UC San Diego

In disparate contexts, urban agriculture has been heralded as the solution to many perceived social ills: community food insecurity, corporatization of the food system, and the food deserts in which many underserved populations reside. The urban agriculture movement is therefore not only an ecological or environmental one—it is also resoundingly social, political, and ethical. This dissertation therefore investigates the relationship between urban food production, race and class, political economy, and the formation of place-based community in the San Diego-Tijuana metropolitan region. Grounded in thirty-six months of ethnographic and mixed methods fieldwork in San Diego and Tijuana, I analyze the complexities, contradictions, and nuances of what it means to be a food producer situated in a larger social movement pushed forward from multiple angles, including community-based organizations, non-profits, and regional government. To do this, I emphasize four main values that govern food producers’ engagement with their work, especially as they push against mainstream neoliberal market values—those are self-determination, connection to land, community, and hope through prefigurative politics. In uplifting these counter-hegemonic values embodied by urban agriculturalists, I deliver three main propositions about the use of urban agriculture in this area: (1) the culture of urban agriculture aims to produce ethical subjects ready for an alternative politico-economic future; (2) urban agriculture has the potential to be both a radical, liberatory countermovement as well as a neoliberal enterprise that reengages capitalist logics; and (3) urban food producers struggle with competing forms of valuation derived from this radical versus neoliberal tension. This account of urban agriculture reveals that urban food production in underserved areas is a significant act in a growing borderland foodscape, where understandings of where food is sourced and what it means to eat and grow ethically shape local communities. Within these communities, practitioners and residents debate, define, and transform contemporary values around food production, social equity, and belonging. This work focuses a critical lens on capitalist modes of production and unequal food distribution models, furthering the anthropological study of how the retraction of governmental social services in light of neoliberal policies most negatively affects the poor and marginalized.