Sustainable Urban Agriculture

Sustainable Urban Agriculture

Growing healthy local food economies

Seeds of Inspiration 

Volunteering at San Quentin State Prison, we heard from people in the medium security unit how growing and caring for plants as part of a class was deeply healing. For some, our classes inspired a desire to work with plants full time. PJ has worked ever since to create dignified, land-based jobs for people coming home from prison and jail that meet not just financial needs, but also needs for healthy and meaningful work, ancestral connection, and a peaceful, healing work environment. 

Growing Local Food Systems

Our social enterprises work together to teach people how to grow their own food and provide the materials they need to create economic and job pathways for sustainable urban agriculture full time. In the urban East Bay, where the bottomlands have been paved over, our Mother Farm shows how to harvest water and grow an abundance of food on undeveloped sloping hillsides. Since the litte remaining topsoil left in the flatlands is too contaminated for food production, we are incubating an intensive production model suitable on paved and contaminated land with the aquaponics incubator farm.

The Impact
7500
People learned to grow food and medicine
600
Gardens built
10000
Pounds of food grown each year

    • Planting Justice opened doors for me I never thought possible. In this environment, you’re not a number, you’re a person. You get encouraged to be in leadership positions, to introduce new things to the program. You have a lot of room to grow.

      1. Sol Mercado, Re-entry Coordinator
        Planting Justice since 2010
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