Toward a justice approach to emergency food assistance and food waste: Exploring pantry–urban gardener partnerships in California's Santa Clara County

The 60,000 food pantries in the United States are well known for charity-based emergency food assistance and edible food recovery, serving 53 mil­lion people in 2022 (Feeding America, 2023a). Thousands of urban gardens emphasize vegetable production and food justice, but lack strong con­nections to food pantries. We explore how food pantries and urban gardens could partner to trans­form pantries into distribution sites that also become food justice education and organizing spaces. To assess this potential, we engaged in par­ticipatory action research with a leading social ser­vices provider that offers programs supporting both organized urban gardeners and a large urban food pantry in San Jose, California. We conducted and analyzed 21 interviews with food pantry volun­teers and urban gardeners affiliated with the same agency, and eight interviews with other urban gar­deners and food pantry staff from external organi­zations. We found that while both food pantry vol­unteers and urban gardeners expressed concerns about increasing healthy food access and reducing food waste, pantry volunteers were often unfamil­iar with food justice and uncomfortable talking about race and culturally rooted food preferences. These findings were similar with the informants from external organizations. To support urban gar­dener and food pantry volunteer collaboration, we developed a food justice approach to emergency food assistance and food waste management in which both groups co-create onsite vermicompost­ing infrastructure and partner with a university to design a training program focused on diversity, jus­tice, and systemic change.