Food Insecurity in West Oakland

Local Heroes: Creating Alternative Food Systems

Various organizations in West Oakland use advocacy, education, and farming programs and markets to fill the void created by the lack of supermarkets while improving the health of the community. While Mo’ Better Foods is selling food at the West Oakland BART station, City Slicker Farms provides farmers markets at the community’s Center Street Farm.

Leslie Pilcher, a fourth-year community studies major, interned with City Slicker Farms for her field study during fall quarter and worked at the farmers market.

“City Slickers is accessible for people who have been left out of the ‘green’ movement,” Pilcher said.

The food is grown in urban gardens maintained by City Slicker Farms’ employees, volunteers, and local community participants. The organization attempts to make organic and healthy food accessible and affordable to West Oakland residents by offering produce on a sliding donation scale, so people can pay what they can afford.

Since 2005, City Slicker Farms has helped 85 residents grow their own produce through their Backyard Gardens Program. They provide residents with all the tools, seeds, and fertilizer they need.

“It’s tapping into reclaiming this space and turning it into a thriving system,” Pilcher said. “Not only in our gardens, but in their backyard.”

John Watkins Sr., a construction worker who uses seeds and fertilizer from City Slicker Farms, grows a variety of vegetables in a 100-by-30-foot backyard lot that he proudly gardens all by himself.

“City Slickers is number one,” Watkins said. “I love them because they can get more organic gardens and that’s what it’s about.”

A 60-year-old man with excited eyes and a curly beard, Watkins has been growing food in his backyard since 1961, when he moved from Cleveland, Ohio to the temperate climates of West Oakland. He hasn’t left since, except for the occasional trip home and to protest alongside Martin Luther King Jr. during the Civil Rights movement.

For Watkins, gardening satisfies him in a multitude of ways. He talked enthusiastically about growing organically, working in the dirt, and giving away his produce to neighbors. He says that urban gardens could work as a solution to food access issues.

“It’s nothing for a person to scratch some dirt out. It’s amazing what you can squeeze out in a little area,” Watkins said. “It’s a solution if you get enough people involved in it.”

***

Developing an Organic and Just Economy

Julie Guthman, a UCSC community studies professor, teaches a course titled Agriculture, Food and Social Justice and has written many articles analyzing the success of community agriculture projects. While she applauds programs such as City Slicker Farms for redefining food systems, she’s critical of those who hail it as the only accessible solution to food security issues in West Oakland and areas like it.

“There’s been a lot of focus on providing access. [Community agriculture] doesn’t get the major problem of food security,” Guthman said. “It’s a little Band-Aidy.”

The problem, Guthman said, is not only about food accessibility but also poverty and economic development.

Food justice activists often attribute the existence of food deserts in communities like East Palo Alto and West Oakland to supermarket “redlining,” or large-scale supermarkets migrating to the more profitable suburbs while closing up shop in lower-income communities.

Keeping money in the community is a concern for locals and food activists alike. Experts estimate that 25 million retail dollars are spent outside of West Oakland — money that, if spent within the community’s boundaries, could help foster local development.

“A lot of reasons why there are food deserts is because of the historical practice of redlining, denying capital to neighborhoods. You can’t create markets,” Guthman said. “We need neighborhoods to have access to capital, to build stores, so that they’re not devalued.”