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 ofurban gardens emphasize vegetable production and food justice, but lack strong con-nections 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 offersprograms supporting both organized urban gardeners and a large urban food pantry in San Jose, California. We conducted and analyzed 21 interviews with food pantry volun-teers 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.