The Non-profit, Community Gardeners Market: Food Production and Distribution in a Chicago Food Desert

This dissertation presents an ethnographic study of the members of a production-based alternative food project in Chicago. Through the practice of urban agriculture, the gardeners produce food both for self and community maintenance, distributing the food through a non-profit market. The outcomes include, (1) improving access to fresh (organic) produce for the poor and working class, predominately African American, residents of the West Side; (2) greening the neighborhood, and (3) building community. In Chicago, food deserts exist primarily in African American neighborhoods, facilitated by persistent residential segregation, prompting state and federal governments to deem it a civil rights issue. Generally, food deserts are defined as areas lacking access to fresh, healthy food. Specifically, on the West Side, the main food suppliers are fast food restaurants, convenience stores, dollar stores, and liquor stores. In response to this racialized food access issue a network of West Side community gardens has established a non-profit, twice monthly, gardeners market. On a microscopic level this research project focused on the motivations of the community garden members to undertake the significant commitment of growing food and operating the gardeners market. The data revealed two main themes, the fellowship of gardening with other people, co-horticulture, and the reenactment of activities that connect one to the sense of wholeness one experienced in the past, performative nostalgia. With respect to the former the community gardeners were motivated by the desire to, “be a part of something with other people,” choosing to grow food in a community garden in addition to or instead of gardening at their homes. With respect to the latter, the community garden members were drawn to gardening to reconnect with the sense of wholeness they previously felt gardening with loved ones, especially grandparents during their childhood. On a macroscopic level the study of a production-based alternative food movement provided insights into non-capitalistic modes of economic activities, i.e., food production for oneself and non-profit market relations. Thus, community gardening was an organizing mechanism to resist disparities in food access, and part of the urban agriculture social movement to resist the oppressive, capitalistic American food system.