Collective Roots: Tackling Poverty and Structural Racism in the Food System

This trip is now closed.

On this tour, you will explore the rich agricultural history of East Palo Alto (EPA) and question how historically racist and unjust policies have marginalized people of color and turned it into a low-income community with limited access to healthy food and a high incidence of diet-related disease. Let by East Palo Alto-based non-profit Collective Roots, the tour will address the importance of recognizing historical forces and reclaiming the agricultural past to promote self-sufficient and healthy urban communities.

East Palo Alto (EPA) has been, at various points in its history, home to a utopian agricultural society with the slogan “One Acre and Independence”, a large-scale poultry colony, and an extensive floral and nursery industry. Remnants of these agricultural roots remain throughout the community, found in its urban planning and zoning, abandoned greenhouses and large-scale lots, and historical urban farmland. The process of urbanization and incorporation of the surrounding communities, the marginalization of the poor and people of color in East Palo Alto, and explicitly racist policies (Japanese internment in East Palo Alto during World War II, for example) have resulted in the loss of much of this extensive agricultural history.

This tour will explore the role of structural racism, urbanization, and poverty in the transition of agricultural communities into communities with limited access to fresh, healthy produce. The tour will emphasize the importance of recognizing and understanding these historical forces in the activism of the modern food justice movement.  However, we will also highlight the power of food justice advocates in the community to reclaim their agricultural past and promote an urban community that is increasingly self-sufficient in its own fresh fruits and vegetables.

Tour Highlights

• Meet with senior citizens at Runnymede Gardens who grow and sell food to the farmers’ market; discuss changes they’ve seen in the food system over the last four decades
• Visit Free at Last, a pioneering drug addiction and recovery non-profit and learn about their efforts to support healthy, sustainable living and income generation through a market vegetable and flower garden.
• Visit the first farmers’ market in our community in over 18 years.  Meet backyard gardeners who sell their produce at the market, and learn about the challenges and successes of small community farmers’ markets in low-income communities.
• Lunch at Don Edwards National Baylands Preserve, home to migratory birds and native plant species; Locally-sourced meal prepared by graduates of Collective Roots’ Cooking Matters program
• Visit EPA’s flagship school garden and learn about our efforts to support healthier food and garden based education throughout the school district.
• Visit Collective Roots Demonstration Garden, where we provide workshops and teaching for community members.

Click here to download a Sample Itinerary

Participating Organizations

• Collective Roots is a food justice non-profit founded and based in East Palo Alto, CA that works to engage youth and community members in creating a healthy, sustainable, and culturally appropriate food system in our community.

This trip is now closed. Please check back later for future Food Justice Tours to East Palo Alto.

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Bay Area Food Justice Tours (Nov. 4 – 5, 2011) are brought to you by CFSC in partnership with Food Sovereignty Tours, a project of Food First/the Institute for Food and Development Policy.

For more information, contact Tanya at tkerssen@foodfirst.org or by phone at (510) 654-4400, ext. 223