From the Holy Trinity to Microgreens

This chapter focuses on gentrification of the foodways in post-Katrina New Orleans, particularly how the emerging narrative of urban agriculture presented the practice as a new idea, despite the long-standing tradition of local food production and procurement practices in the city. We combine a personal experience of being a long-term urban gardener in the city with grower interviews to illuminate what aspects of the new urban agricultural scene in the city are distinct from the tradition of growing and eating locally that predates the storm. With its emphasis on geographic dimension (e.g., grown locally), the new notion of locality associated with urban agriculture tended to dissociate from the social and cultural dimensions of the preexisting local folk foodways (e.g., native plants grown by the locals). As a result, we argue that the popularity of urban agriculture among the newcomers, albeit well-intended, had adverse effects of discouraging many long-term residents from getting engaged with urban agriculture, keeping them from opportunities such as entrepreneurialism, community health, and urban sustainability.