Sustainable Urban Agriculture

Seeds of Inspiration 

Volunteering at San Quentin State Prison, we heard from people being held in the medium security unit how deeply healing it was to grow and care for plants. For some, our classes inspired a desire to pursue full time work in sustainable urban agriculture. Ever since, PJ’s purpose has been to create dignified, land-based jobs for people coming home from incarceration, meeting not just financial needs, but also needs for healthy and meaningful livelihoods, connection with nature, and a peaceful, healing work environment.

Countering Unhealthy Urban Design

Modern cities and farms are designed to shed water and nutrients, resulting in toxic pollution that disproportionately affects environmental justice communities. Our social enterprises demonstrate alternative models appropriate to the urban ecologies we live in and provide opportunities for good land-based livelihoods for people most affected by these injustices. 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 our bottomland urban communities have topsoils too contaminated for food production, we are developing an aquaponics incubator farm.

Permaculture Values

Deeply embedded in permaculture is a respect for the “Life Ethic.” Living beings are not to be valued only according to their usefulness to humans, but respected and cherished for their own intrinsic worth. This ethic is woven throughout permaculture systems design and held together by core values:

1. Care of Earth

We expand our circles of care to include all living and nonliving beings that share this planet with us.

2. Care of People

We promote self-reliance, holistic health, and well-being for individuals and communities.

3. Setting Limits to Consumption

We reduce our impact, or how much we take from other living beings in order to meet our own needs, as much as we can.

4. Returning the Surplus

We give the surplus beyond what we use for our essential needs back to the earth. Our goal is to leave our planet healthier than we found it.

If you’re local, come volunteer and learn directly with us on the land.

Related Resources

• Basins
• What is Food Sovereignty?
• Understanding Permaculture