Cannabis Grow

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 .

McClintock’s framework helps explain the multi-functionality of urban agriculture, its wide resonance in an era of widespread individual, social and ecological strain, and its interconnectedness with numerous social, cultural and environmental processes. However, his invocation of urban political ecology stops short of tracing the ideological and material flows involved in urban agriculture’s implementation in any given locality. Like any other socio-environmental space, community gardens arise from the confluence of certain physical elements that have cohered as a result of social processes, relations, ideas, interests, and practices. In turn, these spaces have symbolic and material impacts on the social systems of which they are part. The soil, water, seeds, and materials used for garden tools and infrastructure are brought together by people holding specific ideas and marshalling resources available to them in order to make urban nature. At the same time, certain physical elements must be absent from the space for it to continue as a garden; the gardeners must labor against ecological forces to limit the growth of life forms they don’t wish to cultivate , and they may come up against political-economic forces seeking to grow capital by re-forming the space with entirely different physical elements. The lens of urban political ecology can help unpack the interconnected social and ecological relations that come to bear on the creation and preservation or loss of urban agricultural sites and other urban socio-environments.

While urban political ecology draws attention to uneven outcomes produced by power relations, however, cannabis dryer much of the political analysis reaches abstract conclusions about the governance of space under the influence of capital. Traditional urban political economy provides a more concrete framework for understanding the actors involved in urban land use contestation, and political ecology can be further enhanced with attention to the specific organizations through which power flows as social relations, ideas, and practices reshape socio-environmental conditions.While community gardens can provide social, nutritional, aesthetic, and potentially economic benefits to participants and nearby residents, they occur within and are unlikely to resolve large-scale disparities in neighborhood characteristics. Residential racial segregation, and the food-system and environmental inequalities that have arisen alongside it, can be seen in part as a result of the political-economic logic governing urban development. This logic, employed with consistency by powerful actors in most North American cities, tends to drive land-use decisions and policy in a way that leaves urban agriculture sites highly vulnerable. In a dynamic process, power differentials manifest through competition to take the form of built-environment winners and losers across space. Logan and Molotch’s urban growth machine thesis explains this disparity by emphasizing that different localities are constantly competing against one another to attract capital, intensify land use, and thereby grow the economy. Because resources are limited, it is a zero-sum game with winners and losers. What is more, the growth machine logic is occurring at multiple scales: between different neighborhoods within cities, between cities and the surrounding suburbs, between different cities, and between regions or larger territories as well.

Local growth coalitions—made up of politicians, businessmen, developers, small property owners, and other real estate interests—work together to structure their locality in a way that will attract capital investment and increase the area’s overall “exchange value” and in so doing promote property value appreciation . The most successful growth coalitions win buy-in from higher levels of government, new construction projects, greater commercial activity, more intense residential development, and the benefits of rising property values that accrue to growth coalition members . Less successful growth coalitions may still attract capital, but in forms such as industrial activity, hazardous waste facilities, or other locally unwanted land uses with steeper health and economic downsides . Unsuccessful locales may lose out on investment altogether, and experience shrinkage rather than growth as economic opportunity dries up, properties are abandoned, and residents move away. Even when growth coalitions succeed, the benefits of increasing exchange value are not evenly distributed amongst those in a given locale. Despite ideological assurances that growth is good for everyone, urban development often comes at the expense of residents’ “use value,” with increased traffic, pollution, noise, strain on utilities, and aesthetic decline reducing residents’ quality of life. Growth coalition members work to manage the public narrative so that growth is widely seen as desirable, or at least inevitable . However, if community organizations anticipate the harm to their quality of life and mobilize to resist unwanted change, conflict can arise between local residents and the growth coalition and its growth entrepreneurs. Within a given locale, community residents opposing development usually organize their resistance in response to a particular threat, while a region’s growth coalitions tend to remain consistently organized due to members’ ongoing coordination and shared interests in growing the value of their properties.

Because pro-development groups are usually better resourced and more organized, they tend to prevail . But not always—sometimes communities are able to mount effective opposition to forms of development that they see as undesirable. Which communities can successfully oppose unwanted development represents further inequality in the terrain of land-use contestation. Those with greater access to financial and social capital are far more likely both to attract capital investment for desired forms of development and to mount effective opposition to development proposals they oppose . Thus, already disadvantaged communities are the most likely to either experience capital disinvestment and neighborhood blight, or to undergo steep declines in use value from LULUs as the growth machine drives on. Mirroring patterns in the urban food environment described above, the residential neighborhoods with the most blight, and those closest to LULUs, tend to be low-income Black or Latinx neighborhoods. Considering the challenges these neighborhoods often face— including limited access to affordable, healthy food; vacant and blighted land; slumping property values; poor air quality; and social problems such as crime and low collective efficacy—the potential benefits of community gardens are especially meaningful for residents in such areas. Indeed, many community gardens are started informally by residents seeking to address community needs and add use value to vacant land in low-income neighborhoods. Yet if these residents don’t own the property they garden on, it remains vulnerable to the gears of the growth machine. The dynamics of the urban growth machine have influenced land use in the United States for well over a century; in recent decades, urban governance and political economy more broadly have also been strongly shaped by the prevailing logic of neoliberalism. Since the late 1970s, cannabis grow room neoliberal ideology has gained traction among political decision-makers across all levels of government. Standing in contrast to Keynesian economic theories about the role of government in stimulating and regulating the economy, neoliberal ideology posits that the main role of the government is to prop up free markets and otherwise get out of the private sector’s way . This has translated into accelerated privatization of public assets, more regressive tax codes, and the rescission of social services . Culturally, neoliberalism has taken shape in an ideological shift that emphasizes individual responsibility for one’s economic well being and health, a shift that has occurred alongside the structural fraying of the social safety net . The rhetoric extolling free markets and spotlighting the role of individuals in their own fate serves to distract from the ways that individuals are connected in society and “free” capitalist markets accumulate ever-greater wealth for a privileged few while burdening everyone else with the downsides of private profit-making . In the United States, city budgets have become more strained since neoliberal ideas gained political traction. Public spending cuts at the state and federal level have reduced capital flows from higher levels of government into city coffers, and cities have not been able to make up for the shortfalls through general taxation describe the dual processes of “roll-back” and “roll-out” neoliberalization: public systems of social service provision are dismantled, and their former functions are devolved onto private and third-sector organizations, which take on a larger share of the work to feed, house, educate, and otherwise care for citizens in times of need. The organizations that manage formal community gardens have been part of this roll-back and roll-out process.

Through the roll-back and roll-out of neoliberalization, urban governance arrangements are becoming restructured. Nonprofit human-service organizations have had to focus more on local service provision and engage less in advocating for policy that protects the rights of the poor . With less money being distributed from the federal and state governments to city agencies, local governments have had to scramble to find alternative funding sources. Public-private partnerships are often formed in this context, but their viability as a replacement for the aid offered by the prior welfare-state remains in question . In this newfound and neoliberal context, local nonprofit organizations often have greater control of resources than local elected officials . However, community organizations may not operate as defenders of “use-value” as the urban growth machine model suggests. Instead, community-based organizations may operate largely in the interest of their own survival and growth—even if they appear to organize local residents politically. To this end, community-based organizations that partner with local government may craft their clientele as a reliable constituency and trade votes for government service contracts . Alternatively, they may deploy technologies of participation that stall resident opposition rather than addressing it . Thus, in the neoliberal era, community organizations cannot be viewed simply as representatives of civic and therefore local resident interests; it is important to look more closely, investigating how such organizations engage in local politics—especially as it relates to whether and how they cultivate civic participation among their members. Urban agriculture organizations are no exception; community gardens in particular require the coordination of many individuals, whose participation may or may not extend into civic action. Lyson has developed the concept of “civic agriculture” to describe the strengthening of local food systems, and at the same time community social ties, through operations such as farmers markets, community supported agriculture, and community gardens. Food-based organizations with a justice orientation can act as places of learning in which participants gain civic skills and critical perspectives . Civic agriculture initiatives build conscientious alternatives to the corporate-dominated industrial food system , and community gardens can further orient participants to challenging development models that exploit their neighborhoods . However, Passidomo cautions that more research is needed to understand how and when such projects promote greater civic participation in disinvested communities specifically. This focus is especially important in light of the finding that many urban agriculture projects actually work to support existing socio-economic structures and the neoliberalization of cities: by promoting a neoliberal ideology of individual responsibility , bolstering narratives used to justify reduced city services , filling in gaps left by the roll-back of the social safety net , or helping to brand a city as “green” and “sustainable” in the global competition to attract tourists and wealthy residents . Simply put, some urban agriculture projects organize participants to challenge and change prevailing socio-economic structures, and others do not. Attending to these distinctions is important because community-based organizations can in fact do a great deal to increase civic participation among their members and clientele. Community-based organizations can use civic participation as a resource in their efforts to survive and succeed, both as a source of legitimacy and as a base of power from which to seek funding, contracts, or favorable policies . The outcomes of successful civic participation may benefit the organization, the individuals involved, or both. As urban agriculture organizations must establish legitimacy for their unconventional spaces, attract resources needed to maintain the sites, and win favorable land use policies, they may come to view the civic participation of their gardeners as a valuable resource. Many community gardens are located in low-income neighborhoods, and like other CBOs that provide services in these neighborhoods, they may stabilize their own operation by teaching neighborhood residents skills to interface better with bureaucracies. For instance, Marwell describes how some housing cooperatives teach low-income residents to manage meetings and interface with the city as well as the private sector, such as by paying taxes and collectively managing their utilities. In this way the organization’s overhead is reduced, some of the residents learn valuable skills, and the organization simultaneously builds its legitimacy as a site where residents learn such skills.

With the higher density of urban areas, demand for space can put pressure on any land use that isn’t maximizing a site’s potential. Of course, what is considered a site’s maximum potential is socially constructed; as predicted by the urban growth machine theory, land uses are largely determined by the alignment of interests among powerful growth entrepreneurs, investors, simple property owners, and local government regulations and regulators. However, when none of these parties takes a lead role in determining a site’s use, local residents often determine a use themselves for underutilized, interstitial spaces in order to fill a need or realize the potential most important to them; this is how many urban agriculture projects begin . In general, with or without institutional and landowner support, urban agriculture tends to proliferate in times and places where crises leave land underutilized and more people in need . Especially during a crisis, such as an economic crisis, war, pandemic, or local social instability, urban agriculture receives increased public attention as a potential solution to many of the problems that the crisis has brought on. This is because urban agriculture can provide numerous benefits—economically, nutritionally, environmentally, and socially—that vary with how the sites are structured and managed . While growing food in cities has many potential benefits, drying cannabis the notion that it can serve as a panacea to urban problems is misleading; because of physical and social constraints, no individual program or project can provide the full range of benefits that urban agriculture is commonly associated with .

Nevertheless, urban agriculture seems frequently to be rediscovered at the onset of any new crisis – such as economic disruption brought on by war, recession or inflation . Activists, residents and/or the media contribute to a surge of excitement around the many potential benefits—healthy food, social connection, education, equity and justice, urban beautification, green space, blight removal, and/or economic development—that they envision urban agriculture will bring. Indeed, urban agriculture can provide valuable means of addressing common social problems that arise in cities—particularly when implemented in the form of community gardening, a practice that has been widely celebrated in the discourse around urban agriculture in the United States since the 1970s. While the anonymity, impersonality, and inequity of urban life can become alienating, community gardens can provide a place where residents can connect with one another , bridging socioeconomic, racial and generational divides and/or developing a greater sense of self-sufficiency and agency . In cities, many low-income residents and people of color are burdened with insufficient access to affordable, nutritious food as a result of racial segregation and economic dislocation, but community gardens have shown the potential to increase food security and sovereignty for these communities . Furthermore, while most of the produce grown in community gardens is eaten by the gardeners and their families or donated to others for free, community gardens and other forms of urban agriculture can also spur local food retail, economic development, and employment in neighborhoods blighted by decades of disinvestment .

Additionally, community gardens and urban farms function as a type of urban green space that helps ameliorate geophysical and ecological problems common to urban landscapes, including storm water runoff, urban heat island effect, habitat loss, and poor air quality . With all of these documented benefits, it is no wonder that urban agriculture engenders much excitement during times of crisis. Heightened attention to urban agriculture during crisis has highlighted its paradoxical relationship with capitalism, too. At its core, urban agriculture holds the potential for producing and consuming outside the capitalist market system . Thus, urban agriculture can take on a “radical” character as a form of resistance and transformative practice . Yet urban agriculture can also serve as a “relief valve” that keeps a dysfunctional system just bearable enough, reducing suffering without solving the underlying issues, and thus propping up the dominant system rather than working against it . In this way, the paradox of urban agriculture today is similar to the broader problematic of civil-sector social service provision under roll-back and roll-out neoliberalism . Moreover, in some cases, as urban agriculture comes to be defined as a neighborhood amenity, it increases local property values . When this happens, urban agriculture ultimately puts low-income residents at risk of displacement, nullifying any benefits the spaces may have provided for them. Community gardens and other forms of urban agriculture hold significant potential as means to improve the lives of marginalized residents, but improvement is neither inherent nor guaranteed; there are contingencies in how urban agricultural practices are designed and implemented. Since urban agriculture goes against the typical uses of urban land, those advocating for community gardens and urban farms often face resistance from urban growth entrepreneurs and the city government officials who support them.

Schmelzkopf conceptualizes gardens as politically contested spaces, where multiple potential uses that would be social goods are pitted against each other. In 1995, Schmelzkopf predicted that urban gardens across the United States would continue to be challenged until gardeners could frame their efforts in ways that demonstrated the benefits of their work, or that asserted the right of residents to open spaces in their communities. Since that time, gardeners across the country have indeed worked to frame the value of their garden spaces in ways that legitimize their efforts and that increase the odds that they will retain control over them. As Schmelzkopf predicted, these arguments often do highlight the social and environmental benefits of urban agriculture, while others build a more rights-focused case for community access and control of urban lands. Urban agriculture advocates across the US have been contesting land in various ways, yet few studies of urban agriculture have focused on the land-tenure question and no prior research appears to use a comparative approach to analyzing these struggles. By examining how advocates for community gardens create and defend these spaces, and in particular how they engage in the social construction of urban agriculture’s value, we can learn a great deal not only about the benefits that urban agriculture can provide different communities, but also about the dynamics of legitimation and political-economic constraints involved when community-based organizations hybridize from service provision to social movement work. In the last 50 years, urban agriculture organizations in major US cities have come to oversee and formalize activities on vacant lots, over time building up the legitimacy required to attract the necessary resources for organizational maintenance. However, vacant lot use remains precarious, and when political and/or economic changes threaten the organization’s access to land, a new kind of legitimacy is required in order to recast urban agriculture as a permanent facet of the urban landscape rather than a temporary use of marginal land. These moments present a theoretically interesting situation in that CBOs are hybridizing to take on social movement work, and in the process are innovating legitimacy by introducing new narrative frames that can change perspective on their activities in order to shift public policy and mitigate the threat. Previous scholars have studied how organizations respond to challenges to their legitimacy, curing cannabis whether due to internal missteps or a change in the external environment . However, less consideration has been given to how existing organizations innovate new forms of legitimacy to buffer their activities against exogenous changes. A sociological perspective encourages us to ask: How do garden organizations legitimize urban agriculture? When vacant-lot gardens face development pressure, who mobilizes to preserve them? What strategies and framing processes do they use to mobilize in defense of threatened gardens? Why do these strategies succeed or fail, and what do they achieve in practice? Ultimately, who benefits from the creation and preservation of urban agricultural spaces? These questions require that we assess garden efforts by considering who is in charge, who will have access, and which of the gardens’ many potential functions are legitimated and thus prioritized. Investigating organizational dynamics is critical for understanding the impact that gardens may have on surrounding communities, since contradictions inherent to modern urban governance and resource allocation can yield garden programs that don’t ameliorate but reproduce inequality, prop up failing systems, or otherwise fall short of the benefits the gardens can produce .

In advocating for urban agriculture as a long-term land use, garden organizations participate in the ongoing renegotiation of both ideas of urban nature and the material ecological conditions in cities, which distribute the benefits and burdens unevenly among different social groups . Advocacy for urban agriculture is also similar to other efforts underway to transform urban life, such as calls for community policing, which attempt to relocate resources and decision-making for critical urban systems in potentially radical ways. In general, studying the distinct challenges that community-based service organizations face when they hybridize to take up social movement work is important because social movements are often the best way to overcome elite opposition and accomplish substantive transformation of any collective feature of social life.In order to better understand the strategies grass root activists and urban agriculture advocates use to secure long-term land access, I conducted a comparative historical analysis of three U.S. cities. In Milwaukee, Philadelphia and Seattle, well-established multi-site gardening organizations have engaged with city officials to win policies that secure land for community gardens. The strategies used to legitimize urban agriculture, the configurations of the programs themselves, and the wider political-economic context of each city vary significantly. Through a qualitative analysis of 55 interviews with key informants and archival material from each city , I show the relationships between legitimation strategies, program configurations and political-economic context as well as their impacts on local discourse and policy related to urban agriculture1. Employing spatial regression analysis to assess the spread of each program’s gardens across their respective cities, I also demonstrate the ways that movement strategies and organizational aspects of the community garden programs have impacted the outcomes achieved and populations served by each organization over time. For the remainder of this introduction, I provide background about each of the three cities, their major gardening programs, and the local policy victories that have helped to secure more land for urban agriculture, followed by a brief outline of the chapters in this dissertation. My research is a comparative historical analysis of the characteristics, preservation strategies, and outcomes achieved by community gardening programs in Seattle, Milwaukee and Philadelphia. All are large US cities , and all have been cited as exemplars for their thriving urban agriculture activities . The cities are also similar in that community gardeners in each locale have experienced at least one major development challenge and responded with political engagement that resulted in favorable policy changes. Further, all three cities have passed urban planning frameworks that incorporate urban agriculture. In each city, I gathered documents from the early 1970s to the present—decades in which community gardening has undergone several surges in both local and nationwide interest and attention—but my qualitative analysis focuses on specific periods during which gardeners overcame development threats and those in which gardens were written into the cities’ urban planning frameworks. Whereas much of the existing literature on urban agriculture is based on individual case studies of a single garden or program, my project builds new insights through comparative analysis. Examining the historical process of land use contestation in multiple cities in which urban agriculture has come to be seen as a legitimate long-term land use, I show that the process of securing land for urban agriculture varies considerably from case to case, yet some key similarities are evident—namely the perceived need for garden advocates to build an economic argument for the value of urban agriculture. While advocates in all three cities have been relatively successful in their efforts, I show that the different political and economic conditions in which land use contestation has unfolded and the strategies used to build urban agriculture’s legitimacy are related to important differences in the outcomes achieved . I selected Milwaukee, Philadelphia, and Seattle for comparison because these cities are diverse in geographic region, political and economic features, degree of site permanence achieved by garden advocates, and the characteristics of each city’s main urban agriculture organizations. The data I collected were then used to illuminate the strategies that garden advocates and organizations used during the process of developing and defending urban agricultural sites, the evolving public discourse around urban agriculture in each city, the internal considerations important to each organization as they built gardens and sought to defend them, and the historical development of gardens affiliated with each program.

The seedling will be ready for budding or grafting when it has grown to 24 to 30 inches tall.Budding and grafting are vegetative propagation techniques in which a single bud or stem of a desired plant is attached to a root stock plant. In budding, a single bud with its accompanying bark is used as the scion. In grafting, part of a stem or branch is used as the scion. One of the most important keys to successful budding and grafting is properly positioning the scion on the root stock. In order for the scion and root stock to grow together, the thin greenish plant layer just under the bark of the scion and root stock must be aligned so that they touch each other. If they do not touch each other, the bud or graft will fail. Within 10 to 15 days, a successful bud or graft forms a hard whitish tissue where the two cambium layers grow together. Always use sharp cutting or grafting instruments and make clean, even cuts. Options include a budding knife, a sharp kitchen knife, or a single-sided razor blade. Do not allow the cut surfaces of the scion or root stock to dry out: immerse cut scions in a pail of water, wrap them in plastic, or graft them immediately after cutting. Also, remove any leaves from scions after cutting to help keep the scions from losing water. Keep the scions in a cool place during the work. To make a T-bud, cannabis grow systems make a T-shaped cut on the root stock about 8 to 12 inches above the ground . The vertical part of the T should be about 1 inch long and the horizontal part about one-third of the distance around the root stock.

Twist the knife gently to open flaps of bark. Avoid cutting through any buds on the bark of the root stock. On the scion , cut a selected bud beginning about 1 ⁄2 inch below the bud and ending about 3 ⁄4 to 1 inch beyond the bud. Make a horizontal cut about 3 ⁄4 inch above the bud down through the bark and into the wood. Gently remove the shield shaped piece for budding . Slip the budwood down into the T-shaped cut under the two flaps of bark until the horizontal cuts of the bud match up with the horizontal cut of the T. After inserting the budwood into the root stock, wrap the bud and root stock with budding rubber . Budding rubber is available from agricultural supply or hardware stores; if budding rubber is unavailable, use wide rubber bands, green tie tape, or stretchy tape. Leave the bud exposed while wrapping. Do not coat the area with grafting wax or sealant. If the budding is done in the fall, the buds should be healed in about 6 to 8 weeks; in the spring, healing should take about 3 to 4 weeks. After the bud has healed, unwrap it and cut off the remaining shoots or stock about 12 to 14 inches above the bud union. This will be the nurse branch, which helps protect the new bud union. After the budwood has grown a few new leaves, completely remove the nurse branch to about 1 ⁄8 inch above the bud union .The best grafting technique for small-diameter root stocks is whip grafting. Whip grafting should be done in the fall or spring. Although whip grafts use more scion wood than budding does, they allow the grafted plant to develop more rapidly. To make a whip graft , select as a scion hard and mature green wood. First make a long, sloping cut about 1 to 21 ⁄2 inches long on the root stock . Make a matching cut on the scion. Cut a “tongue” on both the scion and root stock by slicing downward into into the wood .

The tongues should allow the scion and root stock to lock together. Fit the scion to the root stock and secure with budding rubber . Apply grafting wax to seal the union. To prevent sunburn, new whip grafts should be protected from the sun until they heal. After the scion has begun to grow, remove any growth from the root stock. If necessary, support new shoots by staking.The best grafting technique for large-diameter trees or branches is bark grafting . To make a bark graft, first cut off the root stock just above a crotch where smaller branches sprout out. If possible, try to retain one branch of the original plant as a nurse branch. The nurse branch will provide the scion nutrition and support from wind .Cut vertical slits 21 ⁄2 to 31 ⁄2 inches long through the bark of the remaining freshly cut root stock stubs down to the wood. These slits should be spaced 3 to 5 inches apart. Cut the scions 5 to 6 inches long with 4 to 6 buds per scion . If scions are cut longer than this, they may dry out before healing. When cutting the scions, make a sloping cut about 3 inches long at the base of the scion. Using a grafting knife or other very sharp knife, lift the bark on one side of the slit. Insert the scion into the slit with the long-cut surface of the scion facing the wood of the root stock and push it down into the slit . Make sure that the scion fits snugly into the slits in the bark and that the cambiums are properly aligned. Secure citrus scions by nailing them in place with thin flathead nails or tying them with strong cord or tree tape. Secure avocado scions with plastic nursery tape. Coat all cut surfaces thoroughly, including the tops of the scions, with grafting wax or pruning paint. To protect the graft from sunburn, paint it with white interior water-based paint, either undiluted or mixed 50/50 with water. Paint the entire area around the graft union, including the scions, waxed areas, and the exposed trunk below the graft union. Inspect the grafts frequently and rewax them if they begin to crack or dry out. Once the scions begin to grow well, remove all but one scion per branch.

Early on, however, prune the scions that will be removed to reduce their vigor but do not prune the scion that will be kept. The one scion you keep will eventually become a main scaffold branch. Any nurse branches should also be removed after all the scions are growing well.During my first summer on the Tanaka Farm in western Washington State, I accompanied an indigenous Mexican picker, Abelino, to see a physician . His knee was injured while picking strawberries two days prior. It was Saturday and the only clinic open was a private urgent care clinic. After the initial physical examination, brief history-taking, and knee X-ray, the physician matter-of-factly suggested my friend do lighter work on the farm, ‘‘something sitting down, maybe at a desk.’’ Abelino responded with a quiet, respectful laugh. On Monday the next week, Abelino asked for lighter work at the farm office. The bilingual receptionist told him in a frustrated tone, ‘‘No, porque no’’ . Later that month, I accompanied Abelino to the busy clinic of a rehabilitation medicine physician for follow-up. This physician asked me to translate that Abelino ‘‘hurt his knee’’ because he had been ‘‘picking incorrectly’’ and did ‘‘not know how to bend over correctly.’’ Notably, in her rush, she had not asked Abelino any details about his work, ebb and flow tables including how he bent over. Years later, Abelino still tells me he has occasional knee pain and that ‘‘los medicos no saben nada’’ . This brief vignette focuses on what physicians and public health practitioners often characterize as risk behaviors—choice of job or poor body posture. The physicians involved in Abelino’s care consider these risk behaviors to be the genesis of his suffering. This focus keeps them inadvertently unaware of the macro-social structures that produce suffering. In this article, I propose the concept of structural vulnerability as an important counterpoint to the common individualistic focus on risk behavior in medicine and public health. This concept trains the gaze onto the social structures that produce and organize suffering into what public health denotes as health disparities. I flesh out the concept of structural vulnerability through a thick description of the complex hierarchy at work on the Tanaka berry farm in Washington State . This hierarchy produces vulnerability to suffering through differential demands, pressures, and bodily practices in work. I avoid the pitfalls of a simplistic, unidirectional understanding of structural violence by illustrating the ways in which macrostructures produce vulnerability on every level of the farm hierarchy. The concept of structural vulnerability directs blame and interventional attention away from the victims of suffering and toward the social structures producing and organizing their suffering.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 farmheadquarters. 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 . In congruence with the vertical metaphors utilized by those on the farm, the remainder of this article will move ethnographically from those considered at the top to those considered at the bottom.This farm is owned and run by third-generation Japanese-Americans whose parents’ generation lost half their land during the internment in the 1940s. Their relatives, with hundreds of acres on Bainbridge Island, Washington, were interned suddenly and the government sold their land out from under them. Those in the Skagit Valley had time to entrust their farm to a white family, and thereby avoided the same fate. Today, the third generation of Tanaka brothers makes up the majority of farm executives. The others are Anglo-American professionals brought in from other agricultural companies. The following are abbreviated profiles of key farm executives, focusing on their anxieties. In these profiles, we see that the growers’ worries are focused on farm survival in a bleak landscape of competition with increasing corporate agribusiness, expanding urban boundaries, and economic globalization. These anxieties are founded in the reality of ongoing farm closures throughout the region.

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. Thirteen farmers responded and agreed to participate in the entirety of the study . 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, cannabis grower supplies 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 . Essentially, farmers were asked, “Can you think of a field that you would consider ‘least challenging’ in terms of building soil fertility on your farm?” and “Can you also think of a field that you would consider ‘most challenging’ in terms of building soil fertility on your farm?” . Farmers would often select several fields, and through back-and-forth dialogue with the field researcher, together would arrive at a final field selected for each category . Only fields with all summer vegetable row crops were selected for sampling.

For each site, farmers delineated specific management practices, including information about crop history and crop rotations, bed prepping if applicable, the number of tillage passes and depth of tillage, rate of additional N-based fertilizer inputs, and type of irrigation applied. Following field site selection, soil sampling was designed to capture indicators of soil fertility in the bulk soil at a single time point. Fields were sampled mid-season at peak vegetative growth when crop nitrogen demand was the highest. This sampling approach was intended to provide a snapshot of on-farm soil health and fertility. Because the farms involved generally grow a wide range of vegetable crops, we designed the study to have greater inference space than a single crop, even at the expense of adding variability. As such, we collected bulk soil samples that we did not expect to be strongly influenced by the particular crop present. Field sampling occurred over the course of four weeks in July 2019. To sample each site, a random 10m by 20m transect area was placed on the field across three rows of the same crop. Within the transect area, three composite samples each based on five sub-samples were collected approximately 30cm from a plant at a depth of 20cm using an auger . Sub-samples were composited on site and mixed thoroughly by hand for 5 minutes before being placed on ice and immediately transported back to the laboratory.Soil samples were preserved on ice until processed within several hours of field extraction. Each sample was sieved to 4mm and then either air dried, extracted with 0.5M K2SO4, or utilized to measure net mineralization and nitrification .

A batch of air-dried samples were measured for gravimetric water content , which was determined by drying fresh soils samples at 105oC for 48 hours. Moist soils were immediately extracted and analyzed colorimetrically for NH4 + and NO3 – concentrations using modified methods from Miranda et al. and Forster . Additional volume of extracted samples were subsequently frozen for future laboratory analyses. To determine soil textural class, another batch of air-dried samples were further sieved to 2mm and subsequently prepared for analysis using the “micropipette” method . Water holding capacity was determined using the funnel method, adapted from Geisseler et al. , where a jumbo cotton ball thoroughly wetted with deionized water was placed inside the base of a funnel with 100 g soil on top. Deionized water was added and allowed to imbibe into the soil until no water dripped from the funnel. The soil was allowed to drain overnight . A sub-sample of this soil was then weighed and dried for 48 hours at 105oC. The difference following draining and oven drying of a sub-sample was defined as 100% WHC. Additional air-dried samples were sieved to 2mm, ground and then analyzed for total organic carbon , total soil nitrogen , soil protein, and pH at the Ohio State Soil Fertility Lab . The former two analyses were conducted using an elemental analyzer . Soil protein was determined using the autoclaved citrate extractable soil protein method outlined by Hurisso et al. . Remaining air-dried samples were sieved to 2mm, ground, and then analyzed for POXC using the active carbon method described by Weil et al. , but with modifications as described by Culman et al. . In brief, 2.5g of air-dried soil was placed in a 50mL centrifuge tube with 20mL of 0.02 mol/L KMnO4 solution, shaken on a reciprocal shaker for exactly 2 minutes, dry racks for weed and then allowed to settle for 10 minutes. A 0.5mL aliquot of supernatant was added to a second centrifuge tube containing 49.5mL of water for a 1:100 dilution and analyzed at 550 nm. The amount of POXC was determined by the loss of permanganate due to C oxidation . After the initial field visit and following summer field sampling, all 13 farmers were contacted to participate in a follow up visit to their farm, which consisted of a semi-structured interview followed by a brief survey. The semi-structured interview is the most standard technique for gathering local knowledge . These in-depth interviews allowed us to ask the same questions of each farmer so that comparisons between interviews could be made. In person interviews were conducted in the winter, between December 2019 – February 2020; three interviews were conducted in December 2020. All interviews were recorded with permission from the farmer and lasted about 2 hours.

To develop interview questions for the semi-structured interviews , we established initial topics and thematic sections first. We consulted with two organic farmers to develop final interview questions. The final format of the semi-structured interviews was designed to encourage deep knowledge sharing. For example, the interview questions were structured such that questions revisited topics to allow interviewees to expand on and deepen their answer with each subsequent version of the question. Certain questions attempted to understand farmer perspectives from multiple angles and avoided scientific jargon or frameworks whenever possible. Most questions promoted open ended responses to elicit the full range of possible responses from farmers. We used an openended, qualitative approach that relies on in-depth and in-person interviews to study farmer knowledge . In the semi-structured interview, farmers were asked a range of questions that included: their personal background with farming and the history of their farm operation, their general farm management approaches, as well as soil management approaches specific to soil health and soil fertility, such as key nutrients in their consideration of soil fertility, and their thoughts on soil tests . A brief in-person survey that asked several key demographic questions was administered at the end of the semistructured interviews. Interviews were transcribed, reviewed for accuracy, and uploaded to NVivo 12, a software tool used to categorize and organize themes systematically based on research questions . Through structured analysis of the interview transcripts, key themes were identified and then a codebook was constructed to systematically categorize data related to soil health and soil fertility . We summarize these results in table form. To unpack differences between Fields A and Fields B across all farms, we applied a multi-step approach. We first conducted a preliminary, global comparison between Fields A and Fields B across all farms using a one-way analysis of variance to determine if Fields A were significantly different from Fields B for each indicator for soil fertility. Then, to develop a basis for further comparison of Fields A and Fields B, we considered potential links between management and soil fertility. To do so, we developed a gradient among the farms using a range of soil management practices detailed during the initial farm visit. These soil management practices were based on interview data from the initial farm visit, and were also emphasized by farmers as key practices linked to soil fertility. The practices used to inform the gradient included cover crop application, amount of tillage, crop rotation patterns, crop diversity, the use of integrated crop and livestock systems , and the amount of N-based fertilizer application. Cover crop frequency was determined using the average number of cover crop plantings per year, calculated as cover crop planting counts over the course of two growing years for each field site. To quantify crop rotation, a rotational complexity index was calculated for each site using the formula outlined by Socolar et al. . To calculate crop diversity, we focused on crop abundance, the total number of crops grown per year at the whole farm level was divided by the total acreage farmed. To determine ICLS, an index was created based on the number and type of animals utilized . Lastly, we calculated the amount of additional N-based fertilizer applied to each field . In order to group, visualize, and further explore links with indicators for soil fertility, all soil management variables were standardized , and then used in a principal components analysis using the factoextra package in R . In short, these independent management variables were used to create a composite of several management variables. Principal components with eigenvalues greater than 1.0 were retained. To establish the gradient in management, we plotted all 13 farms using the first two principal components, and ordered the farms based on spatial relationships that arose from this visualization using the nearest neighbor analysis . To further explore links between management and soil fertility, we used the results from the PCA to formalize a gradient in management across all farms, and then used this gradient as the basis for comparison between Field A and Field B across all indicators for soil fertility.

For instance, soil texture may play a mediating role in N cycling, where soils high in clay content may limit substrate availability as well as access to oxygen, which in turn, may restrict the efficiency of N cycling . In this sense, it is important to understand the role that soil edaphic characteristics play in order to identify the underlying baseline limits imposed by the soil itself. Equally important to consider is the role of soil management in mediating N cycling. Compared to controlled experiments, soil management regimes on working farms can be more complex and nonlinear in nature due to multiple interacting practices applied over the span of several years, and even multiple decades. To date, a handful of studies conducted on working farms have examined tradeoffs among different management systems , though few such studies examine the cumulative effects of multiple management practices across a gradient of working organic farms. However, understanding the cumulative effects of management practices is key to link soil management to N cycling on working farms . Likewise, it is important to examine the ways in which local soil edaphic characteristics may limit farmers’ ability to improve soil quality through management practices. Though underutilized in this context, the development of farm typologies presents a useful approach to quantitatively integrate the heterogeneity in management on working organic farms . Broadly, grow vertical typologies allow for the categorization of different types of organic agriculture and provide a way to synthesize the complexity of agricultural systems .

Previous studies that make use of farm typologies found that differences in total soil N across farms are largely defined by levels of soil organic matter.To address these questions, we conducted field research at 27 farm field sites in Yolo County, California, USA, and used four commonly available indicators of soil organic matter to classify farm field sites into farm types via k-means cluster analysis. Using farm typologies identified, we examined the extent to which soil texture and/or soil management practices influenced these measured soil indicators across all working organic farms, using Linear Discriminant Analysis and Variation Partitioning Analysis . We then determined the extent to which gross N cycling rates and other soil N indicators differed across these farm types. Lastly, we developed a linear mixed model to understand the key factors most useful for predicting potential gross N cycling rates along a continuous gradient, incorporating soil indicators, on-farm management practices, and soil texture data. Our study highlights the usefulness of soil indicators towards understanding plant-soil-microbe dynamics that underpin crop N availability on working organic farms. While we found measurable differences among farms based on soil organic matter, strongly influenced by soil texture and management, these differences did not translate for N cycling indicators measured here. Though N cycling is strongly linked to soil organic matter, indicators for soil organic matter are not strong predictors of N cycling rates. During the initial field visits in June 2019, two field sites were selected in collaboration with farmers on each participating farm; these sites represented fields in which farmers planned to grow summer vegetables. Therefore, only fields with all summer vegetable row crops were selected for sampling. At this time, farmers also discussed management practices applied for each field site, including information about crop history and rotations, bed prepping if applicable, tillage, organic fertilizer input, and irrigation . Because of the uniformity of long-term management at the field station , only one treatment was selected in collaboration with the Cropping Systems Manager—a tomato field in the organic corn-tomato-cover crop system.

Since the farms involved in this study generally grew a wide range of vegetable crops, we designed soil sampling to have greater inference space than a single crop, even at the expense of adding variability. Sampling was therefore designed to capture indicators of nitrogen cycling rates and nitrogen pools in the bulk soil at a single time point. Fields were sampled mid-season near peak vegetative growth when crop nitrogen demand is the highest. Using the planting date and anticipated harvest date for each crop, peak vegetative growth was estimated and used to determine timing of sampling. We collected bulk soil samples that we did not expect to be strongly influenced by the particular crop present. This sampling approach provided a snapshot of on-farm nitrogen cycling. Field sampling occurred over the course of four weeks in July 2019. To sample each site, a random 10m by 20m transect area was placed on the field site across three rows of the same crop, away from field edges. Within the transect area, three composite samples each based on 5 sub-samples were collected approximately 30cm from a plant at a depth of 20cm using an auger . Subsamples were composited on site, and mixed thoroughly by hand for 5 minutes before being placed on ice and immediately transported back to the laboratory. To determine bulk density , we hammered a steel bulk density core sampler approximately 30cm from a plant at a depth 20cm below the soil surface and recorded the dry weight of this volume to calculate BD; we sampled three replicates per site and averaged these values to calculate final BD measurements for each site. Soil samples were preserved on ice until processed within several hours of field extraction. Each sample was sieved to 4mm and then either air dried, extracted with 0.5M K2SO4, or utilized to measure net and gross N mineralization and nitrification . Gravimetric water content was determined by drying fresh soils samples at 105oC for 48 hrs. Moist soils were immediately extracted and analyzed colorimetrically for NH4 + and NO3 – concentrations using modified methods from Miranda et al. and Forster . Additional volume of extracted samples were subsequently frozen for future laboratory analyses. To determine soil textural class, air dried samples were sieved to 2mm and subsequently prepared for analysis using the “micropipette” method . Water holding capacity was determined using the funnel method, adapted from Geisseler et al. , where a jumbo cotton ball thoroughly wetted with deionized water was placed inside the base of a funnel with 100g soil on top. The soil was allowed to drain overnight . A sub-sample of this soil was then weighed and dried for 48 hours at 105oC. The difference following draining and oven drying of a sub-sample was defined as 100% WHC. Air dried samples were sieved to 2mm, ground, and then analyzed for total soil N and total organic C using an elemental analyzer at the Ohio State Soil Fertility Lab ; additional soil data including pH and soil protein were also measured at this lab. Soil protein was determined using the autoclaved citrate extractable soil protein method outlined by Hurisso et al. . Additional air-dried samples were sieved to 2mm, ground, and then analyzed for POXC using the active carbon method described by Weil et al. , but with modifications as described by Culman et al. .

In brief, 2.5g of air-dried soil was placed in a 50mL centrifuge tube with 20mL of 0.02 mol/L KMnO4 solution, vertical grow systems shaken on a reciprocal shaker for exactly 2 minutes, and then allowed to settle for 10 minutes. A 0.5-mL aliquot of supernatant was added to a second centrifuge tube containing 49.5mL of water for a 1:100 dilution and analyzed at 550 nm. The amount of POXC was determined by the loss of permanganate due to C oxidation .To measure gross N mineralization and nitrification in soil samples, we applied an isotope pool dilution approach, adapted from Braun et al. . This method is based on three underlying assumptions listed by Kirkham & Bartholomew : 1) microorganisms in soil do not discriminate between 15N and 14N; 2) rates of processes measured remain constant over the incubation period; and 3) 15N assimilated during the incubation period is not remineralized. To prepare soil samples for IPD, we adjusted soils to approximately 40% WHC prior to incubation with deionized water. Next, four sets of 40g of fresh soil per sub-sample were weighed into specimen cups and covered with parafilm. Based on initial NH4 + and NO3 – concentrations determined above, a maximum of 20% of the initial NH4 + and NO3 – concentrations was added as either 15N-NH4 + or 15N-NO3 – tracer solution at 10 atom%; the tracer solution also raised each sub-sample soil water content to 60% WHC. This approach increased the production pool as little as possible while also ensuring sufficient enrichment of the NH4 + and NO3 – pools with 15N-NH4 + and 15N-NO3, respectively, to facilitate high measurement precision . Due to significant variability of initial NH4 + and NO3 – pool sizes in each soil sample, differing amounts of tracer solution were added to each sample set evenly across the soil surface. To begin the incubation, each of the four sub-samples received the tracer solution via evenly distributed circular drops from a micropipette. The specimen cups were placed in a dark incubation chamber at 20oC. After four hours , two sub-sample incubations were stopped by extraction with 0.5M K2SO4 as above for initial NH4 + and NO3 – concentrations. Filters were pre-rinsed with 0.5 M K2SO4 and deionized water and dried in a drying oven at 60°C to avoid the variable NH4 + contamination from the filter paper. Soil extracts were frozen at -20°C until further isotopic analysis. Similarly after 24 hrs , two sub-sample incubations were stopped by extraction as previously detailed, and subsequently frozen at -20°C. At a later date, filtered extracts were defrosted, homogenized, and analyzed for isotopic composition of NH4 + and NO3 – in order to calculate gross production and consumption rates for N mineralization and nitrification. We prepared extracts for isotope ratio mass spectrometry using a microdiffusion approach based on Lachouani et al. . Briefly, to determine NH4 + pools, 10mL aliquots of samples were diffused with 100mg magnesium oxide into Teflon coated acid traps for 48 hours on an orbital shaker. The traps were subsequently dried, spiked with 20μg NH4+ -N at natural abundance to achieve optimal detection, and subjected to EA-IRMS for 15N:14N analysis of NH4 + . Similarly, to determine NO3 – pools, 10mL aliquots of samples were diffused with 100mg magnesium oxide into Teflon coated acid traps for 48 hours on an orbital shaker. After 48 hours, acid traps were removed and discarded, and then each sample diffused again with 50mg Devarda’s alloy into Teflon coated acid trap for 48 hours on an orbital shaker. These traps were dried and subjected to EA-IRMS for 15N:14N analysis of NO3 + . Twelve dried samples with very low spiked with 20μg NH4+ -N at natural abundance to achieve optimal detection.In addition to the soil biogeochemical variables described above, farmers were also interviewed to determine specific soil management practices on their farms. Farmers were asked to describe the number of tillage passes they performed per field per season; the total number of crops per acre that the farm produced during one calendar year at the whole farm level; the degree to which the farm utilized integrated crop and livestock systems on the farm; crop rotational complexity for each field; and the frequency of cover crop plantings for each field. To calculate the frequency of tillage, we tallied the total number of tillage passes per season for each field. To calculate crop abundance, the total number of crops grown per year at the whole farm level was divided by the total acreage farmed. To capture the use of ICLS, we created an index based on the number of and type of animals utilized. Specifically, the index was calculated by first adding the number of animals used in rotation on farm for each animal type and then dividing by the total number of acres for each farm. These raw values were then normalized, creating an index range from 0 to 1 . Lastly, to quantify crop rotational complexity, a rotational complexity index was calculated for each site using the formula outlined by Socolar et al. . Cover crop frequency was determined using the average number of cover crop plantings per year, calculated as cover crop planting counts over the course of two growing years for each field site.

The Cerén farmers tolerated and possibly even encouraged the growth of wild and weedy species within their maize fields. All of the weedy species recovered from these fields have known uses nutritionally, medicinally, or for other purposes where they were incorporated into ceremonial activities or valued as a decoration . Amaranthus, Crotalaria, and Portulaca are all significant contributors towards Mesoamerican diets today and are often intentionally integrated into milpa agroecosystems . Kekchi villagers in Belize only remove weeds if a particularly dangerous variety has encroached, such as those with thorns or spines . The Kekchi Maya do not view weeds as a threat to their crops and consider their constant removal to be futile. Weeds can be useful additions whether fertilizing the soil, increasing moisture, or serving as a foodstuff. In fact, milpa agricultural systems in Mesoamerica commonly incorporate weedy species that are considered nutritious and edible, what is called quelites . Ethnobotanical records show that the majority of species procured for medicinal purposes are collected from disturbed habitats, such as agricultural fields, where weeds are predominant . Nine of the wild and weedy species within the Cerén fields have known medicinal applications to present day Mesoamerican groups . Amaranth was the second most ubiquitous herb within the fields, hydroponic rack occurring in all operations excavated except for Op. AN, and is an important edible green and grain throughout Mesoamerica .

The overwhelming amount of Spilanthes acmella achenes recovered could have been used as an herb or spice to flavor daily meals. The S. acmella achenes were so abundant that their distribution within agricultural contexts can reveal how the herb is significantly more prevalent within the fields closest to the households , suggesting that the farmers encouraged its growth. This follows Killion’s assessment that mono-cropped agricultural fields may have been farther from domestic structures, whereas multicropped or polyculture fields would have been located closer to where people lived. Alternatively, farmers may be more tolerant of weeds during the final stage of a cultivation cycle, as the maize crop is ready to be harvested . Many of the maize stalks recovered here via plaster casts were bent over so that they can dry within the fields , as if the agriculturalists were just about to collect that season’s harvest. The bent stalks prevent moisture from entering the fruits since water can no longer be taken up through the stem and rain can no longer enter the cobs as easily either. The apparent abundance of wild and weedy species within Cerén’s milpas provides further evidence that these fields were at the end of their growing season and perhaps the weedy herbs were simply not an issue that required manual removal. Many milpa agroecosystems burn the entire field in order to prepare the landscape for the next planting cycle, thus managing any weed populations that had become overgrown. Relatedly, it has been documented that the Lakandon Maya take ashes from piles of collected weeds and leftover crop residue and spread them throughout their fields to provide organic matter as a fertilizer . Since the soil samples collected for flotation in this study were taken from the interior of the agricultural ridges, it is unlikely that these herbs were only present from burned organic matter spread throughout the area.

If this was the case, the distribution of the weedy species would be more irregular, rather than the pattern of weedy seeds being more prevalent in fields closer to the village structures . It is more probable that their existence in the flotation samples is due to their growth within the fields. These weeds’ strong presence in the fields suggests that they could have held a positive relationship with the villagers and were part of a complex agricultural system; at the very least the weedy species were tolerated within the fields. Recent excavations at the site encountered a roadway feature, a sacbe, leading south out of the village, likely beginning near the village plaza . ‘Sacbe’ is the Maya term for a white road; sacbeob were typically constructed using a white material such as plaster. In the case of Cerén, the causeway was covered with a layer of Tierra Blanca Joven, a white volcanic ash derived from Ilopango, and was about 2 m in width and elevated an average of 20 cm above the ground surface . The earthen sacbe found traveling through the maize agricultural fields could be interpreted as a boundary marker between agricultural plots. During the 2013 excavations, more than one maize field was often present within each operation, separated by the causeway . When the paleoethnobotanical remains recovered from the agricultural fields on either side of the causeway are compared, management practices differ between the western and eastern milpas. The western fields reveal a larger percentage of weedy species per sample than the eastern fields . Yet, the eastern fields exhibit a more diverse assemblage of weedy species compared to the western fields. This distinction could indicate varying levels of attention to weed removal in terms of time and intensity. This variation suggests that different individuals or households practiced varying agricultural management strategies, perhaps even distinct timings for planting, and that the earthen sacbe served as a boundary marker within the fields.

Perhaps the varying presence of weedy species between the eastern and western fields is also indicative of varying perceptions of what a “weed” is to the different farmers tending these fields. Since the western fields exhibits a more limited set of weedy species, the agriculturalists tending this space may have had a more limited set of weedy species that they considered to be of value. The weedy species in the western fields are more limited to those that would have been used as nutritional herbs and foodstuffs, whereas the eastern fields’ more diverse weed assemblage includes more species that have known medicinal applications. Sheets and Dixon characterize this milpa area as the intermediate agricultural zone at Cerén, which exhibits irregular fallowed areas and a great variability in cultivation strategies. Each household likely devoted varying amounts of time toward gardening and management of their fields, with weed removal taking place secondary to other tasks, if at all. The distribution of the most abundant herbaceous species in the assemblage, S. acmella , across the maize agricultural fields reveals a lower abundance of these achenes within the fields closer to the village center. Around roughly 40 m south of the village plaza , the maize agricultural fields begin to exhibit significantly lower counts of herbaceous species within the flotation samples. The species is still quite prevalent in this area, but only amounts to at most half of the quantity of achenes recovered from field contexts closest to the main village. This stark contrast could be indicative of a possible boundary within the milpa where different farmers were responsible for managing the fields to the north and south of Op. AI. Perhaps the farmer who managed the milpa closest to the plaza was more tolerant of wild and weedy plants compared to the one who managed the area farther away from the village. Variation in management of agricultural fields is also visible within the manioc fields south of the village. While the composition of the manioc beds differs greatly from both the home gardens and the milpas in that it was apparently monocultural, each manioc field was managed by individual cultivators and families, vertical growing system as evidenced by land use lines encountered in 2009 excavations . The land use lines were also aligned 30° east of north, just as the structures and milpas were. The community shares this dominant organizational scheme related to the importance of water coming from the river. Land was still subdivided into distinct plots with clear access by individual cultivators and households. Also found within the agricultural field excavations were quite large carbonized wood fragments from fallen branches in the middle of the maize fields, identified through anthracological analysis. The ancient Maya did not necessarily clear their land of all existing plants in order to grow their crops , so the practice of leaving some trees still standing in the middle of the fields should not be a surprise. We see at least two examples of large branches found within the agricultural fields, Terminalia buceras C. Wright, better known as the bullet tree , and Clusia sp., or what is known as matapalo .

These branches suggest that forest taxa were not completely eradicated in ancient Mesoamerican agricultural systems. T. buceras is considered a hard, durable wood so it is commonly used in construction, additionally tannin can be extracted from the bark . The black bark is used medicinally to treat skin eruptions . The wood charcoal from the T. buceras was located within Operation Y , located among the agricultural fields at Cerén and adjacent to a possible boundary marker between two maize fields. This marker was an eroded furrow that was not cultivated. Small eroded furrows throughout the milpas suggest a delineation of farming duties between the various households. This eroded surco could have possibly separated a northern from a southern section of the maize agricultural field. Since large quantities of T. buceras charcoal were recovered from this location, it is possible that the tree once stood near this location and could have also served as a boundary marker. The matapalo branches were recovered from Operation AD, again an agricultural context, and it lies just east of where the rubber tree branch fragments were found. The charred remains were recovered in a stratum of ash that would have been deposited after the Cerén inhabitants evacuated the village . Because of this, we know that these charred remains are part of a tree that remained standing until the very hot tephra [composing Unit 4] landed, with larger particles hotter than 575 °C . This species is known to have been used by Mesoamericans medicinally with the latex used to treat toothaches and the wood also has been used for construction and as a fuel source. The relationship between maize agricultural fields and forest systems is critical. Forest ecosystems attract many pollinators, so incorporating them within close proximity to agriculture, perhaps on the margins, can be extremely beneficial. Additionally, the accumulation of plant litter on forest floors can serve as fertilizer for agricultural systems and tree root systems can help prevent erosion . Ethnographic work in the Sierra Tarahumara shows that over seventy percent of food resources for communities in that region comes from forest ecosystems , so their incorporation into agricultural systems makes sense. Therefore, the indication of trees cultivated within the milpas at Cerén suggests that the ancient farmers valued the contributions of forest ecosystems within agriculture. Cerén’s agricultural fields were dynamic and incorporated a variety of species that were likely encouraged to grow and utilized for a variety of reasons, not just for food. It is possible that trees served as landmarks to differentiate land ownership and serve as a division between field plots.Farming is inherently knowledge intensive. This knowledge base is multi-faceted and context specific, and often informed by scientists, researchers, policymakers, government, extension agents as well as by farmers. While farmer knowledge is a critical component of this knowledge base, in the United States farmer knowledge has been widely underappreciated . Long considered “informal” knowledge, farmer knowledge is generally not regarded as scientifically valid and therefore infrequently recorded, whether formally or informally . Since the 1950s, due to an increase in knowledge standardization within production agriculture combined with widespread deskilling among farmers and farmworkers, farmer knowledge has become increasingly undervalued . However, farmers who practice alternative agriculture often amass an incredible wealth and depth of knowledge that integrates multiple ways of knowing and reflects diverse knowledge systems for thinking about evidence; perhaps most importantly, farmer knowledge is based in practice . If current trends in consolidation of land ownership, chemical-based intensification of agriculture, and standardization of farmer knowledge continue, local farmer knowledge may be endangered or permanently lost . Before this occurs, it is essential that we elevate the critical role of farmer knowledge and: 1) understand the key features of farmer knowledge; 2) understand the substance of farmer knowledge; and 3) systematically document farmer knowledge in specific local contexts.