Urban Farming Symposium videos.
On May 18, 2012, the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law held a symposium on Urban Farming. Below are videos of some of the presentations at the symposium. I hope you find them thought-provoking!
Self-help nuisance abatement.
People who possess an interest in property, such as property owners and tenants, have a legal right to the “quiet enjoyment” of their land. The law defines a violation of someone else’s right to quiet enjoyment of their land as a nuisance. Vacant properties can easily become nuisances to their neighbors. Some examples include abandoned lots …
Land Trusts.
What Is A Land Trust? A land trust is an organization, usually not-for-profit, that works to protect land and its natural resources. Land Trust Strategies: A land trust can use various strategies to protect land. It can purchase or otherwise acquire title to land. If the trust doesn’t want to own the land, it might wish …
Cuba: an urban agricultural model.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, Cuba’s central food distribution system also collapsed. The Cuban people suffered from acute food shortages, due to the sudden cutoff of Soviet imports: both imported food and imported pesticides, fertilizers, and other farming equipment. Before 1989, Havana, the capital of Cuba, a city of over 2 million people, had no …
Boston’s Pilot Urban Agriculture Rezoning Program.
Boston mayor Thomas Menino, chair of the US Council of Mayors’ Food Policy Taskforce, has instituted an urban agriculture zoning pilot program in the Dorchester neighborhood. The program works like this: zoning codes include complex maps of land use districts, each district intended for specified uses. All city lots are assigned an underlying district, which …
Growing Power Farm Conference.
Will you be at the Growing Power Farm Conference this September in Milwaukee? If so, come check out UALP’s workshop on Urban Agriculture Law 101!
Food Not Lawns.
Last year, a Michigan suburb made headlines when it charged a resident with a misdemeanor for failure to keep her front yard properly under the city code. Her offense? She built raised vegetable beds in her yard instead of growing grass. “That’s not what we want to see in a front yard,” said Oak Park …
Intro to How to Research a Vacant Lot // 596 Acres.
New York City: 596 Acres is a nonprofit that connects NYC residents to the land resources around them; they’ve created a helpful map where NYCers can find vacant city-owned lots close to their homes. Here’s a fun infographic (link to PDF) that explains how to get to work on a vacant lot in New York City: …
Volunteers, Employees & Interns.
On May 22, I attended a videoconference of a workshop entitled Managing Volunteers: Understanding the Legal Impact, sponsored by Pfizer, DLA Piper, Habitat for Humanity, and Dorot. Our local Baltimore videoconference site, held at DLA Piper’s beautiful office in Mount Washington, was also co-sponsored by: the Community Law Center, and the Maryland Volunteer Lawyers Service. The seminar …
Healthy Food Access in Urban Areas
Last week, on Friday, May 18, I watched the webcast of a talk given at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health entitled Healthy Food Access in Urban Areas: Barriers and Solutions. The two presenters were: Holly Freishtat, Food Policy Director for Baltimore City and Anne Palmer, Program Director for the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable …
Urban Agriculture Tax Credit. [May 2012]
In 2010, the state of Maryland adopted a bill that authorized the city council of Baltimore City and any county to approve a tax credit for property used for “urban agricultural purposes.” Note: Baltimore City is an “independent city,” which means that it is not part of any county, but the city itself functions like …
Urban fruit gleaning & trespass.
One creative way in which community organizations are feeding people in the city is through gleaning uneaten and unwanted fruit from trees on public land and in private backyards. For example, the Baltimore Orchard Project seeks to: Glean fruit from trees in yards, streets and civic places, fruit that would otherwise go to waste, and …
Teaching the Food System.
The Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University has put together a very interesting free curriculum called Teaching the Food System; elements of the curriculum can be used with high school, undergraduate and even graduate students. The curriculum presents lots of interesting questions that intersect with urban agriculture, such as: How is food …
Set of sample community garden contracts.
The National Policy and Legal Analysis Network (NPLAN) and Public Health Law and Policy (PHLP) have put together a helpful legal guide that includes samples of the most important contracts community garden groups will need. Ground Rules: A Legal Toolkit for Community Gardens Along with a very thorough lease, they’ve also included a gardener’s agreement …
Maryland food licenses
The University of Maryland has put together a handy sheet describing the licenses Maryland requires to: Offer samples at farmers markets. Make & sell food products. Sell meat & poultry. Licenses and Regulation Updates for Farmers Marketing Value‐Added Products Directly to Consumers Two things I learned from this handout: Food products that do not require any kind of …
Wendell Berry & Economy.
[L]and and people have suffered together, as invariably they must. Under the rule of industrial economics, the land, our country, has been pillaged for the enrichment, supposedly, of those humans who have claimed the right to own or exploit it without limit. Of the land-community much has been consumed, much has been wasted, almost nothing …
Ghost Town Farm: A Zoning Law Case Study.
We last left Novella with a license to garden in the vacant lot next door to her apartment. Over the next few years, however, ownership of the lot changed hands several times. Each time the lot passed from one person to another, Novella’s license was extinguished. But each time, Novella asked for and received permission (aka, …
Chickens in Baltimore: UPDATE!
We’ll come back to Novella’s plight very soon, but first — Baltimore’s chicken ordinance was recently updated. Here are the new rules: No more than 4 chickens may be kept on lots less than 2000 square feet. On lots larger than 2000 square feet, you may have 1 additional chicken per 1000 square feet over 2000 …
Licenses & easements.
When we left Novella yesterday, she had just spoken with the owner of the large lot on which she had dug and planted a garden, without his permission. The man saw her work on his property and told her: “Garden ok. Only garden.” What Novella now has is a license to garden on the plot. …
Guerrilla Gardening & Trespass
You may have heard of Novella Carpenter, an urban farmer with a small city lot in a particularly gritty part of Oakland, California. She wrote a great book called Farm City: the Education of an Urban Farmer, which is a lot of fun. I recommend it. She also writes a blog called Ghost Town Farm. …
Value-added products and food safety laws.
It’s difficult for small farms and gardens to be profitable, especially in their first few years. A few reasons why small farms tend to generate less income, proportionately, than large farms include: Limited purchasing power: small farms purchase materials in small quantities and therefore don’t receive as much of a discount from retailers as large …
Chicken Keeping in the City.
Chicken Regs: UPDATED: 5/3. This morning, I attended a workshop at Real Food Farm called “Who Wants to Be an Urban Farmer?” Even for a novice gardener like myself, it was an interesting morning. The first session I attended was Small Scale Livestock Farming, led by Homer Walden of Sunnyside Farm. He showed us a portable chicken coop that he designed …
Shrinking Cities and Urban Agriculture.
Baltimore is a shrinking city. In 1950, Baltimore City boasted a population of almost one million people. By 2010, the number had dropped 35% to 620,000. Baltimore is not alone. Shrinking cities vary in circumstance, but many American cities in the Midwest and Northeast suffer from long-term significant population decline as a partial result of …