Phat Beets Produce is an American food justice collective focusing on food justice in North Oakland, California, started by Max Cadji and Bret Brenner in 2007. Their programs include weekly farmer's markets (sourcing from local farmers of color), free produce stands, youth gardens, community supported agriculture programs (called the "beet box"), food and social justice workshops, and previously, a kitchen and cafe cooperative. Cadji helps residents have access to nutritious food by coordinating between farmers, institutions, and low-income communities to utilize empty land for urban gardening.
Their mission addresses disadvantaged North Oakland residents, actively opposes the systematic forces of gentrification in the North Oakland Area, and stands in solidarity with criminal justice issues. The organization states that it draws largely from the Black Panther Party, whose founding members lived in the North Oakland area. The Black Panthers focused on black empowerment and racial issues, but also addressed food justice issues, most notably their Free Breakfast for Children program.
Phat Beets has four community produce spaces located around Oakland: North Oakland Children’s Hospital, Arlington Medical Center Farmer’s Market, Arlington Medical Center Produce Stand, and the Saint Martin De Porres Community Produce Stand. Three gardens grow their produce: Healthy Hearts Garden (Dover Street Garden), 59th street spiral gardens, and BEET DOWN! Acres.
Ideology
Phat Beets is a social justice organization that takes an open position on food justice and other social issues, like housing justice, gentrification, and racialized processes within the criminal justice system, to address a variety of issues that relate to each other in hopes of helping community members in need and taking an active role in attempting to solve social problems. The organization believes this approach follows the theory of Intersectionality, in that individuals experience multiple forms of oppression at the same time, which shapes their identity.
Food and housing justice are connected because they share similar factors, like place-based city planning and policy, transportation regulations, and commercial real estate development that change and subsequently affect the environment of the food and housing justice movements. Phat Beets has also mentioned that racialized processes are in line with food justice because a minority community’s lack of access to nutritious and affordable food is partially a result of racist policies that prevented the accessibility to healthy food in low-income minority communities in the first place, like the investment into suburbs and capital structure after World War II that left minority groups in the city without access to grocery stores. Phat Beets has stated that gentrification is also in part caused by racialized policies that push minority groups farther away from their homes and healthy food.
Food justice
According to the Just Food organization located in New York City, “Food justice is communities exercising their right to grow, sell, and eat healthy food.” Phat Beets believes that everyone deserves the right to have healthy food that is affordable and easily accessible. In order to help strengthen food justice in Oakland, part of the Phat Beets mission is to create opportunities for local farmers and businesses, connect the community to food justice, and find different methods of making healthy food accessible
Phat Beets believes it provides farmers of color in Oakland more opportunities to be profitable because the organization's mission is aimed at offering space for produce sales in farmer’s markets and produce stands at local schools and hospitals. The goal is to help local farmers have enough economic support that will allow them to stay in business and continue to sell their crops in the community. By striving to give local farmers more opportunities to succeed, Phat Beets hopes to lower the dependency residents have on cheap, processed food because there will be more options to buy local, nutritious food.