When most people think of community gardens, they picture rented plots in a park where neighbors grow beans and squash. But a new wave of cultivators has a different vision: community resources, complete with kitchens and pantries, that are catalysts of societal change. Their goal is to connect people with their roots through the land and the nutrients it can provide.
Part of this evolution is rethinking “food deserts,” which the USDA defines as low-income residential areas with at least 500 people or 33 percent of the population living more than 1 mile (10 miles for rural areas) from the nearest grocery store. Cheyenne Kyle, food programs coordinator for Obodo Collective, says, “‘Food desert’ implies that this is natural. But this is something people did. Something people made ... I’m not assigning blame to one person or collective. We all have to put in the effort to change the world.”
Local writer and professor Erica Vital-Lazare and Brian Dice of McSweeney’s cofounded Obodo Collective in 2020, taking the name from the Nigerian Igbo people, an egalitarian society based on communal cultivation of the land. Obodo provides tools and knowledge, as well as a community farm with 26 12-foot beds in the Historic Westside, for the benefit of those facing low-income situations.
Kyle greets everyone who comes to the farm from 4 a.m. to 9 p.m. (hot weather hours). She can tell you Barbie’s middle name (Millicent) and takes the time to pray, twerk, and do yoga with her “plant babies.”
“Poverty is not just a state of being,” she says, “it’s a mindset. I come out here and I get to love on plant babies. I get to work as a Black woman. But I also refuse to do all the work on my own. This place is healing for me. I express my love and frustration here, and the earth gives me flowers back. The neighborhood protects this space.”
On Las Vegas’ Eastside, Victoria Flores runs the Solidarity Fridge, a garden and pantry focused on community-building. Flores grows lemongrass, tobacco, chayote, and medicinal and culturally appropriate foods that heal the land. She uses the entire plant when cooking.
“It’s about empowering people to take their power back,” she says. “Food pantries are great — pantries are how I ate. ... But we wanted to go a step further and provide cooking workshops and open an adobe kitchen to cook traditional foods.”
Flores also works with Fifth Sun Project, an Indigenous-focused art and activism collective, and Las Vegas Liberation Foundation to deliver 60 meals a week to people experiencing homelessness.
Flores’ approach resonated with Eztli Amaya, who started Fifth Sun Project in 2016 with sisters Estefania and Giovana Rangel. Eztli traces her ancestry to northern Native roots, while the Rangel sisters trace their Indigenous roots to the Mechica and Aztec Peoples.
Known for tackling colonialism from Indigenous perspectives, Fifth Sun received a $17,000 grant through Planned Parenthood’s Raíz program. Working with Solidarity Fridge, they’ll use the funds for programming and outreach.
“This is bigger than us,” Amaya says. “It has to have a collective of people to take over. We have these governments that are supposed to create these programs, but they’re not doing a good job if we have thousands of people on the street.”