{"id":148907,"date":"2023-05-09T08:00:28","date_gmt":"2023-05-09T12:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/modernfarmer.com\/?p=148907"},"modified":"2024-07-30T11:34:23","modified_gmt":"2024-07-30T15:34:23","slug":"for-urban-farmers-community-organizing-can-be-key-to-easing-zoning-constraints","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/modernfarmer.com\/2023\/05\/for-urban-farmers-community-organizing-can-be-key-to-easing-zoning-constraints\/","title":{"rendered":"For Urban Farmers, Community Organizing Can Be Key to Easing Zoning Constraints"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When a vacant lot next to Doug Adams&#8217; childhood home in Prince George&#8217;s County, Maryland came on the market in 2016, he jumped at the chance to buy it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&#8220;It was a unique property and I didn&#8217;t really have a plan when I bought it, but I decided I didn&#8217;t want to build a house on it,&#8221; says Adams. &#8220;In thinking about what else I could do that was productive, I decided I&#8217;d take a shot at growing food.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Adams quickly developed a plan to host farmers in residence, grow specialty crops for local brewers and host events on the small quarter-acre property he named <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.newbrooklynfarms.com\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">New Brooklyn Farms<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. He connected with <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.pgscd.org\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Prince George&#8217;s Soil Conservation District<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and eventually received USDA funding to build a greenhouse on the property.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That\u2019s when he hit a roadblock. &#8220;I was trying to do things correctly and went to get a permit for the greenhouse and was told, &#8216;You can&#8217;t build a greenhouse, it&#8217;s not inline with the code, and you can&#8217;t operate a farm business, the property isn&#8217;t zoned for that,'&#8221; says Adams.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Urban farms, like New Brooklyn Farms, have sprouted up in vacant lots across the country since at <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/online.aurora.edu\/history-of-urban-agriculture\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">least the 1990s<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, when urban farming started to go through a renaissance. In the decades since, many communities have reaped the <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/2016\/5\/15\/11660304\/urban-farming-benefits\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">benefits of having farms<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in traditionally residential areas\u2014including increased access to fresh foods, carbon sequestration and even workforce training and community building\u2014but many zoning laws haven&#8217;t kept up with the increased demand for urban farming.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&#8220;Zoning initially was created to separate uses, to separate residential from agriculture, and it was all to promote public health and safety initially, but now I think people are beginning to see that it&#8217;s not really worked to further our communities,&#8221; says Lihlani Nelson, deputy director\u00a0 at <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.vermontlaw.edu\/academics\/centers-and-programs\/center-for-agriculture-and-food-systems\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Center for Agriculture and Food Systems <\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(CAFS) at<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Vermont Law and Graduate School, which helped to create the <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/healthyfoodpolicyproject.org\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Healthy Food Policy Project<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Five years ago, CAFS, the<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.publichealthlawcenter.org\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Public Health Law Center (PHLC)<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and the<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.uconnruddcenter.org\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Rudd Center for Food Policy and Health at the University of Connecticut<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> came together to create a policy database to give local governments examples of policies that best work to increase access to healthy food. They quickly realized that <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/healthyfoodpolicyproject.org\/local-planning-and-the-food-system\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">zoning laws<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> could have a significant impact on improving access to healthy food.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&#8220;People have been doing what we&#8217;re calling urban ag for a very long time,&#8221; says Nelson. &#8220;It&#8217;s not some brand new thing, but there has been such a growth in the movement around urban ag and there&#8217;s so many benefits that people understand in terms of health, environment and community, that it seems like a no-brainer to try to support it as much as possible through local policy, including zoning.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_148913\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-148913\" style=\"width: 277px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-148913 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/modernfarmer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/D78B3547-32EE-4361-ACAB-6F4B49CCEC16-277x346.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"277\" height=\"346\" srcset=\"https:\/\/modernfarmer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/D78B3547-32EE-4361-ACAB-6F4B49CCEC16-277x346.jpeg 277w, https:\/\/modernfarmer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/D78B3547-32EE-4361-ACAB-6F4B49CCEC16-819x1024.jpeg 819w, https:\/\/modernfarmer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/D78B3547-32EE-4361-ACAB-6F4B49CCEC16-768x960.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/modernfarmer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/D78B3547-32EE-4361-ACAB-6F4B49CCEC16-800x1000.jpeg 800w, https:\/\/modernfarmer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/D78B3547-32EE-4361-ACAB-6F4B49CCEC16.jpeg 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 277px) 100vw, 277px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-148913\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Inside New Brooklyn Farms&#8217;s greenhouse. (Photo courtesy New Brookly Farms)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When Adams realized he couldn\u2019t build his greenhouse, he started rallying local support.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0&#8220;I thought, \u2018Wow I got this money to spend and I can&#8217;t build,\u201d\u00a0 says Adams.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">He wrote to the mayor and the town council, worked to get support from different community organizations and eventually connected with a county council member that was pro-urban farming. For Adams and others who have worked to change zoning codes, gathering supporters has been the key to easing zoning restrictions.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In Kansas City, Missouri, a farmer from the former urban farm <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cityfarmer.info\/bad-seed-urban-farm-is-a-labor-of-love-though-it-ruffles-some-neighbors%E2%80%99-feathers\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bad Seed Farm<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> got <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cultivatekc.org\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Cultivate KC<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> involved early in their zoning fight.\u00a0 The organization helps growers develop skills and access resources to start and maintain sustainable farm businesses.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&#8220;They were operating a CSA out of a backyard farm in a residential neighborhood and they started running into some issues with the city around running a business in a residential neighborhood,&#8221; says Ami Freeberg, Cultivate KC&#8217;s assistant director of strategy and partnerships.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In 2009 and 2010, Cultivate KC worked with the farmer and other community organizations on what ended up being an extensive process full of community meetings, meetings with city council members and members of the zoning department to come up with ordinances that eventually allowed for Bad Seed Farm and other urban farms to operate.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&#8220;It was a big step forward at the time because it made it possible and created a pathway for farm businesses to operate in residential areas, but there are still a lot of particulars around requiring special use permits, limiting onsite sales and specific restrictions around CSAs, separate from other types of urban agriculture,&#8221; says Freeberg.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In the 13 years since, the ordinance has made Cultivate KC&#8217;s work more straightforward in the sense that there are codes for them to point people towards, but the reception or the ordinance and urban farms in general has varied greatly by neighborhood and individual community member.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThere&#8217;s one neighborhood in particular that had a proliferation of urban farms after the ordinance passed,\u201d says Brien Darby, executive director of Cultivate KC. \u201cAnd even within that neighborhood, it depends on who you talk to, but some folks are all for it. They like it as an identity for the neighborhood. And some folks are like,\u00a0 \u2018We do not want any more green infrastructure going on in our neighborhood.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Cultivate KC does expect that it will need to collaborate with the city to revisit the ordinance in the next few years.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&#8220;There&#8217;s still a lot of gray areas in the language. We get questions every few months,&#8221; says Freeberg, adding that one of the initial things Cultivate KC worked on was putting together training for code enforcement, which they&#8217;d like to do again.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They also hope to work with officials in Wyandotte County, which oversees zoning for Kansas City, Kansas, on updating their codes to make urban agriculture more accessible.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It took Adams two years and a lot of campaigning to receive a special planning resolution to permit his\u00a0 farm in Prince George&#8217;s County. The county also used it as an opportunity to expand zoning for urban farming.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Adams advises that others going through the process try to speak to as many people as possible within their zoning department. Getting in touch with politicians to get their support can be a worthwhile challenge, he says, noting that he leveraged community organizations to get in touch with politicians. \u201cYou have to put yourself out there, collect signatures\u00a0 \u00a0 and use social [media] and the press to keep the eyes on and give people more reason to help you.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When a vacant lot next to Doug Adams&#8217; childhood home in Prince George&#8217;s County, Maryland came on the market in 2016, he jumped at the chance to buy it.\u00a0 &#8220;It was a unique property and I didn&#8217;t really have a plan when I bought it, but I decided I didn&#8217;t want to build a house [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":606,"featured_media":148909,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":[33278],"meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[33067],"tags":[33301,33287,33289],"article-theme":[],"class_list":["post-148907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-farm","tag-access","tag-land","tag-policy","format-article"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.8 - 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