From the street, North Richmond Farm is hard to miss amid its stark surroundings in Northern California. To the south: a sprawling, 2,900-acre Chevron oil refinery. To the northwest: the West Contra Costa Sanitary Landfill—one of the largest and oldest continuously active landfills in the San Francisco Bay Area. A set of wide, noisy railroad tracks greets visitors when they first enter North Richmond, and chemical plants and industrial warehouses line the blocks approaching the farm.
The scenery abruptly changes at the corner of Brookside Drive and Fred Jackson Way, where the fence is lined with large signs in English and Spanish directing passersby to the North Richmond Farm entrance. Green space—made up of food crops, flowers, fruit trees, and native plants—and a massive sundial emerge, flushing the landscape with color like rosy cheeks in the cold. Chickens can be heard clucking in the distance, along with the sound of boots softly trudging between crop rows.
Sophia Piña-McMahon
North Richmond is the last place that one would expect to see a ten-acre, flourishing farm. And that is exactly why Urban Tilth restored this land and started the North Richmond Farm Project. Since 2014, the twenty-year-old food justice nonprofit has been working on transforming a former county-owned vacant lot into a thriving hub for urban agriculture, local jobs, youth and adult education, and community organizing around food and environmental justice. This living expression of climate resilience is vital for North Richmond. A predominantly African American and Latine community, it faces long-standing disinvestment and disproportionate exposure to pollution and air toxins, driving elevated rates of respiratory illness and cancer among residents.
Urban Tilth has long envisioned North Richmond Farm as more than its current state as an urban agricultural hub. In recent years, the nonprofit developed plans to expand infrastructure beyond the farm and into what they’ve dubbed the North Richmond Farm Resiliency Center—a fully operational community resilience center (CRC) that would offer disaster response services, healthy food access, job training, and community wellness programs to residents. The plans for the CRC became a part of the broader, community-led North Richmond Community Resilience Initiative. This collaboration between public agencies and local community organizations sought to enhance environmental health, resilience, and economic opportunities in this underinvested community through the implementation of complementary, targeted resilience projects.
In late 2024, the initiative secured a transformative $19 million grant from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), including $6 million for North Richmond Farm’s CRC expansion. Urban Tilth got to work immediately, completing contracting, permitting, and even pouring a foundation for the CRC’s central spaces. Then, the grant was suspended by the Trump Administration in March 2025, when the EPA’s environmental justice offices abruptly shut down. Despite exploring legal options and letters of support from the region’s Congressmembers, the entire $19 million grant was officially terminated in May 2025. The current state of North Richmond Farm is both a testament to decades of progress and a stark reminder of what Urban Tilth lost.
Sophia Piña-McMahon
At the southern end of the farm property, a sign points toward the county landfill, located less than a mile away. “We’re right in the belly of the beast,” says Marcos “Chito” Floriano, Urban Tilth’s director of farm and gardens.
Environmental injustice and food apartheid exist in tandem in North Richmond, contributing to the existing health inequities. Floriano shares that North Richmond has just two stores—both liquor stores—neither of which stocks fresh groceries. As a part of the previously planned CRC developments, Urban Tilth would have built a new space on the property for a no-cost, pay-what-you-can farm stand. Urban Tilth currently hosts five first come, first served free farm stands throughout neighboring Richmond, but they only run on specific days of the week and in different parts of the community. A permanent daily farm stand could significantly increase the community’s access to fresh produce.
The farm resilience center’s expansion plan also included enhancements to transportation infrastructure at the front of the property, so that community members could safely access the farm. These enhancements were to include the addition of a bike lane and a sidewalk, as well as the installation of rain gardens to manage stormwater runoff and prevent street flooding.
Sophia Piña-McMahon
Urban Tilth—headed by Doria Robinson, its executive director since 2007—currently has sixty-four staff members. Eight staff members tend to North Richmond Farm, led by Floriano. In addition to their annual teams of farm fellows and summer youth apprentices, the farm is supported by an active volunteer community. During the growing season, volunteer events are held every fourth Saturday of the month.
“Richmond is a very urban environment. To have the opportunity to come onto the land and build a relationship with the land is impactful,” says Floriano of the effect that the farm has had on the community. This shared, intergenerational understanding of food, land, and place is what transforms knowledge into collective power.
Sophia Piña-McMahon
The corner of the farm where the CRC structure was planned to have been built—housing the main barn, community room, farm stand, and produce wash-and-pack station—currently lies barren. A stark, dismal sign reads “Do Not Enter” at the edge of the space, and the wooden signs behind it prop up renderings of what should have been.
The core of the CRC would have been the main barn and community room. Part of the reason that the project was named a “resilience center” is because it was going to be built to function fully off-grid for up to four days, with space to house eighty to 100 people in the event of an environmental disaster, such as a refinery accident or a wildfire smoke event. The community room would have hosted CPR and first aid training, wellness classes, and workforce programs to equip local youth and adults with skills in environmental stewardship, sustainable farming, and watershed restoration. In addition to allocated space for the permanent farm stand, designs for the central structure and its immediate surroundings included a community kitchen, a children’s garden, a café, and an amphitheater.
Sophia Piña-McMahon
“This was one of the huge losses for us this year,” says Floriano, gesturing toward the concrete foundation for the main barn and community room. “I mean, you can see it’s right here. We’ve got water chilling on a concrete foundation.”
After initially receiving the grant and in anticipation of the CRC build, Urban Tilth acquired the necessary building permits and poured a foundation for the main barn and community room. The project was shovel-ready when the EPA grant was pulled. Without funding to move into the next phase of construction, the project is at a standstill.
And if the funding had stayed intact? “We probably would have been done by now,” Floriano muses. “We would have started in March [2025], and then probably, in fall, this would have been done.”
The reasons the current administration cited for the EPA’s swath of canceled environmental justice grants are that the projects are “wasteful” and “unnecessary.” However, the grant cancellations didn’t just impact the nonprofit initiatives they were to fund—they took away opportunities for local jobs. “This was going to create jobs in construction,” says Floriano. “We’re talking about a construction project that would have had months of work—like six to eight months of developing the community resiliency center.”
Sophia Piña-McMahon
On other parts of the farm, early progress on the initiative still shows as hope continues to sprout. One corner of the farm, Floriano’s favorite, is a plot that was tended by Urban Tilth’s Rudy Lozito Fellows—participants in a program that provides seven months of hands-on training in sustainable and regenerative farming practices to four West Contra Costa County adults. The farm plot that the 2025 fellows restored in just three months features thriving displays of amaranth, sunflowers, and figleaf gourds known traditionally in Mexico as chilacayote.
In addition to its fellowship program, Urban Tilth hosts a Summer Youth Apprenticeship Program at the farm each year. For six weeks, it hires forty high school-aged youth and equips them with skills in urban agriculture, social justice, environmental justice, and food justice. During the program, the group goes on a camping trip together, and at the end each apprentice graduates and receives a $1,500 stipend. The program makes a difference not only on the farm, but also in shaping participants’ career paths and how they will care for land and food systems in the future.
Sophia Piña-McMahon
North Richmond Farm holds countless details worthy of attention, but one that stands out is the pathway that Urban Tilth began building for the property’s future History Walk. Designed to echo Ohlone basketry, the pathway honors the original stewards of the land and reflects Urban Tilth’s commitment to carrying that legacy forward. Four interwoven brick colors symbolize the core narratives that shape the land beneath: regional agricultural history, the migration and contributions of ethnic communities, environmental and social justice movements, and the vital role of women throughout each. The path will eventually weave through the entire property, with kiosks offering visitors interactive ways to reflect on the land’s past and present—all while pointing toward a future where the farm becomes a public space, community hub, and gathering place rooted in care, learning, and connection. “We want people to be able to come onto the land, engage with it, find these different nooks of the farm, and just be here, show gratitude and show up as they are,” says Floriano.
At the end of a tour of the farm, after seeing everything that Urban Tilth has already accomplished on the property and the breadth and depth of their vision for the future, it all appears to be anything but “wasteful” and “unnecessary.” At their fullest expression (which would have been the completed CRC), these projects could totally change the surrounding community’s future, providing vital services and resources to people that have been historically and significantly overlooked. All of North Richmond Farm is a testament to the expertise, support, creativity, and care that lies within this community. All that is missing is the funding to carry their dreams through to the finish.
The current fundraising landscape for food justice projects is not promising, but Urban Tilth and the North Richmond community remain steadfast in their mission. In May 2025, the nonprofit launched a national petition demanding Congress restore not only their grant, but also the approximately 800 EPA grants that were terminated alongside it. The group is not alone in its advocacy—800 people have signed the petition as of this writing, nearing the goal of 1,000 signatures.
In October 2025, neighbors, elders, youth, and partners of the organization all gathered for a vibrant, joyous event at North Richmond Farm to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of Urban Tilth. Together, the community affirmed that the farm is much more than an urban agriculture project or a future CRC. It is a living testament to two decades of resilience work and a community’s shared commitment to cultivating justice, nourishment, and possibility for generations to come. It is the result of an unstoppable effort to return this land to what it was always meant to be, reclaiming the power that flows from a community’s deep, enduring connection to land and food.