Oakland Food Justice: Building Community, Growing our Movement

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On this tour, you will explore the dynamic food justice movement that has emerged in Oakland’s “food desert” communities: neighborhoods where healthy food is scarce, unemployment is high and poverty is criminalized.  Meet with both new and established players in Oakland’s growing food movement—from the now-famous People’s Grocery to the young Phat Beets Produce—and learn how a community is coming together to take back its food system.

Residents of Oakland’s food deserts suffer from diet-related ailments, inadequate food options at corner stores, and a severe lack of affordable, healthy produce and other basic food staples. In addition, East and West Oakland neighborhoods are also “job deserts”—areas where unemployment and lack of economic opportunity leads to issues in our community such as poverty and criminalization. Large grocery retailers like Kroger Co. recently announced plans to open stores in West Oakland with the use of public funds and eminent domain. Oakland residents, however, have risen up to ask: how will the community benefit? A new food system must ensure local residents benefit economically from new stores and job opportunities. The Oakland food movement has emerged to respond to these community needs.

On this tour, you will get to know some of the heavy-hitters of the Oakland food justice movement, including City Slicker Farms, People’s Grocery, Planting Justice, Mandela Marketplace and Phat Beets Produce. The struggle to reclaim Oakland’s food system is far from over, but has the potential to serve as a national model as it restructures an urban food system in the service of underserved.

Participating Organizations

• Phat Beets Produce is a food justice collective started in North Oakland in 2007 as a guerrilla produce stand in a North Oakland park.  They now support two certified, clinic based farmers’ markets, one youth led school farm stand and community nutrition hub, and a youth market garden in partnership with a local hospital obesity prevention program. As a collective, Phat Beets strives to support social businesses and small farmers and farmers of color.
• City Slicker Farms has been partnering with the West Oakland community to grow and distribute thousands of pounds of its own fresh produce through seven Community Market Farms (spaces open to the public), over 100 Backyard Gardens, a weekly Farm Stand, a greenhouse, and Urban Farming Education programs.
• Mandela Marketplace works in partnership with local residents, family farmers, and community-based businesses to improve health, create wealth, and build assets through cooperative food enterprises in West Oakland. They will also present their “cousin community” of Ashland-Cherryland, and the partnerships and innovations that Mandela Marketplace and the Ashland Cherryland Garden and Arts Network are working on together to build a local food economy in that community.
• People’s Grocery works to increase the local supply of fresh foods; advocate for living-wage business and job opportunities; and develop strong relationships and community leadership. People’s Grocery has attracted local and national attention for its efforts to transform the inner city food environment and address health problems in West Oakland.
• Planting Justice brings community members together to create replicable, energy- and water-efficient gardens that demonstrate how it is possible to grow a complete nutritional diet – including the production of fruit, vegetables, fish, eggs, nuts, edible mushrooms, goat milk, herbs, jam, honey, and meat – right where 80% of U.S. residents live: in the city.

Tour Price: $65 – Includes light breakfast and lunch. Tour begins and ends at the Marriott Hotel in Oakland City Center (click here for map).

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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