In Dallas’ food deserts, community gardens ease — but don’t end — hunger pangs

By |Published On: April 27, 2021|Categories: Food Apartheid, South Dallas|
Neyssa Shockley’s family land in the historic Wheatley Place neighborhood is now home to a community garden, honoring the dying wish of her late father, James “Skip” Shockley. Photo by Nitashia Johnson

Neyssa Shockley recently planted the first peach tree on her family’s empty lot in the historic Wheatley Place neighborhood just south of Fair Park. Peaches were her father’s favorite.

“You won’t meet a person around here who doesn’t recognize my father’s name,” says Shockley, 31. Her father was James “Skip” Shockley, an activist and member of the Dallas Black Panther Party. “Community meant everything to him.”

Her father died last May from sickle cell anemia at the age of 72. His final request to his wife, Mayra, and his daughter was to turn the family land into a community garden. The land sat empty after a fire destroyed their home in 2013. 

The lot has been in Shockley’s family since 1950. Her great aunt once grew mint, carrots, onions, potatoes and tomatoes. “For as long as I can remember, we’ve grown food on this land,” Neyssa Shockley says. 

Community gardens like Shockley’s have been a way of life for people in South Dallas for years. Without a nearby grocery store, residents have often had to rely on their own gardening skills for fresh fruits and vegetables. 

But while such gardens are important for a small number of families, experts say they do little to combat food insecurity outside of their own neighborhoods. To be more effective, cities need to support these community gardens, as demonstrated by an innovative program in Austin, experts say.

The American Community Garden Association says there are less than a dozen community gardens in South Dallas.

“These gardens operate in silos without any kind of support from the city other than perhaps a grant that helps with their start-up costs,” said Candace Thompson, a Dallas community gardener and doctorate student who is studying the intertwining of land, food and faith. “Without additional support, these gardens can help their neighbors but don’t have a chance at reaching the amount of people they need to in order to change South Dallas’ food desert status.”

South Dallas is in an area designated a food desert by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That means 20% of the population lives at or below the poverty level and more than a third live at least one mile away from the nearest grocery store. 

According to Feeding America, 391,671 people in Dallas struggle with food insecurity and 21% of all children do. 

Meanwhile, a community survey showed that as many as 45% of the people in the South Dallas’ ZIP codes of 75210 and 75215 don’t have cars. “A lot of people here are struggling to afford groceries as it is,” Shockley says. “You add a transportation issue and limited access to food to the mix and the situation just becomes dire.” 

This is food apartheid’

“This is not a food insecurity issue, and this is not a food desert. This is food apartheid,” says Ples Montgomery IV, president of The Oak Cliff Veggie Project, a nonprofit focused on making the community “stronger, healthier and more self-reliant” through nutrition and gardening. 

Ples Montgomery IV, president of Oak Cliff Veggie Project, works to prep the Shockley family land for spring planting at a March 21 event. Photo by Nitashia Johnson

Terms like “food desert” and “food insecurity” Montgomery says, don’t accurately convey the role that racism has played in creating South Dallas’ struggle with hunger. 

“Food apartheid means [that] the suffering this community is enduring now was, at least at one point, caused intentionally,” Montgomery says. “The community’s ancestors were forced to find ways to make their own food because 80-some years ago, segregation and redlining made accessing food even harder for them than it is for their descendants today.” 

To truly combat food insecurity, these community gardens can’t continue to operate in silos with minimal funds, Montgomery says. 

“What these community gardeners are doing is wonderful,” he says. “But we need much more of it — more aggregation and more local production.” 

He says there needs to be a large-scale, collaborative approach spearheaded by the city of Dallas.

An Austin resolution

Montgomery and others point to another Texas city for a potentially effective approach involving community gardens.

In Austin, St. David’s Foundation Community Garden and others like it benefit from the Sustainable Urban Agriculture and Community Garden Resolution, which was passed by Austin’s city council in 2009. 

The measure allows community gardens to operate on public property, so Austin residents don’t have to own their own land to create a garden. More gardens mean more produce for hungry Austin citizens and a healthier city overall, Montgomery says. 

The community volunteers who tilled the Shockley land also delivered food to neighbors such as Michael Cotton, who lives across the street from the garden. Photo by Nitashia Johnson

Becca Montjoy is the communications director for Austin’s Sustainable Food Center, a nonprofit organization dedicated to creating equitable food distribution in Austin and central Texas. Montjoy helped create St. David’s Foundation Community Garden, which sits adjacent to the nonprofit’s headquarters. 

“When we were first building the garden, I was getting my hands dirty like everyone else,” Montjoy says.

The community garden launched in 2013 as a way to strengthen community ties, enhance the health of Austin residents and address food i