Farming from the City Center to the Urban Fringe
Food Security for Planners

Anne Carter, Community Food Systems Lab, Department of Plant and Soil Sciences, University of Massachusetts – Amherst and Peter Mann, World Hunger Year, NY, NY. 

Food production has traditionally been seen as an agricultural or rural issue. But as food insecurity and poor health has become acute in U.S. cities, urban agriculture should become as high a priority for planners as transportation, housing, and employment.

The reasons for this are clear. Eighty percent of the U.S. population lives in cities and the current food system requires vast resources for distribution, processing and storing food.  Reducing the distance that food travels can decrease the cost of food, the costs to the environment due to oil, refrigeration and waste during travel and the dangers of bio-terrorism.  Additionally, food insecurity in cities leads to other issues such as diet-related health problems and poor school performance.
City planning can reinforce the potential of urban agriculture as a method of preventing food insecurity (a person’s level of hunger for one or more days a month).  Urban agriculture is defined as “the growing, processing, and distributing of food and other products through intensive plant cultivation and animal husbandry in and around cities”.  The urban food system “contributes significantly to community health and welfare: to metropolitan economies; connects to other urban systems such as housing, transportation, land use, and economic development; and impacts the urban environment.”  We call on city planners to integrate urban food systems in their work.
Urban Agriculture Builds on the Resources of Cities
Urban planners working on health, community development and the environment will find that new city-wide coalitions are emerging in these areas on behalf of urban food security.  Health and nutrition advocates are joining with community gardeners, university extension services, emergency food distributors and faith communities around access to local food.  Community economic development organizers, as well as environmentalists concerned with urban waste reduction and recycling, see the potential in urban farming for creating jobs as well as improving the quality of local water, air, and soil. 
Growing food can have a regenerative effect on the inner-city, especially when vacant lots, which number in the tens of thousands in some de-industrialized cities, are transformed from eyesores into gardens.  Re-development of urban areas through gardening can encourage other types of re-development as well.
Urban farming has significant economic potential.  There are three main types of urban agriculture: backyard gardeners, community gardeners, and commercial growers.  Backyard farmers grow for themselves and neighbors.  Community gardeners produce on community lots.  Urban commercial growers grow food for sale, from direct sale of produce to micro-enterprises of value-added food products such as salsa and jams.  Growers from urban and peri-urban farms bring produce directly to inner-city green-markets, restaurants, and CSA’s.  Planning around community economic development can build on the potentials of urban agriculture.
Challenges of urban agriculture
Land Use Planning
The preservation of agricultural land is increasingly becoming a priority regional issue, with cities being asked to take responsibility to reduce sprawl.  Urban planners can assist solutions to these problems in a number of ways: 
Support smart growth and other initiatives that manage urban and suburban sprawl without loss of critical open space and farmland.  
Develop ways for governments, land-grant universities and businesses to convert idle and under-used urban lands and other resources to area of food production and to preserve existing farms.
Encourage land tenure schemes such as land trusts, leases, eminent domain, and allied policy initiatives.
Secure long term commitment for community gardens, entrepreneurial farms and other urban agriculture ventures to ensure the horticultural, social and economic value of the venture.
Public Policy
The food sector, comprising restaurants, fast food outlets, supermarkets, specialty food stores, taverns, green markets, farmers markets and food wholesaling is an important part of the urban economy and needs planning.  Policy support could include the following: 
Support institutional buying of food from local vendors by changing bidding codes to allow preference for local products.
Support cooperatives that allow vendors to come together and create their own business venture and sell to institutions or individuals.
Promote buy-local campaigns to create new business for local food producers.

Food Related Health Policies
City residents often have difficulty obtaining nutritious food at a fair price.  This brings on health problems related to inadequate food, an unbalanced diet or excessive intake of foods high in fat or calories.  Health care planning should pay attention to urban food systems as support for the prevention of diet-related diseases.  
Environmental Clean-up
City planners are faced with abandoned buildings and vacant lots that are contaminated with lead and other industrial chemicals.  Agriculture can be a means of creating a valuable use to these spaces while decontaminating the site.  
Raised beds with imported clean soil and compost have been successfully placed on top of questionable soils, enabling farmers to produce healthful food.
Low-cost soil testing and subsidies have enabled low-income gardeners to know their level of risk and seek appropriate solutions. 
Phytoremediation (using plants to take up metals from the soil) has great potential to assist with lead abatement. 
Use of organic agriculture techniques will decrease further introduction of chemicals to the city soils and water supply.
Sheltered production methods have been used to avoid contact with the soil and air by providing alternative production sites in contaminated areas.
Transportation Policies
Household and individual trips to the grocery store and other food outlets contribute to a significant portion of urban transportation volume.  Because the poor have fewer cars, the quality of a city’s transit system becomes a major factor affecting their ability to access affordable food stores.  The movement of supermarkets from the inner-city contributes to the problem.  Planners can subsidize or find other means to support several activities to get shoppers to and from larger supermarkets and farmers’ markets.
Support intra-city transit lines that move from neighborhood directly to grocery stores and farmers’ markets rather than the traditional spoke-and-wheel transportation format.
Support store initiated shuttles for seniors and those without private transportation.
Create a grocery delivery businesses for home-bound residents.
Allow zoning variances for smaller parking lots with larger grocery stores so that they can fit into existing inner-city lots in areas with high foot traffic or other public transportation services.
Planning Changes Specific to Urban Agriculture 
While the needs of urban farmers are in certain cases similar to those of rural farmers, in other cases they are different and require special services. Planners and policymakers can work with representatives of urban farming organizations, as well as food policy councils to meet these needs.
Support infrastructure for increased urban food production, processing, and marketing ventures, funding streams, technical service providers, and urban extension agents. 
Tailor loan programs so that urban growers as well as rural farmers also have access to such benefits as start-up capital, credit, crop insurance, horticultural and financial advice, soil testing, markets, subsidies, tools, and inputs such as seeds and soil amendments. 
Support new or existing businesses that provide farm-related services and materials.
Amend building codes so that they reflect the actual structural contingencies of rooftop gardening. 
Provide support and access to public waterways for raising fish in cities (aquaculture) as an inexpensive high-protein food. 
Enhance municipal support for composting solid waste with door-to-door collection of organic material, onsite composting facilities in urban agriculture projects, public education programs, and advice.
Conclusion
In these proposals for planning around urban food systems, we have focused on city planning departments that already exist, such as economic development, environment, health, and transportation.  A municipal Department of Food – currently nonexistent in the United States – would allow for a comprehensive approach to local food issues, including outreach and community education, regulation, capitol programming and food-related services development and administration.  Food Policy Councils are an effective conduit for urban education, research and planning.  The policies and actions outlined above, as well as others, will help promote urban agriculture as a powerful instrument for building community food security and increasing economic development in North American cities.
References
Brown, K., M. Bailkey, A. Meares-Cohen, J. Nasr, J. Smit, T. Buchanan, and P. Mann. 2002. Urban Agriculture and Community Food Security in the United States: Farming from the Inner-City to the Urban Fringe.  Prepared by the North American Urban Agriculture Initiative of the Community Food Security Coalition. Venice, California. www.foodsecurity.org. 
Pothukuchi, K. and J. L. Kaufman. 1997. Placing the Food System on the Urban Agenda: The Role of Municipal Institutions in Food Systems Planning. J. of Ag. And Hum. Val.NEED COMPLETE REFERENCE.
UCLA Pollution Prevention Education and Research Center. 1997. Homeward Bound: Food Related Transportation Strategies in Low Income and Transit Dependent Communities.  Pollution Prevention Education and Research Center. University of California – Los Angeles.  Available through the Community Food Security Coalition, P.O. Box 209, Venice CA 90294.  www.foodsecurity.org.
About the Community Food Security Coalition
The Community Food Security Coalition (CFSC) is a non-profit 501(c)(3), North American organization dedicated to building strong, sustainable, local and regional food systems that ensure access to affordable, nutritious, and culturally appropriate food for all people at all times. We seek to develop self-reliance among all communities in obtaining their food and to create a system of growing, manufacturing, processing, making available, and selling food that is regionally based and grounded in the principles of justice, democracy, and sustainability. CFSC has over 250 member organizatons.  For more information contact Andy Fisher, Community Food Security Coalition, P.O. Box 209, Venice CA 90294.  www.foodsecurity.org.