Land alone is not enough. Prospect Farm, like many community
gardens and urban farms, was possible only because of
the growing dissatisfaction among residents with industrial
food and extensive community organizing. Individual urban
farmers are motivated by many different things, including the
desire to exercise, volunteer, and socialize with neighbors. But
people must want to farm.
However, the reproduction of age-old myths about the
idyllic peasant and joys of farming, were often witnessed.
Urban farming can either address or exacerbate deep divisions
of class, race, gender and age that characterize both rural and
urban life. Beyond romantic notions of bucolic bliss, creating a
farm in a city of concrete and asphalt requires a lot of digging
and lifting, especially when the plot of land is too small for
machinery. Dreams of vertical farming and hydroponics
notwithstanding, manual labor is an essential part of urban
farming, but to what extent will the division of labor follow
historic patterns of labor exploitation? Who will do the work,
how much will they be paid, and will they be paid at all? Farm
laborers in the United States today, including those producing
organic produce, are among the poorest paid, have to put up
with miserable working conditions, and are largely invisible to
the rest of the world.37,38 Who is to say that urban farms,
whether public or private, won't follow the same pattern? Will
the small bunch of enthusiastic volunteer farmers give way to
a new generation of underpaid peons? Can unpaid labor be
regenerative without being exploitative?
When humans created the first cities, farming was the
main line of work and women did most of it. Farming became
a business, men took over and hired others, including women
and children, to do the hardest work. Will the gendered division
of labor and child exploitation be reproduced in urban
agriculture? The most serious divisions in North American
agriculture, however, have been along racial lines. Plantation
agriculture and sharecropping in the Americas used and
abused slaves and freed blacks under the harshest conditions.
Today, immigrants from Latin America and the Caribbean
work on industrial farms under continuing harsh conditions.
In major U.S. cities, food workers have the lowest earnings. As
a result many younger blacks and Latinos reject urban
farming, consider manual labor a step backward and chose
not to get involved. At the same time, many of the city's
community and backyard gardeners are black and Latino
women who are still ‘invisible’ to others.