Research Program:
Interests: Quantitative Methods and Analysis; Food Systems; Health Disparities / Social Determinants of Health; Community
Gardens; Sustainable Agriculture; Social Inequality; Race, Class, and Gender; Rural Health.
My mixed methods research takes an interdisciplinary approach to investigate unequal food systems in the United States, with an eye towards
achieving greater equity and sustainability. My research emphasizes the importance of local food environments for individual food access,
but also speaks to the need to dismantle broader systems of inequality within the global food system.
Publications:
- Butterfield, Katie L. and Ryan E. Galt. “Tracking organic agriculture in California is easier said
than done” (under review)
Abstract:
Farmers in California have been leaders in organic agricultural production, but the historically growing organic
agrifood industry is experiencing declines nationally and in California. To address existing data limitations, we
developed a method to examine the relative contribution of crops and animal agriculture to trends in organic
production in California. Using data on organic production from the State Organic Program, the USDA Census of
Agriculture, and California’s top organic certifier (CCOF), we have developed statewide and county-level estimates
of organic cropland and animal production that show a disproportionate growth of organic animal production over
time, especially since 2014 and an overall drop in organic cropland acreage share in recent years. We also highlight
counties with high overall organic conversion, including Marin, Santa Cruz, and Humboldt. We argue that policy
changes are needed to restart the expansion of organic cropland in California to meet state goals of 20% of cropland
being organic by 2045, and that improving State Organic Program data is critical for evaluating the success of
these policy changes.
- Butterfield, Katie L., Ryan E. Galt, and Houston Wilson. “The Role of USDA’s Public Price and Volume Data in
California’s Organic Food Value Chain” (under review)
Abstract:
For decades, scholars have documented and analyzed a shifting information landscape in the agriculture
industry: increasing privatization of information and widespread decreasing reliance on the public sector.
Despite the increased privatization of U.S. agricultural information over the past few decades, USDA data
releases have remained relevant to the agricultural marketplace and form the foundation of many private
sector agricultural market information services. In this paper we use a mixed-methods approach to explore
how USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) Market News organic price and volume data can be improved
to better support organic agrifood system actors. Based on 26 interviews and 227 survey responses from
organic producers, processors, distributors, and retailers across California, we show that informal market
information sources are the information source most commonly used across the industry. At the same time,
we find consistent interest in increased organic market data presented in visual formats with trend
explanations. We also identify three main areas where AMS Market News organic price and volume data could
be improved: the data interface could be made more accessible and informative; the inaccuracies and
gaps in the data should be addressed or, at a minimum, explained; and more specialty crops should be
included. Making these changes will help the development of a more robust public source of organic market
data that could be especially beneficial for smaller-scale operations, given increasing corporate
consolidation in the agrifood system.
- Butterfield, Katie L. and Katie Daniels. 2025. “Community Gardens Support Stress Coping and Health – A Comparison of Rural and
Urban Perceptions of Benefits.” Wellbeing, Space and Society. (doi:10.1016/j.wss.2025.100297) (Accepted Version)
Abstract:
Community gardens provide health and stress coping benefits in various geographic settings. However, despite
the different structural contexts of rural and urban areas, little work has considered how community garden
health benefits may differ in these contrasting settings. We collected and analyzed in-depth interviews (N = 34)
with mostly White, middle-class rural and urban community garden organizers across the United States to
explore understandings of community garden health benefits within these different geographic contexts. Rural
participants emphasize the holistic community orientation of their gardens, which were simultaneously
embedded in, strengthening, and reliant upon their surrounding communities. In contrast, urban participants
emphasize experiences of their gardens as natural spaces and emphasize community gardening as a key driver of
interacting with nature. While increases in social connectedness and interactions with nature have been shown to
improve health through promoting stress coping, our comparative approach demonstrates the varying impact
community gardens can have in rural and urban settings.
- Butterfield, Katie L., Ryan E. Galt, and Houston Wilson. 2024.
Organic
Data Initiative Gap Analysis – California. University of California, Davis, Agricultural Sustainability
Institute & University of California Organic Agriculture Institute.
Abstract:
The USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) Market News provides free and unbiased data on prices and volumes of
agricultural commodities throughout the United States. In partnership with AMS, this study explores the price and volume
data needs of stakeholders in California’s organic agrifood industry. Findings from 26 interviews and 227 surveys with
mostly small and mid-sized specialty-crop-focused organic agrifood system stakeholders demonstrate that the use of informal
market information is widespread among these stakeholders. Direct use of organic data from AMS Market News and other more
formal organic price and volume data sources was less common. We identified specific areas where AMS Market News organic
data may be falling short for our research participants: data accuracy and consistency, products and geographies covered by
the data, and data presentation and dissemination. Further, organic price and volume data were less often used in pricing
decisions than considerations of the ability to cover business expenses, market pressures, and personal experience. Our main
recommendations for improving AMS Market News organic data based on these findings are: 1) address data gaps; 2) include
additional specialty crops, analyses, and trend explanation; 3) incorporate a simple item-based search process, clearer
explanations of terms, and overviews of data collection processes; and 4) improve data visualizations, outreach, and
email updates.
- Butterfield, Katie L. 2023. “Modeling community garden participation: how locations and frames shape participant demographics”
Agriculture and Human Values. (doi:10.1007/s10460-022-10406-2)
(Accepted Version)
Abstract:
Ample research documents the health benefits of community gardens, but our understanding of the factors shaping gardener participation
is limited. Neighborhood demographics and garden frames have each been theorized to play a role in shaping who participates in community
gardens. Yet, our understanding of the interplay between these factors is underdeveloped and this body of work lacks consideration of the
racial and class makeup of gardeners on a large scale. With a nation-wide survey that includes measures of gardener demographics (N = 162),
the present study considers the extent to which community garden frames and locations simultaneously shape participant demographics. I
combine these factors into a conceptual model explaining community garden participation as an iterative process of framing, accessibility,
and representation, all situated within a garden’s surrounding community. Results show some base correlations between gardens focusing on
healthy food access or symbolic food labels and gardener demographics, but ordered logistic and negative binomial regressions show stronger
evidence of community demographics shaping gardener demographics. At the same time, t-tests comparing mean neighborhood and gardener
demographics shows a consistent under-representation of Latinx community members among gardeners. As theorized in the model presented,
community garden locations are important for shaping what demographics are represented among gardeners, but how community garden benefits
are framed can limit garden accessibility, and subsequently neighborhood representation, especially for Latinx residents. This model helps
illustrate the mechanisms through which garden organizers and advocates can develop more inclusive community gardens through fostering
representation from people of color and the working-class.
- Marin, Nefertari, Brittany Oakes, and Katie Butterfield. 2021. "Changing the World with Community Gardens: A study of community gardens and community garden nonprofits across the United States".
ArcGIS Online Story Map
Abstract:
This story map outlines the historical and current context of community gardening in the United States and explores the potential of community gardens to
address inequality using national-level survey and interview data of community gardeners, managers, and supporting nonprofits. Community gardens are widely
loved for the many benefits they bring. Community gardens have a long history of use by institutional actors to address hunger and as sites of resistance to
structural inequality. Over the past few decades, the number of community gardens has grown across the United States, along with other ‘alternative food
programs’. Funding for these efforts has expanded, alongside the mainstreaming of discourse around food deserts, food security, and food justice. Broader
institutional support has also expanded: a growing nonprofit sector facilitates the growth of community gardens; advocates drive policy changes to support
community gardens and urban food growing; academics, authors, and journalists write more about community gardens; and cities have supplied public land for garden
use.
How are community gardens contributing to their local communities, and how might this increase in community gardens contribute to wider systemic change?
To answer these questions, we explore findings from a survey of community gardeners across the United States and interviews with community gardeners and staff
at nonprofits supporting community gardens. These findings offer insight into the impact and role of community gardens in effecting change, as well as the growth
of nonprofits supporting community gardens today.
- Butterfield, Katie L. and A. Susana Ramírez. 2021. "Framing Food Access: Do Community Gardens Inadvertently Reproduce Inequality?"
Health Education and Behavior. (doi.org/10.1177/1090198120950617)
(Accepted Version)
Abstract:
Background. Alternative food programs have been proposed as solutions to food insecurity and diet-related health issues.
However, some of the most popular programs—farmers markets and community-supported agriculture—overwhelmingly serve White and upper-middle-class
individuals, exacerbating food security and health disparities. One explanation for the mismatch is the way in which alternative food programs
are framed: Language used to encourage participation may reflect priorities of upper-middle-class and White populations who create and run
these programs while lacking resonance with food-insecure populations. This literature, however, lacks consideration of how lower-cost,
more participatory programs—community gardens—are framed. We therefore explore the framing of community gardens through a quantitative
content analysis of the descriptions, missions, and goals provided by community garden managers across Minnesota (N = 411).
Results. Six frames were consistently present in the community garden statements: greater good, community orientation, healthy food access,
food donation, self-empowerment, and symbolic food labels. Greater good and community orientation were significantly more likely to be
used than any other frames.
Conclusions. Taken together, our findings suggest that community gardens may be welcoming toward a diversity of participants but still have
room to improve the inclusivity of their frames. The common use of a community orientation suggests the unique ability of community gardens
among alternative food programs to benefit Black, Latino, and working-class populations. However, the most common frame observed was
“greater good,” suggesting one mechanism through which community gardens, like other types of alternative food programs, may be reproducing
inequality through alienation of food-insecure populations.
- Butterfield, Katie L. 2020. “Neighborhood Composition and Community Garden Locations: The Effect of Ethnicity, Income, and Education”
Sociological Perspectives. (doi.org/10.1177/0731121420908902)
(Accepted Version)
Abstract:
Community gardens provide food, health, and sustainability benefits to surrounding communities.
Research demonstrates that low-income or ethnic-minority communities develop gardens to resist divestment and provide access to healthy food,
whereas white or highly-educated communities develop gardens to address local sustainability concerns.
Missing from this discussion is a comprehensive picture of the relationship between neighborhood composition and community garden locations.
Using GrowNYC and GreenThumb’s 2014 survey of New York City community gardens, this study employs negative binomial and spatial
regression methods to examine this relationship. Findings reveal increased numbers of gardens in communities with higher aggregate
concentrations of: 1. black and/or Latino residents, 2. lower-income residents, and 3. well-educated residents, regardless of ethnicity or income.
In keeping with qualitative research on motivations for garden development, this study provides crucial quantitative
metrics suggesting the diversity of neighborhoods with community gardens and supports their inclusion in urban public policy and city planning.
Projects:
- Butterfield, Katie L. “Fundamental Cause Theory & Community Gardens: Evidence of Countervailing Mechanisms.”
- Butterfield, Katie L., Ryan E. Galt, and Houston Wilson. "Pricing Decisions and Power Dynamics in California’s Organic Agrifood Industry."
- Butterfield, Katie L., Ryan E. Galt, and Houston Wilson. "Data-Informed Decision-Making in California’s Organic Agrifood System."
- Butterfield, Katie L. with Brittany Oakes and Zulema Valdez. All Things to All People: Community Gardens in the United States. (monograph)
Presentations:
- 2025 - “Pricing Decisions and Power Dynamics in California’s Organic Agrifood Industry” with Ryan E. Galt and Houston Wilson,
Annual Conference of the Agriculture, Food & Human Values Society
- 2025 - “California Organic, Agroecological, and Regenerative (COAR) Transitions Project: Trends in Organic Agriculture in California,
1992-2022” with Ryan E. Galt, Jahalel Lee Tuil, and Kase Wheatley, EcoFarm, poster presentation
- 2024 - “California Organic, Agroecological, and Regenerative (COAR) Transitions Project: Trends in Organic Agriculture in California,
1992-2022” with Ryan E. Galt, Jahalel Lee Tuil, & Kase Wheatley, California Climate & Agriculture Summit, poster presentation
- 2024 - “All Things to All People: Community Gardens in the United States” with Brittany Oakes & Zulema Valdez,
Annual Conference of the Agriculture, Food & Human Values Society, poster presentation
- 2024 - “California Organic Data Collection Gap Analysis” with Ryan E. Galt & Houston Wilson, Annual Conference of the Agriculture,
Food & Human Values Society
- 2021 - “Community Gardening in the United States” with Brittany Oakes & Zulema Valdez, Grow Grant Conference
- 2021 - “Community Garden Accessibility: Impacts of Frames and Locations” Annual Conference of the
Agriculture, Food & Human Values Society
- 2021 - “Community Gardening in the United States” with Brittany Oakes & Zulema Valdez, Annual Conference
of the Agriculture, Food & Human Values Society
- 2019 - “Community Gardens, Investments, and Health Outcomes” American Sociological Association Annual Meeting,
Round Table 26. Places, Housing, & Health
- 2019 - “Health Benefits of Urban Vs. Rural Community Gardens” Annual Meeting of the Rural Sociology Society
- 2019 - “Community Gardens, Structural Inequalities, and Health: Urban Vs. Rural Community Gardens” Annual Conference
of the Agriculture, Food & Human Values Society
- 2018 - “Community Gardens, Inequality, and Health” UC Merced Blum Center Summer Institute
- 2017 - “Race, Class, and Community Garden Locations” Lyceum Lunchtime Speaker Series, UC Merced Health Sciences Research Institute
- 2016 - “The Effects of Racial and Class Neighborhood Composition on Community Garden Outcomes” Annual Meeting of the American
Public Health Association, poster presentation
- 2016 - “Straddling Two Worlds: Does Visiting Home Help or Harm First Generation Students' College Engagement?,”
with Irenee Beattie & Wendy Puquirre. Annual Conference of the Sociology of Education Association
- 2015 - “The Effects of Race and Class on Community Garden Locations.” Annual Meeting of the Pacific Sociological Association
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