Holistic pedagogies for social change: reflections from an urban agroecology

farmer training

Authors: Ana Galvis Martinez,1 Brooke Porter,2 Paul Rogé,3 Leah Atwood,4 Natalia Pinzón Jiménez5

Abstract

The Bay Area Farmer Training (BAFT) trained aspiring urban farming practitioners in agroecology,
using a pedagogy rooted in humanistic values, social justice, popular education, liberatory experiences,
and decolonial and feminist frameworks. This chapter outlines the contra-hegemonic and participatory
pedagogical philosophies and practices implemented within the program while providing examples of
how the curriculum manifested in praxis. An analysis of BAFT from the perspective of participants and
the founding educators leads to recommendations for educators and program developers to include
social justice within urban agroecology curricula or training programs aimed at the transformation of
food and farming systems. Educators of such programs should: receive training in restorative justice,
anti-oppression, and conflict engagement; cultivate cross-cultural dialogue by avoiding alienating
rhetoric or theoretical abstraction; build trust through mutual understanding of struggle and shared
leadership; humanize classrooms by cultivating respect and appreciation with students; prepare guest
speakers with limited experience in social justice and anti-oppression frameworks; and design values-
centered curricula. Recommendations to organizations include: prioritizing emotional, mental, and
physical health given the demands of these kinds of programs and the various issues people face in their
lives; cultivating representative staffing and leadership; integrating meaningful metrics for tracking
impact; and adopting participatory planning for future programs.

Keywords: Agroecology; Constructivist pedagogies; Food sovereignty; Humanistic education; Popular

education; Urban agroecology

1
Independent Consultant founder of www.cafepanamericano.org and www.holisticsustainabilities.org
2
Graduate Student, MSc in Agroecology, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, ORCID ID: 0000-0002-7781-9650
3
Faculty, Environmental Management & Technology, Merritt College, ORCID ID: 0000-0003-2298-5958
4
Wild and Radish Ecovillage, LLC and Farmer Campus
5
Doctoral Student, Geography Graduate Group, Department of Human Ecology, University of California, Davis
1
Land Acknowledgement

This chapter was written on occupied, unceded Chochenyo and Karkin Ohlone land. We would like to
offer our deepest gratitude and respect for the indigenous people of this planet and this place, honoring
that their stewardship from time immemorial has created the foundation for what we understand to be
agroecological principles today.

Introduction

“Agroecology is actually a peasant indigenous movement, it's a social movement for liberation, undoing
all the harm that has been caused by industrial agriculture, the harm that white supremacy and
patriarchy has caused with the pursuit of capitalism and the commodification of resources. In my role of
being someone who identifies as an educator or even as a mentor, after BAFT I feel like I'm more
prepared and better equipped to have those types of conversations with people and that I'm able to help
to engage folks with those types of thinking, helping them become system thinkers themselves, this is how
BAFT has been helpful to me.” –Samuel Madrigal, BAFT participant, November 12, 2019

Samuel Madrigal shared this reflection approximately one year after graduating from the Bay Area
Farmer Training (BAFT), a program implemented from 2015-2019 that sought to meet the growing
demand for agroecological training in urban settings of California.6 In less than a century, global urban
populations have rapidly expanded from 15% to 55% of the total (UN DESA 2018). A complex matrix
of power dominates urban geographies, forming a landscape highlighted by its inequalities (Deelstra and
Girardet 2000). In this context, agroecological education has an important role to play in scaling up, or
massifying, the ability of urban people to meet their own basic needs for healthy food while
simultaneously building community and defending territories.

Agroecology has long been practiced and protected by indigenous and peasant farmers across the globe.
Rooted in indigenous traditions of reciprocity with the land (Kimmerer 2018), agroecology arose as a
response to the Green Revolution, which promoted ecological destructive, chemical intensive, maximum
yield breeding strategies, and monoculture specialization (Wezel et al. 2009). Agroecology is often
defined as the “application of ecological principles to the study, design and management of
agroecosystems that are both productive natural resource conserving, culturally sensitive, socially just
6
BAFT was designed and implemented by staff at two nonprofits: the Multinational Exchange for Sustainable Agriculture
(MESA) and Planting Justice.
2
and economically viable” (Miguel Altieri 1995; Gliessman 2015; Tornaghi 2017; A. B. Siegner, Acey,
and Sowerwine 2020). While it is very much a science, it is also a practice and movement (Wezel et al.
2009). As a social movement, it has a strong ecological foundation and is backed by peasants, farmers,
and activists seeking to ensure global food sovereignty (Steve Gliessman 2013; “Forum for
Agroecology, Nyéléni” 2015).

In recognizing that the extractive industrial agriculture model doesn’t serve people or the planet
(Stephen Gliessman 2018; IPES-Food 2016), social movements such as La Via Campesina,7 the
Landless Rural Workers Movement,8 and the farmer-to-farmer movement have massified agroecology
through popular education (McCune, Reardon, and Rosset 2014; Meek and Tarlau 2016; Holt-Giménez
2006). The horizontal nature of popular education and farmer-to-farmer exchange have helped facilitate
the preservation and proliferation of agroecology in indigenous and peasant communities around the
world (Holt-Giménez 2006; Wilson 2011). Borrowing from these movements urban agroecology
education has the capacity to stand as the protagonist in the transition to create resilient urban
communities, by encouraging food and farming models that center equity, cooperation, and solidarity.

Transforming how humans relate with each other and to the ecosystems of which they are a part of is a
central challenge to urban agroecology education. As the world becomes increasingly urbanized, it is
vital to maintain and reclaim land-based relationships and wisdom rooted in agroecological principles,
which have the potential to serve as valuable tools to mitigate climate change, biodiversity loss, fresh
water depletion, land and ocean degradation among other major global environmental problems. While
agroecology has a strong focus on production, it also seeks to address a larger paradigm shift within
food and farming systems through social equity, one in which many urban communities play a central
role.

Transitioning towards agroecology within urban geographies is multifaceted and manifests within the
ecological, political, economic, and social realms of society (M Altieri and Nichols 2019; Dehaene,
Tornaghi, and Sage 2016; Tornaghi 2017). Providing consumers, particularly urban populations with

7
Founded in 1993, La Via Campesina is an international movement bringing together in solidarity small and medium sized
farmers, landless people, rural women and youth, indigenous communities, migrants and agricultural workers to defend a
fight for agroecology, food sovereignty and gender equality around the globe (La Via Campesina 2020).
8
The Landless Workers’ Movement—“Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra” (MST)—is a Brazilian social movement
which actively fights for agrarian reform by occupying unproductive lands, a constitutional right as outlined by Brazil’s post
dictatorship constitution of 1988 (MST 2020).
3
direct supply networks not only decreases the geographical distance in which food travels—addressing
its ecological footprint—but simultaneously builds relationships between producers and consumers,
oftentimes strengthening urban and rural relations (Dumont et al. 2016). Following socioeconomic
principles of agroecology, cooperative models present opportunities to strengthen urban communities by
increasing agency, collaboration, and profit-sharing. Agroecology also has the potential to serve as a
bridge between a wide array of social movements and platforms: ecofeminism, racial justice,
LGBTQIA+, indigenous sovereignty, agrarian reform, land reparations, and more. Public policies that
increase urban farms have a wide range of benefits such as: interception of solar radiation, waste and
nutrient recycling, increased soil fertility, filtration of atmospheric pollution, microclimate improvement
and overall community wellness (Deelstra and Girardet 2000). Urban agriculture is a vital aspect of city
infrastructure to promote health, peace and interdependence by creating places for residents to connect
to food, nature, and each other (Reynolds and Cohen 2016).

This chapter discusses the challenges and opportunities for applying agroecology to the interwoven
environmental and social issues of urban places. Urban agroecology education occurs in different
contexts, within academic institutions, grassroots organizing of social movements, and non-profits and
community-based organizations. In the case of BAFT, it emerged from the context of the non-profit
sector in the United States. Its educators had experience in both social movements and traditional
academic settings. BAFT took the shape of a community-based farmer training program focused on
social justice.

In this context, BAFT provides insights into contra-hegemonic pedagogies with a focus on critical,
constructivist, humanistic approaches emerging from non-academic spaces. This case study highlights
some of the challenges in creating these types of learning environments. Many of the authors of this
chapter formed the BAFT educator and program team. We weave together our own perspectives with
interviews of former BAFT participants and program evaluations. The following analysis of BAFT
illustrates one way to design and implement urban farmer training programs rooted in agroecology and
supported by humanistic values and decolonial frameworks.

BAFT: a case-study in politicized urban agroecology education

Through funding from the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Beginning Farmer and
Rancher Development Program (BFRDP), BAFT trained 122 aspiring urban farmers in agroecology and
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food sovereignty between 2015 to 2019. It was specifically crafted for underserved aspiring and
beginning urban farmers with a focus on people of color, women, immigrants, formerly incarcerated
people, and LGBTQIA+ individuals. The majority of those who participated in BAFT lived in urban
places. Most were landless, facing severe challenges in accessing farmland and lacking secure housing.
Systematic disparities have barred some of the communities participating in BAFT from accessing
institutional and academic opportunities. BAFT attempted to offer a high-quality educational experience
for an unconventional student demographic that faced ongoing challenges in entering the farming sector.

The BAFT program consisted of two main components: a three month course and a follow-up
mobilization phase. The BAFT course introduced agroecology and food justice theories and practices to
122 participants. Each BAFT course spanned three months, with eight hours of classes per week. The
curriculum used didactic tools such as field trips, participatory presentations, on-farm practice, anti-
oppression training, project-based learning, online resources, and mentorship support to create an
environment that celebrated different learning styles. Field trips included visits to farms, food
preparation facilities, aquaponic systems and nurseries. The online course contained a learning network
with multimedia lessons and readings that supported the in-person classes. Each BAFT course
concluded with a celebratory graduation ceremony, where students reflected on their learning and
presented their visions for future businesses, projects, and other endeavors.

In recognition of societal inequalities affecting many BAFT participants, the program was designed to
reduce barriers to participation and meet some of their basic resource needs. To accommodate working
students, the course took place in the evenings and on weekends. Eight hours per week of in-person
meetings were supplemented with optional 3 hours per week of online course materials for the week’s
topic. The BAFT course was offered at a sliding scale rate with scholarships and participation stipends
available for low-income applicants. Over 50% of graduates received a stipend between $350 and
$800—in addition to a fee waiver—to support their participation. Participants put the stipends toward
transportation, childcare, and/or meals. This greatly facilitated their involvement in the classes.
Classmates were allowed to bring the children to class where they frequently received childcare support
from both staff and fellow classmates. Laptop computers were also available on loan, which allowed
some participants to engage with the online materials and prepare their applications for the mobilization
phase.

5
Graduates of the course could continue in the BAFT mobilization phase, which provided guidance on
the development of participants’ farming, food business, and education projects. Out of the mobilization
program formed projects such as the East Bay Farmers Collective, which was founded by a group of
BAFT graduates seeking to cultivate agroecological produce and medicinal herbs (Paxton 2019). The
collective focuses on distributing nourishing food and medicine to predominantly people of color,
indigenous communities, women, trans, and fem residents of the Bay Area.

The BAFT mobilization phase included mentorship for participants from specialists in their field of
interest, on-farm apprenticeships, and mini-grants to support their mobilization projects. The application
for all forms of support required a basic project proposal or business plan. The hours of mentorship
during the incubation phase varied in length, depending on the needs of each project. The BAFT
provided matchmaking services and $15/hour stipends for on-farm apprenticeships in the Bay Area and
surrounding rural regions. BAFT graduates also applied for competitive mini-grants toward material
costs of their projects. BAFT educators strove to foster a culture of transparency, inclusivity, and
engagement through participatory budgeting and an emphasis on the formation of worker cooperative
farms and projects.

At its core, BAFT sought to address the structural inequalities that shape the current hegemonic food
system. The program provided tools to overcome imminent challenges that participants would likely
encounter—difficulties in accessing land, financial and social capital, and technical support—with
alternatives such as cooperativism, local markets, connections to locally available resources,
relationship-based networks, and mentorship support. Rather than seeing these inequalities as personal
shortcomings to be overcome, the program sought to understand the origins of these structural
inequalities, which are produced by a society plagued by colonization, white supremacy, extractive
capitalism, and patriarchy. This radical vision of agroecology from the perspective of social justice set
BAFT apart from many other farmer training programs funded by the USDA BFRDP.

Guiding Pedagogies and Didactics

BAFT educators approached agroecology as a multidimensional means to achieve food sovereignty, and
as a living concept that evolves as it is adapted to diverse contexts. Until recently in the United States,
agroecology research, education, and practice has emphasized the natural science components to the
detriment of a holistic understanding of sustainable food systems. However, a politically aware
6
agroecology is common in many parts of the world. “Agroecologists recognize a wider sense of
agricultural purpose that goes beyond mere production of commodities, and includes issues of
environment, community, and justice. This wider understanding of the agricultural context requires the
study of relations between agriculture, the global environment, and society” (David and Bell 2018). For
this reason agroecologists must grapple with a structural analysis of inequality within the food and
farming system. Toward this end, the BAFT course borrowed from an array of pedagogies and didactics.
The focus was primarily on constructivist, critical, and humanizing pedagogies. We review each of these
dimensions of the curriculum before describing the key curricular aspects of BAFT.

Critical Pedagogy

Critical pedagogy is a teaching philosophy that encourages participants to examine power structures and
patterns of inequality within society (McGuire 2016). Through facilitating discussions around power
structures and patterns, participants can critically evaluate opinions they may have inherited or absorbed,
and feel a greater sense of agency in their own learning process (McGuire 2016). This is essential
because agroecology must challenge the ideological system that protects the corporate food regime and
it must take issue with the concentration of power and the unequal distribution of wealth that lie at the
heart of the way the food system operates (Gliessman 2015; Chohan 2017). It is through this lens of
questioning power structures that Brazilian philosopher Paulo Freire (2014) critiqued the Western
“banking method” of education that treats students as empty vessels to be filled with the values of the
dominant class. “[This] practice dehumanizes and disempowers students, whose culture, experience,
language, and ideas are subjugated in order to indoctrinate the students with the ideology of those in
power. It fails to teach critical thinking skills, and it doesn't teach the value of dialogue” (Mink 2019).
BAFT actively sought to incorporate these philosophies by questioning and critiquing the ways the
global industrial food system displaces small farmers, colonizes traditional diets, exploits labor, and
monopolizes the market.

BAFT’s critical pedagogy borrowed from traditions of popular education, which is a people-oriented
and people-guided approach to education (Freire 2014). It encourages participatory activities and
learning methods that value participants’ life experiences resulting in the development of critical
consciousness (Freire 2014; Intergroup 2012). This approach strives for horizontal relationships between
teachers and students, rather than the more traditional, static, and vertical transfer of knowledge from

7
teacher to student. By implementing popular education principles, BAFT educators sought to
incorporate participants' recommendations and feedback on an ongoing basis. “Many political and
educational plans have failed because their authors designed them according to their own personal views
of reality, never once taking into account (except as mere objects of their actions) the men-in-a-situation
to whom their program was ostensibly directed” (Freire 2014). The process of continuously integrating
feedback allowed for the course to be collectively constructed and honor the diverse realities of the
students.

Acknowledging that learning is not a purely individual process (McCune and Sánchez 2018), dialogue is
a key component that assures that the production of knowledge is formed through a collective process
within the classroom. BAFT emphasized the importance of horizontal facilitation that allowed for
students to have agency in exploring and developing their critical voices. “We must continually remind
students in the classroom that expression of different opinions and dissenting ideas affirms the
intellectual process. We should forcefully explain that our role is not to teach them to think as we do but
rather to teach them, by example, the importance of taking a stance that is rooted in rigorous
engagement with the full range of ideas about a topic” (hooks 2014). The course’s emphasis on dialogue
encouraged cross-cultural understanding and movement building. “If it is in speaking their word that
people, by naming the world, transform it, dialogue imposes itself as the way by which they achieve
significance as human beings” (Freire 2014). Fostering dialogue resulted in a strong sense of
interconnectedness and community, reinforcing a sense of shared territoriality, that brought together a
diverse group of people from the Bay Area around visions of agroecology and food sovereignty.

Humanizing Pedagogy

Humanization strengthens a person’s capacity to recognize our commonality, rather than furthering
divisions and othering based on distinct human identities and social constructs. BAFT emphasized the
importance of humanizing classroom environments, as implemented in various social movements such
as La Via Campesina. “Education as the practice of freedom—as opposed to education as the practice of
domination—denies that man is abstract, isolated, independent, and unattached to the world; it also
denies that the world exists as a reality apart from people” (Freire 2014). In pointing to this freedom,
Paulo Freire outlines how humanization enhances our collective capacity to oppose isolation toward
liberation. “One does not liberate people by alienating them. Authentic liberation—the process of

8
humanization—is not another deposit to be made in men. Liberation is a praxis: the action and reflection
of men and women upon their world in order to transform it” (Freire 2014). This speaks to the broader
ecological realm of “humanization” that Paulo Freire emphasized in 1970, stating that at “the center of
education is no longer only a transformation of the relations among people, but also between people and
all other forms of life” (Meek and Lloro-Bidart 2017). The very act of farming the city has the potential
to mend the alienation from nature felt by many urban people in modern capitalist societies (McClintock
2010). BAFT educators sought to address farmers’ feelings of isolation within urban food justice spaces
by reestablishing meaningful connections with each other and the land.

A humanistic pedagogy in BAFT was realized through a values-centered curriculum—discussed in

greater detail in a section that follows—which invited discussions on systemic oppression and societal
traumas connected to racism, sexism, and classism in the food system. In practice, this approach brought
various challenges with multiple site visits and guest speakers from diverse backgrounds (Landzettel
2018). Some of these challenges were important learning opportunities for participants on how to
engage people with different viewpoints and awareness of systemic oppression, or the lack thereof.
These incidences also provided some important lessons for the educator and program team on how to
better structure the class and engage with guest speakers.

For example, on a site visit to a farm owned and operated by an immigrant and farmer of color, the
BAFT class was joined by another tour of farmers from the Midwestern United States. At the end of the
tour the farmer shared his story as an immigrant starting out with limited financial resources to now
owning his own thriving operation as a testament there was no systemic barrier preventing someone’s
success, and if you put your mind to it and worked hard, you could thrive, regardless of your
background, financial status, or race. The educators noticed that many participants from the midwest
group were nodding, while many participants from BAFT were not expressing agreement. On the return
trip, the class engaged in a thoughtful discussion about the “self-made and pull yourself up by your
bootstraps” mentality. While at times inspiring or motivating, it can also invisibilize the struggle of
people who have been discriminated against for their race, culture, gender, or sexual orientation. The
class discussed how a person who has experienced discrimination can still internalize oppression by
either adopting, normalizing, or ignoring a pervasive discriminatory mentality, sometimes as a means of
assimilation or protection.

9
In another example, a speaker, in sharing his experience of working in seed saving with indigenous
communities, described the communities as “having no culture.” Although the intention was to share
about the loss of food culture and seed saving practices in these communities, by using this specific
phrasing, the speaker participated in the erasure of the violent history of displacement and genocide
experienced by indigenous peoples, which is the reason why so many cultural practices have been lost.
Deep historical awareness is vital in order to recognize the global impact and normalization of
colonization and white supremacy.

In both of these cases, a humanistic approach supported the class to share feedback with the speakers
about the impact of their rhetoric. It also supported lessons in compassionate engagement and restorative
justice to see the speakers as human beings who have been conditioned to perpetuate these patterns over
time but are open to adopting new behaviors and values, as opposed to recreating trauma through
shaming and silencing. “Shaming is one of the deepest tools of imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist
patriarchy because shame produces trauma and trauma often produces paralysis” (hooks 2013) These
experiences helped clarify the need for restorative justice training for facilitators, as well as the need for
deeper communication with guest speakers about the decolonial course framework, and to inform course
participants in advance about the background and perspectives of guest speakers.

Regular community-building exercises were critical to fostering dialogue on challenging issues. First,
each class began with a round of check-ins, allowing students to talk about what was alive for them and
inviting them to bring their whole humanity to the classroom space. Although this sometimes took more
time than expected, participants said this space for open sharing helped them feel valued and some
expressed that it was the best part of their week. Educators also provided food during class which later
led to students preparing and sharing their own dishes accompanied by family recipes and stories.
Finally, highly academic and alienating rhetoric was encouraged to be substituted or re-framed with
more commonly used vocabulary based on lived experiences.

Constructivist Pedagogy

Constructivism posits that every individual constructs their own understanding and knowledge of the
world based on their own unique experiences (Bada 2015). Constructivist pedagogies specifically
recognize the learner’s innate knowledge prior to entering spaces of learning. In embodying
constructivist education in BAFT, educators placed great value in the rich social and biocultural

10
knowledge that each individual brought to class, and they developed trust with the students through
honest and open dialogue about their own backgrounds, lived experiences, and social positionality.

One of the co-lead educators of BAFT, Ana Galvis, presented her background as an immigrant and
single mother, which allowed her to connect with many of the students who shared similar backgrounds.
The challenges she faced to become an agroecology educator with two Masters degrees in the United
States resonated with many participants and fostered trust in class. In contrast, co-lead educator Paul
Rogé consciously stepped out of certain roles in recognition of his social privileges as a cis-white male
with a PhD in Agroecology so that Ana and BAFT participants could cultivate leadership in the
classroom. His personal dedication to service manifested in simple actions—driving to field visits,
providing technical assistance, and meeting with students outside of class time—and he was invaluable
in presenting complex agroecology concepts in a very accessible way, all of which led to the formation
of deep, meaningful, and lasting connections with BAFT students over time. The end result was that no
one individual dominated the discourse, and both educators shared teaching responsibilities and class
time conscientiously, knowing when to step in when their expertise was needed and when to step back to
allow others to be heard.

Key Curriculum Concepts

BAFT overall addressed the key integrated approaches involving agroecological education outlined by
David and Bell (2018): bringing agroecological practitioners and activists into the classroom as
instructors and sources of knowledge; developing and expanding an active and experiential learning
program; diversifying the origins of agroecology students and instructors, including diversity of gender,
sexuality, cultural heritage, and national origin; and creating a sense of agroecology as a publically-
oriented endeavor with important policy implications. In the sections that follow, we discuss some of the
key concepts embedded within the BAFT curriculum.

Values-Centered Curriculum

In designing courses, an approach urban agricultural educators can use to engage with humanizing
pedagogy is to create a value-centered curriculum such as the one developed for BAFT (Table 1).9 From
this list one can reflect on the ways in which different values can become unbalanced, especially within

9
Co-lead educator Ana Cecilia Galvis created the values-centered curriculum for BAFT.
11
an individualistic and capitalist society. For example, care and compassion are contrasted with neglect
and cruelty. Each value is then placed within the social and technical contexts of agroecology, and
practical, experiential learning activities are identified that provide students with opportunities to
actively embody those values. Eventually, this framework permeated the chosen topics within four
broad categories: regenerative agriculture and agroecology, social movements, models of agroecological
production, and business incubation (Table 2).

Insert Table 1 here

Insert Table 2 here

The Relational Over The Technical

In contrast to many agroecology training programs within the United States that offer curricula
emphasizing the technical aspect of sustainable agriculture—a depolitized agroecology—BAFT
intentionally balanced both the technical and social components, establishing an organic link between
education as a training process for political action and practical skills.

One of the many learning objectives for the course was to create conscious political subjects while
simultaneously building community within the classroom for solidarity, collaboration, and mobilization
in urban farming movements. Acknowledging that many participants were already politically conscious,
BAFT educators sought to encourage collective agency. The curriculum emphasized the importance of
political education in recognition of the historic socio-political forces that have shaped contemporary
food and farming systems.

The fragmented and reductionist ways of thinking that have been historically promoted by Western
science has left out the social and cultural components of agriculture. It is vital to comprehend how
relations, both human and ecological, function alongside the technical and agronomic aspects of
agroecology. “Some scientists (and among them agroecologists) are proposing that a paradigm shift is
needed, a transformation toward ways of knowing and doing that are contextual and relational and can
address sensitively the complexity that is at the heart of living systems” (Ferdowsi 2013). In practice,
BAFT sought to strengthen participants' ability to be systems thinkers and to see the many different
factors that make up the whole in order to understand both the ecological and social components of the
food system.

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Decolonial Framework

Just as agroecology principles embrace biodiversity within ecosystems, there is also great value to be
found in a diverse classroom. The wide range of diversity within the BAFT program allowed for deep
conversations around identity, systemic oppression, privilege, and intersectionality. In teaching
agroecology, it is essential to talk about race within the food system in the context of the United States,
where racism and xenophobia are deeply woven into the threads of society. The food system has a long
history of reinforcing violence against people of color, from the expropriation of indigenous lands, to
slavery, to the exploitation of farm laborers. One program participant stated the following when
reflecting on their own identity and desire to participate in BAFT.

“I think when a lot of people think of black peoples’ relationship to the land, they think of folks that
were enslaved and I knew there was more and I wanted to look for that, and I wanted to feel that rather
than searching for it in a book. I knew that that information was inside me already and I wanted to wake
it up” –Shelley Hawkins, BAFT participant

Participant experiences such as the one above influenced the course's decolonial framework that
critically examined the colonial legacy behind food and farming in the United States. The objective of a
decolonial classroom is to make power visible, to understand the ways in which settler mentalities have
formed racial hierarchies, and to map the ways in which global politics affect the distribution of
resources (Avalos 2019).

While there are many dimensions of colonization, including the power it holds over the production of
knowledge, one of the key colonial forces within farming and food systems is the emphasis on the
domination of the land and extractivist production as part of the larger colonial project. This concept is
deeply linked to the notion that humans dominate nature and that nature exists to serve humanity. This
perception was born out of the Renaissance period of the 16th century, and advanced with the
development of the reductionist sciences in the historical period known as the modern era (Moura 2015).
Historically, this concurrent to the colonization of the Americas and many other parts of the world by
European forces (Moura 2015). This objectification of the Earth laid the groundwork for contemporary
industrial and extractive agriculture. The philosophy of control is deeply rooted in the concept of
modernity fostered by a colonial-imperialist mentality of the West. Agroecology seeks to break away

13
from these agricultural practices that attempt to control the environment, and in doing so implements
practices that harmoniously grow food alongside natural ecologies (Miguel Altieri and Nicholls 2002).

In many urban places within the US, the colonial history of the food system has greatly played a role in
who has access to nutritious and fresh food, hence the growing need and demand for a food justice
movement (A. Siegner, Sowerwine, and Acey 2018). It is a movement that goes beyond consumers’
individual food choices by addressing the systemic inequalities that bar certain communities from
accessing nutritious food. “Food justice thus pursues a liberatory principle focusing on the right of
historically disenfranchised communities to have healthy, culturally appropriate food, which is also
justly and sustainably grown” (Sbicca 2012).

Food justice within urban communities is multifaceted, ranging from issues around environmental
racism, access to land, and labor in terms how food is grown and processed. The Bay Area in particular
has a long history of grassroots organizing around food justice. For example, West Oakland was the
birthplace of the Black Panthers Free Breakfast for Children program, which sought to provide
nutritious food for youth living in the highly industrialized neighborhood (Sbicca 2012). The area's long
history of discriminatory redlining played a central role in the neighborhood's lack of grocery markets.
The Black Panther Parties efforts to address issues around equity and access to fresh food can be seen in
the emancipatory spirit of the neighborhood today, with entities such as the Mandela Grocery
Cooperative serving as a thriving local community hub that is a worker-owned and Black-owned
business (Figueroa and Alkon 2017). These historical and contemporary examples were woven into the
BAFT course through group discussions and guest speakers.

The decolonial framework within BAFT spanned from a historical analysis of how colonization has
affected land tenure in the United States, to practical tools to decolonize one's diet from production to
consumption, all while challenging colonial ideologies and assumptions. One BAFT participant Samuel
Madrigal reflects, “the course taught me to be thinking about the cultural significance of food, that it
isn't just that it is representative of our culture but that it also holds our lineage.” Within the classroom
an array of conversations were sparked, ranging from the ways in which the forced enslavement of
people to work the land has resulted in deep-seated historical trauma and internalized colonialism, and
how these narratives must be centered when discussing farming and access to land, to how to reclaim
traditional dietary practices and the implications of eating sugary and highly processed foods produced
by industrial agriculture.
14
Agroecology in theory seeks to decolonize knowledge by reclaiming traditional indigenous and peasant
based agricultural knowledge, acknowledging that there is a multiplicity of epistemologies. In order to
integrate humanizing pedagogies into a decolonial framework, it was essential to allow students the time
to reflect on their own people’s histories around land and land tenure in this country. This diverse group
of students shared narratives that are often absent from popular dialogues around the history of land and
farming. These conversations in turn created space to discuss food sovereignty and environmental
justice, as well as to recognize how resistance movements—frequently led by people of color and
impoverished communities—have long counteracted extractive capitalist models of farming.

BAFT not only sought to uphold a decolonial framework within the classroom, but also to decolonize
federal resources from the USDA. BAFT diffused institutional power by reallocating funds and
resources to underserved beginning farmers. Recognizing that the USDA has a long history of
unlawfully barring the distribution of federal resources to farmers of color (Williams and Holt-Giménez
2017), BAFT directly allocated funds to beginning farmers from similar backgrounds.

Gender and Sexuality

When discussing agroecology, it is essential to critically look at gender to understand how patriarchy has
influenced land tenure, labor, and resource distribution within the food system. According to a UN
report, “gender issues are incorporated into less than ten percent of development assistance in
agriculture, and women farmers receive only five percent of agricultural extension services worldwide”
(De Schutter 2010). Agroecological models strive for self-sufficiency so that farmers are not dependent
on high inputs. In this regard, low-input agroecological practices may have the potential to benefit
women and fems who frequently struggle to find access to capital, external inputs, and/or subsidies.
Agroecological practices seek to address gender inequalities and help pave the way for resilient,
regenerative, self-sufficient, and empowered farmers.

The following data highlights the disparities faced by female-identified farmers in the United States and
female-headed households seeking to address food security. According to the USDA Agriculture Census
of 2017 only 36 percent of all farms have a woman as the principal operator. Women farm operators as a
whole receive 61 cents on the dollar made by men, resulting in one of the largest wage gaps of any
industry (Kruzic and Hazard 2017). Women own only 2 percent of all titled land worldwide (Milgroom
et al. 2015). Structural gender based oppression is also visible within households resulting in female-

15
headed homes being 30.3 percent food insecure, in comparison to a mere 22.4 percent of male-headed
homes (Kruzic and Hazard 2017). Within the course, BAFT participants were asked to reflect statistics
such as these, the implications of patriarchy within agriculture, and the ways in which agroecology has
the potential to dismantle these inequalities.

The BAFT course provided students with interactive opportunities to reflect on their own identity within
the broader intersection of gender and sexual orientation in agroecology. Students were invited to
express their gender through creating a visual or written art piece and then place it on a spectrum of
masculine to feminine, exploring gender as both a spectrum and social construct, rather than a binary
biological determination. By starting the dialogue from a personal reflection rather than an abstract
theoretical approach, students were able to contextualize their own narratives in theoretical ideas.

Even more broadly, gender and sexuality were examined in relation to other social “isms” within a
context of structural oppression. A module focused on intersectionality was used to explore the impact
of patriarchy, white supremacy, neoliberalism, and colonialism and to promote dialogue and
understanding between participants from diverse backgrounds. “A central tenet of modern feminist
thought has been the assertion that ‘all women are oppressed.’ This assertion implies that women share a
common lot, that factors like class, race, religion, sexual preference, etc. do not create a diversity of
experience that determines the extent to which sexism will be an oppressive force in the lives of
individual women” (hooks 2014). In an exercise conducted by a guest speaker, the class placed various
social categories on signs around the classroom such as race, gender, class, sexual orientation,
appearance, physical ability, mental ability, language, religion, citizenship, academic education.
Participants were then asked questions such as:

● “What posed the greatest challenge for you growing up?”

● “What has had the biggest influence on your life?”
● “What do you feel has given you the most privilege?”
● “What is something that you have or currently struggle with that other people may not know?”

After each question was read, participants would stand near the category they felt most impacted by.
Everyone was invited to share about why they selected a category, often resulting in informative, eye-
opening, and sometimes challenging dialogue.

16
This greatly speaks to what Claudia Korol (2007) identifies as one of the key elements of feminist
pedagogy: “the discovery of memory not only within oppression, but also in resistance. Pedagogy that
prefers testimony to silence of texts. Collective testimonies, made of many memoirs, capable to affirm
or to question identities.” BAFT’s feminist pedagogy allowed students to explore the ways in which
agroecology challenges hegemonic relationships of power and domination perpetuated by patriarchy,
while simultaneously opening a space for dialogue on how to observe and dismantle patriarchal and
heternormative behaviors within students own lives.

Honoring Queer Identities Within the Classroom

One of the many realms of diversity represented in the BAFT classroom was participants’ gender
identities. Both participants and educators were challenged to expand their perceptions of gender. As an
educator, if you mistake a person’s pronoun, it is important to acknowledge the mistake and apologize.
A standard classroom introductory practice is for educators to share their preferred gender pronoun and
to invite participants to share their preferred pronouns. This fosters inclusivity within the classroom and
normalizes the importance of checking assumptions. Further, we suggest educators incorproate a module
around gender and agriculture that expands on the concepts discussed in this chapter and defines
important terms such as sex, gender, and sexual orientation. We invited a guest speaker who developed a
module called "The Garden is Queer" which showed students how some plants can be “male” and
“female” at the same time. The course then looked at ways in which hertonormative scientific botanical
terms can be redefined to label plants as “pollen-producing” and “pollen-receiving” rather than “male”
or “female”, directly disrupting common institutional articulations of “normative” plant biology.

Spirituality and Mysticism

Inspired by global peasant movements such as La Via Campesina and MST, BAFT also greatly
emphasized the spiritual component that comes with stewarding land, honoring the many different
traditions of people across the globe and recognizing the somatic healing experiences that form when
reconnecting with the Earth. Welcoming the spiritual aspects of agroecology and different cosmologies
linked to land stewardship is another form of decolonizing the classroom. “Revolutionary theorist Frantz
Fanon noted that colonization estranges the colonized from their own metaphysical worlds, their
epistemologies, knowledges, and ways of being. Multiple forces of power (institutional, epistemological,
religious) collude over time to produce this estrangement” (Avalos 2019).

17
Spiritual components brought into the classroom included “místicas” offered by guest speakers of the
MST in Brazil, sharing circles, and other rituals. While BAFT had various mystic and/or spiritual
components interwoven into its curriculum, the BAFT educators recognized the importance of
expanding these elements of the curriculum, especially in the context of the Global North where much
of Earth-based spiritual practices have been forcefully erased or banned as part of the colonial legacy.
Urbanization and colonial legacies present in the United States have a long history of attempting to sever
communities connections to land. BAFT educators incorporated these elements into the curriculum,
seeing them as important opportunities to honor a wide range of ancestral traditions and recenter the
spiritual component of farming, especially with urban communities that have limited access to the land.

Beyond the Course

Mobilization Phase Design and Implementation

A significant part of BAFT is the mobilization phase that created pathways for participants to take the
next step as urban farmers and agroecologists. This process started during the BAFT course with
participants engaging in a visionary process of designing a business or project plan. This component of
the course assisted in bridging the relationship between theory and practice to form praxis. Participants
received mentorship and paid internships with other farmers and community entrepreneurs working
within a similar realm, as well as seed grants to help participants get their land access or their food and
farming business up and running.

While recognizing that the concept of “business incubation” is still functioning within the capitalist
paradigm, educators tried to introduce concepts such as exchange, sharing, and cooperativism. Leah
Atwood, BAFT program co-director reflects, “Extractive capitalism creates inequality in the way that it
is designed and unregulated. With the interconnected influences of settler colonialism, patriarchy, and
white supremacy, there is no way unfettered capitalism can promote social equity. It’s exactly the
opposite.” The mobilization phase allocates public funds via mini-grants, paid internships and
mentorships to serve individuals from structurally oppressed communities to cultivate agroecological
food and farming businesses. “The aim is to promote economic viability for farmer livelihoods, and to
increase food sovereignty in the communities most impacted and most deserving,” states Leah. She
envisions the potential of public subsidies, not for cash crops, but to recognize and support farming as an

18
essential public service, as a part of food security and social and ecological resilience. The BAFT
program, through the mobilization phase, aspired to increase food sovereignty and to create networks of
solidarity between consumers and producers toward cooperative economic models.

BAFT aimed to reduce barriers commonly present within on-the-job training opportunities, while
simultaneously building resilient and equitable community food systems with experienced food and
farming leaders fighting for agroecology and food sovereignty. Together with like-minded organizations
and experienced farmers, BAFT directly connected individuals to build relationships and learn new
skills and perspectives. By directing grant funds to support leaders and learners to cultivate community
and provide paid skills training through mini-grants, paid internships, and paid one-on-one consultation
with mentors of their choice, BAFT provided an alternative to the unsustainable model of unpaid
internships.

A key part of BAFT was not only to provide education but to strengthen a movement within the Bay
Area. “The more relevant measure of formative processes may not be in the quality of the thinkers they
produce, but in the territoriality of the movement they reproduce” (McCune and Sánchez 2018).
Reinforcing territoriality and movement building within the bioregion of California’s Bay Area is an
essential component of forming the local food sovereignty mobilization network.

Challenges and Future Directions for BAFT

While the concept of humanization was foundational is designing the BAFT pedagogy, trying to
embody humanization in the classroom did not come without challenges. Due to the background of the
BAFT educators and program designers, many of the pedagogical influences came from Latin America.
When teaching agroecology in the US, it is important to incorporate the US legacy of land-based
oppression and it’s historical and ongoing impact on people of color. Specifically, the centuries of
genocide, mass enslavement, pilaging, internment, and exploitation has impacted indigenous peoples,
and people of the African, Asian, and Central and South America diasporas, in unique and explicit ways.
By building awareness around racism in the food system and the historic and present-day impact upon
diverse racial and cultural identities, educators can shed light on the trauma of white supremacy and
examine what is needed for healing and collective liberation. For future directions of BAFT, it was
recommended to have a more specific focus on racial justice and agroecology as it’s own curriculum
topic, as well as be embedded throughout the course. Educators were challenged to discuss race in a

19
multiracial classroom, to discuss class in a space where a wide range of privileges were represented, and
to discuss gender when there is a spectrum of gender identities. Historical traumas arise, white fragility
is confronted, and accountability is demanded.

A challenge facing many farmer training programs is how to measure the impact of their programs.
Depending on the source of funding, measures can be predominantly reductionistic, focusing on the
number of people impacted, businesses started, and the number of people being served from socially
disadvantaged backgrounds, etc. These gross standards of success can motivate organizations to increase
participant counts without focusing on the depth of impact. California farmer-educator networks have
discussed the need to create shared metrics that better reflect our educational programs and to
recommend those changes to funding agencies. We encourage funders to expand their impact
vocabulary when it comes to program evaluation, and, rather than create metrics from the top down, to
give organizations autonomy to set and design their own course metrics. The goal is to create metrics
that can help both the organization and their funders gauge the overall success of a program. Measuring
early and frequently is key, as well as incorporating measurements that reflect a holistic and deep
impact. The pressing challenge of improving metrics of success for farmer training programs mirrors the
need to expand the ways in which we understand and measure ecological productivity on farms. The
current standard is to measure on-farm productivity by quantitative yield or profit, rather than the quality
of ecosystem services provided, of human physical-emotional health maintained and of socio-ecological
sustainability promoted.

As BAFT created a larger and larger network of graduates who are working within the farming and food
systems, a process of inviting graduates back to come teach different cohorts was established. These
active teaching methods encourage previous graduates to reflect on their experience and continue to
engage with the course content, formulating a collaborative process and deepening in their skillset. This
methodology assists in the construction of knowledge originating from peers, who are able to
contextualize knowledge for underserved beginning urban farmers.

20
Recommendations for Urban Agroecology Educators

The need for politicized urban agroecology education

A core objective of BAFT was to prepare urban farmers as agroecologists to dismantle the structural
inequalities that shape the current hegemonic food system. Programs such as these require educators
who are highly competent at facilitating dialogue among diverse students and communicating social
justice principles. The diversity that exists within urban areas presents an important opportunity to build
solidarity between diverse communities. However, this requires a nuanced unpacking of the impact of
systems of oppression. Fostering cross-cultural dialogue in agroecology training programs can help
build bridges between the diversity of urban communities that are often historically and intentionally
fragmented.

Politicized urban agroecology education—as presented in this chapter—provides opportunities to

strengthen food sovereignty, contribute to cultural healing, and achieve personal transformation.
Educators must consciously avoid indoctrinating students to accept or adapt to the conditions of the
global food system. Agroecology is a life-honoring philosophy that is linked to a long history of
resistance. Its transformative potential is rooted in shifting paradigms. Our recommendations follow for
integrating social justice and politicalized agroecology into urban farmer training programs.

Educational tactics to support politicized urban agroecology education

Train educators: We recommend that core educators and facilitators receive training in restorative
justice, anti-oppression, conflict engagement. This will allow the program team to maintain awareness of
power dynamics in the classroom while also increasing their capacity to address with care and
compassion the triggering of traumas that arise when discussing challenging issues. The quality of
facilitation makes the difference between deepening divisions and causing harm versus deepening cross-
cultural connection and a sense of healing.

Cultivate cross-cultural competency: Educators can cultivate cross-cultural dialogue in classrooms by

avoiding alienating rhetoric or theoretical abstraction. One useful way to avoid alienation is by
contextualizing discourse in lived experiences, and to remain receptive to student feedback. Examples
include: student reflections on their own people’s histories around land and land tenure; honoring queer
indentities students self-identifying their gender pro-nouns.
21
Build trust: Trust is built based on an awareness of social positionality and privileges, either by
identification with the struggle and overcoming obstacles, or through solidarity and humble service. This
is particularly important in programs aiming to serve structurally oppressed, overburdened, or
multicultural communities. Representation by the communities served in the educator and leadership
team is critical for building trust.

Humanize your class: Encourage your students to be their whole selves in class and share their own
knowledge and stories. To do this, you must cultivate respectful and sincere relationships with students,
truly listen to them, and value the wisdom they bring. A humanistic pedagogy allows for more authentic
learning and exchange. Strategies for creating spaces for dialogue and community-building include:
personal check-ins, shared meals, artistic and creative self-expression, and spiritual connections with
land and territory.

Prepare guest speakers: Challenges can arise when field visits and guest speakers have limited
familiarity with social justice and anti-oppression frameworks. Prepare guests in advance by sharing
overview documents of program goals, core values, and class agreements. Follow up with conversations
to address any questions they may have.

Create a values-centered curriculum: Mapping the curriculum to values—as was done for BAFT
(Table 1)—can help ground farming activities and classroom learning in relatable terms.

Programmatic tactics to support politicized urban agroecology education

Address participation barriers: Addressing barriers to participation and structural inequalities is

imperative to long term success of these programs. Underserved beginning farmers are likely to confront
challenges in access to land, resources, markets, and institutional support throughout their careers. Think
deeply about how to meet as many of the basic needs of participants as possible in recognition of
societal inequalities and barriers to access. For example, BAFT provided fee waivers and scholarships to
students with financial need, hourly wages for on-farm apprenticeships, and guest speaker stipends. In
addition, carefully track and measure the allocation of resources to understand their use and impact.

Prioritize organizational health: The organization needs to be financially healthy as these programs
can require significant financial, mental, and often emotional resources. We recommend prioritizing
emotional, mental, and physical wellness. In our experience, a weekly check in to acknowledge one

22
another’s personal lives and explore ways to cultivate health, both individually and collectively, was
tremendously powerful. We recommend prioritizing paid time to engage in wellness practices, such as
acupuncture, massages, potlucks, and hikes as a team. This can strengthen relationships and improve
individual and collective wellness.

Cultivate representative staffing and leadership: Consciousnessly make space for and hire educators
and staff who reflect the racial, sexual and/or cultural diversity of the people your organization serves. If
possible, train students or participants to transition into staffing, educator, and leadership roles. For
example, BAFT hired two graduates of its program.

Integrate metrics: Create metrics that can help both the organization and your funders gauge the
overall success of your program. Both your team and the people your organization serves need to
understand the value of the metrics. Measuring early and frequently through various modalities can help
collect comprehensive and quality data.

Adopt participatory planning for the future: The long term impact and success of any farmer training
program is contingent on the future opportunities that follow an educational program. Most farmer
training programs for new or beginning farmers see a small percentage of graduates continue on farming
career paths. When serving structurally oppressed communities, this percentage can be even smaller. For
this reason, the BAFT mobilization phase was developed through a participatory process as a follow-up
to the BAFT course and offered these kinds of next steps for graduates:

● Mentorship: Funding covered one-on-one mentorship and consultation support to work with a
mentor of their choice. Mentors should be offered compensation, and can also donate their fees
to the scholarship programs for participants.
● Paid internships: Funding for graduates continued experiential training and relationship
development. Offering living-wage internships is critical for low income graduates who often
cannot afford to participate in unpaid volunteer internships.
● Participatory mini-grant allocation: Graduates were invited to lead the process of directing
and allocated funds based on an individual's need. These strategies empower participants to
decide how funds are pooled or distributed to achieve the greatest impact and best meet
participants’ needs.

23
 ● Land access: We recommend participants have the opportunity to actively steward land, either
through an incubator site or in a mentorship capacity where they can receive guidance, resources,
and build community with other urban farmers.

It is essential to consistently listen to the students, to value the deep inner-knowledge present in both the
students and facilitators identities, privileges, and traumas. This allows for authentic learning, stemming
from human humility. Love sincerely the students, truly see them as human beings with stories. When
implementing educational programs, have the courage to implement the knowledge and techniques in
their entirety. Be sure to pause and listen to the group, taking in the pulse and energy of the classroom,
and remember to stay true to the original learning objectives of the course. Agroecology is linked to a
long history of popular culture. It stands as a protagonist in the resistance against industrial agriculture
that tries to erase those histories. Agroecology is a philosophy, a way of life, that honors life and should
also uphold these values when the focus of educational spaces. As a transformative process, the praxis of
agroecology aims for paradigm change, not only for the individuals within the classroom, but for the
students’ broader communities of which they are a part.

Conclusion

Agroecology education can serve as a driver for radical change, one that is rooted in systems
transformation, behavioural change, and paradigm shifts for culture and society. As a concept,
agroecology is often interpreted as a blending of agriculture and ecology. Indeed, much of the
sustainability and organic farming discourse has focused on environmental conservation in agriculture,
with social justice as an afterthought. However, a core ethos of agroecology is centered around humans
as an inseparable part of nature. Therefore, without human rights and social justice, there is no
ecological resilience. In an urban context, agroecology is a nexus for people from diverse backgrounds
including a confluence of communities who have been structurally oppressed.

The Bay Area Farmer Training sought to strengthen a community of agroecological practitioners who
collectively have the tools to dismantle the extractive industrial agricultural model. It offered a unique
pedagogy, weaving together popular education, critical, constructivist and humanizing pedagogies
within decolonial and feminist frameworks. Such an approach to agroecology education, set it apart
from many beginning farmer training programs in the United States. At its core, BAFT not only focused
on agroecology as the foundation for regenerative farming practices, but actively reimagined what it
24
looks like to live in urban communities. The program created a vibrant group of 122 participants who
continue to actively care for and protect the territory in which they live. Many have gone on to create
cooperatives, businesses, and projects that fight for food sovereignty and agroecology.

By centering the humanizing and critical pedagogies in urban agroecology education, we have the
opportunity to build bridges and promote social healing to massify agroecology as a movement. In order
to do this, an intersectional educational approach that actively builds solidarity is critical. This requires a
process in which individuals see themselves as protagonists confronting environmental and social
problems while also in service of something bigger than themselves. Urban agroecology education can
empower, unite, and mobilize individuals to build resilient community food systems that treat the Earth
and one another not as ecological or human resources to be exploited, but as an interconnected living
ecosystem for which we are all responsible.

Acknowledgments

This chapter honors those who have been deeply dedicated to BAFT’s work in creating a grassroots
global and local food sovereignty network. Thank you to those that strive to live in reciprocity with the
land and are at the forefront of the struggle to shift our global food system in order to protect
agroecological farming practices. We recognize the students in BAFT for their camaraderie, wisdom,
and guidance that contributed to a vibrant farmer training program.

We also recognize our many institutional partners and guest speakers including The Multinational
Exchange for Sustainable Agriculture (MESA), Planting Justice, Spiral Garden, Singing Frogs Farm,
Soul Farm, Wild and Radish, Catalan Family Farm, Oakland Sol Collective, La Cocina, Farmlink, Dark
Heart Nursery, Organic Seed Alliance, Gill Tract, Don Bugito, the Latin American Scientific Society of
Agroecology, BlueDog Consulting and many more supporters that kindly shared their time and
knowledge with the program.

All authors contributed to the writing of this chapter. Leah Atwood, Natalia Pinzón Jiménez, and Gavin
Raders co-authored the proposal to the USDA Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development program
that designed and funded the BAFT concept and framework. Ana Galvis and Paul Rogé co-designed the
BAFT curriculum. Ana Galvis served as the lead educator for most BAFT cohorts. Paul Rogé and Leah
Atwood supported BAFT classes. Paul Rogé, Natalia Pinzón, and Leah Atwood designed an online

25
learning platform and course to support BAFT’s in-person learning. Leah Atwood served as a co-
director for BAFT and became more directly involved as a facilitator in the last two BAFT cohorts. Leah
Atwood and Paul Rogé led the design and implementation of the mobilization phase of the program.
Brooke Porter conducted collaborative research with MESA in 2019 that included interviewing BAFT
participants and educators a like for her MSc in agroecology.

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Tables
Table 1. The values-centered curriculum of the Bay Area Farmer Training course.10

Core Value Core value

Domain Topics
balanced unbalanced
Social movements and their practices; Risk management planning;
Social Theory
Business planning and enterprise budgeting
Care and Neglect and Food safety, post-harvest handling, and food distribution; Cover crops
Technical Theory
compassion cruelty and soil-plant health; Irrigation and evapotranspiration
Building terraces and contour ditches with the “A” tool; Soil tillage and
Practical Activity
cultivation
Social Theory
Diversifying income streams; Management of economic risks
Polycultures; Functional biodiversity to enhance fertility, control pests
Technical Theory
Diversity Hegemony and diseases, and attract pollinators; sexual/asexual plant propagation
Transplanting and direct seeding; Vegetative propagation through cuttings
Practical Activity
and divisions
Social Theory
Food empires, regimes, and injustice
Ecological management of soil; Ecological management of pests, disease,
Harmony Hatred Technical Theory
and weeds
Practical Activity
Bed design for ecological management of pests, diseases, and weeds
Gender and agroecology; Traditional agriculture and indigenous
Social Theory
agroecological knowledge; Sustainability; Agriculture and nature
Fairness Unfairness Technical Theory
Economic thresholds of pest damage
Practical Activity
Farm design based on the biointensive model
Decolonization of diets and medicines; Cooperative Businesses and the
Sharing Economy; Access to land; Marketing plans; Community
Social Theory
Supported Agriculture and other direct marketing outlets; Access to land
and capital through community support and local governance
Autonomy Dependency How to prepare herbal medicine, make compost, harvest water, save seed,
conserve food through pickling and preserves etc.; Analysis of market
Technical Theory
conditions; Building community with social media and events; Dynamic
cash flow planning, bookkeeping, farm taxes, etc.
Practical Activity
Compost production and use; Seed saving and selection; Soil evaluations
Integrity Dishonesty Social Theory
Kinds of product certification

10
Co-lead educator Ana Cecilia Galvis created the values-centered curriculum for BAFT.
29
 Farm record keeping; Managing on-farm food safety risks; Assessments
Technical Theory
of sustainability and resilience
Practical Activity
Business and market plan
Social Theory
Animal health and well-being
Season extension; Small farm equipment; Aquaponics; rangeland
Renewal andstagnancy orTechnical
lack Theory
management; raising small animals; Whole farm design and management;
cycling of flow Crop planning software
Practical Activity
Greenhouse propagation; milking animals

Table 2. The Four Curriculum Categories of the Bay Area Farmer Training course.

Regenerative Agriculture and Agroecology Social Movements

● Agroecology and Permaculture Ethics ● Intersectionality and Social Movements
● Garden Design ● Decolonization of Diets
● Vegetable Production ● Gender and Agroecology
● Ecological Pest Management ● Seed Sovereignty
● Irrigation and Water Management

Models of Agroecological Production Business Incubation

● Evaluation of Agroecosystems ● Product Certification
● No-Till Vegetable Production ● Business Planning and Marketing
● Rooftop Gardening ● Financial Planning and Fundraising
● Nursery Production ● Democratic Workplaces
● Organic Farming ● Business Incubation
● Herbal Medicine and Food Preparation

30