Help us raise $150,000 by January 1st, 2024 to turn an additional 8,000 sq ft blighted lot into a thriving urban farm to help feed Oakland neighbors and make our city safer.  Please read the following excerpt from our weekly newsletter to learn about the robust data linking urban farming and improved community safety in low income, food deserts: 

Many neighbors first approach our organization due to their deep concerns over Oakland’s escalating crises of theft, violence and lawlessness. We have received an influx of new supporters, volunteers and members over the past few months and many have had questions on how our focus on urban farming and agriculture fits in to our program of creating the safe, livable, Oakland we deserve.

There is a growing body of research that demonstrates that community gardens are associated with reduced crime and gun violence. A 2012 study by the University of Pennsylvania tracked the impacts of greening vacant lots on crime. The study “showed a non-significant decrease in the number of total crimes and gun assaults around greened vacant...People around the intervention[greened] vacant lots reported feeling significantly safer after greening compared with those living around control vacant lot.”

This analysis of studies on the subject by the National Library of Medicine showed that “A larger number of studies addressed community gardens and greening of lots. All of these studies suggested that greening interventions or the presence of community gardens were related to a reduction in crime.”

Charles Branas, an epidemiologist who led the study at Penn said the following, “People just became more in touch with their neighbors. People felt more connected to each other.” Calls to police from neighbors “for acts like loitering or public urination or excessive noise—went up significantly in the immediate vicinity of the newly greened land.” What he realized is that “it had emboldened neighbors to call the police for minor disturbances, something they hadn’t done in the past.” In the wake of this research, the CDC is now doing more expansive studies on the impacts on crime of community gardens and urban farms.

NTO’s urban farm, Bottom’s Up Community Garden is currently 13,000 sq ft, produces a ton of food each year, runs two food banks a week, provides nutritional education to an underserved demographic and has created a space in West Oakland centered on life production, which has reshaped the area, with neighbors often reporting feeling much safer and hopeful there as a result of our presence.