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There may be a drought in much of North America, but this summer has produced a bumper crop of reports on urban agriculture in cities across the continent. Nonprofit groups in New York, Toronto and Boston have recently published studies examining what their cities can do at the policy level to support city gardeners and farmers.

In the Big Apple, the Design Trust for Public Space and Added Value partnered together to produce Five Borough Farm: Seeding the Future of Urban Agriculture in New York City, the most comprehensive of the reports. The study’s snapshot of urban agriculture revealed:

• More than 700 farms and gardens (including school gardens) are producing food. This, the report pointed out, is more than three times the number of Starbucks in the city. 
• In addition to 390 food-producing community gardens managed by the Department of Parks and Recreation, the New York City Housing Authority hosts 245 food-producing gardens.
• The vast majority of the sites are 5,000 square feet or less.

An innovative aspect of the report was its call for the city and urban agriculture practitioners to provide more detailed metrics — not only to track production (in pounds of food, value, jobs and participation) but also to track impact (dietary change, food literacy and social cohesion). In the coming year, the Design Trust will begin working with a small sample of sites to collect this sort of data, similar to the work of Farming Concrete.

One other notable aspect of the New York City report was how the history of land insecurity, specifically former mayor Guliani’s attempt to auction off 115 community garden sites for private development in 1999, led to a very specific garden review process for any future transfer proposals. It also led to the establishment of a small handful of land trusts — including the New York Restoration Project and three smaller community trusts that were recently spun off by the Trust for Public Land — that own scores of community garden sites. In contrast, there are no community land trusts operating urban agriculture projects in San Francisco.

Providing an international perspective from a colder clime, Toronto’s Food Policy Council published GrowTO: An Urban Agriculture Plan for Toronto. The goal of this enthusiastic report was to scale up urban agriculture across the city. Reflecting the similarities that dense cities face on this issue, the four top policy recommendations from Toronto are similar to those SPUR identified for San Francisco:

1.     Create an urban agriculture program within the City of Toronto.

2.     Update city policies to support and implement urban agriculture.

3.     Provide incentives (financial and/or other) to groups and individuals starting or growing their urban agriculture initiative.

4.     Develop a website that provides a clearinghouse of urban agriculture information.

The report also highlighted a “yard sharing” initiative called YIMBY (Yes in My Backyard), a model of maximizing use of private yards that has not been institutionalized yet anywhere in the Bay Area.

Not to be outdone by bigger cities, researchers from the Conservation Law Foundation in Beantown issued their report Growing Green: Measuring Benefits, Overcoming Barriers, and Nurturing Opportunities for Urban Agriculture in Boston.  Unlike the others, this report was framed as a feasibility study for a hypothetical commercial urban farming venture that would cultivate many sites across Boston, totaling 50 acres. Two notable findings in the study were that:

• Commercial urban farms were likely to employ 2.6 to 4.5 people per acre
• Boston has at least 800 acres of vacant land suitable for urban agriculture

Alongside its feasibility analysis, the report provides detailed descriptions of existing policy and initiatives in the city, including an urban agriculture zoning overlay district. Unaddressed, however, was whether that zoning policy, or any other policy change, would make it feasible for any urban agriculture venture to gain access to 50 acres of land. 

What the three studies show is both a growing sophistication of urban agriculture policy efforts in cities across the continent and the similar obstacles facing farmers and gardeners in dense urban areas.  What is not yet clear is whether the bumper crop of studies will lead to subsequent bumper crops of food produced in those cities.

Read SPUR's report on urban agriculture in San Francisco >>

San Francisco may soon have a new urban agriculture program. On June 11, the Land Use and Economic Development Committee of the Board of Supervisors unanimously passed legislation introduced earlier by Supervisor David Chiu that seeks to increase the coordination, efficacy and breadth of city support for urban agriculture. Based on recommendations from SPUR's report Public Harvest as well as calls for change from community organizations including the San Francisco Urban Agriculture Alliance, the ordinance now moves to the full board for two consecutive votes, with the first vote likely on June 19.  

The version of the legislation that passed the committee included a number of amendments to the original version. Some of the notable changes include:

• Strategic plan: The strategic plan for implementation of the legislation must be presented to the board for approval
• Funding: For the coming fiscal year, the urban agriculture program should have funding sufficient for at least one full-time staff person
• Timelines: The strategic plan may set new target dates for the goals listed in the legislation
• Job training: The program needs to find ways to link urban agriculture with job training and employment opportunities, especially in the private sector
• Land Use: The program must ensure that existing urban agriculture spaces are fully utilized

Though the board agreed to numerous changes, they retained the core components of the legislation. Given the support demonstrated at the hearing by both the supervisors and community advocates, including SPUR, the ordinance appears headed toward passage.

Assuming the legislation becomes law, the most pressing issue becomes how to translate the text of the ordinance into meaningful change.  Prime among the questions of the law’s implementation is how the urban agriculture program will be funded.  The mayor and Board of Supervisors are in the process of negotiating the city budget, and it is not yet clear what funding, if any, will be included to support the new program and ensure that the ordinance’s call for at least one full-time coordinator is reinforced with budget dollars. The city administrator and mayor will face another large question: Which city agency or nonprofit should manage the program and ensure that the goals of the legislation are met? They have until December to evaluate the various options and submit an answer to the board and public.

The Land Use Committee’s approval of the ordinance has moved the legislation very close to becoming law. And it has moved city agencies, nonprofits and community advocates into the more difficult conversation about how, exactly, the city will create a program that better serves San Francisco’s many gardeners and farmers.  

Read the urban agriculture legislation passed by the Land Use and Economic Development Committee >>

Read the SPUR report Public Harvest >>

On March 9, 2012, San Francisco issued its first zoning permit for “neighborhood urban agriculture.”  The change of use permit, given to Little City Gardens, allows the small urban farming business to grow produce for sale at its three-quarter-acre market garden in the Mission Terrace neighborhood. It is the first permit issued under San Francisco’s pioneering urban agriculture zoning guidelines, which Mayor Lee signed into law in April 2011. 

The permit is both a victory for Little City Gardens and the culmination of a multi-year effort to legalize commercial urban farming in residential neighborhoods in San Francisco. The permit, is, at its core, a simple recognition that the previously vacant lot is now being used to grow food according to basic guidelines. Securing the permit, however, was not simple. The process involved:

• four visits to the permitting office
• plan review by the Planning Department, Department of Building Inspection, Public Utilities Commission and Central Permit Bureau
• a $300 fee
• hours of conversation between the applicants and the various agencies about the new zoning law and the practice of urban farming

Little City Gardens has been at the forefront of trying to find a legal path to sell what it grows in the city.  Now, having set the precedent of successfully securing a change of use permit, the path ahead for other aspiring urban farmers in San Francisco will be a little smoother.

Can you make a living selling what you grow in a city?

That’s a question a number of urban farming entrepreneurs have been working to answer in the past few years, and initial numbers are beginning to become public.

The short answer is … maybe. For many new urban-farming businesses that have started in the past couple of years, it may be too soon to judge — just as it would be with any small business getting off the ground. It’s also a question of what level of income you consider livable. A recent article from the two co-owners of Little City Gardens and a study in Vancouver provide some initial data.

Little City Gardens grows a variety of vegetables on a three-quarter acre plot in the Mission Terrace neighborhood of San Francisco. During the past year — their first of intensive production and sales — they marketed their produce to restaurants, caterers, CSA subscribers and to the public through a farm stand. In a blog post reviewing the past year, the co-owners reported that their revenue from 2011 allowed them to cover costs, set aside money for the coming year, and pay themselves $10,000 each. As the Little City owners put it, “Of course we acknowledge that we cannot sustain this type of salary for too long. This is not considered a living wage in San Francisco, and if we tried to pay ourselves by the hour, our wages would be embarrassing. We also acknowledge that this salary absolutely would not be adequate for anyone responsible for supporting a child or other family members, repaying loans or medical bills.” At the same time, they are hopeful that their second year will include increased sales, greater efficiency and the ability to pay themselves higher wages.

The numbers in Vancouver, British Columbia, paint a similar picture of urban farmers earning relatively little income. A study by University of British Columbia researcher Marc Schutzbank of eight commercial urban agriculture projects revealed that city farm owners earned an average of $8.64 per hour in 2010 (the figure was reported in Canadian dollars but is essentially the same in U.S. dollars at the contemporary exchange rates). The report notes that this is slightly less than what rural farm owners earned in British Columbia during the same period, but that urban farmers have the potential to grow and increase profits with higher yields, efficiency and sales.

Other notable commercial urban agriculture operations in areas of the country with high costs of living may soon provide more data about their commercial viability. Dig Deep Farms, for example, grows produce in the Ashland and Cherryland areas of Alameda County and sells its harvest through a CSA. Brooklyn Grange and Gotham Greens in New York City have taken to roofs for growing space. Proponents of a model of intensive small plot cultivation called SPIN Farming have hosted workshops in the United States and Canada promoting the viability of urban farms on less than one acre of land.

Urban agriculture as a business is a young industry. Initial numbers indicate that urban farming, like rural farming, often has low-to-no profit with the added burden of city-level costs of living. As with any young industry, though, it will take a number of years before it is clear which business models can support the livelihoods of urban farmers.

Further reading:

“A growing concern,” Earth Island Journal >>

“Urban Farms Don’t Make Money – So What?” Grist >>