USA Today: Cities ease rules to encourage urban farms

Here, herbs growing at the edge of sidewalks, traffic noise and the looming skyline identify it as City Farm, a 1-acre farm on unused city property in downtown Chicago. Photo by Brett T. Roseman for USA TODAY.

The city’s new rules “put urban agriculture on the map,” says Andy Rozendaal

By Judy Keen
USA TODAY
9/20/2011

Excerpt:

In Salt Lake City, the City Council voted this spring to allow the sale of produce without a business license and eased rules for greenhouses and plastic-covered “hoop houses.”

“We have a great tradition of making the desert bloom here,” says Councilman Luke Garrott. Besides the nutritional advantages of locally grown food, he says, “there are also the community considerations. Social capital gets built.”

City Farm, an urban garden operated in Chicago.

The Columbia, Mo., City Council in July approved a zoning plan that allows the Columbia Center for Urban Agriculture to sell crops from its 1.3-acre urban farm. “It’s rejuvenating the neighborhood,” says marketing director Billy Polansky.

Matthew 25, a Cedar Rapids, Iowa, non-profit group, is working with city officials to change regulations so it can build a 2.5-acre urban farm on vacant lots in a neighborhood devastated by 2008 flooding.

Read the complete article here.