California Food and Justice Coalition: Issues: Urban Agriculture

Issue Paper:
Urban Agriculture
By Andy Fisher

-WORKING DRAFT-

What is the value of urban agriculture?
Urban agriculture can provide a host of benefits to communities. These include:

Improved access to high quality produce, especially in lower income communities where access may be problematic due to lack of supermarkets and few transportation resources, and lack of income to purchase produce. Under-consumption can lead to diet related diseases.

Improved knowledge of how food is grown and where it comes from. Gardeners better appreciate the plight of farmers-, and have a better appreciation for the regional and seasonal constraints of the food system, as well as better appreciate high quality foods. Gardening builds a constituency for local foods and for support of local agriculture.

Increased social capital and community empowerment. Community gardens in particular can help to build relationships between neighbors, building social capital along the way. They can turn troubled neighborhoods around, by instilling pride and a sense of community spirit, as well as provide aesthetic and environmental benefits from cleaning infested lots. They can also provide needed recreation space for neighborhoods with few parks, provide a setting for intergenerational and intercultural exchanges, and provide a space as well for disempowered residents to make decisions about their community.

Provide economic opportunities for growing and selling food. Market and other entrepreneurial gardens typically provide jobs, job and business training for youth and disadvantaged persons.

Provide a closer source of food for urbanites. Urban agriculture is local food for city dwellers. Support for urban agriculture typically means support for small scale farmers.

Policy Opportunities
There are few existing policies or programs at the state level related to urban agriculture. Most of the existing policies that affect urban ag are local land use and city service type issues. More research will need to be done to identify those state programs that might be used to promote urban agriculture. An initial list might include job training, economic development, urban parks, and crime prevention programs (many of these might be federal dollars).

Other changes that could be made include allowing unused state lands to be used for urban agriculture (no idea of the impact other than symbolic), and creating a funding stream to support urban ag projects. The Garden in Every School Initiative could also be linked somehow to this policy campaign.

Organizing Value
Urban agriculture is a largely unorganized field. There are numerous players and wonderful projects going on across the state without any coordination, except that provided by the CFSC. By getting engaged in this area, we can a) make use of the wonderful images and stories of people involved in urban agriculture; b) incorporate residents and groups working in low income and communities of color who are engaged in urban ag projects or are familiar with their benefits; c) highlight an area that is intuitively understood by the public and policymakers, and has a fair degree of "sex appeal." Urban agriculture speaks to lower income constituencies and to urban communities.

The California Food and Justice Coalition is a project of the