May 7, 2025

A new scale measuring agricultural community power developed by, for, and with U.S.-based urban growers provides a framework for assessing the impacts of urban agriculture programming.

Community farming and gardening are consistently linked to improved physical and mental health, as well as increased social support, agency, and care—particularly in historically marginalized communities. However, Black- and Brown-led urban agriculture organizations have long critiqued standard evaluation metrics used by funders such as produce grown, body mass index (BMI), and consumption as misaligned with their goals. They have expressed the need for an instrument that captures what is most important to them:

• Land-based knowledge transfer
• Spirituality
• Collective agency
• Resistance
• Mental health

Ashley B. Gripper, PhD, MPH, assistant professor in the department of Environmental and Occupational Health and core faculty at The Ubuntu Center on Racism, Global Movements, and Population Health Equity at the Dornsife School of Public Health, and Tori Cowger, PhD, MPH, research associate at the François-Xavier Bagnoud (FXB) Center for Health and Human Rights within the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, responded to this need by developing the Agricultural Community Power Scale (AgCPS).

AgCPS is grounded in community-derived questions, knowledge, and lived experiences, and demonstrates potential applicability across multiple disciplines, including public health, sociology, and psychology. It contains a 41-item instrument made up of five subdomains:

• Collective self-determination,
• Embodied Earth Care and Connection,
• BodyMind Community Care,
• Land-based spiritual wellbeing, and
• Ubuntu, which emphasizes the interdependence of all people.

A new article in the Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development titled “Measuring community power: A scale to measure collective self-determination, Embodied Earth Care and Connection, and Ubuntu among urban farmers and gardeners” by Gripper and Cowger shares initial findings from their exploratory factor analysis.

Gripper shared more background and key takeaways.

Q: How does the AgCPS differ from traditional public health metrics used in food justice evaluation?

A: In public health, there is an obsession with weight, BMI, and clinical obesity. Often, these are considered root problems instead of the structural racism that underlies them. This obsession with weight and diet-related illnesses translates to funders and foundations limiting the value of agricultural programming to the extent that it improves health physiologically. They tend to evaluate programs based on changes in participant BMI, quantity of produce grown, and fruit and vegetable consumption. Although physical health is an important part of wellness and wellbeing, it is not the only important wellness metric.

The Agricultural Community Power Scale is holistic and considers collective agency and self-determination, ancestral spirituality, embodied connections to the Earth, BodyMind wellness, and interdependence as incredibly important aspects of individual and collective health.

This scale also differs from traditional metrics for urban agricultural programming because it was developed at the request of urban growers in direct response to the expressed challenges they have faced with large foundations and funders.

Q: How did Black- and Brown-led food justice organizations contribute to the design and validation of the AgCPS?

A: There are several ways that folks contributed directly and indirectly to this study. Initially when I began developing this research, I had a set of conversations with land-based friends who lead different urban ag organizations. I presented ideas to study the impacts of agriculture on hypertension and some other physiological markers of health. They made it abundantly clear that these research questions were not the most useful questions for their movement work. Hundreds of studies have been done on the impacts of community gardening and urban farming on physical health. My friends and comrades shared that it would be more relevant, useful, and interesting to look at the connections urban agriculture has with collective agency, community organizing, and spirituality.

In another set of conversations with organizations in Massachusetts, growers shared that they needed new and different types of tools to understand the impacts of their programming, tools that were more aligned with their missions and values. In that meeting, I asked folks if it would be helpful for me to work on developing an instrument to evaluate their work and programming, to which they responded yes.

In addition to influencing the questions and focal areas of the research, Black and Brown community gardeners and farmers participated in a set of focus groups with me, during which some of the key themes in the scale emerged.

Lastly, as a Black farmer and someone deeply embedded in Black agriculture, I was able to draw from my own experiences as well as the experiences and lessons from many of my land-based teachers.

Q: How can the AgCPS be applied in real-world settings to evaluate the impact of community farming programs? And more broadly, how can this scale be used in public health research?

A: At present, I work with organizations to support their evaluation efforts. Dr. Cowger and I are in the process of converting the scale to a format that is easy and straightforward for organizations to distribute to their participants. To inquire more, organizations may reach out to us directly or reach out to their funders about acquiring the scale for program evaluation purposes.

While no tool can definitively say whether a community does or does not have power, I envision this scale as being a helpful way for organizations to assess how well their programming is doing what they intend for it to do. The scale likely has utility that extends beyond agricultural groups, as community power is something that exists across many different grassroots groups, organizations, and movements.

Q: For early-career public health practitioners or students interested in this field of work, can you share what inspires you most about it?

A: I decided to pursue a PhD but, in many ways, I was also sent to do this work. I understand my role in academia as an opportunity to support and continue the work that Black folks, specifically Black land-based folks, have been doing for thousands of years. That support includes leveraging institutional resources, teaching and mentoring the next generation of scholars, and affirming my community’s knowledge systems and expertise in press.

Whether it’s in the classroom, analyses, or through writing manuscripts, I love that I get to mix new and old, traditional and nontraditional, and embodied and empirical ways of doing science and research.

To early-career public heath practitioners and students, I offer three pieces of advice that have served as my guiding principles: 1) trust community and indigenous wisdom and ways of knowing 2) align your scholarship with questions and concerns generated in and from your communities, and 3) don’t let institutional or scientific gatekeepers tell you what you can or cannot do.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE

Ashley B. Gripper, PhD, MPH, is an assistant professor in the department of Environmental and Occupational Health and core faculty at The Ubuntu Center on Racism, Global Movements, and Population Health Equity, a research center at the Dornsife School of Public Health that brings together activists, researchers, and community residents working to advance anti-racism scholarship, training, and collective action.