This lecture explores the intersection of environmental justice, community empowerment, and urban agriculture, particularly focusing on its potential in developing countries like Kenya, challenging the perception of urban farming as merely a survival strategy for the poor.
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thank you for coming to tonight's
lecture our second evening of this
race ethnicity
and identity conference at grand rapids
community college tonight we have our
second keynote speaker dr
dr
courtney gallaher
assistant professor of geography and
women's studies at northern illinois university
university
dr gallaher was awarded the phd at
michigan state university so for those
of you that are msu fans pay particular
attention please okay
okay
she has done quite a bit of field work
in africa especially and we'll be
talking tonight on these matters in
reference to
linking environmental justice and
community empowerment through urban
agriculture in east africa
thank you once again for coming this
evening and i'll now turn it over to
am i on
well i'm really pleased to be here and
thank you for that introduction um
because i get to talk about something
that i really love talking about which
is this idea of community empowerment
through urban agriculture
and i'm also completely amazed to see so
many young and smiling student faces
here at 7pm in the evening so thank you
for taking time out of your day to
be part of this conference and to attend
my talk
as uh dr divo said i am on faculty at
northern illinois university which is
just west of chicago and i'm in my third
year there so i'm a recent alum of
michigan state university and had a
really fabulous
experience there and very much miss
michigan and so it's nice to be back in
how many of you are familiar with the
environmental the term environmental
justice is this something that people
have maybe heard about in classes or is
this brand new
relatively new so environmental justice
is this movement that um became
became
more known in the united states and has
now spread around the world and it's
this movement that was started by
individuals primarily people of color to link
link
issues of environmental
harm or environmental problems to
to
uh to issues of identity and race and
class so what people noticed was that
when they were looking at different
environmental issues oftentimes the
people who were being placed in harm's
way in terms of those environmental
issues were people who were
minority populations who were lower
class populations in the united states
and this really started in warren county
north carolina
in um the
the
year was that
well 1970s um
when there was a company there that
decided it wanted to dispose of a bunch
of pcb waste that they had from their
company and they dumped it all over the
roadsides throughout north carolina and
the state decided they needed to clean
this up because pcgs are carcinogenic
and quite toxic and so they were going
to go basically clean up all the soil or
strip all the soil and then move it to
landfill and the place that they decided
to target for a landfill was a
predominantly african-american
community and a community that was if
you ranked all of the counties in the
state of north carolina then like at the
very bottom it was the poorest county
and so people woke up and said you know
there is a reason we are being targeted
as a community
and so um
this was in a way the birth of the
environmental justice movement there
were mass protests people laying down in
the street these are the trucks carrying soil
soil
that we're trying to dump the pcb laden
soil but this this movement has really
continued and so as we went through this
environmental awakening in the united
states so if you think about things like
silent spring by rachel carson who was
waking people up to the issues
dangers associated with pesticides in
our environment we had these protests in
warren county
love canal was another big incident out
in the new york area and near niagara
falls where they figured out that
company again had dumped a lot of toxic
pollutants they had capped the landfill
built a school on top of it and
everybody was getting really ill and so
over a period of a decade they decided
they needed to evacuate the population
and then on a more global issue we have
things like the
bhopal india where there was this
massive explosion of the pesticide plant
and so these are
isolated incidents in a sense but
they're not there you see this pattern a
global pattern of
environmental problems being associated or
or
at-risk populations being more
associated with exposure to these
environmental problems
and this includes in east africa
so the green belt movement
is a movement that was started by a
woman who went on to win a nobel peace prize
prize
named wangari masai and she was actually
the first woman in east africa to get a
phd and she was she was part of the
kennedy airlift program that brought
barack obama's father to the united
states to go to college she was part of
that same program so she came here got
educated went back to kenya got her phd there
there
practiced veterinary medicine for a
while and started to realize there were
all these problems in the environment
and one of the most pressing ones was
that kenya was logging down all their
forests at a rapid rapid rate
and because women's livelihoods in kenya
were so dependent upon the forest the
loss of trees meant not just soil
erosion and you know loss of forest
cover and all sorts of things but it
meant that women disproportionately were
being impacted
so she started this women's movement in
kenya called the greenbelt movement
where she would go into local
communities she would pay women to plant
these tree nurseries and then transplant
it and the idea was to build these big
lines of green trees so green belts
throughout the country and they've planted
planted
millions if not billions of trees
throughout southern throughout africa
now because it's spread from kenya to
other areas
but what was interesting is what started
as an environmental movement really
turned into this
much broader sort of social justice
movement where they realized that
protecting the environment meant
changing sort of the political culture
in kenya and so it became this movement
for democracy this movement to fight for
women to be able to voice their control
over the environment
and so as i said she went on to win a
nobel peace prize in 2004 for her work
she was one of the first environmental
activists and one of the first women to
be recognized for this and there are all
sorts of cool children's books that have
been written about her she's one of the
few female scientists where i feel like
you can reliably find cool children's
books about her so for any of you who
have nieces or nephews or children at home
home
somewhere to look
but in the united states what we've seen
in the last few decades
and what we're very slowly starting to
see when we talk about
environmental justice issues in other
parts of the world is that environmental
justice has been now being it's moving
beyond concerns about exposure to toxins
in the environment and it's moving
beyond concerns about sort of conserving
our natural resources and and maybe
regrowing trees or forest cover and
we're starting to talk about food
because food is one of the ways that you
can most intimately interact with nature
right everybody has to eat food
everybody in some way is tied to the
supply chain of growing food and the
quality of food that we produce is
really really tied to our environment
and a lot of people have started to feel
very disconnected from the food that
they eat how many of you grow any of the
how many of you grow more than say ten
percent of the food that you eat got
got
one or two lonely hands back there but
most of us do not right most of us are
somewhat or very disconnected from our
food system
and so there's been this movement in the
united states to really think about how
do we link these concepts of social
justice and environmental justice to
this idea of food justice so
reconnecting people to their food system
and it's not just that people are
disconnected it's that specific
populations have been very disconnected
from the food system so if you look at
detroit for an example
within the city limits of detroit there
are no big box grocery stores and so
food access becomes
almost a racial issue if you look in a
lot of cities where low-income
populations or minority populations are
disproportionately disconnected from
their food systems
and so there are lots of organizations
in this particular one i took these
photos from an organization called
growing power
that are thinking about how do we
reconnect people to their food systems
in a way that is also
empowering local communities and
addressing some of these inequities
that are related to race and class and identity
identity
so growing power is this very cool
organization that was started by will allen
allen
and it started in milwaukee they have a
branch in chicago has anyone here heard
of growing power
look them up they're awesome so will
allen was a farmer down in the south had
ties to milwaukee area decided he wanted
to come back to milwaukee and um
and create this sort of youth
empowerment program where he would get
uh high-risk youth to work on his farm
and they've now expanded their farm to
provide cfa shares and all sorts of
training about urban agriculture to
inner city milwaukee and they also
operate a farm in chicago along the same model
model
so community gardens are obviously
really popular
i imagine the grand rapids area has
community gardens because nearly all
cities in the united states have
community gardens at this point in time
and in a way on a on a fundamental level
it's just a way for people to grow food
like oftentimes you know
hey now i have a convenient plot of land
where i didn't have one maybe in my
backyard but on a broader level a lot of
the ideas behind community gardens are
how do we link people back to this idea
of nature back to this idea of food and um
um
and the purpose is broader than just
growing a few tomatoes to eat right the
idea is how you bring the community
together in a way that can empower them
so what kinds of social connections can
be made through community gardening
and so this has been very effective in
some places less effective than others a
lot of times it has to do with how
dynamic the leaders are but community gardening
gardening
and urban gardening in the
i would say in developed countries so in
north america and europe has in
australia has really received a lot of
attention and has been seen as a really
sort of powerful way to get into
communities and kind of get people
and another reason that urban
agriculture has been receiving a lot of attention
attention
in developed countries is that
it improves access to green spaces
so in a city like just looking outside
and driving around grand rapids a lot of
you have access to trees here right like
you see trees on a regular basis there's
decent amount of open green space but
there are definitely areas in our
country in areas in other parts of the
world where things have been built in a
way that people literally do not have
access to open green spaces and so
building these community gardens allows
people to start to reconnect with their
food system and
reconnect with nature in a way that's
different because they don't have access
to trees
one of the things that we know in the
united states is that access to green space
space
often varies based on income again so
based on class and also based on race so
there was this cool study down out of
the university of wisconsin milwaukee
that looked at
access to green space in the city of
milwaukee and they found that the black
populations were
especially unlikely to have access to
green space in terms of forest cover in
their neighborhoods as compared to the
white populations and the hispanic
populations and so there was this racial
inequity and something that one might
not think about so having trees in their
neighborhoods so urban gardens urban
so this is the model that we have been
talking about urban agriculture in the
united states for the last several decades
decades
we talk about urban agriculture as a way
of growing food we talk about this idea
of needing to empower communities and
this idea of food justice
but what's
interesting is that this view of urban
agriculture hasn't really been exported
to developing countries
when you look at urban agriculture in a
lot of developing countries
all of a sudden what we're talking about
is oh this is a coping strategy for poor
people so poor people move to the city
from rural areas they grow a bit of food
until they get on their feet and then
they're done with it so
while people are almost evangelizing
urban agriculture in the united states
in areas that i've worked in east africa
urban agriculture is still very much not
taboo but just it's not given a lot of thought
thought
even though in kenya where i'm going to
talk about in malawi where i've done a
lot of work 60 to 70 percent of the
population has backyard gardens or some
sort of urban farm so this isn't like
something that just happens but it's
something that's being ignored
sometimes when people are talking about
urban agriculture in africa there's a
little bit of conversation about
environmental quality like
should people be using waste water is
the soil good enough but basically it's
cons it's considered to be not worthy of
attention because it's just something
poor people do
and often times and is the case in kenya
it's actually illegal um so
definitely not the case here in the
united states but this is a relic of colonialism
colonialism
during the colonial era in kenya
african migrant laborers were brought to
the cities to work for the white
colonial population and they actually
outlawed the practice of farming in the
city as a way of suppressing the black
african population so if they weren't
allowed to grow food they would be
dependent upon the jobs of the you know
with the white colonial
settlers who were in power and so it was
considered to be sort of a backwards
practice that one shouldn't allow
and there's a lot of sort of
relic there's a relic of that in the
sense that
even the upper class black population in
nairobi now still considers urban
agriculture culture to be like a
peasants thing or something that poor
people do and the police very much still
have the right to go in and either
burn down the crops arrest the people
doing it or oftentimes collect a bribe
in return for allowing the people to
and then another thing that you see about
about
surrounding discussions about urban
agriculture not just in africa but in
many parts of the world
is this idea
that it's just not worth investing in
because it's not something that people
in space constrained environments can do
and by space constrained i'm talking
basically about illegal settlements or slums
slums
which is makes up a really large
population of the urban
the urban area so in nairobi about 60
percent of people are considered to be
part of the urban poor and live in one
of the
19 or 20 slums that are in nairobi which
is the capital of kenya so we're talking
about a really significant
proportion of the urban population
living in these environments where you
know the ministry of agriculture
extension workers ngos everybody kind of
says eh it's probably not worth thinking
about herb growing food in that environment
environment
so there's a lot that's being overlooked
if you compare how we're talking about
food and agriculture and community
empowerment here in the united states
compared to how we're talking about
agriculture in kenya and in particular
this idea that
urban agriculture could play any role in
community empowerment and environmental
so i'm going to talk to you about
work that came out of my dissertation at
michigan state university on urban
agriculture in kenya
and i'm going to focus on the kibera
slums which
there are debates over the slides
because it's really hard to get a census
in a slum environment but it's one of
so
kenya east africa kibera is an
interesting place it's um
in the center of nairobi so it's
surrounded by all of these
big like uh open estates and golf
courses and shopping malls and then
there's this incredibly densely planned
settlement so it's only about
maybe a
mile one and a half to two square miles
probably on the order of 400 to 500 000
people living in there on the order of
maybe five to six hundred latrines so
not a lot of toilet no
legally accessible water no
government sponsored sanitation systems
basically it's a free-for-all in kibera
so kibera was settled following world
war ii uh but there nobody really has
title deeds to the land so officially in
the eyes of the kenyan government kibera
doesn't exist and so there just aren't a
lot of services in kibera kibera is
divided into all of these different
neighborhoods which are they called
villages and
they're somewhat divided like they're
somewhat self-organized along ethnic lines
lines
and this is largely the result of some
post-election violence that occurred in 2008
2008
where there was tribal warfare that was
very politically motivated and so people
this is a view looking into the kibera
slums so these are the homes in kibera
they're super super close together so a
pathway between
the houses might be as wide as these two
rows of chairs um and each of those
housing blocks that you see there
probably has three or four housing units
in it each of which contains a family
so very close very densely packed environment
environment
this is one of the more open roads that
kind of runs through the center of kybera
kybera
and what we're starting to see
is that people are trying to farm so
so
even though there's
uh officially no farming activities
going on in kubera people have in fact
started trying to farm but because there
isn't a lot of open space and because
they can't legally access any of that
space what people are doing instead is
they're doing they're practicing
something called sac gardening so
so
they go get these big nylon burlap sacks
that are used to transport things like
rice or
onions or things that get sold at the
little shops on the corner
they fill them up with soil with a
column of stones in the middle to help
with infiltration and then not only now
do you have space to plant into the top
of the sack but you can plant them to
the side of the sacks so
an area where maybe previously you used
to be able to grow three or four plants
so this is a better picture this is kale
growing in one of the sacks kenyans love
kale they call it sukumowiki which means
stretching out the week
because it's a poor man's food and they
eat it on a very regular basis and
luckily kale can
can
you're able to harvest kale and allow it
to continually grow so as long as you
harvest from the bottom it'll just keep
going up and up and up it starts to look
like a dr seuss plant you know it's sort
of like wind itself up to the ceiling of
as i mentioned um there was this
post-election violence that broke out in
kenya in 2008 and
for political reasons that i'm not going
to get into here the police barricaded
off a lot of the entrances into the
kibera slums and people were cut off
from access to food for a long time and
and
there was a french ngo called solidarity
that decided that after that they wanted
to come in and provide
aid food aid but they wanted to teach
people to farm and they noticed there
had been a small number of people that
were doing this sort of container
gardening sat gardening and so they
provided the resources to scale it up so
at the time that i did my study they had
gone from you know maybe a
couple dozen households doing this to
about five to ten thousand households
throughout the slums we're now
practicing sat gardening and they did
this by training field technicians to go
teach workshops on how to build them
providing seedlings to help people plant
and so when i went to to look at sac
gardening it was relatively new in
kubera it had been
scaled up and kind of established for
about three to four years at that point
in time maybe three um
and so i
there was still a lot of discussion they
people said you know
three sack gardens in front of a house like
like
how much can that actually help people
in terms of food security um
people said it's way too contaminated in
the slums you really ought not to be
growing any food there
basically this this isn't worth doing so
there was a lot of concern from ngos and
polit government officials about that
and then there was
there was really no acknowledgement
about this aspect that i talked about of how
how
fat gardening might be sort of drawing
the community together like how is this
an environmental or food justice issue
so i went in and
we conducted this research project to
kind of look at this so was it actually
having a meaningful impact on food
security was there a risk with farming
in kibera and then how was it sort of
changing the way that people thought
so um this was sort of a beast of a
project we had a lot of different things
that we did um
we started out just doing qualitative
interviews with different farmers there
to understand the process of sac
gardening because it was relatively new
one of the interesting things is that uh
particularly in
in many parts of africa
domestic gardening so gardening for sort
of subsistence purposes is very much
considered to be a woman's job so it's
consistent with this idea of maybe
having kitchen gardens or in rural areas
women often are
tasked with growing food for household
consumption and men will often grow the
cash crops so probably 95 of the farmers
that i talked to were women and the men
i talked to were so funny they were very
entrepreneurial i said what do you do
with the kale from your sacks oh i sell
it or i make my mom cook it for me like
they wanted nothing to do with sort of
the home consumption of this
so we did these interviews with farmers
just to kind of get a sense of like what
data should be included in a household survey
survey
we then went on and did the survey of
both farmers so people who had these
sock gardens and then non-farmers
meaning neighbors essentially that that
were not practicing sat gardening
we collected soil from the socks we bought
bought
kale from the socks
we wanted to compensate the farmers for
purchasing some of the kale so that we
could then analyze it to figure out
whether it was contaminated
we also collected samples of the
irrigation water that they used
and then finally we did these focus
group interviews with both farmers and
non-farmers to get at this idea of how
their perceptions of environment had
changed and this idea of community empowerment
empowerment
so i love this picture because it really
captures kind of how sac gardening was
happening in kibera um so this is one of
my research assistants dennis
i was interviewing a farmer and so she
had set up shop with oliver sacks right
next to her house i don't know how
clearly you can see with the lights here
but this right here is a drainage stitch
so as i mentioned there's no formal
sanitation system in kibera so the way
that people keep their yards and
environment clean is they sweep it and
they just sweep it into a drainage ditch
and then their neighbor sweeps it in to
drainage ditch and it just sort of gets
carried all the way through these little
drainage networks down to the nairobi
dam and so
this is basically raw sewage sitting
right here
and people are farming right next to raw
sewage because they have no other
options and so there was a lot of
concern on the part of the farmers about
how clean their vegetables were because
there were just tons i mean so many
flies that you could literally see the
fly poop on their on the kale like big
the farmers that the farmers and
non-farmers that we looked at were
pretty relatively similar you can see
that family size is
actually relatively small compared to
sort of the stereotypes of a huge
african family so a lot of sort of the
effects of urbanization and economic
constraints have caught up in kenya and
so family size is dropping pretty rapidly
rapidly
kenyan education system is divided into
primary school and secondary school so
upper primary basically means they got
through maybe fifth or sixth grade so
so
not a lot of education and they were a
relatively young group of farmers
kale as i said is one of the more
commonly grown crops there but they also grew
grew
i should have swapped that out it's
spinach is this charred so they they
grow lots and lots of swiss chard there
also because it has that habit where you
can kind of pick part of it and the
plant will continue to grow
they also grow a lot of coriander and
green onions and this is primarily
subsistence but about a third of the
farmers end up selling some part of
their crop to kind of supplement their
income from it
and this looks like a tiny amount of
money here but this is actually a huge
proportion of the amount of income that
they survive on so
average household income is maybe
50 to 100 a month so getting five
dollars from the sale of their crops is
okay so this question of food security
that i was talking about um
there are lots of different ways that
you can try and figure out whether a
household is food secure and when i mean
food secure i'm talking about do they
have enough to eat are they getting
enough fry to eat do they have access to
the types of foods that they want to eat
and one of the ways that you can do this
is by measuring how diverse someone's
diet is so if you think about sort of
the stereotypical poor person's diet in
the united states people might subsist
on rice and beans or macaroni and cheese
but if you kind of count which different
food groups they're eating out of it's
pretty limited compared to somebody that
perhaps has
unlimited access at the grocery store
unlimited financial access so they can
buy whatever they want they might start
buying all sorts of fancy fruits and
vegetables and all sorts of condiments
and so you can see that
that
there might be some sort of relationship
between dietary diversity
and how well off a household is and
that's how food secure they are this is
a lot easier to measure than measuring
things like calories and counting
people's portion sizes and so it's kind
of a rough and dirty way of looking at
food security
and it's this index that was developed
by the united states agency for
international development so usaid
and basically you go in you ask people
about everything they ate in the last 24
hours and then you ask for all the
ingredients and the meals that they
cooked fortunately in kenya meals are
pretty simple
and then you categorize them into these
15 different groups and they're grouped
because of their nutritional value so
for example
orange roots and tubers are grouped
because they're high in vitamin a and
orange yellow fruits are grouped because
they're high in vitamin c so the idea is
you know you've got your different
and then because kenyan's diet
the sort of average kenyan's diet
consists of ugali which is this starchy
maize porridge which in southern africa
is called sema but it's like uh it's
just cornmeal mush basically which in
kenya has cooked so hard that you can
like cut it with a knife and then use it
to scoop stuff up
and then they eat leafy green vegetables
that are chopped up in different forms
and that's about it
if they can afford it they'll add some
sort of fish or meat or something so
because leafy green vegetables which is
a single category there is so important
we actually asked about all sorts of
different vegetables that they grow and
when they grow things like sweet
potatoes and pumpkins unlike here they
are eating their leaves so pumpkin
leaves have this really like prickly
texture too which i could never quite
so we found that in terms of vegetable
diversity farmers
consumed a much greater variety of
vegetables and it was interesting
because they were only growing a couple
different vegetables but what they were
doing was selling
their kale selling their swiss chard and
buying indigenous vegetables at the
market which were considered to be more
more expensive and which have lots of
sort of improved nutritional values
and so we saw that their vegetable
diversity was improving we did also see
that a very mild effect in terms of
their overall dietary diversity improving
improving
and it was sort of heartbreaking doing
this part of the study because when you
would do these 24-hour recalls the
average family would have maybe
tea with milk and sugar for breakfast
and then you'd ask about snack nothing
lunch nothing
afternoon snack nothing dinner ugali
ugali
kale maybe a little tomato mixed in so i
mean these are really limited diets that
we're talking about to so to see even a
little bit of
a change is significant from these sac gardens
gardens
we also asked about food security in
terms of whether or not
consuming food from their garden
improved food security and so they said
without a doubt that it saves money for
other kinds of foods it provides extra food
food
people's perceptions of food security
have been shown to be almost as
important as whether or not they're
actually getting the calories in the
sense that it can cause really high
anxiety not knowing where your food's
coming from so
so
something important that came out during
these qualitative interviews is that
it was seen as this sort of leveling
factor so in times of need people knew
that they had something to go through it
was like a security blanket
so when i was asking like what are the
benefits of sac gardening
one of the farmers said the first thing
is that it helps a lot i never go to
sleep hungry and even your child can
never sleep hungry so she knew she was
only getting a few days worth of
vegetables out of it but if she really
needed it she could sell it to her
neighbors or she could go pick something
and cook which is um
which is important and it's something
that we are also seeing with community
gardens in very low income neighborhoods
we asked people to rate
how food secure they felt according to
the scale like always eating enough of
what they want all the way to frequently
not eating enough
and again
the first thing i'd like to point out is
if we're comparing farmers and
non-farmers here this is 10 so fewer
than 10 percent of households felt food
secure but where you start to see a
difference here is that farmers were
eating enough but not what they wanted
whereas non-farmers were sometimes not
eating enough to frequently not eating
enough so it was just shifting the
balance ever so slightly which is really
a lot to expect of a few you know sacks
of kale outside of somebody's front steps
and then finally the last way that we
looked at this idea of food security was
we said okay that was over one month
we're going to go back 12 months and
we're going to ask you how food secure
you felt in terms of all of these
scenarios ranging from being worried
about running out of food all the way to
going an entire day and night without food
and you can see that there are really
really really high levels of food
insecurity in kibera so
almost constant worry about running out
of food or eating foods that they don't
like oh it's horrifying going through
the transcripts for a lot of these um
interviews and focus groups hearing
people talk about buying questionable
meat from the butcher as in like they
didn't they weren't certain that it was
the animal they were getting like they
were pretty sure it was cat to not be for
for
rats or all sorts of animal parts that
they just couldn't identify but they
and there were still a rather
significant number that sort of reported
going to sleep hungry at night but where
we saw a difference here was that
farmers were statistically less likely
to reduce the number of meals that they
ate per day so that it was sort of um
and what we think is that this was
related to this idea of social capital so
so
social capital did i get to this here
is this idea that um
social capital basically is defined as
like the
how strong are your networks of friends
um and your your linkages to community
members so in a time of need do you have
someone you could call if you need extra
help is there someone that could loan
you money is there somebody that could
give you a bit of food
if you have a lot of social capital
you're well connected if you have no
social capital you're basically on your own
and what we and we had picked up in the
qualitative interviews that these
gardeners had shared vegetables with
their friends on a really regular basis
so one farmer said a benefit of sac
gardening is that when i plant and the
sukuma which are the kale are plenty i
harvest and eat them and if you find
that your friend does not have anything
to eat you pick some for them so
this was her saying this is a benefit
for me like i now have something i can
and we also looked at whether sat
gardening had changed their relationship
with their neighbors in kibera
kibera is one of these how many of you
have ever lived in like a dorm room or a
crowded apartment or been on top of each
other's toes little things can spark a
lot of conflict right like somebody
doesn't do the dishes and you're pissed
for a week um kibera is like that it's
this really inflammatory environment
because it's so crowded and everybody is
on top of each other and everybody is
very stressed because they're in a
stressful environment
if we could
measure whether or not sex gardening had
sort of smoothed out those relationships
and improved relationships with their
neighbors that would be really
significant impact in terms of linking
the community together and empowering
them in some way
so what we did find was that overall
whether they were farming or not
respondents who had better relationships
with their neighbors were just less
likely to be food insecure so they were
less likely to worry about running out
of food they were less likely to reduce
the meals that they ate
but what we also found was that sac
gardening really played a positive role
in improving relationships with their neighbors
neighbors
so um a lot of farmers like two-thirds
of our farmers said that they got along
better with their neighbors than before
they started farming and this probably
had to do with the fact that they were
now able to kind of share
food with their neighbors
other farmers were really pissed because
their neighbors kept stealing their food
but for the most part it seemed to sort
of have a good impact on their
relationships and so they were now much
less likely to find themselves with no
food in the house and what was
interesting is it kind of spilled over
into other aspects of their lives they
talked about now having
made friends so they had someone to
watch their children if they needed to
go do an odd job or they had somebody to
okay so that that first question that i
was talking about was people said this
is a short-term coping strategy it's not
really worth paying attention to people
really can't farm in slum environments
and if they do no way is it going to
impact their actual food security
because it's too small of a quantity and
our research seems to suggest actually
it does have a bit of an impact it's not
a vast impact people who do this are not
suddenly not having food problems but
it's it's enough to kind of nudge them
in the direction of being a bit more
food secure
the second question if you remember was
this concern over farming and polluted
environments so are there these
trade-offs between improving food
security but maybe being exposed to all
sorts of environmental toxins through farming
so as i said
there are no formal sanitation systems
in kibera it is a polluted environment i am
am
blessed perhaps with a really terrible
sense of smell because a lot of other
people that i work with in kibera would
like gag constantly from um just sort of
the open sewage that's there but i was
i could smell it but i wasn't terribly
bothered by it
um but the people even the people who
live in kibera you just don't adapt to
that and so they had a lot of concerns
over sort of the quality of the
environment there concerns
concerns
about not just uh trash that was lying
around but because there aren't very
many latrines in kibera
relative to the population size and
because people have to pay to use those
latrines that are there people often
don't pay they just go wherever and
there's this thing in the kibera slums
called a flying toilet so people
defecate into a plastic bag and then
just chuck it wherever um and wherever
it lands that's where it lands and
oftentimes that's on people's houses or
on their gardens or on their children or
um you know there's yeah
i mean a thorough wash down after being
in the kibera slums
so when we interviewed farmers they were
concerned about the environment and they
were really concerned about these flies
and dust and again i i apologize that
you probably can't see this very well
but all those brown spots there that's
fly poop so
so
just really large numbers of insects
crawling all over their plants and so
they were concerned about needing to
really thoroughly wash and scrub
there was lots of concern about people
urinating and defecating on or near the
vegetables so lots of complaints about
usually men coming home from the bar
drunk at night and like peeing on their
plants um there was also concern that
like if people didn't use these flying
toilets they would often go looking for
somewhere that was a little bit more
secluded and like sack gardens kind of
create a barrier so at night people
would go behind them to defecate and
then people would come out in the
morning and find piles of human
excrement next to their plants
and then lots of concern about trash
i being trained as a soil scientist was
perhaps more alarmed um when i learned that
that
i mean there isn't a lot of open space
so to find soil people had to be
creative they would go to any open space
that they could find and an obvious open
space and a giant slum is the trash dump right
right
so they would go to these big trash
dumps and they would dig up as much soil
as they could and they'd pull out the
really obvious big stuff like plastic
bags and pieces of clothing and broken
glass bottles and then they'd put them
into the sacks and they'd grow their
food and they had really awesome things
to say they said this is really rich
soil because people had dumped organic
matter there too right like you you know
all their food waste went in with all
this other stuff but i mean there was
everything in there there was you know
old cell phones all sorts of old
electronics and so there's lots of
concerns about things leaching into the
soil that perhaps was not being
accounted for
and then
excuse me
people would explicitly go to these dump
sites and dig them up as a source of
manure for their plants so we go to the
garden store and buy fertilizer they go
but they didn't pers they didn't
perceive that as a risk so oftentimes
you see this
with environmental problems and this
isn't just in kenya in the united states
it's really well documented that how
people perceive risks and um the way
that we measure risks are often
different so i'm sure you can think of
any number of environmental issues but
climate change is a really easy one to
think about in the united states science
models often say something different than
than
members of the population view
view
sort of the risk of climate change and
so this is true about any environmental
problem and certainly was true about
sort of the risks from urban agriculture
and the way people think about risk is
often linked to education like are they
do they know about potential risks it's
linked to gender it's linked to sort of
so we measured perception of risk by in
our household survey asking about kind
of what concerns did they have what did
they do to mitigate the risk and then we
actually tested the water soil and kale for
for
heavy metal contamination so things that
might have been leached out of those
electronics or from old industries or
they use leaded gasoline in kenya until
the 90s and lead kind of sticks around
in the soil
so lead and then
we kind of compared and we also measured
total coliform bacteria
and total coliform bacteria is just a
good indicator of all sorts of other
biological pathogens things like typhoid
and cholera and dysentery and things
that would give you diarrhea or much worse
so it was interesting when we asked
people what might be contaminating
vegetables in their sac garden they were
very obviously concerned about dust and
flies and so we asked the farmers we
also asked the non-farmers because that
changes whether or not they're willing
to sort of share food with their
neighbor and maybe take on the practice themselves
themselves
soil really not concerned
in terms of what people did to mitigate
these problems so to solve these
problems they said sometimes they use
different soil
things that they were concerned about in
the soil they were most concerned about
glass because they cut their hands when
they were collecting the soil and
putting it in the trash but is anyone
here taking chemistry is glass an issue
in terms of consumption from that soil
pretty inert right so so that's like
misplaced that's that's a good example
of sort of perception versus risk
in terms of trash they swept they washed
their vegetables they put up these
fences they constructed out of old um
old facts
for flies dust and human waste they just
washed their vegetables really well they
said sometimes they put a little bleach
into the wash water and basically they
said we do this and now our vegetables
are fine like no concerns about the
heavy metals was something that
literally did not come up in conversing
with 306 farmers or 306 people in kibera
so all the farmers all the non-farmers
qualitative interviews no concerns about
heavy metals largely because most of
them had not probably not gotten to chemistry
chemistry
in their education system so they just
didn't have any knowledge about that but
as i said there are all sorts of
concerns about it being in the
environment from industrial waste from
batteries from leaded gasoline that was
used relatively recently in kenya
and consuming heavy metals
is nasty in the really long term so this
isn't something that's going to be
acute in the sense that it's a huge dose
and they instantly get poisoned but over
a long-term period of consumption so 10
years or 20 years there are really
serious health risks so there's concerns
about cancer
lead in particular there's all sorts of
documented neurological issues
particularly in younger children there
are all sorts of concerns in the united
states about lead paint
and so lead is an issue it can cause
chronic pain so basically it causes
severe osteoporosis in your bones and
your bones start to disintegrate and you
have severe pain and
and
crops like kale
are phytoaccumulants which means they
are really efficient at pulling all
these heavy metals out of the soil into
their roots and then up into their
leaves which is the part that we consume
and so more so than say a tomato plant
or a pepper plant consumption of kale
puts you at risk if the soil is heavily
polluted and if you consume it
frequently and in kenya they do they eat
so as i said at the beginning of the
talk we went and we collected these soil
samples we collected
plant samples this is us getting a
sample of irrigation water so farmers
would go purchase the water for their
plants because
they didn't have you know running water
and we analyzed them in country because
soil permits are a pain in the rear to
deal with and so we looked at a range of
heavy metals but in terms of analyses
i'll just talk about arsenic lead and cadmium
cadmium um
um
so these are the different villages in
kibera based upon where people collected
their soil from so kind of stratified geographically
geographically
and this is the concentration of cadmium
in the kale leaves if the soil was
collected from these villages that make sense
sense
this line here is the maximum safe level
that's recommended by the food and
agriculture organization and the world
health organization
so you can see that there are perhaps
some concerns about the concentrations
of cadmium but it's not outrageously
above this recommended level
although this is a very generic
recommendation so this is the fao saying
on average people in the world consume kale
kale
once a month twice a month so this seems
like a reasonably safe level
i think you'd probably be hard-pressed
to find an american that consumes kale
with the sort of vigor that a kenyan
does not too many people eat it like
every day
where it starts to get a little more
alarming is when we look at the data on
arsenic and lead so there are specific
points specific villages in kibera where
if you collected soil from there it was
just really very polluted so in this
case we're looking at arsenic levels and
you can see a similar picture with lead levels
levels
machina and mashimoni which are to the
villages that that are sort of alarming
in both of these cases
are uh a bit more developed in the sense
there's a road that goes through them
the rail line goes through them so
there's just bit more sort of traffic
and industry that
might have occurred there
and so we went and uh
collected gps coordinates for some of
the popular soil collection sites and then
then
referenced where they were from and you
can see there are these hot spots so
this is parts per million of arsenic
and and then where they collected where
the soil was collected from
and so this line right here that's
running through is the railway line that
actually goes all the way from the coast
of kenya to uganda and it goes through
the kibera slums
out here is the major road that sort of
enters kibera and this was a football um
sorry soccer field where they had dumped
a bunch of soil and the city council
dumped a bunch of soil and was smoothing
out and they were going to have
political rallies there and the farmers
went there at night like clandestinely
with their little flashlights and stole
all the soil before they could smooth
out the field to build their sack gardens
gardens
clearly wherever they got it was highly
polluted and you see this similar
pictures with lead there's a big road
that roads here and so these there are
these hot spots um in terms of sort of
risky areas in the slums where people
were collecting soil but it's
problematic because there aren't a lot
of open spaces where people can collect soil
soil
so as i said there were these these hot
spots near the railroad this open field
that was north of kibera
along the road and then there's this the
nairobi dam down in the southeast corner
of kibera
and so there was this geographic
relationship where we could sort of tell
community workers we could tell ngo
workers we could tell the farmers like
these are places that really ought to be
avoided in terms of concerns about soil quality
but the positive news so that was sort
of the scary news in terms of concerns
about environmental contamination but
the positive news related to concerns
about um total coliform bacteria which
was that indicator of other diseases
like cholera and typhoid and so forth
so we tested the kale and we tested the
irrigation water
and then we compared it to kale that had
been bought
on urban farms near kibera
we went to wet markets which you can
just think of as like big open air
markets where there are you know
vegetable vendors set up on the ground
selling their goods um we went to
supermarkets and we went to the high-end
specialty stores so these are like
the supermarkets that all the
expatriates shop in because they're
crazy expensive and they're in like
secluded shopping malls and so forth
and if you look here so these are orders
of magnitude right and the cool thing is
fat gardening was sort of the least
polluted of the kale um that was found so
so
by like a couple orders of magnitude so
this probably has to do with the supply
chain when you go to a wet market or you
go to a supermarket the kale was picked
on the farm and then it was probably
washed in some questionably clean water
and then handled by another person and
stocked and then handled by another
person and put into your bag
whereas from the sac gardens it was just
like the farmer that was collecting it so
so
the united states department of
agriculture would probably have a heyday
with those numbers but by kenyan
standards it was relatively clean and
when you cook it it kind of kills all
that stuff off anyway so
we were able to tell the farmers that a
lot of their perceived concerns about
the environment really were
perhaps less threatening than sort of
the other sources where they could get
but here's the part where
i think the story gets the most
interesting because it's it's just not
how people talk about urban agriculture
in east africa
so i'm going to get up here just so i
can show you this
so this is a google earth map of the
kibera slums and i apologize it's just
very hard to see this but this is the
outline of kibera
and what you can maybe see
if we zoom in
is there are almost no trees here so
these are all the tin roofs that i was
showing you or the metal corrugated
roofs and there's like a dot of trees
here a dot of trees there but there's
almost none of that green space that i
was talking about having
limited access to
and with green space
green spaces have shown to be positive
for the environment in terms of
you know improving air quality perhaps or
or
maybe providing habitat for animals in
the united you know in areas where we
think about green spaces being much
larger but the psychological benefits of
green space have been documented to be
even more beneficial so
putting a little green space into a neighborhood
neighborhood
that has no other access to green space
has been shown to lower crime lower
rates of depression
improve sort of community linkages all
sorts of things that you might not think
would be associated with just having a
few trees
and look what sac gardening was starting
to do to this environment that otherwise
so in these focus group discussions that
we had with both farmers and non-farmers
we asked we we asked about environmental
problems in kibera because we wanted to
know whether they thought sat gardening
was changing the environment of kibara
in any way and they were so quick to be
able to list off you know all the
problems in kibara so
so
all sorts of concerns about air quality
animals crowding electrical wires
there's no official electricity in
kibera so wires are just sort of
haphazardly strong as people kind of like
like pay
pay
the handyman to string it together so
there's lots and lots of electrical
fires lots and lots of examples of lines
falling on the ground and kids touching
him and being electrocuted so concerns
about poorly constructed houses water
water
you name it
oh that was odd so
so um
just as an example one farmer said in my
area we experienced all these problems
but the most disturbing one is the water
situation most of the water pipes pass
through those dirty trenches or sewers
which is the same water we use
domestically and their pipes are pvc
plastic and crack all the time so stuff
just like gets in the water
or sometimes you may find when one of
the houses does not have toilets you
find some of them opt to use plastic
bags and later dispose of them but they
just throw them anywhere it might even
fall on someone and this person who was
talking said she'd had one land on her
but interestingly people there
fluidly merged like when we tried to ask
about problems with the physical
environment they just kept talking about
the social environment for them in urban
areas the social and physical
environment were one and the same like
you couldn't you couldn't improve one
without proving the other or degrade one
without degrading the other so they
talked about all sorts of problems with
noise pollution with idleness with
really really high crime in kibera with
drug abuse
and so
they identified all these problems
and then when we asked about who is
responsible for
addressing these problems or could these
problems be addressed
the vast majority of the people that we
were interviewing in these focus groups
basically just said they felt really
powerless to address them so
so
in particular they sort of linked it to
corruption of government officials so
they said with the leaders we have these
days it's become such that whatever
project comes our way the chairman or
the chief must be present and then they
hand out the jobs created to their
relatives or people they know personally
all i'm stating is that our leaders
contribute to this problem a lot you
have to bribe your way into a job these
days so and kenya if you look at sort of
corruption indices for the world kenya
is like one of the more one of the more
corrupt nations in the country and so
it's easy to see how people as a
community feel really disempowered they
feel very powerless to do anything
but when we started to ask about whether
people could change the environment the
non-farmers kind of went back to this
whole idea of like why even try there's
so much corruption
sacked farmers talked differently they
didn't say they could fix the
environmental problems in kubera
but they did use really different sort of
of
verbiage they said like if we clean
things up the environment will be clean
or cleanliness starts with yourself
and they talked about all these efforts
they'd gone to to clean the environment
near their sac gardening and how that
was changing how they thought about the
rest of the environment in kibera so
thinking about sweeping away trash or
putting up these makeshift fences or
having conversations with their
neighbors about cleaning up the area
there so it would be cleaner for their gardens
and so
to them this was greening the
environment there they said you know you
see the way it looks here in kibera
maybe there's no fresh air there are no
trees but maybe the gardening project
that started has made it better because
now when someone comes to visit my house
they claim the air has changed here a
bit normally the air we breathe is
totally polluted
or when you look back you realize
there's no more garbage in this area
because of cultivation so because they
have these sock gardenings so there's
they were it was interesting because
consistently they started to talk about
how the environment was just a little
bit greener or just a little bit cleaner
because these sac gardenings were there um
um
but it also had become this form of
community empowerment
they really
spoke very passionately about how having
set up these sac garden projects had
had
impacted the social environment of
kibara so they felt like now because
they were cultivating these areas that
had been vacant people were no longer
going there as like a an area to convect
you know
drug trades or all sorts of other crime
that was going on in kibera
um and so
they felt there were certain areas that
had been very risky particularly for
women and girls to walk through that now
were a bit safer
and they also talked a lot about how
urban agriculture had become this
teaching tool that they were building
these ecological ecological citizens
amongst their children
so they said zack gardening has become a
practical lesson for my children
it's helped them know the different
types of crops grown in farms at least
now if i take them up country to our
home i will not be embarrassed that they
do not know things so a lot of people
maintain ties to their rural areas like
where their grandparents lived and they
talked about being thoroughly
embarrassed because their children
couldn't identify a tomato plant or a
corn plant because they literally had no
opportunity to see it and now they had
and this i think most aptly summarizes
this shift that's kind of occurred so at
the end of the day the whole community
is now thinking as one and helping each
other another benefit that sac gardening
has brought to our community
so i don't want to glorify sacrament it
hasn't fixed kibera in any sense but
farmers really genuinely felt empowered
by practicing sac gardening so
so
yes sat gardening had these positive
impacts in terms of food security
modest improvements in dietary diversity
people felt a little bit more food secure
secure
we found that perceived risks and
measured risks in terms of the
environment were not the same some were
less some were more in terms of
trade-offs we're talking about long-term
potential risk from heavy metals versus
immediately improving food security
probably one should continue to advocate
and so you just need to consider how to
promote it so the vegetables are safe to eat
eat
but here's here's where
i went back and did these um feedback
workshops with policy makers so people
from the ministry of agriculture and
different ngos in the area and then the
farmers what i really tried to emphasize
beyond sort of these more practical
findings were that the value of urban
agriculture goes way beyond just sort of
improving household food security or
building social capital
and so
we have the potential in africa to talk
about urban agriculture the way that we
talk about it in in more developed
nations it doesn't have to be this
fantastic thing for the community here
and coping strategy for the poor there
it can be seen as this tool to sort of
build up community empowerment while
we're trying to think about these issues
of food insecurity
and it can be thought about as a way to
address issues of environmental justice
that they very clearly are facing as
sort of poor disadvantaged populations
that don't have access to political will
to political capital to social capital
to change their environment
and so it's really important to think
about how do we facilitate urban
agriculture so i actually was involved
in helping draft an urban agriculture
policy in kenya that will legalize urban
agriculture and therefore mandate the
ministry of agriculture to send
extension workers into the slums and
help help them work on urban agriculture issues
issues
and so
just getting back to this idea that
we're now thinking about food justice
not just um
not just in
the united states not just in canada or
not just in europe but thinking about
how do you bring together these issues
of race class and identity in other
parts of the world when we talk about
food systems
so i feel like this conversation
needs to go from being discussed in the
global north to being discussed in the
global south and it has to a certain
extent been applied to
advocating on behalf of sort of
disenfranchised populations in rural
areas so rural agriculture has gotten a
lot of focus how do we feed the poor how
do we sort of the green revolution conversations about the savage gotten
conversations about the savage gotten tied up in this but urban areas have
tied up in this but urban areas have been almost forgotten when we talk about
been almost forgotten when we talk about agriculture in other parts of the world
agriculture in other parts of the world and so
and so how do we link together these ideas of
how do we link together these ideas of food access growing food community
food access growing food community empowerment and environmental justice
empowerment and environmental justice in developing countries is really where
in developing countries is really where i've been headed with my research so i'm
i've been headed with my research so i'm now working on a project in malawi sort
now working on a project in malawi sort of extending this conversation to
of extending this conversation to farming
farming malawi is this like sleepy country that
malawi is this like sleepy country that nobody ever thinks about in sort of
nobody ever thinks about in sort of southern eastern africa where a lot of
southern eastern africa where a lot of the same issues are being faced but
the same issues are being faced but there's even less donor attention
there's even less donor attention there and so we're kind of looking at
there and so we're kind of looking at these issues of community empowerment
these issues of community empowerment through urban agriculture there
through urban agriculture there and before i wrap up i just want to
and before i wrap up i just want to acknowledge
acknowledge i got a lot of funding support to do my
i got a lot of funding support to do my research from different agencies which
research from different agencies which was very much appreciated and then i
was very much appreciated and then i absolutely have to acknowledge all the
absolutely have to acknowledge all the amazing farmers that i worked with on
amazing farmers that i worked with on that that helped me bring this data to
that that helped me bring this data to life
life so with that thank you for listening
courtney thank you so very much for for enriching us with this
for enriching us with this with this uh report of your study that
with this uh report of your study that is essentially integrated physical
is essentially integrated physical geography human geography and then some
geography human geography and then some a bit of environmental perception thrown
a bit of environmental perception thrown in there it's amazing really when we
in there it's amazing really when we think about how to empower those that
think about how to empower those that are disenfranchised
are disenfranchised often
often i'm sure we don't think that providing
i'm sure we don't think that providing them with an opportunity to engage in
them with an opportunity to engage in their own agriculture
their own agriculture really
really enables them to shape part of their own
enables them to shape part of their own destiny this is this is really
destiny this is this is really captivating to me are there any
captivating to me are there any questions that
questions that anybody has for dr gallagher at the
anybody has for dr gallagher at the moment
moment no i have a question have you when you
no i have a question have you when you were conducting your field work
were conducting your field work in the slums it's not a very pleasant
in the slums it's not a very pleasant place and you know not all of us are are
place and you know not all of us are are blessed with the with the uh
blessed with the with the uh nose that i have that enables me to
nose that i have that enables me to breathe all kinds of air and distinguish
breathe all kinds of air and distinguish between many types
between many types as you mentioned
as you mentioned really
really you know was that one of the one of the
you know was that one of the one of the benefits perhaps of being able to to
benefits perhaps of being able to to wander around was it a safe environment
wander around was it a safe environment for you because i think not no no it
for you because i think not no no it really wasn't um
really wasn't um i was pretty careful i'd done a lot of
i was pretty careful i'd done a lot of work in kibera before i always worked
work in kibera before i always worked with field assistants who were from
with field assistants who were from kibera i also had a team of four
kibera i also had a team of four male research assistants that were
male research assistants that were university students that kind of we
university students that kind of we traveled and packed together for the
traveled and packed together for the survey but we ended up having to drop
survey but we ended up having to drop one of those villages so we our survey
one of those villages so we our survey was in all 10 of those villages in
was in all 10 of those villages in kibera and we ended up having to drop
kibera and we ended up having to drop data um from one of them because we got
data um from one of them because we got mugged in the process of doing our
mugged in the process of doing our research and so they stole all of our
research and so they stole all of our surveys and still well they stole
surveys and still well they stole everything off of me um so we ended up
everything off of me um so we ended up we regrouped we were able to go but
we regrouped we were able to go but after that i sort of was a lot more
after that i sort of was a lot more cautious about which parts of keyboard i
cautious about which parts of keyboard i went into um because it was broad
went into um because it was broad daylight it was two in the afternoon um
daylight it was two in the afternoon um like that must have been frightening yes
like that must have been frightening yes yes it was frightening but
yes it was frightening but there's such a strong pull for me there
there's such a strong pull for me there i actually had started a dissertation
i actually had started a dissertation project on the coast of kenya it was
project on the coast of kenya it was this beautiful environment like
this beautiful environment like literally i could walk to the beach and
literally i could walk to the beach and go snorkeling in three minutes um and
go snorkeling in three minutes um and the project sort of disintegrated and
the project sort of disintegrated and then i found myself working in the slums
then i found myself working in the slums and at first i was um interested in the
and at first i was um interested in the question and kind of bummed about the
question and kind of bummed about the placement right but there's it's such an
placement right but there's it's such an interesting sort of
interesting sort of inner intersection of all these
inner intersection of all these different geography questions and then
different geography questions and then the opportunity to work with a really
the opportunity to work with a really disenfranchised population that i just
disenfranchised population that i just it made me want to cry every day leaving
it made me want to cry every day leaving kybara but i kept going back because i
kybara but i kept going back because i felt like i did have this opportunity to
felt like i did have this opportunity to give
give it really was an amazing opportunity
it really was an amazing opportunity do you have any recommendations for uh
do you have any recommendations for uh students that may wish to engage in
students that may wish to engage in field studies in africa in particular
field studies in africa in particular um i sort of fell into working in africa
um i sort of fell into working in africa to be honest i
to be honest i decided to study abroad which is
decided to study abroad which is something that i encourage any and all
something that i encourage any and all of you to do if you're able to for any
of you to do if you're able to for any amount of time and i had been a high
amount of time and i had been a high school exchange student to france and so
school exchange student to france and so i wanted to go somewhere french speaking
i wanted to go somewhere french speaking that wasn't europe so i just randomly
that wasn't europe so i just randomly picked senegal in west africa and moved
picked senegal in west africa and moved there for 11 months much to the chagrin
there for 11 months much to the chagrin of my parents
of my parents but i sort of fell in love with africa i
but i sort of fell in love with africa i mean people who work in africa i'm sure
mean people who work in africa i'm sure dr davido can tell you just like it gets
dr davido can tell you just like it gets in your blood and you keep going back
in your blood and you keep going back but it doesn't have to be africa i just
but it doesn't have to be africa i just add i really cannot advocate strongly
add i really cannot advocate strongly enough just getting connected to another
enough just getting connected to another environment through study abroad
environment through study abroad opportunities if any of you are
opportunities if any of you are considering at any point in your life
considering at any point in your life going on to graduate school there are
going on to graduate school there are often professors who already have
often professors who already have established
established research programs there that bring
research programs there that bring students to do work with them there are
students to do work with them there are all sorts of other ways to kind of get
all sorts of other ways to kind of get into the field through programs like
into the field through programs like peace corps or
peace corps or other sort of
other sort of volunteer abroad opportunities and so
volunteer abroad opportunities and so so i don't know i i'm happy to talk with
so i don't know i i'm happy to talk with specific students there are lots of
specific students there are lots of different routes to the field but um
different routes to the field but um train yourself broadly i end up using
train yourself broadly i end up using all sorts of bizarre skills that i don't
all sorts of bizarre skills that i don't i i it it i mean
i i it it i mean it is really unique that you went from
it is really unique that you went from soil science to
soil science to essentially
essentially a blend of cultural and physical
a blend of cultural and physical geography yeah you know i uh studies i
geography yeah you know i uh studies i did masters work in malawi and i was
did masters work in malawi and i was working on a bean breeding project and i
working on a bean breeding project and i i was there talking to these women and
i was there talking to these women and men about
men about bean breeding and soil quality and i
bean breeding and soil quality and i thought i am just missing i'm asking the
thought i am just missing i'm asking the wrong questions in this picture like i
wrong questions in this picture like i need to be talking to people about their
need to be talking to people about their cultural landscapes if i want to
cultural landscapes if i want to understand their agricultural systems
understand their agricultural systems and also then you're able to shape
and also then you're able to shape policy yeah you're not able to shape
policy yeah you're not able to shape policy if you don't have an
policy if you don't have an understanding of the people
understanding of the people did you have a question
i uh i was not here at the beginning so you may have addressed
you may have addressed this
this but i can i can see that most of the
but i can i can see that most of the farmers that you put there are or women
farmers that you put there are or women is that true women are the the ones who
is that true women are the the ones who are in terms of urban agriculture it's
are in terms of urban agriculture it's it tends to be true um depending on the
it tends to be true um depending on the size of the farm like in kibera where i
size of the farm like in kibera where i worked it was probably 95 women um if
worked it was probably 95 women um if you look at urban agriculture more
you look at urban agriculture more generally in africa it's often 70 to 80
generally in africa it's often 70 to 80 percent and a lot of that just said
percent and a lot of that just said a lot of that has to do with perceptions
a lot of that has to do with perceptions of what you do with this food so in
of what you do with this food so in traditional agricultural systems in most
traditional agricultural systems in most parts of africa women were tasked with
parts of africa women were tasked with subsistence agriculture and men are
subsistence agriculture and men are in charge of cash crop agriculture and
in charge of cash crop agriculture and that has to do with whether they have
that has to do with whether they have access to money to buy tractors or seeds
access to money to buy tractors or seeds or anything and so um
or anything and so um so this is just sort of a carryover
so this is just sort of a carryover urban agriculture is often small it's
urban agriculture is often small it's used directly for home food consumption
used directly for home food consumption so it's considered to be sort of the
so it's considered to be sort of the women's domain it also fits really well
women's domain it also fits really well with other things like taking care of
with other things like taking care of babies and cooking and all that
babies and cooking and all that at this point we've run out of time let
at this point we've run out of time let me just state please that there are
me just state please that there are more sessions over the course of the
more sessions over the course of the next two days
next two days we
we will have a speaker tomorrow evening at
will have a speaker tomorrow evening at the fountain street church and then
the fountain street church and then thursday evening here and there are
thursday evening here and there are talks during the day
talks during the day thank you so much for attending and
thank you so much for attending and please give a last round of applause for
please give a last round of applause for dr gallagher thank you so much
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