PLANTING THE SEEDS FOR PHILADELPHIA’S FIRST URBAN AGRICULTURE PLAN

For well over a decade, growers, community advocates, nonprofits, and Philadelphia City staff and elected officials have called for more support for urban agriculture and more investment to build an equitable and sustainable food system. Currently, the food system continues to underserve residents who live in neighborhoods with high concentrations of deep poverty and low-to-no walkable access to food markets. According to the US Department of Agriculture, over 18 percent of Philadelphians lack access to enough food for a healthy, active life.12

Land insecurity, hunger, and food-related illnesses, such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease, disproportionately affect the city’s BIPOC communities, which make up more than half the population. Systemic structural, racial, and socioeconomic barriers prevent communities from being able to create and self-determine their own food systems. Meaningful change requires systemic solutions that address the root causes of harmful cycles and patterns.

Today, the effort to ensure that all Philadelphians have access to fresh, nourishing, and affordable food is simultaneously losing and gaining ground. Zoning changes in 2012 made gardening and farming permissible activities on most land in the city, and the 2013 Philadelphia Land Bank Law identified urban agriculture as a priority community beneficial use for vacant land. In 2016, City Council voted to approve a stormwater fee discount for gardens. However, this evidence of forward progress and demonstration of support for urban agriculture within the City, contrasts with ongoing concerns about access to land for growing food in Philadelphia.

In 2008, University of Pennsylvania researchers reported that the number of community gardens in Philadelphia declined by 54 percent between 1994 and 2008.13 This study, along with the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission’s (DVRPC) 2010 Greater Philadelphia Food System report, solidified the need for more advocacy around growing food and land access in Philadelphia. DVRPC’s study concluded that the food supply in the region’s 100-mile foodshed is

“not sufficient to meet Greater Philadelphia’s consumer demand.”14 The DVRPC study highlighted a “deficit of nearly 2.8 million acres of farmland that would be needed to supply the current population,”15 and the need for “a plan for a more sustainable and resilient food system... [with] recommendations for different audiences, ranging from federal and state policymakers to county planners, and from nonprofit service providers to individuals.”16

Part of the problem is a lack of direction, investment, and coordination at the city, state, and federal level necessary to support a thriving urban agriculture community. Presently, philanthropic resources also do not meet the growing needs of the urban agriculture community. Growing from the Root, Philadelphia’s urban agriculture plan, is an opportunity to address some of the challenges of the current food system with strategies to encourage a more localized food economy.

It has taken time and dedication both within City government and through community organizing to lay the groundwork and build the political will for the City’s first urban agriculture plan. In 2008, thenMayor Michael Nutter pledged to make Philadelphia the greenest city in America, creating the Office of Sustainability and establishing the Philadelphia Food Charter by executive order. The charter affirmed the City’s commitment to developing coordinated municipal food and urban agriculture policy, and providing safe, affordable, locally grown, and healthy food for all Philadelphians.

In 2009, the Office of Sustainability published its first Greenworks plan, targeting an improved local food system with urban agriculture as a key component of a more sustainable city. In 2011, the Philadelphia City Planning Commission published Philadelphia2035, which wrote urban agriculture into the citywide vision. Also in 2011, the Office of Sustainability together with Philadelphia Parks & Recreation (Parks & Rec), created the Philadelphia Food Policy Advisory Council (FPAC), a diverse body of volunteer local and regional stakeholders appointed to advise the City in efforts to create a more just food system.

Meanwhile, a diverse coalition of advocates, among them the Campaign to Take Back Vacant Land Coalition, Garden Justice Legal Initiative, Healthy Foods Green Spaces, and the Philly Land Bank Alliance worked to pass the Philadelphia Land Bank Law19 through the City Council in 2013. Successful advocacy helped pave the way for the new Land Bank, empowered to “return vacant and underutilized property to productive use through a unified, predictable, and transparent process,” including urban agriculture. The first Land Bank Strategic Plan, published in 2015, identified seven primary goals to guide Land Bank activity, among them to “reinforce open space initiatives and urban agriculture.”20

In 2017, FPAC appointed and ex officio members began laying the groundwork for the creation of an Urban Agriculture Plan. FPAC contracted with Corajus (Coalition for Racial Justice) to survey the needs of growers, residents who raise agricultural animals, neighborhood leaders, nonprofits, and City agencies. Over 300 Philadelphia residents participated.

While institutional change was afoot within City Hall, farmers, gardeners, and urban agriculture advocates across the City were organizing, educating, and campaigning for more sweeping change. Youth food justice leaders presented the Youth Food Bill of Rights at the National Constitution Center, naming their rights to “culturally affirming foods,” “nutrition education,” and “healthy foods in school.” The Public Interest Law Center, a nonprofit law firm that fights for Philadelphia communities facing discrimination, inequality, and poverty,17 launched the Garden Justice Legal Initiative (GJLI) in 2011 to provide pro bono legal support to gardens and farms at risk of losing their land, and to offer community education.18

As the Land Bank operationalized, development continued to threaten and destroy gardens and farms. In early 2016, Soil Generation—a Black- and Brown-led grassroots coalition of growers—organized alongside other community organizations, gardeners, farmers, nonprofits, city agencies, and FPAC to bring over 100 advocates to testify at City Council’s first Urban Agriculture Public Hearing. At the hearing, Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown, chair of the Committee on the Environment, said: “I have struggled as I sit here, trying to figure out and remember the last time we had an audience of witnesses, testifiers, and advocates that were as richly diverse—in terms of age, in terms of cross-sections of the city, in terms of ethnicity, in terms of energy and enthusiasm.”21 The collective voice of the community helped build support for urban agriculture and raise awareness that a plan was needed.

In the years since, responsibility for carrying out food policy work within the City has been broadly shared across departments including Philadelphia Parks & Recreation, the Department of Public Health, Office of Sustainability and FPAC. FPAC has made progress with interdepartmental relationship building, but struggled to establish leadership support, a sense of urgency for urban agriculture, and an accountability system for carrying out the food policy recommendations presented to the mayor on an annual basis.22 Finding a permanent home for urban agriculture within City government became a priority. In 2019, advocacy culminated in the creation of a new director of urban agriculture position within Parks & Rec and the launch of the process to develop the City’s first Urban Agriculture Plan, Growing from the Root

The release of this plan follows two other aligned City documents: the Philly Tree Plan and FPAC’s Strategic Plan. All three of these documents underscore the need and point the way toward a greener, more just, and more sustainable food and land future for Philadelphia.