Who Owns the Soil? The Promise of Civic Agriculture and Human Rights Education
The ability to access healthy food in a developed country likely attracts less attention than developing nations struggling to feed their own growing populations. And yet, debates over eco farming practices, GMOs, and other issues connected to land ownership and resource availability are global in scope. Because food insecurities everywhere undermine the right to access quality food, various strategies have emerged to suggest more equitable methods for feeding populations around the world.[1] According to Peter Uvin, Oxfam International identifies “five rights-based aims that may provide poor and excluded people” with a framework for equity rights that underscores ‘new rules for the global economy’.[2] Understandably in the short-run, assistance for externally-sourced food at the macro level is used to mitigate the affects of extreme food shortages; but the long-term sustainability of food rights and the requisite promise of hunger alleviation requires a more efficient delivery system – one that must be rooted at the local level.
One powerful example of local, sustainable food production is found in Will Allen’s Growing Power.[3] Headquartered in Milwaukee, Wisconsin since 1993, the non-profit organization’s first urban farm began offering the local teen population equitable access to healthy food and jobs. Today, Growing Power-sponsored food systems operate from multiple locations around the U. S. where they promote healthy, affordable food environments and social justice through human rights education. Comparing each one of Oxfam’s aforementioned five ‘rules’ with strategies similar to Allen’s civic agricultural programs posits the idea of a co-evolutionary model that combines both concept and practical application for communities struggling with rights-based scarcity.
The right to sustainable livelihood and the job creation potential of urban farms across a local landscape may provide income to members of the community who are often overlooked. It is also true that urban farms and other forms of civic agriculture in the U.S. typically employ more laborers and volunteers than corporate farms that utilize large farm equipment for planting and harvesting and prolific chemical applications to control yield. Unlike corporate food systems, urban farms can offer a variety of nutrition-based programs, diversity training, fundraising events, and other forms of work experience and activities to educate and prepare participants for future employment. Building a local food system not only establishes and strengthens diverse bonds within the community, but may also provide a nexus of support for other local programs.
The potential for community outreach from the local urban farm is partly due to information delivery systems that access experiential knowledge of the participants. Because so many under-served populations are denied the right to basic social services, many urban farms have developed herbal-medicinal gardens for heath and healing purposes. In California, one large urban farm supported by over four-hundred families, offered the benefits of indigenous medicines and other prescriptions – often handed down from one generation to the next – to the local community. Without community connections, some of this invaluable information would be lost. Using the urban agricultural model to provide healthy environments with proven health benefits has also captured the attention of various public administrators looking for ways to reduce nutrition-related health problems and institutional and environmental stresses that lead to even greater social conflict.
Because it is commonplace to find human rights education emanating from the urban garden or farm, the opportunity to recognize and enhance the dignity of local populations suffering from marginalization and exclusion cannot be overlooked. Also notable are the policy implications of being fully recognized as a community partner in civic outreach activities where the right to life and security are key features. Rights-based education, efficiently addressed at the local level, allows farm participants and members from adjacent neighborhoods or townships to establish a model of environmental stakeholdership. Where previously there may have been no binding – legal or otherwise – attachment to place, a sense of community pride may assist in overriding many forms of social exclusion and a general sense of disconnectedness from the world.
Being recognized as a key stakeholder also enhances a person’s right to be heard. Individuals or ‘groups’ connected to local farms, community or school gardens, and other kinds of local food production often emerge as part of an activist community – especially when the garden or farm co-evolves with human rights education. A biomimetic approach to community-building and local food production might also be suggested to, not only honor the diversity of the participants, but to also establish strengthen the bonds of a common language that allows for individual expression.
Participatory activities and educational opportunities characteristic of all varieties of civic agriculture should allow for alternative ideas of place and self-hood. Because local participation must sustain the urban environment, there is an inherent opportunity to define not only the collective efforts of the group but to also define one’s place in the world. The right to an identity should be one of self-making – an essential and elemental part of being human.
[1] Marks, S. P. (2003). The Human Rights Framework for Development: Seven Approaches. <http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic435759.files/FXBC_WP18–Marks%207%20approaches.pdf> (cited 22 Feb. 2010).
[2] Uvin, P. (2004). Human Rights and Development. Kumarian Press, Inc., Bloomfield, CT.
[3] <http://www.growingpower.org/about_us.htm> (cited 27 Feb. 2010).
© 2010, Mary Delaney Pearson. All rights reserved.
Excellent article! May I have permission to copy part of it and site it on the newsletter for Feedom Freedomm Growers in Detroit Michigan? I will send you a copy.