The B genome copy of the NAM1 gene is nonfunctional or deleted in modern bread wheat , and introgression of a functional copy from wild wheat can significantly increase Fe, Zn, and N grain concentration in certain genotype–environment conditions , and can also result in a significant increase in total N content . However, accelerated senescence in several isogenic lines containing a functional NAM-B1 allele resulted in reduced grain-filling periods and reduced kernel weights. Therefore, the best genotype– environment combinations must be determined in the breeding process to deploy NAM-B1 cultivars effectively.Urban agriculture has a rich history in the United States, evolving from a 20th century strategy for self-sufficiency during times of war and economic depression to a radical and alternative approach to food production in the 1960-70s . Today, urban agriculture has grown in popularity and is an increasingly commoditized feature of urban lifestyles . The move towards urban food systems is part of a larger trend to localize food ways in the United States by decreasing so-called “food miles” and reconnecting food consumers and producers to create trust, accountability, and transparency . Underneath this umbrella, urban agriculture symbolizes a myriad of ambitions including increased well-being via access to ‘good’ food and green space, improved sustainability, stronger local economies,snap clamps for greenhouse and a greater sense of community . Urban agriculture is also an important component of more radical movements like of food justice and food sovereignty . Researchers have critiqued the assumptions underlying local food systems and urban agriculture, namely that this myriad of benefits will come from localizing food sources.
Born and Purcell challenge this “politics of scale” which privileges local food production without critically examining actors’ agendas and confuses broader goals like food justice and means like localization, calling it the “local trap” . Researchers have also illustrated the racial tensions surrounding local food, noting that participants tend to be primarily affluent and white , transforming urban agriculture into “a way for local elites to create protective territories that narrowly serve their own interests” . This “defensive localism” can “create and maintain social exclusion, economic inequality, and social justice” . Researchers instead call for an embedded, “place-based” perspective that incorporates a progressive sense of place and “attends to [food’s] historic, political, economic, sociocultural, and scientific aspects” , calling upon visions of spatial justice . Spatial justice incorporates justice with important geographic concepts like space and place. Indeed, justice unfolds within and across spaces that either create or restrict opportunities for representation, access, participation, and belonging . Space has been a source of productive conversation among geographers, growing from the absolute, Newtonian conception of space as a container to the abstract, relational space of the cultural turn that inspires this research . The relational concept, inspired by Lefebvre’s conception of space as the product of interrelations , has been incredibly influential in the discipline, shifting the focus from topography to topology. This relational approach sees space as produced through relationships that reflect power inequalities . This view of space has been influential for theorists like Smith and Mitchell , as well as Massey , and drives this research. As Joassart-Marcelli and Bosco argue, the concept of space contributes productively to concepts like food justice by considering “how the spatial organization of the food system generates economic inequality, health disparities, social oppression, and uneven environmental barriers” .
Place can refer to a geographic location where practices unfold, the locale or setting of practices, or to a feeling or experience of place . In thinking about social movements, “place is both a setting for and situated in the operative of social and economic processes, and it also provides a ‘grounding’ for everyday life and experience” . Place undoubtedly matters in local food movements like urban agriculture and underlies concepts such as civic agriculture and community based agriculture . Further, place as a locale is important for understanding justice as embedded within local socio-natural geographies. As urban agriculture has grown and evolved, it has become more diverse in its form and spatial distribution, transforming a growing number of places in the process. Traditional, soil-based models like community gardens and urban farms are increasingly joined by soilless models, particularly hydroponics and aquaponics, that grow in greenhouses and even in buildings. Hydroponics uses a “nutrient solution root medium” to grow plants in place of soil . This method is praised for its reduced water and agrichemical use . Aquaponics uses a similar method, but incorporates aquaculture “to produce fish and plants in a closed-loop system that mimics the ecology of nature” by recirculating water with nutrient-rich fish waste that is filtered by the plants, enriching them and reducing waste . However, these methods often require more energy inputs than conventional production schemes . Although the majority of urban agriculture in the United States is still soil-based, soilless models are expected to become an increasingly present feature in urban landscapes. Soilless urban agriculture has yet to feature prominently in scholarly and popular literature on urban food systems, although targeted searches will return articles on “Z-Farming” or farming on zero acres , rooftop greenhouse gardening , vertical farming and popular books like The Vertical Farm: Feeding the World in the 21st Century by Dr. Dickson Despommier .
Aside from rooftop agriculture , which often still use soil-based growing practices, very little critical literature considers the social justice impacts of soilless agriculture. Reynolds and Cohen , however, do note that “high-tech projects such as rooftop farms and other entrepreneurial urban agriculture initiatives” are overwhelming white, middle-class, and male and may draw attention away from more radical, soil-based projects undertaken by people of color, low income communities, and women. The technological innovation that attracts funders to soilless urban agriculture thrives in urban landscapes where shared landscapes and cultures, increased competition, and public-private partnerships stimulate invention . However, access to cultures of innovation is not ubiquitous and often reinforces social division between high-paid “knowledge workers” who tend to be “mostly male, mostly white, very highly educated…” and the low-wage service workers whose labor undoubtedly supports innovation . This division is reinforced by an “ideology of technocracy” that sees those with technical knowledge as more valuable to society . The knowledge workers that develop soilless technologies such as scientists and engineers have been theorized as members of a “creative class” that thrives in cities. This “creative city” discourse complements neoliberal policies that influence economic development in cities and urban agriculture , favoring entrepreneurial approaches that reinforce “market-oriented economic growth, commodification, and the rule of capital” and create social exclusion by privileging the urban elite . The neoliberal agenda caters to a corporate food regime which includes food enterprises, as well as reformists strategies in urban agriculture like those emphasizing ‘food security’ . Indeed, the rise of the ‘social enterprise’ to address food insecurity and relieve federal institutions from the “vagaries of food assistance programs” , as well as provide job-training and workforce development,greenhouse snap on clamp falls squarely in the realm of neoliberalism . The focus on entrepreneurialism draws attention away from “deeper social injustices like racialized poverty, educational disparities, and political disenfranchisement” and ignores the significant barriers that communities of color face in transforming their food environments. The neoliberal model of urban governance shifts fiscal responsibilities onto communities and nonprofits that, at least in low-income neighborhoods, are poorly equipped and ill-prepared to address social problems . The role of the state is reduced to that of a facilitator, encouraging private investment and innovation through partnerships, rather than providing a social safety net. Furthermore, by increasing low-income neighborhoods’ attractiveness to outsiders, urban agriculture has been tied to gentrification or the displacement of long-term residents by more affluent and primarily white newcomers . Displacement, which ties directly to questions of land ownership, is higher in low-income communities of color who have histories of marginalization that have created barriers to becoming property owners . Acknowledging the structural inequities that underlie urban agriculture , food justice and food sovereignty take more radical approaches to urban food systems.
Food justice – the idea that every person has the right to access affordable, healthful, and culturally appropriate food produced in an ethical and environmentally sound way – begins the task of unraveling the race-, class-, and gender-based inequities that shape food production, distribution, and consumption . Food sovereignty, arguably the most radical approach, seeks to dismantle systems of privilege like capitalism and neoliberalism, enabling marginalized communities to plan and make decisions about their foodways through participatory and community-oriented projects . Geographers, in particular, have taken the lens of spatial justice to examine food justice, asking “who is included, who belongs, who has access to resources, and who benefits from these opportunities” in particular food spaces . Further, they consider the role of sociospatial setting in producing particular ideas of justice , including distributive justice, which stresses fairness in outcomes like access to food , and procedural justice, which emphasizes fairness in procedures such as participation in decision making and food system planning . The right way to define or do justice, particularly within the so-called alternative food movement has been the source of productive scholarly conversations . However, researchers like Goodman, Dupuis, and Goodman have urged that we move away from standard setting towards a more nuanced, imperfect understanding of justice that is situated, admits conflicts, and is malleable to present conditions. As Sbicca argues in a special issue of Local Environments on “new spaces of food justice,” it is time that we acknowledge the multiple ways of doing food justice, while at the same time recognizing the universality of food struggles. Focusing on the practices of food justice requires that we pay attention to growing methods, among other things. The connection between the growing method and justice has been under theorized – although, assumptions around the motivations of actors and romantic images of children with dirty hands persist in the food movement. Little is actually known about how burgeoning soilless urban agriculture contributes to justice. This dissertation seeks to fill this knowledge gap by examining soilless and soil-based urban agriculture in San Diego County. To this end, I developed a theoretical framework that combines urban political ecology, commodity circuit analysis, and actor-network theory, in order to rigorously approach my research questions. This research is underpinned by a theoretical framework that integrates three areas of theory – political ecology, economic geography, and actor-network theory – that have been exceptionally influential in the field of geography and, more recently, in the study of food. Political ecology, particularly urban political ecology provides the foundation for this dissertation, as it frames the way I theorize nature in the city, allowing me to abandon dualisms that produce a priori assumptions about different forms of urban agriculture. Urban political ecologists, Heynen, Kaika and Swyngedouw argue “there is nothing a priori unnatural about produced environments like cities” . Indeed, cities are simultaneously social and natural, discursive and material “socio-ecological assemblages” . This view removes long-standing dualisms between nature and society that undergird the capitalist exploitation of environmental resources and labor and frame popular discourses on urban agriculture . However, scholars have noted that it fails to upend the nature-society dualism, instead framing nature and society as two spheres with a dialectical relationship, which can still lead to prioritization of particular domains . Relational geographers instead argue for a hybrid approach , that recognizes “the intimate, sensible and hectic bonds through which people and plants; devices and creatures; documents and elements take and hold their shape in relations to each other in the fabrications of everyday life” . Such an approach, which emphasizes networks and connections, shares much in common with actor-network theory – one of the three main theoretical foundations of this dissertation. Nonetheless, urban political ecology unveils the power relations underlying uneven urban landscapes, with implications for food justice . Swyngedouw notes, “the material conditions that comprise urban environments are controlled, manipulated and serve the interests of the elite at the expense of marginalized populations” . Indeed, in capitalism, raw materials, capital, and land are unevenly distributed and concentrated among a few individuals and corporations. This ownership gives this group power to exploit labor and nature. These material relations are embedded into particular spaces and commodities, obscuring exploitation .