URBAN TILTH

Founded in 2005, Urban Tilth hires and trains local residents to help our community build a more sustainable, healthy, and just food system. We farm, feed, teach, train, build community, employ, and give back. We use our 5 school and community gardens, 2 small urban farms, weekly CSA serving 168 families, and pop-up farm stands to teach and employ community members to create a more equitable and just food system within a healthier and more self-sufficient community.

Based in Richmond California, Urban Tilth’s school and community garden and small farm programs serve primarily low-income communities of color in Richmond and San Pablo, California. We particularly focus on the neighborhoods of North Richmond, the Iron Triangle, Beldingwoods, Santa Fe, and Coronado which are all primarily extremely low-income communities of color and functional “food deserts”. Our school-based programs annually serve over 500 students from Title 1 West Contra Costa School District schools where 100% of student populations are eligible for FREE school food programs. Our community garden programs serve over 3,000 unique program participants and garden volunteers annually from these target communities.
Urban Tilth is a strong, diverse, locally rooted organization led and operated by local residents. Urban Tilth accomplishes its goals by training and employing local youth and adults with barriers to employment in the skills necessary to grow food and transform community and ourselves. Our staff, including our Executive Director, are primarily people of color who come from and currently live in the communities our programs serve. Our 8 member board is composed of a majority of women, people of color, and Richmond residents. 

Urban Tilth has been devoted to cultivating new environmental and social justice leaders while growing a sustainable and just food system in Richmond. We know that this moment calls for a broader, more coordinated translocal vision for a Just Transition of the agriculture sector, away from dependence on fossil fuels and profit-driven decision making, towards a food system that is regionally local, appropriately scaled, environmentally responsible and socially and economically just that can also feed the 7 billion people on planet Earth, 323 million people of the United States as well as the 100,000 people of Richmond, California.

As a local organization truly rooted in Richmond, Urban Tilth is uniquely positioned to lead the way in Richmond and West Contra Costa County to transform the food system for Richmond families and youth.