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

Leah Joyner, Blanca Yagüe, Adrienne Cachelin and Jeffrey Rose

Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development, 2022, vol. 11, issue 2

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. Read the press release for this article.

Keywords: Food Security and Poverty; Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/359338/files/1025.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:joafsc:359338

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development from Center for Transformative Action, Cornell University
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().