Planting Justice

Planting Justice’s Urban Aquaponics Incubator Farm

Model and Strategy

Planting Justice (PJ) empowers people impacted by mass incarceration and other social inequities with the skills and resources to cultivate food sovereignty, economic justice, and community healing. Its five interconnected programs are: 1) Transform Your Yard (TYY): building edible permaculture gardens; 2) Food Justice Education: ecological design and nutrition education in schools, prisons, and juvenile detention facilities; 3) East Oakland Nursery: a 2-acre mail-to-order organic nursery; 4) El Sobrante Farm: a 5-acre urban farm, one of the region’s largest and most biodiverse; and 5) Grassroots Canvassing: generating volunteers, customers, donors, and support for local policy change. The Nursery, Farm, TYY, and Canvassing programs are revenue-generating, partially self-sustaining, and support PJ’s other programs.

PJ is now creating an Urban Aquaponics Incubator Farm and Health Equity Center adjacent to PJ’s East Oakland Nursery in Sobrante Park, a neighborhood that for decades has been impacted by institutional racism including redlining and lack of government investment. Most local jobs are in toxic industries and the neighborhood has a high density of pollutants. There is no full-service grocery store: residents, who are low-income and predominantly Black and Latinx, must travel three miles to access fresh produce.

The Incubator Farm will fulfill multiple community investment and health gaps in the neighborhood: resident access to well-paying jobs in green industries, to healthy and affordable produce, and to educational institutions and job training. PJ’s ultimate goal is to support long-term East Oakland residents in replicating aquaponics farm technology on empty lots throughout Oakland through the creation of a producers cooperative that empowers low-income residents to become land and farm owners.

The project is being carried out in collaboration with seven community based organizations including the Black Cultural Zone Community Development Corporation (a past Battery Powered grantee), Sustainable Economies Law Center, and East Oakland Neighborhood Initiative, as well as the City of Oakland and University of California, Davis. After four years of planning and fundraising, development of the farm is underway.

Read a recent article about Planting Justice in The Guardian.

Impact

When infrastructure renovation is complete, the Urban Aquaponics Incubator Farm is projected to produce approximately 180,000 lbs of certified organic produce and 150,000 nursery starts each year; create 15-20 full-time living wage jobs in urban aquaponic farm production; increase healthy food access for 2,500 food-insecure Sobrante Park residents; and offer educational programming and farmer-to-farmer training for 450 youth and community residents. The Urban Aquaponics Incubator Farm builds upon PJ’s current programs, which since 2009 have created living-wage, benefitted, green jobs for 57 formerly incarcerated people, with a 3.5% recidivism rate, compared to 70% recidivism in California. In that time PJ has built 600 edible permaculture gardens throughout the East Bay that provide healthy food to over 4,000 people each year; and it reaches over 7,500 people each year through school-, community-, and prison-based food justice education programs. PJ’s East Oakland Nursery, which currently hosts the nation’s largest and most biodiverse collection of certified organic fruit trees, serves a national customer base through online sales. The Nursery has seen a recent doubling in sales due increasing demand, generating $450,000 per year for PJ programs. Upon paying off its remaining acquisition loan on this property, PJ plans to transfer title to Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, a women-led Ohlone land trust, ensuring public benefit and native stewardship for generations to come, and to negotiate a long-term nominal lease to PJ to continue running our nursery and educational center. The Urban Aquaponics Incubator Farm also builds upon five years of resident leadership development, workforce development, job placement, food distribution, and education program offerings that have benefited thousands of East Oakland residents since PJ first began operating its nursery in Sobrante Park in 2016.
Project image 1
Project image 2

Leadership

  • Bobby

    Bobby House

    Transform Your Yard Director

  • Covonne

    Covonne Page

    Aquaponics Farm Manager

  • Gavin

    Gavin Raders

    Co-Director

  • Julio

    Julio Madrigal

    Mother Farm Manager

  • Lynn

    Lynn Vidal

    Operations Director

  • Nadia

    Nadia Barhoum

    Operations Coordinator

  • Otis

    Otis Spikes

    Nursery Manager

  • Salvador

    Salvador Mateo

    Co-Director