“We don’t farm because it’s trendy:” An Environmental Justice Approach to Exploring the Connection between Urban Agriculture and Health

Abstract

My research is transdisciplinary and uses mixed methods to investigate the associations between urban agriculture, mental health, spirituality, and collective agency within Black communities. I designed and am the PI of a grant-funded, IRB-approved study that employs spatial, qualitative, epidemiologic, and psychometric methods to understand these impacts. This original research has been funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Lee Kum Center for Health and Happiness. My work highlights the historical and sociopolitical factors, such as structural and environmental racism, which have impacted and influenced Black agriculture in the United States. The first aim of my work is to conduct a descriptive epidemiologic study assessing the association of neighborhood demographics with the number of community gardens at the block-group level. This study shows that both Black and low-income neighborhoods have a greater concentration of community gardens compared to non-Black and higher income areas. This work serves as an introduction to the landscape of agriculture in Philadelphia and begins to lay the groundwork to understand how collective agency and community resistance might occur in the city’s Black and immigrant communities. An overarching goal of my work is to strengthen the case for land security for Philly’s community gardens and growing spaces. The second aim of my research is to learn how growers understand the impacts of agriculture on their own health and the health of their communities. I conducted six focus groups with over 30 Black and white urban growers in Philadelphia. From these data, four major themes emerged: growing as a demonstration of agency and power, growing facilitates body-mind wellness, community care and relationship-building, and deepened spiritual connection and interdependence. There were both similarities and differences in the impacts of urban agriculture by race. Both Black and white focus groups emphasized body-mind wellness. Across the six focus groups, people talked about concepts related to community care and relationship-building as being a major benefit of growing food. In both groups, people also brought up significant issues and barriers around land security. Mentions of spirituality appeared more frequently and more emphatically in the Black focus groups. The concept of “othering” was more likely to appear in white focus groups. White participants often seemed to not see themselves as part of the community they were working in and in search of social connection whereas Black participants tended to talk about themselves as a part of the community. Black focus groups were more likely to discuss the collective impacts of agriculture, while white participants were more likely to discuss the impacts on themselves as individuals. The final aim of my work is to develop and validate an instrument that measures “Agricultural Community Power,” a new scale that builds on the work of Dr. Monica White by including spiritual health and wellbeing as a primary impact of agriculture in communities. I conducted an exploratory factor analysis on data collected from a population of about 350 urban farmers exploring eight possible domains. The goal was to develop and validate an instrument to measure Agricultural Community Power aligned with the vision and impacts of grassroots organizations. Scree plot, eigenvalue, and parallel tests all indicated that a 4 or 5 factor solution makes the most sense given the data. Together, the five factors that emerged from the exploratory factor analysis measure an underlying phenomenon that I am coining “Agricultural Community Power.” This scale is comprised of five sub-domains: collective self-determination, community care, land-based spirituality, knowledge and experiences of environmental health, and Ubuntu/interdependence. Altogether, the reliability for the scale was incredibly high with a coefficient of 0.93. This scale is the first to capture land-based spirituality, Ubuntu/interdependence, and collective self-determination; and it is the first instrument designed specifically for urban agricultural communities. The Agricultural Community Power Scale (AgCPS) meets a need that community organizations have expressed for decades. This scale was developed based on what I, and others, heard from Black and brown urban farmers. The Agricultural Community Power Scale is a tool that can be used as a program evaluation metric for environmental organizations working towards community care, agency and self-determination, spirituality, and environmental stewardship. The deep and longstanding relationships I have with my community partners have not only inspired my research questions and aims but have also shaped my overall approach to epidemiologic research. My research questions and hypotheses were consistent with the results and conclusions because I listened to and trusted community knowledge. Their wisdom and expertise shouldn’t need to be validated by the academy to be taken seriously.