Urban Agriculture

• Author: John R. Nolon
• Pages: 299-325

299

Chapter 8:

Urban Agriculture

I. A Truly Local Movement: Urban Agriculture and

Land Use Law1

e metaphors abound in this chapter within a book celebrating the grass-

roots movement of the law from the local to the state and federal levels.

At the ground level, fa rming ha s always occurred in urban areas as grow th

spread from ports and transit stations into farm country. People farmed for

subsistence; they needed the food to survive. Families moved into neighbor-

hoods k nowing that t here would be roosters crowing, cows mooing, goats

bleating, and crops growing next door. As the timeline demonstrates, urban

populations have tried to continue this tradition, in selected places and

ways, but it understandably ebbed when cities got dense and roosters, cows,

goats, and crops— cultivated with increasingly noisy equipment—became

nuisances. First the common law limited these activities, and then zoning

restricted them. Now a new movement is cultivating this turf again, utilizing

the reform of land use law as an organizing technique.

Urban agriculture is increasingly being seen as a means to protect and

enhance public health, supplant food deserts, sequester carbon, cool the heat

island eect of climate cha nge, and cut transportation and other costs of

acquiring food from distant places. For dierent reasons today, this may be

a matter of survival: to urba n populations in need of fresh vegetables, young

adults in need of a job, urban populations seek ing relief from the heat, a nd

declining cities in need of new land uses where people used to live.

e movement to reintroduce farming in cities, urban villages, and ham-

lets is truly a local one, fueled by new insig hts into nutrition, obesity, energy

consumption, climate change, and urban planning. e presence a nd inu-

ence of federal and state law was largely absent at the movement’s inception,

in contrast to the stormwater ma nagement, ooding, and wetlands regu-

lations from higher levels of government that encouraged and guided the

advent of some other local environmental laws.

300 Standing Ground

Students of political science observe in the t rend toward urban farming

local residents and leaders sensing the need to restore agriculture to urban

life, encountering zoning’s barriers, and guring out how to overcome them,

providing a menu of choices for other communities to follow. is is how

change often happens, from the ground up, particularly with the law of the

land.

is chapter exa mines the benets of urban agriculture, the barriers that

unreasonable land use regu lations pose to agricultural activities, and the

actions taken by municipalities to allow agriculture to return to cities. It

concludes with a suggested course of action to evaluate and make amend-

ments to comprehensive plans, zoning ordinances, and land use regulations

to promote urban agriculture.

A. Def‌inition

Urban agriculture embraces many undertak ings relating to growing food in

an urban setting, including activities involved in the planting, cultivation,

processing, marketing, d istribution, a nd consumption of food. It includes

community gardens, per-

sonal backyard gardens,

rooftop farms, commercial

greenhouses, farmers’ ma r-

kets, community supported

agriculture operations, a nd

apiaries, among other activi-

ties. For purposes of this

chapter, the term urban agri-

culture is broadly dened

to encompass a ll of these

undertaking s and related

activities. From the perspec-

tive of land use law, these are

all land uses, which to occu r must exist in zoning’s blueprint: its denitions

and permitted uses.

B. Trends

Urban agriculture has grown in popularity in the United States and has

become a frequent topic in social media in most parts of the country. Between

Urban Agriculture D ef‌ined

While there is not yet a universally

agreed-upon def‌inition, Urban and Peri-

urban Agriculture . . . is perceived as agri-

culture practices within and around cities

which compete for resources (land, water,

energy, labour) that could also serve other

purposes to satisfy the requirements of

the urban population. Important sectors of

Urban and Peri-urban Agriculture include

horticulture, live-stock, fodder and milk

production, aquacu lture, and forestr y.2