community gardens have gained a notable degree of site security because of social movement activities in the 1990s; while the garden advocates achieved virtual permanence for many of the city’s gardens, they did so in part by appealing to growth machine logic in framing the value of gardens .