An agricultural commons in California’s Central Valley examines the spatial and structural relationships between the industrial food system of the Central Valley, the local ecologies, and unincorporated rural communities. As a dominant land use, current industrial practices deplete water resources, deplete the topsoil, create toxic living conditions for local communities, and undervalues farm labor. Despite its scale of production and importance to the American food system, it is an invisible landscape to consumers, and a placeless landscape to the farm workers. This thesis project investigates how this productive landscape has antagonized rural communities, and taken away the ability for migrant farmworkers to feel rooted in the landscape in which they work. 

Through a reevaluation of the agricultural commons as a practice and principle, new models of management, relationships between economy and landscape, and values can begin to formulate a more equitable, participatory, and just food system. The design proposal is a set of time-based strategies that help enact a new model of agriculture and land stewardship that is nurturant and productive to ‘place.’