In this paper I’ll share the experiences I had volunteering with and talking to different urban farmers. I’ll also shared the challenges and successes they face as well as the larger problems within the global food system. From Three Sisters Garden to Growing Places Indy to the CUE Farm, there are a variety of missions, target audiences, and outlook on the food insecurity issue within Indianapolis. When I first started this project I had a pretty different idea of where I wanted it to go. I was first puzzled by the relationship between the number of food deserts in Indianapolis with the high number of urban farms and food justice organizations. I wanted to look at a map and compare where these farms were in comparison to the food deserts. I was curious if they were located in the right places, marketing the right people, and providing affordable produce. But it was difficult to find accurate, up-to-date data. Secondly, I was quickly realizing there were more important things to look into. When interviewing the farmers, I allowed it flow by conversation and afterwards would address any other questions I had. Hearing their answers to what their missions and goals were as well as their target audiences made me realize while they are not all directly serving those who are food insecure but rather they are all working against the system that caused these issues but from different angles.
Introduction- Indianapolis Food Deserts
In Indianapolis, 18% of people are food insecure in Marion county. That is almost 1 in every 5 people (Feeding Indiana’s Hungry, 2018). A food desert is considered to be an area where low-income people do not have access to fresh foods. Typically the food they have access to is fast food or food from gas stations, which is usually processed and high in sugar and fat. Many of these people do not have the transportation or income to access healthier foods.
For a more technical definition, here is what the USDA (2015) claims makes a food desert:
1. 20-40% of residents must make 200% below the federal poverty level
2. In a urban area, residents must have to travel a mile or more for groceries
3. In a rural area, residents must have travel more than 10 miles for groceries
This map from the USDA Economic Research Services (2015) shows the levels of food access in Indiana. The darker areas where they are higher numbers of people with low food access. In the center is Indianapolis with the darkest shade possible.
Global Food System
The current global food system is a system of power, discrimination, and corruption. It has been shaped by our politics, economics, and society. The food system is taking a toll on everyone's lives, but mostly on those who are vulnerable and have very little power. Food deserts are the result of these issues within the global food system. The unsustainable agricultural practices, the separation between farmers and consumers, the amount of food waste, unemployment and minimum wage, and policy issues are all big problems within the global food system that create the food deserts in Indianapolis and all over the world.
Unsustainability
One of the big problems within the global food system is that it is not sustainable and it is destroying our environment. Agriculture is one of the largest contributors to climate change. “Agriculture, deforestation, and other land use account for roughly 20% of all greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.” (Colombo, et al.) All over the world, countries are cutting down forests and burning trees to make more space for monoculture farms; this includes corn, soy, and livestock farms. Deforestation is harming the ecosystem and its biodiversity as well as releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Also, once a farm becomes so large, it needs large machines to maintain it and these machines also need gas to run and then release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Another negative aspect of a large scale farm is that large amounts of fertilizer is often used as well as pesticides and herbicides to manage pests and weeds. These chemicals reach other lands and waters and reach animals and humans as well as pollute the air.
Separation Between Farmer & Consumer
In Raj Patel’s book, Stuffed and Starved, the “Hourglass Figure” of the global food system is introduced. Patel describes the food system as an hourglass figure where at the top there are the farmers, at the bottom are the consumers, and in the middle are the gatekeepers between the two, creating this bottleneck of wealth, control, and power over the global food system. The gatekeepers include food processors, distributors, chemical industries, seed sellers, retailers, etcetera. The bottleneck makes it very difficult for farmers or consumers to have a say in how food is grown, produced, and distributed. These gatekeepers are also destroying the relationship between farmers and consumers. Consumers are becoming so used to not knowing where their food came from or what it is made out of that they no longer seem to care. This is part of our food culture today because we are so disconnected from our food and its origins that it seems foreign to know the farmer or workers who grew the food on your plate. A lot of urban farmers focus on connecting with their consumers because they know this connection is so rare and unique now.
Not only is connecting consumers with their farmers important, but connecting with their food and land is also important. Nathaniel McClintock (2010) explains that urban farming improves its consumers’ physical and mental health. He also uses this concept of de-alienation meaning that it is turning us back into humans that are walking on this earth, interacting with it, and developing with it, rather than being some outsider who enjoys the fruits of farmers’ labor without knowing anything about them (McClintock, 2010).
Unemployment
The global food system also forces a lot of people into unemployment and sends a lot of small business out of business. If farmers are not forced off the farm into an industrial job to pay the bills, then they are changing their farm to conform to the global food system ideals of large, monoculture farms. A lot of small food and grocery businesses are struggling because large corporate chain grocery stores come in with much cheaper products that they are sourcing from other countries. In many places throughout the country, there are farm workers that are paid minimum wage or below minimum wage and many of these farmers are hispanic or non-white workers receiving no benefits (National Farm Workers Ministry). The distribution of money in the global food system is extremely unequal. This chart shows how much the farmers and the farm workers get paid compared others in the tobacco industry.
Many farm workers are paid by how much sugar cane they cut or how many buckets or bags of crops they gather, which is called being paid by “piece rate”. According to the National Farm Workers Ministry, some farm workers that are paid by piece rate can end up being paid under minimum wage.
Policy issues
There are a lot of policies that cause problems in the food system and Joseph Glauber (2018) suggests that we need to stop adopting agricultural subsidy policies because they are extremely difficult to remove. These subsidy policies end up punishing low-income farmers who cannot compete with the big corporate farms (Glauber, 2018). The farm bill is also crucial when it comes to policy and regulation in agriculture and shaping the global food system. The farm bill typically encourages monoculture farming and commodity crops which often marginalizes small-scale, low-income farmers. An article by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) explains that our current farm bill provides opportunities for local farming, but there are threats to SNAP and there is not much funding for agricultural research and farming. It is important that the next farm bill covers these issues and gives farmers a better economic safety net and better benefits (UCS, 2018).
American Food Culture
Organizations like Growing Places Indy, Slow Food, and other organizations that focus on cooking and growing foods are working to try and bring back a food culture to America. One of the biggest reasons why we as Americans give in so easily to fads and diets is because we do not have a set food culture that has been present in our country for hundreds of years like many other countries. One could maybe say our food culture is fast, easy, and cheap food. But many organizations are trying to put an emphasis on growing your own food or buying it local, cooking with friends and family, and taking time to sit down and enjoy it. Phil Kranyak at Growing Places Indy responds to the argument, “healthy food is too expensive and we don’t have time to cook” by saying maybe we should prioritize where we are putting our dollars and our time. Here is a map from the USDA Economic Research Services (2014) that shows where the most fast food restaurants are in America and as you could guess they are heavily concentrated in big cities. But if you look at the next map, also from the USDA Economic Research Services (2012), you will see that not only are there a lot of fast food restaurants in big cities, but there are also very few farms selling direct produce rather than commodity crops.
USA fast food map
Farms with direct sales
Food Justice Movement
Patel wraps up his book by providing hope for his readers because there is something that we, as citizens, can do to fight against this system. Food sovereignty is the right to produce and consume your food of choice as well as decide your food and agricultural policies. It comes with ten demands that Patel discusses in his book. Some of the demands that we can do, as citizens, include transforming our tastes, eating locally and seasonally, eating agroecologically, and supporting locally owned businesses. Demands that organizations can fight for and that we can support include all workers having the right to dignity, profound and comprehensive rural change, living wages for all, and sustainable architecture for food. Lastly, something as a larger democracy and government that food sovereignty demands is snapping the food systems bottleneck and owning and proving restitution for the injustices of the past and present. Patel goes on to say that, “For food sovereignty demands that the rights of people in the Global South be respected no less than those in the North, that those of the poor be respected no less than those of the rich, people of color no less than whites, women no less than men.” Which goes to say that food does a lot more than feed a hungry belly. These ten demands of food sovereignty can change the food system, change lives across the world physically, socially, and economically, and create equality and justice for all people.
10 Demands of Food Justice
Transform our tastes
Eat locally and seasonally
Eat agroecologically
Support locally owned businesses
All workers have the right to dignity
Profound and comprehensive rural change
Living wages for all
Support for a sustainable architecture for food
Snapping the food systems bottleneck
Three Sisters Garden
Someone who has seen a lot of firsthand inequality and injustice is Cheri Hood, head farmer of Three Sisters Farms in Indianapolis. Cheri is an African American farmer who lives on the eastside of Indianapolis, right in a food desert. She is a part of the Black Farmer’s Co-Op which is a non-profit organization that works to “transform black lives by making a direct correlation between healthy eating habits, learning abilities, and overall good health.”
Organizations like this are important to support the African Americans facing food and environmental injustice in urban areas such as Indianapolis. Within the food deserts on the eastside of Indy, 63% of the individuals are African American (Qin, pg. 7, 2014). African Americans being the majority of those with food insecurities is the result of a long history of discrimination and racism against colored people. Here are two maps from the USDA Economic Research Services. The first shows food access for caucasians in Indiana (2012) and the second shows food access for African Americans in Indiana (2015). The darker squares are where there are higher numbers of people with low food access and it is clear to see that this is a much bigger problem for African Americans than it is for caucasians.
Indiana African American food access map
The mission of Three Sisters Garden is what most people imagine the mission of an urban farm should be. They grow healthy produce and provide agricultural education to the members of its community so they can learn to grow and eat healthy food since they have limited access. When I asked Cheri where their source of income came from, she explained that they just receive donations and earn a little bit of money from a few farmers markets, but that is it. They have a small, local farmers market located in the center of the district but the prices are extremely low so that their community members can afford the produce. Cheri also explained that they work a lot with food banks and donate a lot of their produce to local soup kitchens. In the summers when the most work is to be done, a lot of people near the farm volunteer, even kids! Cheri loves having kids help at the farm because she believes that it helps them create a connection with healthy foods at a young age (C. Hood, personal communication, October 8, 2018). When you put time and hard work into something, you appreciate it more and enjoy it more than when you buy it at a grocery store. People in Cheri’s community are learning the benefits of urban farming through volunteering and educational workshops that Cheri and her co-farmers manage.
What I heard over and over from Cheri was that she wanted to change the mindset of the members within her own community and other areas of Indianapolis. She explained that we are so stuck in this culture of fast, cheap food that we don’t want to grow food and we don’t want to eat healthy produce. She believes that if she could get more people out on the farm working with one another, she can begin to change the mindsets of what food means to them and influence more people to want to grow and eat healthier foods. While Philip Kranyak’s mission at Growing Places Indy is slightly different, he focuses on this same idea of changing the mindset of people when it comes to food and what we are putting in our bodies.
Growing Places Indy
Not all urban farms exist to solve the food insecurity issue and that is okay because they are still fighting against the bigger picture which is our current global food system. At Growing Places Indy (GPI), Phil explains that it is a for-profit farm that is trying to bring education and awareness to what you are putting in your body. He wants to bring us back to a culture where we have a connection with our food and cooking with family and friends. GPI targets a different, but still important audience. They try to reach out to people who have the means to be engaged in the local food system but are currently unaware of it or uninformed. They try to grab these people's’ attention because these people are crucial in changing the status of our community demands since they have more power and control. Not only do they do this through marketing and the selling of their products but they also do this through education. These are the types of people they target for educational workshops and their apprenticeship program. The apprenticeship program is perfect for reaching out to young, local, middle class people who could use some more education on farming practices and healthy food education. Many of the people that go through the apprenticeship start up their own farms or businesses and that is why GPI targets this specific audience (P. Kranyak, personal communication, October 17, 2018).
GPI also puts a lot of emphasis on taking care of yourself as a whole, not just what you are eating. They believe in doing a lot of exercise of the body and the mind. Those participating in the fellowship will spend many hours doing non-farming activities such as bike rides and yoga as well as activities expressing feelings and mental health (P. Kranyak, personal communication, October 17, 2018).
CUE Farm
Lastly, at Butler University the Center for Urban Ecology (CUE) Farm’s mission is made up of three parts: educate, feed, model. Once again, this farm does not directly serve to food deserts, but rather fights the global food system that causes food deserts through educating college students and middle-upper class urban families who can also fight against the food system. But the CUE Farm’s target audience goes farther than Butler and local neighborhoods because its main mission is to educate. Through educational farm tours for public schools, other colleges, and local gardening groups, the CUE Farm reaches a wide variety of people. Multiple classes at Butler work with the CUE Farm to educate students on the agroecological practices and the works of a local, sustainable farm. More in-depth and first hand education with Farmer Tim is offered through volunteering, internships, and jobs at the farm.
The feed part of the mission is addressed through the farm stand and Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) Program. Throughout the summer and most of the fall there is a weekly farm stand which is held down by the farm so that the customers can see where there food is grown and harvested. The CSA program provides produce for its members for 21 weeks. Each week they come to pick up their box at the farm and are able to make relationships with the farm their food is being grown on as well as with the farmer and current employees, interns, and volunteers.
Lastly, the farm works to model what all you can do with one acre of land in hopes of inspiring and educating others on how to farm and grow foods on their own. In just one acre, 9,000 lbs of produce was grown last year at the farm. The CUE Farm is a perfect model for people who live in urban areas and want to be able to farm but think they can’t since they live in the city. There’s a lot you can do with a little bit of grass, good soil, and a lot of passion.
Conclusion
Food insecurity is a universal issue caused by the unequal power distribution in the global food system. Other ways that the global food system contributes to food insecurity includes policy issues, lack of an American food culture, unemployment, unsustainability within the system, and separation between the farmers and consumers. Food insecurity hits some areas harder than others, especially regions with high levels of color and low-income. In these regions are the higher number of fast food restaurants, but low numbers of direct farmer sales meaning these people are getting limited to no access to fresh, healthy foods. When millions of people have low food access for so long, it creates the only American food culture we have, which is fast, cheap, and easily accessible food.
The Food Justice Movement is fighting against the global food system in a number of ways, but here in Indianapolis we are seeing an increasing number of urban farms. While not all of them are directly giving to those in need, they are all crucial in fighting against the large food insecurity issue in Indianapolis. Growing Places Indy contributes to the food justice movement by educating and encouraging people to grow their own food, cook it with family and friends, and take time to sit down and enjoy it. Their head farmer, Phil, focuses on the importance of putting healthy foods in our body that will positively impact our physical and mental health. Three Sisters Garden provides healthy foods to those living in the surrounding food deserts as well as educates them on how to cook and eats these foods. They also encourage local members to volunteer and learn how to farm. Lastly, the CUE Farm at Butler University focuses on educating, feeding, and modeling a sustainable, one-acre urban farm. They educate students at Butler as well as citizens in Broad Ripple and other parts of Indianapolis. A large part of the education that the CUE Farm shares is focused on agroecology and the importance of having diverse crops, insects, and soil. These three urban farms as well as hundreds of others that are popping up in Indianapolis are contributing to the food justice movement in a variety of ways. They are like an ecosystem web; they are all necessary to help the system thrive and removing one thing has an effect on all other parts of the system.
References
Economic Research Service. (2015). “Low Income and Low Access Layers”. United States Department of Agriculture. Retrieved from https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/food-access-research-atlas/go-to-the-atlas.aspx#.U4jdqHJdXzg
Feeding Indiana’s Hungry. (2 May 2018). “New Data Shows Many Hungry Hoosiers are Ineligible for Federal Nutrition Assistance.” Indiana State Association of Food Banks. Retrieved from https://feedingindianashungry.org/blog/hunger-data/
Glauber, J. (2018). Domestic Farm Policy Reform and Global Food Security. Global Food Policy Report. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. Retrieved from https://gfpr.ifpri.info/2018/02/16/chapter-7-2/
“Low Wages”. National Farm Worker Ministry. Retrieved from http://nfwm.org/resources/low-wages/
McClintock, N. (July 2017). “Why Farm the City? Theorizing Urban Agriculture through a Lens of Metabolic Rift”. Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations.
Patel, R. (2012). Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System. New York: Melville House.
Pollan, M. (2006). Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. New York: Penguin Books.
Qin, A. (May 2014). An Evaluation of the East Indianapolis Food Desert. Butler University, Indianapolis, IN. Retrieved from An Evaluation of the East Indianapolis Food Desert - Butler Universityhttps://www.butler.edu/file/87149/download
“The Farm Bill: An Opportunity to Change Our Food System for the Better.” (2018). Union of Concerned Scientists. Retrieved from https://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/solutions/strengthen-healthy-farm-policy/the-farm-bill.html#.XAd1ri_Mwg4
Wittmeyer, S. (30 May 2014). “Indianapolis Ranks Worst in the Nation for Food Deserts”. Indiana Public Media. Retrieved from https://indianapublicmedia.org/news/indianapolis-ranks-worst-nation-food-deserts-67800/
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