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Organization of the Collective

The basic leadership structure of Phat Beets Produce is highly dependent on the work of volunteers. The main five programs that Phat Beets Produce has are the farmers’ markets, Healthy Hearts Youth Empowerment, Beet Box Urban Community Sustained Agriculture, Get Organized! and Community Celebrates!. Currently, the main source of leadership and organization is the volunteer collective that consists of 8-12 members. Each member has to meet certain requirements to fulfill membership, including a 1 year commitment, participation in 80% of monthly meetings, and volunteering 4 hours every month. They also use a working group based model where different working committees are responsible for creating and leading their own program. Currently there are five committees: the Farmer’s Market Committee, Garden Steering Committee, CSA committee, and the Fundraising Committee. The current main leaders of the collective are Max Cadji, Brett Benner, and Toveo Hill.

Healthy Hearts Youth Garden

Junk Food

In 2009, Phat Beets Produce partnered up with the Children’s Hospital in Oakland to create an obesity preventio] program for Oakland youth. Obesity is a growing health problem in urban communities where opportunity to exercise and access to healthy food is limited. According to a study conducted by Rice University in 2012, children that live in poorer communities are 30% more likely to become obese than their counterparts in wealthy neighborhoods. Some of the risk factors that contribute to childhood obesity include the prevalence of sugary and processed foods, television advertisements and media portrayal of fast foods, unsafe neighborhoods that discourage exercise, and lack of breastfeeding. Overall, a combination of lack of exercise and a poor diet leads to severe consequences in terms of this burden of chronic disease. Another important issue in urban communities like Oakland is the development and growth of food deserts in these regions. A food desert is an urban neighborhood without access to affordable and healthy foods. Hence, the residents only have fast food or convenience stores to fulfill their nutritional needs. Continued consumption of low-nutrition food contributes to a greater prevalence of obesity, heart disease, and diabetes. According to the Economic Research Service from the USDA, there are 23.5 million people who currently live in food deserts. A disproportionate amount of these residents are low-income and under-resourced citizens. According to the USDA, the official definition of a food desert is “census tract with a substantial share of residents who live in low-income areas that have low levels of access to a grocery store or healthy, affordable food retail outlet.” Low-income is a “poverty rate of 20 percent or greater or a median family income at or below 80 percent of the area median family income.” Low-access means that “500 people or 33% or of the tract population live more than a mile away from a grocery store.” The Federal government is working to reduce the number of food deserts in the United States. The 2011 budget included $150 million in private and public investments for programs that will promote healthy food alternatives in food deserts.

Urban Gardening

In order to combat the growing obesity problem and reduce food deserts, the Healthy Hearts Youth Empowerment program promotes healthy living practices by teaching youth how to create their own urban garden, grow their own food, and change their diets to improve overall health. The youth in the program are encouraged to learn how to cook by themselves and make conscious and healthy choices when selecting food for consumption. The underlying idea behind this program is to promote health education among the youth. By promoting a healthy eating lifestyle, the program hopes that the participants will be able to bring what they learned back to their own family and community. Each cycle of this program consists of a group of 8-12 students. In terms of community gardening, they have transformed the ¼ acre plot (approximately 10,000 sq. ft) in Dover Street Park into arable land. This urban garden has produced over 3000 pounds of produce every year. The produce is sold to local residents in the community through the Phat Beet Produce’s clinic based farm stands. In addition, this partnership has a “Fresh Fellows” food justice program that specifically targets teenagers who are at risk of heart disease and Type 2 diabetes. The “Fresh Fellows” program is dedicated to teaching the teenagers to be leaders in the food justice system. Over the years, this program has trained over 60 youth leaders. One of the participants in the 2011 summer session stated “Well I’m going to bring to my community to more gardens, activities with more peers, more hands on gardening activities because we don’t have enough of that. But I feel like I would take basically everything I learned here to my community and my family because I feel like if I could benefit from it then someone else can benefit from it. ” Urban gardening is positively correlated with health benefits in the community. Residents are more willing to eat the food they grow, benefit from the exercise of tending to gardens, and feel safe and involved in their community.

There is a growing trend of converting urban land into gardens or community space. In Richmond, the Richmond Greenway Project has transformed previously unused railroad land into a bicycle and pedestrian-safe community with plenty of open space. The purpose of this project is to provide residents easy access to the outdoors while promoting healthy exercising activities like bicycling. The land that was once occupied by the Atchison-Topeka and Santa Fe railroad has now been transformed into 3 miles of biking and walking trails, and over 32 acres of open space. Hospitals, like Kaiser Permanente, are trying to integrate nature into their facilities. At the Oakland Medical Center branch, they have created a Serenity Garden that displays many plants native to the community, with the hope that the increase in nature will be beneficial and therapeutive to patients.

Phat Beetz Pickle Company

In 2014, Phat Beets Produce added another youth program focused on entrepreneurship and gaining work experience. The Phat Beetz Pickle Company is a joint cooperation between the “Fresh Fellows” and the Kitchen Incubator program. This pilot program goes toward developing the work skills of Oakland youth by providing job employment opportunities through the production and sales of pickles and jams. The pickles and jams are sold online, at local cafes, and at the Phat Beets’ farmers market. The goal is to make enough money through sales to fund the participants and the youth company. Furthermore, this program helps generate a source of finance for the participants and acts as a stepping stone to future employment opportunities. The goal is to make enough money with pickle company to fund youth.

Example of a CSA box

Beet Boxes

Beet Boxes are boxes that are packed with 11 to 14 organic and pesticide-free fruits and vegetables that were locally grown by small farmers. Small farmers are those whose farms do not exceed 40 acres in land. Local residents can purchase and pick up these boxes at one of Phat Beets Produce’s locations in Oakland. The Beet Boxes reflect the “Community Supported Agriculture” model. Community supported agriculture is an alternative economic model to increase self-sustainability and just food distribution in the community while improving the environment. The increased demand of Beet Boxes is a reflection of the growing interest in urban gardening and food justice in Oakland. According to the Urban Food Systems Coordinator, Max Cadji in 2013, “We started the Beet Box two years ago with five members and we now have we over 250 active members with about 125 boxes being delivered each week.” As of 2014, Phat Beets Produce delivers up to 180 Beet Boxes every week. On their website, Phat Beets Produce updates the different types of foods that will be in each Beet Box for that week. This community supported agriculture model is beneficial to both the farmers and the consumers. The farmers are able to earn money from their crops early in the season, which is important for maintaining a positive cash flows. Consumers benefit by obtaining fresh ingredients that are in season and become exposed to a wider variety of foods through the process. Some other community supported agriculture organizations in the East Bay include: Eatwell Farm , Eat Outside the Box , Farm Fresh to You , Full Belly Farm , Happy Child CSA , and Marin Sun Farms.

Community Healthy Food Business Incubator Kitchen Program

In the Spring of 2013, Phat Beets Produce launched the Community Healthy Food Business Incubator Kitchen Program to support local low-income vendors. With the support of the Alameda County Health Department, the collaboration aims to help local vendors and residents successfully start up their own business. It is specifically built to help people of color, the economically disadvantaged, and the under-resourced . The financial component of this project gives business one year’s worth of subsidized resources – including liability insurance, food safety training, kitchen equipment, lease space, and workshops focusing on financial literacy. The long term goal of this program is to develop a strong marketing cooperative and community. In addition, the program tests out the implementation of the Cottage Food Bill that was enacted in January 2013. The Cottage Food Bill allows small business owners to produce certain non-perishable foods in home kitchens once they acquire a permit. Hence, small vendors would not have to rent or lease a place to sell their food. This would greatly reduce the start-up capital needed to create an entrepreneurship or small business. Vendors would be able to invest this capital into other areas of their business that lack funding. Ever since the bill passed in 2013, 1000 microbusinesses have developed to take advantage of this policy. However, one of the criticisms of this bill is the different permit fees based on location. For example, if one lived in Santa Clara Class A permits are $219 annually and Class B permits are $635, whereas in Alameda, Class A permits cost $162 and Class B permits cost $243. Class A permits allow businesses to directly sell to customers and Class B permits allow sales through a third party -- a store or retailer. These differences in fee costs provide obstacles for small business owners to navigate through the system.

The primary purpose of the food business incubator kithcen program is to support small businesses and reinvest resources back into the local community. A major barrier for small vendors is the lack of capital resources and business knowledge. Hence, this program aims to provide support for first time entrepreneurs in the community. In the long term, the idea is that if more business and employment is created in the area, the community would be self-sustainable without interference from outside big businesses. As a result, there would be no need for residents to move out of the area.

Community Produce Spaces

Farmers' Market

A major component of urban agriculture is actually getting the produce to the local residents. Besides beet boxes, farmers markets are the main source of this exchange in the community. Phat Beet Produce has two farmers’ markets in clinics and two community produce stands. The 4 different farmers markets located in: North Arlingon Medical Center, North Oakland Children’s Hospital, Farm Free Stand – Arlington Medical Center, and Saint Martin De Porres Community Produce Stand. The produce that is sold at these farmers’ markets comes primarily from small farmers and farmers of color. At the farmers’ markets, there are also vendors that sell already cooked food. In terms of future expansion, Phat Beets Produce plans to open a new farmer's market on June 14th of 2014. The location of this new farmers' market will be near the Destiny Arts Center in North Oakland.

Will Scott, the President of the African American Farmer’s of California is one of the many farms that participate in the farmers’ markets. Even though the Scott’s Family Farm is based in Fresno, Will Scott makes the trip to Oakland in order to increase presence of farmers of color in our nation. One commentator in “The Disappearing Farmer” stated that there is, “loss of land by our farmers, African American farmers, who are now less than 2% in the country, and have been losing about a half million acres of land a year in this country. And there were some indicators that for every acre lost, there was a reciprocal loss of economic wealth in our community.” African American history of agriculture in the United States is an important driving force for present-day farmers of color. Furthermore, throughout history, there has been a correlation between land ownership and power.