Doria Robinson Discusses the Disproportionate Impact of Climate Change

I'm back. I'm sorry. [laughs]

So, one thing that I like to think about,

when I think about alternative meats and other such things,

my partner was vegan for many, many years.

Do we have any vegans, vegetarians in the audience here?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, all right. Let's go. [chuckles]

Was vegan for many, many years.

I am not,

which I say with great shame,

but he had to change his diet,

for medical reasons,

because for some reason,

he just couldn't absorb iron the same way

from vegetable sources,

or at least that's what his doctor at the time said,

maybe we need a better doctor.

But in any event,

the one thing that I learned

when we were first starting to date,

and it was very vegan,

was that instead of thinking about a lot of these foods

as replacements for the thing that...

And, this is another way

that I actually like to talk to people

who eat a lot of meat, about, like, soy bacon.

Like, my favorite soy bacon,

I'm not gonna give this to you and say,

It tastes just like, bacon. You'll love it.

I mean, they're gonna love it,

but it's not gonna replace bacon for them.

For me, it's like, a perfect sandwich topping, right?

Like, I don't have to fry it up.

I can just take it out of the package and put it...

I mean, maybe I shouldn't actually do that,

but like, I can just put it on a piece of bread,

and it's delicious.

And, that to me is the kind of way

that we should be looking at these kinds of foods

going forward.

Just like, we just said, you know,

there's gonna be better options in the future.

Like, when my partner was vegan before,

we didn't have cheese,

we didn't have vegan cheese that could melt,

and now, we're talking about vegan cheese that can melt,

like, it's a real thing.

And, I love cheese.

I am lactose intolerant, but I love cheese.

[crowd laughs]

So, if I die, it will be by my own hand.

But anyway, that's the way to think about

these kinds of new technologies,

is not just replacements for the things

that we already eat and enjoy.

One great example,

I like to talk to people about,

is Mapo Tofu.

If anybody is a big fan of Mapo Tofu, I am.

But it boggles the mind of many, you know,

very traditional American people,

with traditional American diets.

They're like, Wait, wait, wait.

There's tofu and there's meat in it?

Like, Yes!

the meat is a seasoning.

It adds something to the dish,

but it is not the whole dish.

And, the more that we think about our diets in that regard,

that meat or those very taxing products on the environment,

are seasonings as opposed to entire portions of our food.

I think that will make a big difference,

when we all leave this place

and go to the grocery store and say,

Hmm, maybe I shouldn't buy those five ribeyes,

and maybe I should buy something else.

Maybe I should try a new recipe.

But that was a lot of science,

which is great because I am also a scientist,

but I am also a black man in America,

and I live in a marginalized community.

I live in Harlem.

And, our next speaker is Doria Robinson,

who is the founder of Urban Tilth.

And, she...

I wanna make sure I have this right.

Right.

She trains people to do community gardening,

and in environmental justice,

and in sustainable agriculture,

and teaches people, not just people,

but will teach all of us

about how growing food close to home

and growing food in our own communities,

can not only supplement our diets

with nutritious and healthy options,

but also can enact environmental justice

on behalf of those marginalized communities

that are so often overlooked by the broader powers that be.

So, without any further ado,

because I've talked entirely too much, [chuckles]

this is Doria Robinson.

[crowd clapping]

[upbeat music]

So, I'm out here today without images

and I'm hoping that I can actually create some images

in your mind.

Yesterday I had the profound pleasure

of being out in Hollister, California,

with Yesenia, Anna Maria,

a mom,

who's a former farm worker,

who worked in the farm fields,

as a migrant worker actually,

for many, many years.

Now, she owns her own farm in Hollister,

run with her two daughters.

We're standing in the middle of a field

of beautiful, heirloom tomatoes,

unfortunately all destroyed from the last heat wave

that just happened.

She lost her whole crop.

And, we're talking really, optimistically, about the future

because we have a really profound relationship

with Anna Maria and Nancy's Organics.

As we stood in that field, us,

a crew of folks from Richmond, California,

this very urban town,

talking about what happened in that field

and having her tell us the stories

of why she became an organic farmer.

Because when she was a farm worker,

she got so sick from the pesticides,

the petroleum-based pesticides,

that she had to deal with every day,

that she got to a place

where she couldn't really move or walk,

and she thought she was gonna die.

She had to stop that work,

but she loves farming.

And so, she went through a program called ALBA,

so she was able to actually, learn the farming business,

and got this lease, this plot of land.

We're listening to her story

and thinking about ways

that we can grow closer together with her.

Just a week before, we were with a different family,

the Chan family, in Brentwood, California.

It is in Eastern Contra Costa County,

the eastern part of the county to Richmond,

which is very urban.

The eastern part of the county,

is traditionally agricultural.

On the land where the Chan family leases,

it's been farmed, really, rich, agricultural land

over a hundred years.

It's been farmed, deep, rich, soil,

completely under threat of development.

There's literally, kind of ticky-tacky houses

coming across the street.

It's right on, Marsh Creek.

This beautiful land that's about to be lost forever.

Once you lose agricultural land, its lost forever.

And, the Chan family,

they were immigrants here,

first and second generation,

they love farming,

and they grow sustainably.

And, as we're out there at their strawberry patch,

there's neighbors coming over

from across the street,

from the senior living facility across the street,

buying things from their farm stand.

And, we're out there, again,

these crazy, kind of, urban kids,

trying to think of ways to help them save their land.

Why?

Because over the last 16 years in Richmond,

Urban Tilth has been doing a lot of really amazing things.

We really did start,

as this organization,

that looked at our landscape in Richmond.

Richmond is the home of the Chevron Refinery,

I literally grew up five blocks from the refinery.

It is a petroleum town.

It's a place where it's a majority-minority city,

mostly, Black, and Latinos, live there.

Lots of people are poor.

We have lots of vacant lots.

Growing up, we have lots of violence.

Still today, people are shot in the street.

We have one grocery store,

hundreds of fast food restaurants,

and corner stores selling chips and soda.

We have lots of people who have no work,

underemployed, unemployed, lots of vacant lots.

So, over the last 16 years,

we got this vision that we could actually,

take a lot of the things

that were wrong with Richmond,

the vacant lots, the people without jobs,

the need for healthy food,

and actually, transform the spaces that we have,

using ourselves, our most important asset

to make these transformations.

We started on a old railway line,

the Santa Fe line, in Richmond.

Transforming the Richmond Greenway,

now, it's called the Richmond Greenway,

into a 14-block trail of community gardens.

In the beginning,

it was really about the power of getting people out

from behind the bars of their houses,

out talking to each other,

'cause Richmond also has problems with health, right?

High heart disease,

high diabetes,

high asthma rates,

high blood pressure.

People were inside, locked in, afraid.

We wanted to create places where people came together.

Maybe, they grew a little bit of food together,

but it was mostly about coming together.

And, in the first five or eight years, super successful.

Young people were really empowered.

We would hire them and train them to run these gardens.

We expanded to have gardens in the schools.

We had gardens out in former vacant lots,

lots of connections, lots of people coming together,

but what we didn't see,

was a lot of transformation of people's plates.

You know?

A few people would come

and they would get certain things from the garden.

It would be a handful of people here and there.

And so, we wanted to make a deeper connection,

but we realized

that the way that we were doing it,

one garden at a time, one vacant lot at a time,

one agreement at a time, all on public land,

we would never know

when we would get kicked off of the land,

we never know how long we would have it,

we couldn't build infrastructure

to really explore the vision that we were having.

And so, we started to create this vision

where we would actually be able to own land.

That was really what we needed to do,

so that, we could build soil properly,

so that, we could deepen relationships,

so that, we could actually grow enough food

to change people's plates, change people's bodies.

And, we're on that path.

We're growing every year.

We got to a place

where we had one garden,

to a place where we had seven different gardens,

and things were going really well,

and then, 2012 happened.

In 2012, there was a massive fire at the Chevron Refinery.

I don't know if y'all heard about that

or remember those pictures,

but it blackened the sky over Richmond for over eight hours.

Literally, cut out the light.

You could see the big plume of black smoke

over the whole San Francisco Bay from anywhere in the bay.

People took pictures from the Golden Gate Bridge.

That was our homes

that were covered in that plume

of greasy black smoke, you know?

And, it changed Urban Tilth,

we're on this trajectory

where we're thinking about food

and we were creating these beautiful gardens.

That summer, we had our biggest summer apprentice program

with over 40 youth,

who had been growing food,

in all the gardens, all summer,

and they were very proud of the food that they grew.

They were really, like, excited to get it out

to families who we had designated it for.

It was the day before graduation when the fire happened

and they were pissed.

It's like, all the work they did, all summer, was destroyed.

They couldn't serve that food to people.

What was on it?

It was this greasy layer of gunk.

And, in that moment,

Urban Tilth really transformed

because those youth stepped up

and they're like, We have to be more than about gardens,

and more than about,

just this work of connecting people back to the land,

and more than about,

just connecting people back to each other,

but we also have to stand up as a fenceline community

with the biggest point source of GHGs

in the state of California,

literally, in our backyard or our front yard,

if you live where I live.

We have to stand up and we have to fight.

So, in that moment,

we actually took the vision that we had

around transforming food access,

and started thinking about,

how it could be also a climate solution,

and how we can use food

to engage people in transformative change.

Not just transforming vacant lots,

but transforming our politics,

transforming the policies that govern petroleum industry,

and putting people's attention,

more focused on the kinds of transformations

we need to do,

to transition away from fossil fuels.

So, we started thinking about the work that we were doing,

not just as these isolated gardens,

and this desire for a farm where we could grow more food,

but actually as like, asking ourselves the question,

How do we localize our food system?

How do we take the petroleum out of the food system,

in as many ways as possible?

One of them, is shortening supply chains, right?

So, we're not going to the grocery store

and getting our apples from Argentina,

when they're grown in Oregon,

or strawberries, you know,

from somewhere else when they're grown in Watsonville.

And like, how can we shorten our supply chains?

How can we lift up those farmers

who are taking the steps to grow without petroleum products,

without the pesticides, without the fertilizers,

maybe, even with vehicles that use alternative fuels,

how can we focus on them and actually uplift them,

while also solving our food desert problems in Richmond?

And, that's the journey that we've been making

over the last 10 years, really.

And I think, there was this moment of change

in that moment of the Chevron Refinery fire,

where we just doubled down

and really committed to it,

and shifted the way that we spoke about our work,

the way that we interface with community,

to make those connections.

I think before then,

we would talk about, you know,

locally grown food.

When you grow it yourself,

it tastes so good.

It tastes separate,

it tastes different.

You know, we want people to eat healthy things

that'll help you reduce the impacts of your diabetes,

and your blood pressure, and everything.

But then, we also realize,

that when you directly engage people in growing food,

and they realize that the water you put on that food,

the air that the plants are taking in,

are all impacted by the industry

and the pollutants that are around it,

they become fierce environmental allies.

That was the lesson of the fire,

that we could actually expand our work

to make sure that people,

the people we were feeding through our small pilot projects,

understood the connection between

what they put in their mouth,

and the refinery that's up the street

and the impact it had on our food,

on our environment,

and our role as a fenceline community

to hold a line of responsibility with them.

So, we started doubling down.

We started thinking,

that it can't just be about our little community gardens,

and it can't just be about the farm that we want,

but we actually have to make more connections.

We actually have to think outside of the hood

and think about,

What is this regional system that we really want?

And, we started to dream into it a little bit

and certain things started to happen, you know?

Supervisor John Gioia,

which is our County Supervisor in our area,

came up with a plot of land, again, public land,

everything we do is on public land

'cause we believe that public land

should be for the public good.

So, he found a plot of public land in North Richmond,

formerly agricultural area,

now, industrial area,

and he said,

This could be the home of your farm.

And, so over the last seven years

we had been developing that space to create an urban farm.

Big urban farm.

We can actually start,

you know, moving from feeding,

10, 15 people, 20 people,

at each garden,

to at that time, launching a CSA,

a member-subsidized CSA,

where some members actually choose to pay more,

to make low-income boxes for people who can't afford it,

launching a member-subsidized CSA

that served a hundred families every week,

box of fresh produce from our farms and gardens.

We thought, Wow, now we're getting somewhere,

we're actually getting on the plate.

You know?

Not only are we getting on the plate,

we're still continuing all the other work that we're doing.

We're working with over 400 kids

at the local elementary school,

running their school garden program,

teaching them the connections between food, and health,

and justice, and climate.

We're working at the local high school,

where we've taught a class now for 15 years,

on agriculture and American food systems.

They grow a farm stand,

and they're learning those lessons too.

Now, it's two classes a year, every day,

for over 15 years.

We're also doing all of the other community work.

And, we have a farm,

feeding a hundred people every week.

[crowd clapping]

And then, you know, COVID happened,

and it was pretty intense, right?

In the grocery stores, people can't get what they want,

not just toilet paper, but food, you know, food.

It was hard to get food.

People didn't have work.

They didn't know when they were gonna work again.

And, in a community, like, Richmond,

people don't have reserves.

They can't pay their rent, fortunately,

you know, they didn't have to for the time being,

but they didn't have enough money to know,

where they were gonna feed their families next.

And, instead of shutting down, Urban Tilth,

which I didn't say before,

which is almost entirely run by local residents,

a lot of young people,

a lot of youth,

who start in that school, high school program,

actually, come to work for Urban Tilth,

after they're done with high school

or while they're in college,

when COVID hit, we felt called, we did not shut down.

What we did was,

we actually made calls, we made connections.

We said, We can feed about a hundred,

but we are hearing about farmers

who didn't have access to their normal markets.

The farmer's markets were closed down

and other things.

So, we had partners in places like, CAFF,

Community Alliance for Family Farmers,

and Kitchen Table Advisors,

and the Growing The Table project,

and they were like,

Let me connect you with this farmer

and let me connect you with this farmer.

They have this and they wanna get it to people.

So, we started making these regional connections

to all these different small, sustainable,

mostly BIPOC farmers,

Black, Latino, immigrant farmers, women farmers,

who don't normally, also have access to market,

and bringing their food in,

and expanding our reach

because we were getting calls every day,

Can you help this family?

They don't have any food.

Can you put this family in your CSA?

They don't have money to pay.

I'll pay for them.

During the first weeks of COVID,

our CSA doubled to 200,

and then, it doubled again,

and then, by the end of it,

we were serving 500 families a week.

[crowd clapping]

500 families, half of them get the box for free

because we've set up philanthropic funding sources

to make that happen,

and the others are in the community-subsidized CSA,

and it was powerful.

We pulled back all of our folks,

we had about 30 people working for us at that time,

in all the different seven programs,

and different gardens,

and everything,

we had to close down our community programs.

So, we actually pulled them back to the farm

that we had now,

and we were developing the farm pretty intensely.

You know, for the first seven years,

we spent a lot of time cleaning it up

because it was a vacant lot,

40 years, owned by the county.

Lots of dumping, lots of trash, lots of whatever.

So, it took us forever to clean it up

and revitalize the soil, restore the soil,

and start growing.

But fortunately, everything lined up,

and we were already growing on the land,

after all of that, when COVID hit,

but we hadn't actually developed all of the crop rows.

So, instead of laying people off during COVID,

we just repurposed them and said,

Okay, if you wanna work, help us build this farm

so we can grow more food,

so we can serve more people.

And, that's what we did.

We drew everybody back to the farm dramatically.

You know, we actually doubled our growing capacity

on the farm during that time.

Put up lots of temporary structures,

really maxed out the temporary infrastructure

that you could possibly have.

Drew up a pretty dramatic plan,

to completely revitalize the farm

and build it out,

with this vision of the North Richmond Farm project,

that would actually make the farm a Resilience Hub,

with lots of facilities and infrastructure,

so that we never get caught without a plan again

in Richmond,

so that people of Richmond have a backup plan during crisis.

All this, during that time,

but I think the most powerful thing that we did

during that time,

was connect to farmers like, the Chan family,

and Yesenia,

and Anna Maria.

And, as we were coming to each other's aid,

we realized that something happens,

when folks move to urban areas, you know?

They lose the connection to the things

and the people in other spaces,

they lose the connection to the land,

and understanding why they should care about it,

and how they should care for it,

and lose the connection to rural people.

And I think that,

we're in this time,

this space now,

with the pressures that are coming with climate change,

where it is so important to reconnect.

So, now, we're at this place where we see,

that in order to stabilize

and create a future for Richmond,

we actually have to stabilize

and create a future for rural areas,

and rural peoples, and small farmers.

So, we're working together now,

to actually create a fund to help all the small farmers

that are in our network,

own their own land.

[crowd clapping]

Not only own their own land,

but help them continue on their journey

towards sustainable farming.

So, we have grant writers,

we have all these kinds of things in urban areas

that could help them.

So, we're writing proposals,

so they can help continue to transition

using drip irrigation systems,

or having other water conservation methods,

so they can weather, you know,

the pressures of less water available in California,

you know, all the different things you need to transition.

We're actually offering those services to our farmers,

because we know that as they are stabilized,

we have a stabilized food source.

So, the next time a crisis rolls through,

just like, the last one, during COVID, we won't go down.

We'll never not have food.

We never, did not have food for our community.

In fact, we had a lot of food,

and a lot of people, and a lot of needs.

So...

I want people to leave this moment

with the idea that urban agriculture is much more

than just a community garden.

The potential of urban agriculture is much more

than a community garden,

is much more than all of the good feelings you get

when you eat a real tomato.

The potential of urban agriculture is reconnecting us

to the land, reconnecting us to other farmers,

reconnecting us to our responsibilities on earth,

and actually, innovating,

using this moment of climate crisis

to innovate on the systems we currently take as a default.

We take as a default

that the only way we can feed people

is through international trade.

And, we ignore the fact that there is extreme hunger,

in places like, Richmond, every day.

We don't make a connection that actually, it's not working.

Even before the climate crisis, it wasn't working.

We don't fit the profit-driven model.

We're not worthy to serve.

So, in a moment of crisis,

we can actually take an opportunity to say,

Let's innovate, let's change the systems.

Where are there opportunities

for places like, Richmond,

communities like, Richmond,

to actually transform and create the things we need,

to make the kind of community that we need to thrive.

So, we're in that moment,

we're in this moment of opportunity.

A moment of great crisis

is also a moment of great opportunity.

And, I want to, kind of, leave with everyone

this idea that,

now is the time to create the infrastructure that we need

to make sure that communities like, Richmond,

communities like, Louisiana,

communities like, ours,

who have community-based,

community-led climate solutions,

have the infrastructure,

and have the resources they need,

to transform their communities,

to transform their space.

[Doria exhales]

[crowd clapping]

So...

Yeah, that's what I have for you today.

So, thank you, and we go from there.

[crowd clapping]

[upbeat music]