Urban Agriculture
Please make a 1-page reflection on these two articles and cite them using APA style.
(double space, 12 font size, Times New Roman)
12/7/2020 New York Moves to Stop Foraging in City’s Parks – The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/30/nyregion/new-york-moves-to-stop-foraging-in-citys-parks.html 1/3
By Lisa W. Foderaro
July 29, 2011
Maybe it is the spiraling cost of food in a tough economy or the logical next step in the movement to eat locally. Whatever the
reason, New Yorkers are increasingly fanning out across the city’s parks to hunt and gather edible wild plants, like mushrooms,
American ginger and elderberries.
Now parks officials want them to stop. New York’s public lands are not a communal pantry, they say. In recent months, the city
has stepped up training of park rangers and enforcement-patrol officers, directing them to keep an eye out for foragers and chase
them off.
“If people decide that they want to make their salads out of our plants, then we’re not going to have any chipmunks,” said Maria
Hernandez, director of horticulture for the Central Park Conservancy, the nonprofit group that manages Central Park.
Plants are not the only things people are taking. In Prospect Park in Brooklyn last week, park rangers issued four summonses to
two people for illegal fishing. Although officials say such poaching is not widespread, park advocates say taking fish and turtles
for food is not uncommon, and some have reported evidence of traps designed to snare wildfowl.
Foraging used to be a quirky niche, filled most notably by “Wildman” Steve Brill, who for years has led foraging tours in the
Northeast, including in Central Park. (He now sells a foraging app, too.) But foragers today are an eclectic bunch, including
downtown hipsters, recent immigrants, vegans and people who do not believe in paying for food.
Even those who would never dream of plucking sassafras during a walk in the park can read about it. The magazine Edible
Manhattan has an “Urban Forager” column (as does The New York Times’s City Room blog). And the current issue of Martha
Stewart Living features a colorful spread about foraging on Ms. Stewart’s property in Maine — but at least all those plants belong
to her.
While it has long been against the rules to collect or destroy plants in the city’s parks, with potential fines of $250, the city has
preferred education to enforcement. “It’s listed in the prohibited uses of the parks, and the simple reason is that if everyone went
out and collected whatever it is — a blackberry or wildflower — the parks couldn’t sustain that,” said Sarah Aucoin, director of
urban park rangers for the Department of Parks and Recreation.
Officials have not gone as far as posting signs in Central Park that foraging is prohibited, for fear they would serve as arrows
pointing to the most delectable areas. Ms. Hernandez of the park conservancy would take a reporter on a tour of edible plants
only on the condition that their locations not be revealed.
Enjoy Park Greenery, City Says, but Not as Salad
Ruby Harris, 9, of Brooklyn, inspecting an edible plant on a foraging tour of Prospect
Park. Todd Heisler/The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/
https://www.nytimes.com/by/lisa-w-foderaro
http://www.wildmanstevebrill.com/
http://www.centralparknyc.org/about/news/central-park-news/foraging-and-picking-how.html
12/7/2020 New York Moves to Stop Foraging in City’s Parks – The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/30/nyregion/new-york-moves-to-stop-foraging-in-citys-parks.html 2/3
For their part, regular foragers — especially those who write and teach about the practice — say that they are sensitive to the
environment and that they focus on renewable items like leaves and berries. Besides, they say, much of their quarry comes from
invasive species that squeeze out native plants.
“You’re almost doing the ecosystem in the park a favor by harvesting them,” said Leda Meredith, who wrote “The Locavore’s
Handbook: The Busy Person’s Guide to Eating Local on a Budget,” which includes a chapter on foraging. Ms. Meredith, who leads
tours in Prospect Park, says 70 percent of the plants she collects are nonnative and invasive.
“Japanese knotweed is very invasive, and it’s in season in April,” she said. It can be used like rhubarb, she added.
Marie Viljoen, a garden designer who writes the foraging column for Edible Manhattan, argued that parks officials were
overstating the problem. “It’s a little alarmist to think that a park is going to be mowed down like a herd of deer went through,”
she
said.
Parks officials counter that they are more worried about the novices and say that certain plants, like American ginger and ramps,
are especially vulnerable since they are yanked out, root and all. Park managers point out, too, that there are programs to weed
out invasive plants.
Then there is the danger of poisonous and toxic plants. “Not everyone knows how to use these herbs and spices,” Ms. Hernandez
said.
Some natural areas outside New York City accommodate foragers. Sandy Hook in New Jersey, which is part of the federal
Gateway National Recreation Area, limits the harvesting of beach plum fruit, berries and mushrooms to “one quart container per
person, per day,” said John Harlan Warren, a spokesman for the recreation area.
In New York’s state parks, the attitude seems more relaxed as well. “It’s illegal, but the occasional blueberry picker is not hauled
away in handcuffs,” said Tom Alworth, deputy commissioner for natural resources for the State Office of Parks, Recreation and
Historic Preservation.
Among the edible plants picked in Central Park is mountain mint. Fred R. Conrad/The
New York Times
Elderberries also grow in Central Park. Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
12/7/2020 New York Moves to Stop Foraging in City’s Parks – The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/30/nyregion/new-york-moves-to-stop-foraging-in-citys-parks.html 3/3
Aside from issuing summonses, the city has not taken any recent legal action. It did go after Mr. Brill for foraging in Central Park
once before: he was arrested in the mid-1980s, and it turned into a public relations debacle for the parks department. The charges
were later dropped.
After appearing on television talk shows and receiving sympathetic news coverage, Mr. Brill was actually hired by the
department as a naturalist and led foraging tours for a few years. He has since continued his tours privately, and says he is
tolerated by Central Park’s rangers. “They usually wave at me,” he said.
Even some fellow foragers look askance at Mr. Brill. One of his tours in 2009 attracted 78 people, an all-time high. “I see him as the
vaudeville showman of foraging,” Ms. Viljoen said. “I get nervous when I see that many people storming the park.”
Just what gets taken can vary from park to park, often depending on the ethnic makeup of the surrounding neighborhood.
“There are groups going around and collecting things that they recognize from their home countries,” said Gary Lincoff, an
instructor at the New York Botanical Garden, who admitted foraging in the parks for juneberries. “The Chinese gather gingko,
and I’ve talked to Koreans who are gathering white wood aster.”
Beverly McDermott, director of Friends of Kissena Park in Flushing, Queens, has confronted foragers directly when she has seen
them hauling away everything from plants to top soil to turtles. A garden in the 242-acre park that Mrs. McDermott helped revive
a decade ago has been repeatedly pillaged, with herbs, flowers and a whole weeping cherry tree disappearing.
“I have caught them leaving the park with coolers full of fish and turtles,” she said. “You need signs throughout the park. I find the
rangers to be totally useless. They’re walking around like Boy Scouts.”
A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Enjoy Park Greenery, City Says, but Not as Salad
People also pick and take American ginger from the park. Fred R. Conrad/The New York
Times
12/7/2020 Food apartheid: the root of the problem with America’s groceries | Society | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/may/15/food-apartheid-food-deserts-racism-inequality-america-karen-washington-interview 1/4
Food apartheid: the root of the problem with America’s groceries
Anna Brones
Food justice activist Karen Washington wants us to move away from the term ‘food desert’, which doesn’t take into account the systemic
racism permeating America’s food system
Tue 15 May 2018 12.59 EDT
A merica’s sustainable food movement has been steadily growing, challenging consumers to truly consider where our food comes from, andinspiring people to farm, eat local, and rethink our approaches to food policy. But at the same time, the movement is predominantly white,and often neglects the needs and root problems of diverse communities.Issues of economic inequality and systemic racism permeate our national food system. The movement’s primary focus has been on finding
solutions to “food deserts” – defined as areas empty of good-quality, affordable fresh food – by working to ensure that affected neighborhoods have
better access. But some advocates, and studies, have argued that the proximity of a well-stocked grocery store is not enough of a solution given this
country’s elaborate food problems.
Farm subsidies in the United States go predominantly to white farmers, which has led a group of black farmers to sue the US government for
discrimination. Food pantries, which distribute food directly to those in need, are stigmatized. Our subsidized food system, as the activist and
community organizer Karen Washington points out in the interview that follows, “skews the cost and value of food”.
Washington has been battling for food justice for three decades. Before taking up the cause, she worked as a physical therapist, and saw many of her
patients, predominantly people of color, suffering from diabetes, obesity, and hypertension. (More than one-third of American adults, and 48% of
African American adults, are obese.) Treatment always involved medication and surgery as opposed to prevention, and Washington knew there had to be
a better way. She moved to the Bronx, in New York, in the mid-1980s and became a vocal community gardener.
Since that time, Washington has won a James Beard Foundation Leadership Award, been invited to the Obama White House for her involvement with
New York’s Botanical Garden, and been called “urban farming’s de facto godmother”. She’s also worked to transform the Bronx’s empty lots into spaces
where food can grow, helped launch a farmers’ market, and, in relentlessly engaging her community, has remained focused on the intersections of food
and issues like poverty, racism, a lack of healthcare, and joblessness.
In other words, Washington has been around the block. What she found is that there weren’t very many people who looked like her with active roles in
the food system. To bring additional voices to the table, she cofounded Black Urban Growers, an organization dedicated to supporting and advocating for
black farmers and black leadership in the food movement, in 2009. And as she creates a more inclusive food community, she is working to redefine the
challenges that the food system faces, too. Washington is opposed to using the expression “food desert,” which she calls “an outsider term” that calls
desolate places, rather than places with enormous potential, to mind. She prefers “food apartheid”, which “brings us to the more important question:
what are some of the social inequalities that you see, and what are you doing to erase some of the injustices?”
– Anna Brones for Guernica
Guernica: When did you begin growing food?
Karen Washington: Well, it all started with a tomato. I never liked it. It wasn’t red, it was pale pink, it had no taste. Until I started growing it myself, I
didn’t even know it grew on a vine, let alone that it was red and brown and juicy. When I finally bit into someone’s fresh, garden-grown tomato, it just
changed my world. It really gave me the ambition to want to grow food myself. Then, in 1988, I looked out my kitchen window to the empty lot across
the way and saw a man with a pick and a shovel. I went out and I asked him what he was doing, and he said, “I’m thinking about starting a community
garden.” I asked if I could help. We’re about to celebrate our 30th year [of working together].
Guernica: That’s amazing!
‘When we say ‘food apartheid,’ the real conversation can begin.’ Illustration: Daniel Chang Christensen
http://reason.com/blog/2016/06/13/500-million-later-usda-on-food-deserts
https://www.ewg.org/agmag/2017/03/real-farm-subsidy-scandal-usda-s-legacy-racial-discrimination#.Wt-MZ9PwbUI
http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sdut-black-farmers-file-claims-in-usda-settlement-2012mar28-story.html
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db219
https://www.blackurbangrowers.org/
http://anobelisk.com/
12/7/2020 Food apartheid: the root of the problem with America’s groceries | Society | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/may/15/food-apartheid-food-deserts-racism-inequality-america-karen-washington-interview 2/4
Karen Washington: It is amazing. My gardening got me into community
organizing and activism. I noticed that when I went to visit friends who
were white, their neighborhoods, their food system, their supermarkets
were totally different compared to what I was seeing in my backyard. At
my local supermarkets, things that should have been composted were
wrapped up in cellophane and sold at a reduced price. We had a variety of
food, but I wouldn’t call it fresh. It looked like it was secondhand, and
people had no other options.
I eventually realized that I couldn’t concentrate on food alone because
there were so many things that were intersecting. I saw that the people
who were in [that first community ] garden were mostly low-income and
had no health insurance. The garden wasn’t just being used for food, but
also for wellbeing and medicine. The healthcare industry is part of this
conversation. As a physical therapist, I used to see billions more spent on
treatment than prevention. Look at the pharmaceutical companies. In my
neighborhood, there is a fast-food restaurant on every block, from Wendy’s
to Kentucky Fried Chicken to Popeye’s to Little Caesar’s Pizza. Now
drugstores are popping up on every corner, too. So you have the fast-food
restaurants that of course cause the diet-related diseases, and you have the
pharmaceutical companies there to fix it. They go hand in hand. The fact
is, if you do prevention, someone is going to lose money. If you give people
access to really good food and a living-wage job, someone is going to lose
money. As long as people are poor and as long as people are sick, there are
jobs to be made. Follow the money.
I set out on this journey to explain the conditions of impoverishment. A lot
of these communities need an influx of resources and monetary help,
along with more local ownership of land and capital, in order to change
things around. I go around the country to challenge people to see beyond
the “raised beds” and to recognize that we live in one of the greatest
nations and countries of all time and yet we still suffer from hunger and
poverty. How have we allowed that to happen and what are we going to do
to change that?
Guernica: We often use the expression “food desert” today. Does that
term help us create infrastructure to ensure better access to food, or is it
hindering our ability to do so?
Karen Washington: I was just in Pennsylvania and North Carolina talking
about food deserts, and the topic of food justice and food sovereignty, and
putting it out there that it means nothing to me. I asked people to define it,
and, of course, they gave me their cookie-cutter definition: “Communities
who have limited access to food.” That means nothing. Who in in my actual
neighborhood has deemed that we live in a food desert? Number one,
people will tell you that they do have food. Number two, people in the
hood have never used that term. It’s an outsider term. “Desert” also makes us think of an empty, absolutely desolate place. But when we’re talking about
these places, there is so much life and vibrancy and potential. Using that word runs the risk of preventing us from seeing all of those things.
What I would rather say instead of “food desert” is “food apartheid”, because “food apartheid” looks at the whole food system, along with race,
geography, faith, and economics. You say “food apartheid” and you get to the root cause of some of the problems around the food system. It brings in
hunger and poverty. It brings us to the more important question: What are some of the social inequalities that you see, and what are you doing to erase
some of the injustices?
So, now, let’s go a little further; let’s talk about food sovereignty. Food sovereignty is being coopted in the same way that food justice is, because “food
sovereignty” was a term that was really founded by indigenous people in Central and South America when they were fighting for governance. The
organization Via Campesina coined the term “food sovereignty”. They were fighting for land ownership and they were fighting for resiliency, so we
should make sure that we pay respect to those indigenous people who have been fighting for so long. “Food sovereignty” is now being interchanged with
“food justice”, and although they are coexisting conditions, they are two terms with substantial differences. Even those terms have been watered down,
but “food desert” sugarcoats what the problem is. If you bring a supermarket in, it’s not going to change the problem. When we say “food apartheid”, the
real conversation can begin.
Guernica: You mentioned wanting to challenge people to look beyond their raised beds. What is the best way to ensure that people have access to food?
Is it by focusing on food production or focusing on systemic racism and economics?
Karen Washington: All of the above. This idea that just because you give people the ability to grow their own food, and give up soda for water, that all of
sudden it’s going to make these people’s conditions better? No. We have to talk about race, we have to talk about economics, because those are the things
holding people back.
I wake up dreaming that my neighborhood has been given capital, has been given opportunity, has been given finance, that we can own our stores and
businesses. Why is it that outsiders always have to come into our neighborhood to open a business? Why don’t people with capital come into my
Karen Washington, a food justice advocate.
‘It all started with a tomato. When I finally bit into someone’s fresh, garden-grown tomato, it just changed
my world.’ Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo
https://www.theguardian.com/food
12/7/2020 Food apartheid: the root of the problem with America’s groceries | Society | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/may/15/food-apartheid-food-deserts-racism-inequality-america-karen-washington-interview 3/4
neighborhood and think about investing in the people who already live here? Give them the capital, give them the means of financial literacy, teach them
how to invest, teach them how to own homes, teach them how to own businesses. Give them that chance, instead of coming in and changing the
dynamics and the complexion of our neighborhood.
People often interview me and they ask me questions like: what’s it like to live in a neighborhood with limited access to food? After a while, I shut it
down. I say, “Why don’t you turn it around?” Because I want to hear what people in affluent neighborhoods are doing. What is their take on people who
live in food deserts? What is the conversation that rich, white, privileged people have about poverty and hunger and what are they doing to make a
change? Sit down at the table with a family member, a father, a mother, who owns a business, and ask them what they’re doing to ensure that their
businesses are employing people who need jobs, or [ask if] they’re getting out of their comfort zone, not just writing a check, because it’s easy to write a
check, but what are they doing to invest in neighborhoods that are less fortunate?
Guernica: I’ve moved back to my hometown, a rural community where we have high poverty rates and many kids receive free school lunches. We do
have a food bank and other programs that provide access to fresh food, and it’s easy for people to write a check to a food bank or buy a couple cans of
food to donate, but it feels like a Band-Aid on a larger problem.
Karen Washington: It is a Band-Aid. I recently asked [the students in my gardening] classes, “What is the purpose of food pantries and food kitchens?”
And of course they say, “To feed the poor,” and “to have access to food,” and so on. But the main function of these two approaches is [supposed to be]
that they’re reserved for emergencies only. Instead, they’ve become a way of life.
How do we sit with the fact that 40 million people are in poverty? The system of giving out free food is not going to fix that. Even as a farmer, I have to
deal with the fact that when I come down to the farmers’ market and sell my produce I have to educate people about the value and cost of food, because
I am surrounded by a food system – a subsidized food system – that skews the cost and value of food. My carrots are $2. They are $2 because I am a for-
profit farmer, and unlike the carrot for 99 cents that’s sold in cellophane at the supermarket down the street or the bunch of carrots that you got for free
from the food pantry, this two-dollar carrot is feeding me, my family, and it means something.
The conversation around actual food value is a conversation that we don’t have in low-income neighborhoods, regardless if they’re black or white, rural
or urban. But things are changing. People are talking more than ever about food. It’s such a major shift, so you’re seeing major corporations offering
different options, like fast-food chains offering salads. The consumer is starting to understand the relationship between food and health. It’s also
happening in low-income communities. The rise in school gardens impacts children and they shift their parents’ perspectives. In my neighborhood,
every year, we have a block party and they don’t serve soda anymore. The kids are asking for water! Education is working.
Guernica: Would it be more advantageous for us to restructure the charity system?
Karen Washington: Yes! First of all, let’s think in terms of labeling and messaging. Food pantries are stigmatized. When you say “food pantries”, you’re
talking about people who are poor, standing in line, getting their food as a handout. The organization West Side Campaign Against Hunger has a pantry
that they have started to rebrand. They set up their organization like a supermarket, so customers are coming and they’re shopping like they would at a
regular store. It’s not a food pantry where you’re giving out free plastic bags of food. They also offer job training, and a chef who teaches the clients if
they want to learn how to prepare food.
I tell them to ask people, “Why are you here? What is causing you to be on this food line? Is it the fact that you don’t have a job? Are you ill? Are you
homeless?” By knowing those answers, they can help a person. For a problem like, “Well, I was homeless, so I am in a food pantry,” they talk about what
we offer in terms of social work and helping people get apartments. For, “Oh, I just got out of jail,” they talk about some of the entry programs out there
that can help them. Or: “I lost a job … I’m looking for a job.” Let’s have job training on site for employment opportunities so people can seek jobs.
Guernica: You launched the Black Urban Growers organization because you had traveled around and hadn’t seen anyone else who looked like you in
the food movement, which I can imagine felt like a desolate, lonely place.
Karen Washington: That’s accurate. I recently went to the Organic Grower’s Conference, which is in its 25th year, and someone told me that it was the
second year that they had speakers of color. The second year! I don’t know how many attendees they had, but I can tell you o�and it was less than
maybe seven people of color. And these are food conferences. I ask people about the work that they do, and a lot of them say, “Yeah, we work on a
community farm,” “We work in a community garden,” “You know, it’s full of vegetables and flowers,” and I say, “You know what? Even within the work
that you do with flowers and vegetables, you see diversity. But when it comes to the movement, it’s not diverse.” How can you see beauty and diversity
in the food system, and yet these workshops and conferences are all homogenized? There is no diversity, there’s no inclusion.
That’s why we have the Black Urban Growers Conference. It’s because no one talks about our issues, and when they do talk about our issues it’s from a
white voice. Why does the respected [one] always have to be a white voice?
People talk about food justice, but where are the farmers who look like me and who were brought here as slaves to do agriculture? When I asked that
question, I was told, “Black people don’t want to farm, all they want to do is play basketball and play music.” When people tell me that, I know I am doing
the right thing with this work.
For me and my friends, it has been inspirational. People come up to me at the end of the conference and say that they have never seen so many black
farmers in a room. They have never had a conference that presented issues that pertained to the black experience.
Guernica: Why do you think food conferences don’t give people of color a platform?
Karen Washington: They’re not taking the time to go out of their comfort zones to reach people. That’s the bottom line. The reason I attend conferences
is because people reach out and invite me. I’m going to write to Organic Growers and give them a list of people of color that they need to reach out to.
Some of those people include: Leah Penniman, Malik Yakini, Lorrie Clevenger, Dr Gale Myers, Kirtrina Baxter, Keisha Cameron, Kelly Carlisle, and Chris
Newsome. I asked people in the African American community if they were going to that conference and they said they weren’t invited. That’s the
problem. People live in their silos.
I also have a problem with organizations in urban areas and communities of color that are white-led. You started an organization and you have been
there for 10 or 15 years and your mission statement says that one day the people within the community will have leadership. They should have your job
right now; why are you still there? I talk about power, and how power is a drug and power over people is a drug and it’s hard to give up. But once you start
A Whole Foods Market in Oakland, California. Photograph: Bloomberg/Bloomberg via Getty Images
12/7/2020 Food apartheid: the root of the problem with America’s groceries | Society | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/may/15/food-apartheid-food-deserts-racism-inequality-america-karen-washington-interview 4/4
taking a job in a community, and particularly a community of color, once you are there as the emergency department, you should be thinking about how
you are going to transition out.
Guernica: In the sense that a desert is an “empty” place, do you feel that the food movement has become a “desert”?
Karen Washington: At the conference, it’s also powerful to hear young people talk about reparations and going back to the land. The younger black
farming community is growing. Leah Penniman of Soul Fire Farm is doing excellent work. Young people are understanding the power that they have and
they are not waiting for us to fix it. Look at Black Lives Matter; they are very outspoken. They are unapologetic. They know what’s right. They know the
oppression and segregation and the racism that have happened and continue to happen. They’re not drinking the Kool-Aid.
Even still, the average age of a farmer is 59. The movement is going to be a desert if we don’t get more youth involved. Who is out there? How are we
going to get the next wave of farmers? The price of land for new farmers is crazy. So how do we entice a new generation to become farmers if they don’t
have access to land? They have credit-card and student-loan debt, and there’s no diversity to encourage the young blood of new farmers with different
faces to come into the food system.
Guernica: The food movement has essentially become a monocrop.
Karen Washington: Exactly. As we know, you lose diversity and it will truly end up a desert because you’ve never taken the time to nourish that seed,
diversify that seed, and you kept doing the same thing over and over again. And you know what happens when you continue to grow in the same soil? It
gets depleted of nutrients and becomes barren. That’s what’s going to happen to the food movement if we don’t think about planting seeds of diversity,
of new young blood, into the food system.
Anna Brones is a writer, artist, publisher, and producer. She is the author of The Culinary Cyclist, Fika: The Art of the Swedish Coffee Break, Paris Coffee
Revolution, Hello, Bicycle, Best Served Wild: Real Food for Real Adventures, and Live Lagom: Balanced Living the Swedish Way. She’s also the founder and
publisher of Comestible, a bi-annual zine about food, and her work has been featured in Saveur, T Magazine, and Eater, among others. Currently she is
working on the Women’s Wisdom Project, a series featuring 100 papercut portraits of amazing women.
This interview is part of Guernica’s new special edition on the theme of deserts. Looking for more great deserts work from the award-winning digital magazine
of global art and politics? Here are some su�estions:
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