the black panther party was founded in oakland, calif., in 1966. they preached a message of radical black power throughout disinvested in, low-income urban areas until the early 1980s. part of their message was policing the police — often remembered as violence — but their commitment to community safety went further.

the panthers’ goal was to address and mitigate the injustices caused by national, endemically racist policies and programs that have systemically undermined black communities since their inception. policies such as the requirement for public housing to be segregated, often segregating previously desegregated neighborhoods when initially built, and processes like redlining.

while the black panther party’s overall goal was to bring about systemic change for black communities, with an end to police brutality and economic subjugation, they provided important resources as a stopgap measure to sustain urban communities until radical change or revolution came. the panthers’ “ten point program,” detailed their mission — both what they wanted, and what they believed. it makes explicit calls for institutional change, and reaffirms the rights of all people to the basic necessities to live a healthy life.

10. we want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice, and peace.” 

— the black panthers ten point program 

the panthers designed a series of survival programs, which targeted a wide range of needs, including food, clothing, jobs, education, health, and more — items highlighted in their mission. four are particularly relevant to the ways we conceptualize food movements today. 

the first two, free breakfast for school children and the free food programs most explicitly provided communities with food security. 

the free breakfast for school children program provided hot, nutritious food, free of charge, to any child who attended the program. by the panthers’ own admission, the purpose of the program was threefold — to feed children, to bring attention to the pervasive issue of childhood hunger, and to provide a positive introduction to the panthers and their message for children, their parents, and the broader public. it is sometimes credited with inspiring the expansion of federally sponsored free breakfast programs, the government’s response to its wild popularity and the way it palatably introduced the panthers’ beliefs and message. 

the free food program addressed hunger beyond just the school day. the panthers accomplished this through ongoing food deliveries to program participants, and periodic widespread food distribution to a wider swath of the community. a third program, the seniors against a fearful environment (safe) program, aimed to meet the variety of needs of elders in the communities, and included food distributions to seniors.

the exploited and oppressed people’s needs are land, bread, housing, education, freedom, clothing, justice, and peace, and the black panther party shall not for a day alienate ourselves from the masses and forget their needs for survival. … when people call in to say they need food we do not spout a lot of superficial rhetoric, but see that they are fed.” 

— a bpp member named marsha in an april 1969 issue of the black panther 

all of these programs relied heavily on community assistance to run. donations of food, funds, space, and time were necessary. while many of these donations were made by community members on their own volition, the panthers also took a more active role in securing donations. this included calling grocery stores to ask for food donations, requesting that program participants occasionally volunteer, or asking churches and community centers to lend them space for organizing and distribution. this was often an effective strategy for the panthers, but if an entity refused to provide the requested assistance, a more aggressive tone was often adopted, including boycotts or protests of offending businesses, according to the book “black against empire: the history and politics of the black panther party,” by joshua bloom and waldo e. martin.

these three survival programs are clearly understood within the framework of food security movements, ensuring that all in the community had access to affordable, healthy food. but when coupled with the panther’s demands for just and equal living conditions, it elevated the food movements the panthers were a part of to a class of food justice activism. 

there is another survival program of the panthers — and the fourth on our list — that is worth mentioning in its relation to food movements. although it was never realized due to a lack of funds, the panthers designed a land banking program, which would have given the community the power to make land use determinations. these decisions could have created a space for a food sovereignty movement to flourish, as community members would have been able to create jobs and access to healthy, affordable produce growth within their community. the panthers imagined a system that would see the “merger of land conservation and ‘human conservation’ — the interconnection between the preservation of our natural and human resources, recognizing that each have little without the other,” according to the book “the black panther party: service to the people programs” by the dr. huey p. newton foundation and edited by david hilliard. this could have been used for urban farms and gardens, where the means of production would have been put back into the hands of the community, but without the means of purchasing land, the land banking program was unfortunately never actualized. 

the panthers imagined a radical equality, never before seen in america, and were willing to take active measures to secure this reality. at the same time, they realized the immediate needs of their communities. 

the creation of the survival programs was a hallmark of their approach, integrating the practical needs of the community with broader radical ideological struggle. the survival programs ingrained mutual aid and community care and were creative in adopting strategies from other movements to best fit their needs. 

racial and environmental injustice has many effects, and the survival programs were designed to address them all. food was just one facet of their programming to right injustices. part of the panthers’ downfall lay in the ways managing this multitude of programs strained resources. predicated on substantial systematic change, the programs were never designed to provide for communities indefinitely. 

across the country, urban farming organizations continue to provide mutual aid, access to healthy and affordable food, and educational opportunities to advance food security in the same spirit as the panthers. 

in oakland, the black panther party’s birthplace, organizations like spiral gardens, city slicker farms, and phat beets produce, all work with the local community to provide fresh produce for free or at affordable rates, or supplies for community members to grow their own. 

similar organizations exist in major cities across the country, such as the urban growers collective in chicago, and revision urban farm in boston. they also exist in smaller cities, suburban, and rural areas, like soul fire farm in petersburg, new york; the natwani coalition in northern arizona; and liberation farms in androscoggin county in maine.

in today’s movements, taking a narrow focus has led to longer-term success for organizations.  this is unlike the panthers multifaceted approach, which when combined with pressure, white supremacist systems, and the forces that uphold them caused strain on their resources. with this narrower approach, in order to effectively challenge the systems that produce and maintain inequality, an intersectional, multi movement coalition will be necessary. to do this, many food sovereignty and justice groups partner with groups addressing other symptoms of oppression to challenge the larger system. 

in this struggle, by remembering the panthers’ approach — by utilizing mutual aid networks and uplifting urban communities from within — organizations can address the current realities or low-income communities while striving as a collective for systemic change.

however, some jobs done by dogs are a bit more unusual. since 1982 the maryland department of agriculture has had at least one dog as a member of their apiary inspectors team. this practice is not just uncommon though. it does not appear that any other place in the country uses dogs for this purpose, although there is one dog, specially outfitted in his own beekeeping suit, doing the same work in australia.

the canine detectives are trained to sniff out american foulbrood, or afb, in a hive. if afb is detected the dog will sit by the infected hive to notify their handler.

american foulbrood is a very serious bacterial disease, one which infected hives rarely recover from. the disease has two stages, the spore and the vegetative stage. a hive is infected when a worker bee picks up afb spores from an affected colony or contaminated equipment. the spores are transferred to the developing larvae through food, and during the bacterium’s vegetative stage, and the bacteria spores rapidly multiply, creating billions of new spores. when the brood cell is capped and the larvae are sealed the young larvae, usually glistening white, turn a coffee brown then black, and sink to the floor of the cell in a goopy mass. eventually this will dry into a hard scale on the cell’s bottom, which will contain many spores and infect future larvae in the cell.

american foulbrood will eventually kill almost every hive it infects. furthermore, it continues to wreak havoc on the area’s bee population even after the originally infected hive is decimated. bees frequently steal honey and nectar from weak or dead hives, and afb spores can be transmitted to a new hive through this process.

spores can also exist for up to 30 years on beekeeping equipment. if equipment is left unsterilized it will infect other hives that it is used on. the most reliable way to clean equipment and hives is to burn them. unfortunately, even this is not guaranteed to purge the equipment of the bacteria.

given the high possibility for contamination with afb it seems only logical to inspect hives in the most efficient way possible. maryland’s chief apiary inspector, and owner and handler of the current apiary inspection hound, cybil preston can check around 10 hives in 45 minutes. mack, her dog, can check 100 in the same amount of time. over mack’s predecessor, klinker’s entire career 100% of hives he identified as afb positive were confirmed when later tested by the usda. and while mack’s statistics are not currently out, in field testing he correctly identified 100% of infected hives.  

clearly, introducing apiary inspection dogs could drastically improve efficiency in apiary departments all across the united states, and even across the world.

now a giant machine, akin to a mechanical earthworm, denominated lady bird, burrowed deep under the city, creating a tunnel. this tunnel will serve to redirect sewage overflows, keeping the waste out of the city’s rivers on the occasions when the archaic sewage system becomes overwhelmed — a problem that has contributed to 3 billion gallons of raw sewage deposited into the anacostia and potomac annually.

this tunnel project is part of a larger commitment, $2.6 billion that d.c., along with the environmental protection agency, has invested in a the clean rivers project, a 20 year rivers cleanup initiative.

one report released by dc appleseed, a d.c.-based organization focused on solving problems affecting the district and its residents, stated that the anacostia river is one of the dirtiest in the country, practically unswimmable and for all safe purposes unfishable. yet, the rivers are still a hub for d.c. life. people boat and fish in both of the city’s rivers, and the banks house parks, stadiums and other centers of activity.

currently, the district’s sewer system dates back to the 1800s. it uses a combined approach, with one set of pipes for both sewage and stormwater. this means that with any storm that accumulates more than a quarter inch of rainfall, sewage flows into the rivers through 60 main overflow sites.

to give you an example of the extent of the problem, the highest rate of overflow for the last quarter of 2015 was the northeast boundary swirl effluent combined sewer overflow. there were 10 overflows in the quarter, which equaled spillage of 128.66 million gallons of sewage and flowed for just under 80 hours. to put it in perspective, this is enough sewage to fill just under 195 olympic swimming pools.

it’s estimated the new tunnel will cut those sewage overflows by 96%.

the machine used to create this tunnel is known as a tunnel boring machine, and consists of a cutterhead, scrapers, a giant screw and a conveyor belt. lady bird is 442 feet long (more than a football field in length, according to dc water), weighs 1,325 tons, and can move at a speed of 4 inches per minute.

to travel forward it braces itself against the sides of the concrete tunnel behind it and uses hydraulic jacks to propel itself forward as the cutterhead slowly rotates. the earth is loosened and mixed with a soapy, conditioning substance. it is then sucked into a giant screw which turns, carrying the muck to a conveyor belt, where it travels out of the tunnel to be disposed of at a dumping site.

after each push a new section of the tunnel is put up by workers, who make use of a mechanical arm to fit the pre-made sections into place. as the next shove occurs, grout is injected between the new tunnel and the outside dirt. workers lay down rails so the next section of tunnels can arrive and the cycle continues.

while lady bird has completed her section of the tunnel, as has a machine named lucy diggs slowe, named for one of the founders and first president of alpha kappa alpha sorority, and later an administrator at howard university. two other machines will continue to work. the third tunnel boring machine, named nannie after nannie helen burroughs, a civil rights activist who was very prominent in d.c. and helped provide education for african-american girls. nannie is digging the portion of the tunnel near rfk stadium, which will connect to the tunnel that lady bird is working on. the fourth machine, a micro tunnel boring machine simply called abigail, will connect lucy’s tunnel to existing sewers.

these tunnels, when combined with urban sustainability and green infrastructure projects such as distributing free rain barrels to residents and replacing asphalt with a more porous pavement, green roofs and rain gardens. all of these, and other efforts combine in the $2.6 billion, 20-year clean rivers project. in a decade, at the end of this initiative, district residents can expect to once again see rivers that are swimmable, fishable and compliant to the epa regulations.

worse yet, kathleen merrigan, gw’s executive director of sustainability and former united states deputy secretary of agriculture, said “we are increasingly importing during our own season, when farmers could be growing here.”

merrigan, who spoke at planet forward’s april 4 urban agriculture salon, encapsulated america’s tendency toward shortsighted food practices. 

many people have begun to look more closely at these practices, and are working to find solutions, because the bottom line of the issue is that this practice is incredibly harmful to the environment. the mass transit of food requires not only the energy to grow the product, but also the energy that is used to transport it to its final destination.

faced with this dilemma, some cities are turning to a unique solution: vertical farming. while vertical farms are not yet abundant, there has been a steady increase in recent years. there are currently six vertical farming operations in the united states, but soon to be seven, as missouri state university recently leased 21 silos in downtown springfield to a startup company that will use them for vertical farming.

the startup, called vertical innovations, plans to use the silos for lettuce, mushrooms and other vegetables. a couple of the silos also will be used for aquaponic and hydroponic experiments. the structures already built into the silo to move grain up and down provided an added benefit of assisting to move water throughout the structures. the silos, which for years sat empty aside from rotting grain, will hopefully be able to flourish, and the method replicated in other abandoned silos.

the practice of repurposing existing structures for urban farming is not uncommon. in chicago, a vertical farming operation and model for closed resource, waste and energy loops called the plant stands in an abandoned industrial building. located in the old meat packing district, the plant is growing food and generating business in an area that is considered a food desert. within the plant, there are more than a dozen small businesses, which include a bakery, kombucha and beer breweries, coffee roasters, and mushroom and aquaponics farms, among others.

another vertical farming operation is the farmery, located in raleigh, north carolina, and is based in old shipping containers. (check out their video on planet forward!) this system also uses a combination of aquaponics and hydroponics, and is capable of growing up to an acre of greens in a single shipping container. they developed a modular growing system, which allows for the plants to be moved. there is also a farmers market that they host, as well as a restaurant located in an airstream trailer.

america’s practices of importing produce from all around the world is clearly unsustainable, and an environmentally unfriendly system. unfortunately, as more and more of the country’s — and of the world’s — population moves to urban centers, the practice becomes more heavily relied upon, due to the lack of infrastructure in cities that could allow such food production to occur there. however, with the implementation of solutions such as vertical farming, we could find a more sustainable, eco-friendly solution to feeding our cities.