Urban Gardens: Urbanization vs. Agriculture

This post summarizes the situations and plights of two community-based public gardens, one located in South Central Los Angeles, California, and one located in the South Park district of South Seattle, Washington. Each of these locations and generally-diasporic organizations and the communities surrounding them face some degree of opposition from their environment and the neoliberal societal structures that surround them.

In the case of the South Central L.A. garden, the primary issue faced was one of land ownership. As expressed in the documentary film The Garden, the 14-acre set of land that once provided space for their ‘home gardens’ was originally provided by the city of Los Angeles at least partly in order to placate citizens – particularly minority ones, largely prominent in the area – after the citywide 3-day riots fueled by concerns of racial and ethnic injustices sparked (or brought to the surface) by the Rodney King case.  A backroom deal transferred legal and technical ownership of the land to a Mr. Horowitz, who beginning in 2003 threatened to evict the farmers residing upon “his land”. This spawned a large campaign and a great degree of indignation by the farmers who had previously created a true sense of place for themselves. Largely displaced from their home communities in Mesoamerica, these people and their families used the garden to bring their own ways of culture and life, not to mention farming, to life in a faraway place and culture alien to their own. The farms were indeed evicted from the original 14-acre plot, but after considerable activism, these individuals were given another (marginally smaller) plot located elsewhere in the city. Since then, they have banded together to establish a considerably-sized farm located near Bakersfield. This farming endeavor employs additional people full-time and is a fully-certified organic presence at many farmers’ markets throughout L.A.

Seattle’s Marra Farm, on the other hand, faces less threat of shady dealings due to its nature as public property (managed governmentally and by non-profit organizations). Instead, however, it faces other issues. The land upon which Marra Farm currently resides was originally owned by the Marra family, then sold to King County in 1970. In the 90s it was purchased with funds from the Open Space Bond with the understanding that it would become agricultural land. Recently, governmental interference has made clear its intended mission to transform the land into a city park that addresses pollution and runoff concerns. Part of the land has indeed remained available as farmlands for the local community at large however, which puts it ahead of the South Central L.A. gardens in that it is still alive.

Both gardens share being centered around – located in – largely diasporic communities, largely involving Mesoamerican peoples. These cultures of origin possess long histories of ecological involvement in everyday familial life, phenomenon known as kitchen gardens in some cultures for example. These communal gardens allow people, many of whom would have very limited ability to provide for themselves without them, to not only eat on a daily basis but also to provide a living, and – to look at it from the market economy viewpoint that in so many situations has been a catalyst to such situations’ demise – “contribute to society”. Such plots of land are invaluable uses of city property, especially in a society who continues to marginalize anything not owned by megalithic corporate entities. In addition to the ethical and sociological benefits brought on by such establishments, their ecological contributions are also valuable, as demonstrated by the Marra Farm’s city-sponsored intervention to help curb local pollutants through “green” efforts not altogether out of line with the project aims and ideals of the farmers that work its fields.

-- Nate