WITH THE LAUNCH of Planting Justice’s Good Table Project and the opening of a new farmers market in El Sobrante, access to membership in an over-100-year legacy is gained by digging fingers into dirt, biting into lush, organically grown fruit and vegetables, or shoving tiny, fragile seedlings into the soil.
The Oakland-based nonprofit is a network of urban land-based social justice enterprises founded by Gavin Raders and Haleh Zandi in 2008. The food-justice and urban-gardening organization grew from a single backyard garden to become in 2024 an organization with three urban garden/nurseries, two farms, the Good Table Project that includes a pay-what-you-can café, commercial incubator kitchen, retail nursery, community gathering space, and future arts venue. In addition to the new farmer’s market, a large, active volunteer work force participates in multiple ways, including farm maintenance, retail sales, and more.
Planting Justice operates throughout its organization according to three core objectives: providing sustainable, living-wage jobs and full health benefits for formerly incarcerated people; addressing food deserts in under-resourced urban and rural areas; and supporting and training the next generation of land-based workers and property owners interested in permaculture, food justice, and wellness. The farmer’s market in the center of El Sobrante’s Triangle District sits directly in front of The Good Table Cafe and Nursery and is open every Sunday. It is entirely vended by QTBIPOC-, woman-, or cooperatively owned small farms and food businesses.
Sam Lustig has been working with Planting Justice since July 2022 and is the Kitchen and Retail Manager. Tasked with bringing the café and new market to fruition, he admits the effort has been arduous. The obstacles related to the location, standard regulations and permitting, and the construction process, at times, have been nearly overwhelming.
“The word sobrante translated to English means leftovers, the forgotten surplus,” he said. (Like most of Planting Justice’s over 50 employees, he is bilingual.) “BART doesn’t even run here. It’s gas stations, mechanic shops, liquor stores. But this area deserves to go back to its legacy as a ranch area, of having places like the Adachi Nursery, the oldest Japanese nursery in California and one of many in East Bay history.”
Sowing the seeds of success
Adachi Florist and Nursery was founded by Isaburo Adachi and launched with his brother, Sadajiro Adachi. The family-owned business began on five acres of land on the Richmond-El Cerrito border in 1905 and became a success. Even after Pearl Harbor was bombed during World War II in 1941 and the Adachi family along with other Japanese immigrants were forced to leave their homes and suffer the travesty of the country’s internment camps, they returned and rebuilt their business. It continued to thrive until family members made the difficult decision to sell the land and close the nursery in 2017.
“When it closed, the community was devastated,” Lustig said. “But they’ve been patient with our process and years of development. COVID put a big stop on everything and drove the costs through the roof. The power behind this is the blessing coming from contributors, the grants people have gotten for us, the volunteers and support. Without the community, we wouldn’t have made it through.”
Raders in a separate interview said when the Adachi family approached them in 2017 about buying the land, Planet Justice lacked the necessary funding. The property was sold to a gas station developer, but because of community opposition to the purchase, the land sat idle for multiple months. Simultaneously, ongoing discussions with Pastor Melinda McClain of the non-denominational Mira Vista United Church of Christ had the two groups envisioning, planning, and ultimately forming a cooperative called Good Table UCC. The initiative preserves the history of Japanese agriculture in the East Bay, creates a hub for sustainable agriculture and public events, and invests in the community for generations to come. Between the nursery and farmer’s market, they estimate that over 30,000 community members will be served, 15 farmers will gain access to the commercial kitchen and retail space, and 20 community organizations will use the space each year.
“(B)eing surrounded by people impacted by food deserts, incarceration, born into abject poverty and social injustices, when given opportunity to uplift themselves — the resilience is mind-blowing. It’s transforming their lives, the lives of their families.”
Samuel Lustig, Planting Justice
“Adachi family members had made the really hard decision to sell the land to the real estate developer,” Raders said. “Their nursery was where people in the community bought flowers for births, funerals, weddings and other significant life events. They had built a beautiful building in an area that doesn’t have many buildings with deep community meaning. It was hugely challenging for them and since we were able to buy the land, they’ve been deep supporters of our purchase: walking the land with us, telling us peculiarities of the irrigation system. We’ve promised them they can have reunions here and that we’ll keep the family legacy alive with a multimedia display about the brilliance of their business, the Japanese internment, and other storytelling so people know the history of Japanese farmers in the East Bay.”
Carrying forward tradition brings an elevated level of pride for employees, according to Raders. They are well aware of the need for food justice activists who are farmers, for spaces where small businesses can build infrastructure and customer following through use of a commercial kitchen and market visibility.
“We’re having all small, local farmers and products that are handmade items that will also be featured at the café shop seven days a week,” Raders said.
Importantly for the small businesses, Planting Justice does not charge the typical farmer’s market weekly and equipment fees that can add up to $100-200. Instead, stalls are free, and they loan tables and canopies to vendors. This keeps costs down and allows vendors to offer food at prices, Lustig said, that are “compatible with stagnating wages.” To further the effort to make the market accessible to average-to-low-income customers, the market accepts EBTs (SNAP). Other assistance has also come from Lustig, who said completing the permit forms required of small businesses and farms is daunting.
“For many, English is their second language. It can be scary. The temporary food facility form from Environmental Health wasn’t even available in Spanish. I translated it and helped people with their paperwork.”
Organically grown farmers
Planting Justice partners with ALBA, a land-based training association based in Watsonville. “Most of the recruiting is word-of-mouth and me hitting the road to visit small famers for eight months,” Lustig said. “I also got four vendors who are from ALBA. ALBA educates people to be organic farmers, then grants them a half-acre that builds to five acres while they establish their businesses. Even if they don’t become independent farmers, they use what they learn wherever they go.”
Lustig’s work history proves his point. “I worked for 15 years at Swanton Berry Farm, the first unionized organic farm in the country. My role was to design their farm stand, where we had a cannery and bakery program. Everything grown at the farm was brought back to make value-added products: jam, pies, chocolate-dipped strawberries, cheesecake. We had signage about the importance of treating your field workers as employees with dignity and respect. Outside of the human aspect, from an economic viewpoint, the quality of what you offer is so much greater. People can taste the difference.”
Lustig has known Raders since they were 15-year-old kids, growing up together in the East Bay. “We were destined to meet again,” he said.
Neither Lustig nor Raders has been incarcerated, which leads to obvious questions about that foundational element of the mission. Raders said formerly incarcerated people re-entering society in 2024 are facing heightened anxiety. “Many have experienced in-and-out imprisonment over and over. Each time out, they lack jobs and support, the same conditions that existed when we started.”
One fundamental difference provides hope for Raders, staff, and people today who come from incarceration to Planting Justice. “We now have staff in leadership positions they knew from before as folks who hung out on street corners or were in the worst kind of mental health or addiction. They look at them and imagine a different, better reality that’s made more real when they see people who’ve done it,” Raders said.
Lustig said America’s capitalist ethos is predicated on profit and squeezing laborers for the most an employer can get out of them. “Treating everyone with respect and giving them room to move forward and take part in society is something I see here every day that’s very moving. I wasn’t naive to this before, but being surrounded by people impacted by food deserts, incarceration, born into abject poverty and social injustices, when given opportunity to uplift themselves — the resilience is mind-blowing. It’s transforming their lives, the lives of their families. Digging your hands in the dirt is very human. When communities who were in touch with that for hundreds of years return to that genetic urge to grow, eat, and share food? There’s gratification, even in beginning that process. I hope our urban farm connected to social justice model can be an example for the world.”
Raders said despite the victory represented by opening the café and market, the road ahead is “always going to be hard.” Planting Justice boasts multi-year funders and voluminous community support but is still grassroots and a learn-as-we-go operation. He said the pandemic caused construction costs to double, but support from credible architects and an experienced project management team provide skills and knowledge that helped raise millions of dollars for the development and capital improvements.
“Ultimately, though, without tangible products you can smell and taste and places where you can gather, we all just know the problems, have ideas, possible solutions, and policies,” Raders said.
“If we’re not trying these things out in real time and accepting feedback, we just have doomsday scenarios. We need actual models and play spaces for following an iterative project. If our model can be adopted in part or in whole by other organizations around the country, that’s our long-term goal.”
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