Farms and gardens everywhere but not a bite to eat? A critical geographic approach to food apartheid in Salt Lake City

Leah Joyner,Adrienne Cachelin,Blanca Yagüe,Jeffrey Rose

doi:10.5304/jafscd.2022.112.013

Leah Joyner, Adrienne Cachelin + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.5304/jafscd.2022.112.013

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Abstract

Through community-engaged research, we investigate how political and economic practices have created food apartheid and the ways in which this legacy complicates efforts toward equitable urban agriculture in Salt Lake City (SLC). The study takes place in SLC’s Westside, where an ample number of farms and gardens exist, yet food insecurity is a persistent issue. We partner with a small urban CSA farm operating in a USDA-designated food desert in SLC’s Westside to explore the farmers’ own questions about whom their farm is serving and the farms’ potential to contribute to food justice in their community. Specifically, we examine (1) the member distribution of this urban CSA farm and (2) the underlying socio-political, economic, and geographic factors, such as inequitable access to land, housing, urban agriculture, food, and transportation, that contribute to this distribution. GIS analyses, developed with community partners, reveal spatial patterns between contemporary food insecurity and ongoing socioeconomic disparities matching 1930s residential redlining maps. These data resonate with a critical geographic approach to food apartheid and inform a need for deeper and more holistic strategies for food sovereignty through urban agriculture in SLC. While resource constraints may prevent some small farmers from attending to these issues, partnerships in praxis can build capacity and engender opportunities to investigate and disrupt the racial hierarchies enmeshed in federal agricultural policy, municipal zoning, and residential homeownership programs that perpetuate food apartheid.

Highlights

In Salt Lake City (SLC), food insecurity is a persistent issue, despite a multitude of food access advocacy programs and a vibrant tradition of urban agriculture (UA)
A food apartheid framework accounts for the idea that food inequity is not a natural occurrence based in ecological limits, but rather an explicit outcome of political economy based in structural racism and unequal geographies of access (Reese, 2019; Brones, 2018)
Farms indicate that the two shares that stayed in the Westside via landowner and worker exchanges represent relatively recent transplants to the area who relocated to and recently purchased land in the neighborhood for the potential to participate in UA and are likely not experiencing food insecurity

Summary

Introduction

In Salt Lake City (SLC), food insecurity is a persistent issue, despite a multitude of food access advocacy programs and a vibrant tradition of urban agriculture (UA). This paradox is evident in SLC’s Westside, home to much of the city’s immigrant and refugee community, including 75% of SLC’s Latinx population (University Neighborhood Partners, 2019). Urban farmers cite more affordable land prices and larger residential tracts as primary reasons for living in and growing food in this part of the city This is salient in the Glendale neighborhood, where there are multiple small farms in operation, a large cohousing development with residential gardens, and numerous residents who cultivate gardens and manage animal husbandry systems. The political and economic factors that underly food apartheid may provide context for the prevalence of food insecurity in the face of abundant local urban agriculture

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