Marginalizing Access to the Sustainable Food System: An Examination of Oakland's Minority Districts

Camille Tuason Mata

Sept 2013 · Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

About this eBook

Marginalizing Access to the Sustainable Food System is a comprehensive analysis of the barriers and opportunities confronting minority communities’ ability to access healthy, fresh foods. It exposits the meaning of marginalization through several measurement indicators examined from the cross sections of history, space, and participation. These indicators include minority participation in agriculture, the delivery scope of CSA farms, the presence and location of farmer’s markets in the minority districts, the density of food stores, the availability of fresh produce in grocery stores in minority districts, the placement of urban food gardens in minority districts, and minority residents’ participation in the sustainable food system. Camille Tuason Mata applies this analysis to three minority districts in Oakland—Chinatown, Fruitvale, and West Oakland—and examines the patterns of marginalization in relation to the sustainable food system of the California Bay Area.

About the author

Camille Tuason Mata is a Philippine-born American who has been studying food systems and sustainability since 2000, when she began her graduate studies in urban and regional planning at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. She subsequently went on to complete a MA in social change and development at the University of Wollongong in New South Wales, Australia, in 2002 and a MA in liberal arts with a concentration in environmental studies at Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont, in 2009.