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Food Politics

Farming in the Ghetto
Hannah Wallace
July 17, 2009

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O.K., so maybe Ghost Town is not precisely a ghetto, but it’s one of Oakland’s toughest neighborhoods, and writer Novella Carpenter has created a mini-Eden there on an abandoned lot.

She spoke to Leonard Lopate yesterday about her new book, Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer Farming in the Ghetto, and how there are certain advantages to raising (and slaughtering) pigs and chickens in a high-crime neighborhood. (In Berkeley, she explained, the neighbors would’ve been pickier, calling the cops at the first 4 A.M. rooster crow. “In Oakland, if no one was murdered, no-one is coming.”)  It also helps if your landlord is from Benin. “He doesn’t even ask me about it,” she says, about her goats. “He’s just like, ‘Oh yeah, some goats.’”

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Hannah Wallace writes about food justice, integrative medicine, and travel. She is a frequent contributor to Whole Living (formerly Body + Soul), Portland Monthly, and T: Travel, and her articles and book ...

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MORE FROM Hannah Wallace:

  1. TFT Interview: Malik Yakini of Detroit’s Black Community Food Security Network
  2. TFT Interview: Slow Food’s Josh Viertel
  3. Cleveland’s Food Justice Hero: Councilman Joe Cimperman

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