#communitygrown

We arrived in Tucson, AZ feeling like we had landed on the sun, but alas we survived.

Not only did we survive but we continued our expedition and research, finding folks who are using agriculture to strengthen, organize, and support their communities. This lead us to the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona, an organization that "Through education, advocacy, and the acquisition, storage, and distribution of food, we will anticipate and meet the food needs of the hungry in our community."

Food insecurity is an issue of justice, and one that does not brush lightly against U.S. communities. According to the United States Department of Agriculture in 2013, over 50 million households in the states reported being "food insecure." Disproportionately affecting black and non-white communities.

Food insecurity is defined by the USDA as "at times during the year, these households were uncertain of having, or unable to acquire, enough food to meet the needs of all their members because they had insufficient money or other resources for food."

Of course, this number most likely is not capturing the reality of insecurity here in the states, being that not all folks here have "households" and many folks may not have documentation or access to the USDA. Furthermore, the statistic is failing to take in to account access to healthy, fresh, and affordable food. Nevertheless, the number gives us a good foundation to start the conversation on food insecurity in the United States and some nation-wide context to the work the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona is doing.

We spoke with Chris Lowen, the farm manager who shared the inspiring story of how Las Milpitas came to grow in the heart of Tuscon. His work with Native Seed Search gave Chris experience with community work and he knew that for a community gardens  inception to be successful community input had to be leading from the very start.

“The goal was the create a community farm, a space where people could come work together, work with each other, know their neighbors, [and] grow food for themselves.”

Chris explained that before Las Milpitas was a working community farm, they had a series of visioning sessions. Visioning sessions are facilitated by an individual or group of people to help guide a discussion that has the potential to be a creative and collaborative process in which the community creates a shared vision or goal. Visioning sessions are essential to community organizing efforts, especially when folks are coming from outside of the community.

“The visioning meetings really got us on the right foot [...] knowing what the community wanted and how that worked with what the food bank wanted- the goal was to create a community farm, a space where people could come together, work with each other, know their neighbors, grow food for themselves. We started at a very basic level of ‘what you want to see here, what do you want this space to look like, smell like, feel like, what kind of experience do you want to see and people wanted to see multi-generational folks working together, [...] They wanted to have a sense of community [...] They wanted to see small gardening plots, food production, and opportunities for economic development.”

We stood in the center of what the community had envisioned years ago. Las Milpitas has up to 85 garden plots that span the three blocks of space, though they only use half of those plots for production, working on a rotational system that allows the other half of the plots to rehabilitate their soil and nutrients by means of cover cropping.

 Around 40-45 families/groups/individuals have access to these available plots each season. Las Milpitas is sustained by community members paying only a $6/month fee to cover the water costs (the rest being covered by general operating funds under the Food Bank of Arizona). The beds measure in at 4ft x 20ft and all the beds soil have been amended using 50% compost and 50% native soil giving people a rich and fertile base in which to start their crops. They also come equipped and set up with the irrigation system in place which gives them 3 drip lines spaced about a foot apart to water their crops in the arid desert.

“People want that  sense of community you just have to provide the opportunity for it.“

The radical act of providing an agriculture space for community to come together paved the way for the community members to begin to organize on other issues that affected them as a whole, such as addressing the need for sidewalks in their neighborhoods to keep children safe from the rampant traffic on the streets.

“Watching community build without us even doing any work but simply providing the space and the focus for people and now we have a community organization that’s focused on issues that extend beyond the farm and are looking at issues like safety, security, people tear up and down this street and there are kids waiting for the bus- so looking at those larger issues and that just happened on its own and that’s been encouraging to see.”

This is directly related to food insecurity here in the states discussed earlier. Meaning when communities are able to provide food for themselves or have readily access to food, when they are no longer food insecure, they can begin to focus on other needs/desires. Furthermore, it proves that agricultural spaces set up for community engagement and control has the potential to be more than just a space where food is grown, but where community is built.

Chris maintained a fierce advocacy for community support and attributed Las Milpitas success to just that: community driven choices. 

“Without [community] we wouldn’t have support, we wouldn’t have people gardening and ultimately we would just be isolated in our farming operation here [...] you’ve got to have the community behind you.”

Agricultural work is not easy, especially in the unforgiving heat of the sun, add in issues of justice and community and you have a workload you best be willing to dedicate your life to. We had to ask Chris why he does what he does.

"For me it’s the fact that planting a seed is this tremendous act of faith and hope that that seed will grow into food and nourish and sustain you and I think that every time you plant a seed there's this like, I hate to use the term, miracle, its like really just a term, but its spiritual maybe, I don’t know. Watching something grow from something so tiny and produce a plant and grow and be beautiful and nourish people, theres just a sense of wonder in that and if I can share that with other people I think that that’s my ideal job. The fact that I get paid to come out here every day and do something I love and help other people do that too, that’s what drives me to do this.”

With that said Chris had to hurry off but luckily Las Milpitas was buzzing with workers and volunteers so we were able to continue our conversation, other questions still on our tongues.

Stay tuned!

Las Milpitas / Food Bank