Progress 09/01/12 to 08/31/15
Outputs
Target Audience:Planting Justice's Urban Resilience Farm project successfully addressed difficult, complex, and interconnected challenges associated with employing formerly incarcerated people, training low-income people for careers in the local sustainable food movement, and improving access to healthy food for those who systemically lack access to it. Our project was collaboratively led and primarily implemented by people who themselves have come out of incarceration with serious barriers for housing, employment, and health. Our response is comprehensive, trauma-informed, and environmentally-oriented. This project immerses participants in a highly structured and culturally-relevant program to help them see their place in the overall food and life support systems in their communities; increase access to healthy food and locally grown produce; provide a sense of greater opportunity, agency and purpose; foster positive relationship skills and empathy; build a supportive community of peers and mentors; provide hard skills through vocational certification that builds marketable skills in growing sectors of the local green economy; provide paid work experience in urban agriculture production and education; and offer opportunities for formerly disadvantaged people to become leaders and mentors in the local food and health justice movements. Inequitable access to affordable healthy food and well-paying, dignified livelihoods are inter-related root causes of many preventable and traumatic crises in Alameda and Contra Costa Counties, with lasting intergenerational impacts. This project involved more than 3,500 urban residents who directly experience or have a family member who experiences diet-related diseases, poverty-induced stress, and chronic unemployment. Over the three year grant period, this project resulted in more than 100 public workshops for low-income urban residents, both on the 5 acre Urban Resilience Farm in El Sobrante, and at dozens of community sites including low income apartment complexes, public high schools, prisons and county jails, juvenile detention facilities, churches, and other community-based public sites. Because these workshops were led primarily by formerly incarcerated staff leaders who themselves are making inspiring transformations in their lives as a result of the employment and leadership opportunities enabled by this grant, the shared life experience that they embody enabled us to reach workshop participants in extraordinary, personal, and transformative ways. A successful example of this is our food/garden partnership with Chrysalis, a drug and alcohol prevention, treatment, and recovery facility for adult women in West Oakland. Our team installed 4 raised beds, a berry patch, a medicinal herb/flower garden, and an irrigation system for the women to enjoy each day. Our team then facilitated weekly lessons including themes around holistic wellness, mindfulness practices, nutrition education, plant medicine, culinary arts, organic gardening, business management, and social entrepreneurship. The content and experience was so well-received, we've been invited back for ongoing educational programming. Once women transition from Chrysalis, they have the possibility of employment in our urban farming, landscaping, and educational programs. Before entering the criminal justice system, many incarcerated individuals live in high-stress-communities impacted by poverty, violence, and racism.This kind of stress can cause trauma, isolation and detachment that affect individuals' health and behavior, and can ultimately contribute to criminalization.This trauma is further intensified by the prison experience. Prison fundamentally separates inmates from positive forces in their lives: home, family, church/spiritual community, education, employment, nature; and instead marks them as convicts, takes their freedom and control over their lives, and surrounds them with violence and criminal influences.This stress may lead to depression, mental health conditions, drug/alcohol abuse, or violent behavior that may persist after release. Upon reentry, individuals are often thrust into hostile territory.They are released into the same community where they may have committed the crime that led to their imprisonment, potentially putting them in close proximity to negative conditions and influences that prompted their illegal actions in the first place.Many employers categorically will not hire anyone with a felony criminal record due to legal restrictions or concerns about liability and safety. Many struggle with housing and homelessness, and depending on the type of conviction, they may be ineligible for public benefits such as subsidized housing, income supplementation, and food stamps.Some face mental health problems, or are in recovery from substance abuse, and may have no resources to continue treatment started during incarceration.Many lack knowledge of the agencies and options that are open to them, and need help navigating the system. Planting Justice's Urban Resilience Farm demonstrated that formerly incarcerated people can and should become leaders in the movement for healthy local food systems. As they develop into leaders and mentors as staff members and board members in the organization, our formerly incarcerated staff adopt a new identity and sense of purpose, respect for others, and responsibility for self and community, becoming an inspiration to themselves, their families, and communities. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Importantly, Planting Justice's grant funded activities on the TURF farm and in our TYY and Education programs have enabled us to expand on our Holistic Re-Entry Program's ability to train and hire formerly incarcerated people. The TURF farm has become our primary educational center for our Holistic Re-Entry Program -- building upon the work of the Planting Justice Education Program does on the "inside" running its urban garden and holistic wellness educational programs at the prisons and juvenile detention centers where we work. Our work in prisons, jails, and juvenile detention facilitiescreates relationships with participants while they are still incarcerated, leading to a more seamless and successful re-integration process through supportive case management, job training, and community support upon their release. Upon release, 30 formerly incarcerated people completed a 72-hour permaculture design certification course at TURF, which provided employment training and certification in a growing sector of the local sustainable food economy. Keying on the population of formerly-incarcerated individuals in Alameda and Contra Costa County as leaders and mentors affords Planting Justice a unique leverage-point to reach families, friends, employers, religious leaders and other key influencers in the underserved populations of these counties, to implement hands-on solutions to the challenges of food sovereignty,and to work to reducelifestyle- and food-related illnesses such as heart disease, diabetes, and stroke in our community. This program grows new leaders in the food justice movement armed with the skills and support they need to build more resilient and healthy urban communities, economies, and ecologies. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?We are developing our Urban Resilience Farm as a scalable program that has the potential to create sustainableeconomic pathways for formerly incarcerated people within urban agriculture and sustainabilityfields. We are carefully documenting all the work that takes place at TURF and TYY, down to every piece of equipment, everytool, and every hour of labor we use to build the farm and each of our urban gardens, so that we can use this data in educational trainings to help others successfully replicate this work. We are taking great care to document ecological benchmarks as well, and are blessed with a fresh-water spring with a measurable year-round flow yearthat makes it possible for us to document the direct impacts on the spring of our contoured-swale water-harvesting and tree-plantingsystem, which we are documentingin addition to measuringchanges in soil quality (biomass, nutrient cycling, cation-exchange levels, etc), carbon sequestration, and insect/wildlife biodiversity levels, to provide a more diverse justification and need for projects like this. These results are being disseminated through public workshops in urban East Bay communities, on our website, on our blog, on facebook/twitter/instagram, and presented on panels at local, regional, and national gatherings and conferences. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?
Nothing Reported
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Planting Justice's Community Food Project, titled The Urban Resilience Farm (TURF) in El Sobrante, marked the launch of our Urban Farms and Training Centers Program with the design, installation, and educational utilization of an organic 5-acre perennial, no-till farm. The goals of the program are to demonstrate and educate low-income communities in the most sustainable and productive urban farming practices, create new job and business ownership opportunities in various sectors of the local food system (production, value-added processing, and marketing/distribution), and produce healthy food that is accessible and affordable for low-income communities. Planting Justice (PJ) secured a long-term $1/year lease on 5 acres of beautiful and ecologically significant land to start TURF, as well as enthusiastic support from the Contra Costa County Department of Conservation and Development, the County Board of Supervisors, and local community based organizations. The farm now serves as an educational center and demonstration site to advance the causes of sustainable urban agriculture, wildlife and native plant habitat, watershed protection and awareness, food justice, and economic opportunity, and addresses the issues of poverty, hunger, and environmental health head-on in West Contra Costa County. The Urban Resilience Farm and Training Center (TURF) is protecting and regenerating 5 acres of natural habitat, andit's budding orchards will soon provide approximately 200,000 pounds of food annually to the most concentrated centers of poverty, unemployment, and violence in Contra Costa and Alameda Counties.This project accomplished Goal 1 -- Improve access to fresh, healthy, and affordable local food for low-income residents in West Contra Costa County - in the following ways: 1) planting of approximately 2000 food-producing trees and shrubs at TURF will provide hundreds of thousands of pounds of organic produce for our community for decades to come!; 2) the design and installation of 35 urban gardens for low-income communities (public highschools and middle schools, churches, low-income apartment complexes, transitional housing centers, prisons and juvenile detention facilities), complete with raised bed vegetable gardens, fruit trees and perennial production, native plants, and other sustainable landscaping elements, including composting, drip irrigation, rainwater harvesting/greywater systems, and urban animal husbandry, where appropriate; 3) Approximately 100 public workshops at these garden sites, and at TURF, teaching people how to use the plants they are growing to make delicious meals, smoothies, medicine, and other useful products. This project accomplished Goal 2 - create living-wage jobs and economic empowerment in multiple sectors of the food system, specifically for low-income urban residents and people with barriers to employment - in the following ways: 1) TURF directly employs 6 formerly incarcerated people, as urban farmers, with full-time salaries and benefits including 4 weeks of annual paid-time-off and medical, dental, vision, and chiropractic coverage; 2) This grant supported the living-wages of 6 formerly incarcerated people, as ecological landscapers on our Transform Your Yard team, including 4 weeks of annual paid-time-off and medical, dental, vision, and chiropractic coverage; 3) This grant supported 10 public workshops for 30 people in re-entry in hands-on urban farm training at TURF. This project accomplished Goal 3 --Experiential education to support holistic health, community resilience, and healthy urban food systems - in the following ways: 1) Approximately 100 public workshops, involving 3,500 participants, who participated in educational programming funded by this grant. Workshops were given weekly or monthly at dozens of community garden sites, post-garden installations, in places as diverse as churches, prisons, juvenile detention facilities, apartment complexes, transitional housing centers, and other community sites. Workshops ranged from hands-on skill building (greywater, rainwater catchment, composting, plant selection/garden design, companion planting, raised bed building, etc) to culinary arts lessons that teach folks how to use the plants they are growing in preparing delicious home-cooked meals on a tight budget. To accomplish Goal 4 -- Build a model urban farm to demonstrate solutions for sustainable urban food production -- this project actively demonstrates and educates about vital soil and water conservation practices that combat the two major concurrent crises disrupting the present and future viability of agricultural production in California: drought and soil loss. The farm includes a freshwater spring and a year-round, highly impacted creek. Given the severity of the drought and it's long-term impact on CA food production, this grant enabled PJ to install extensive on-farm water harvesting systems that now catch nearly all the precipitation that falls onto the farm to demonstrate a model for productive and ecologically regenerative urban farms across the region. Specifically, this grant supported the significant labor and material costs that Planting Justice needed to install the infrastructure of each of the TURF's essential farm elements, to accomplish Goal 4: 1) Spring Regeneration, Sustainable Riparian Management, and extensive 5-acre drip irrigation system 2) On-Farm Water Catchment via a) rooftop rainwater harvesting systems that divert the stormwater runoff of participating upslope neighbors to the farm; and b) installation of nearly one-mile of water-harvesting Swales on Contour, mulched with tree bark, to create a sponge-effect that almost entirely reduces run-off by catching/storing in the soil nearly all the precipitation that falls on our 5 acres. 3) Soil building with the application of hundreds of cubic yards of biomass tree-bark mulch and hundreds of cubic yards of compost 4)Perennial "Food Forest" Farm Planting on 5 acres: Water-wise perennial fruit and nut trees as the long-term overstory, with fruiting shrubs, perennial vegetables, herbs, nitrogen-fixing groundcovers, and native plants intercropped between rows and in the understory to increase three-dimensional agricultural production, recycle nutrients, increase soil structure through biomass cycling, and provide pollinator habitat and food. 5) Design andeducational dedication of a1000 sq. foot aquaponics farm to demonstrate annual vegetable production using 70-90% less water than in-ground growing.
Publications
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