> News+Events > Features > Planning - June 2009

Community gardens sprouting up all over

City policies can help small-scale agriculture to flourish

Interest in community gardens, urban agriculture, farmers markets, and other local and regional food sources is growing sky-high. As people become more concerned about where their food comes from, how to reduce their carbon footprint, and eating more healthfully, they are turning to these opportunities.

Take the City of Hopkins. Before this year, they had never sold all the plots in a City-run community garden located in one of their parks, according to Kersten Elverum, the City’s community development director. This year, all the plots were gone in two days.

Gardening Matters is a Minneapolis-based nonprofit that provides resources for individuals, groups and communities seeking to start and support community gardens. Kirsten Saylor, executive director of Gardening Matters, said they received more requests in the first three months of 2009 from people interested in joining a community garden than they did in all of 2008.

Because many community gardens have waiting lists for entry, residents are organizing to create more. For example, in Brooklyn Center, residents Allan Hancock and Diane Sannes are spearheading an effort, in partnership with the Brooklyn Center School District, to establish a garden on school property.

“When this community was formed 150 years ago, it was mostly agricultural – and many residents still think of the area as having an agricultural base,” Sannes said. Brooklyn Center residents are also organizing to start a local farmers market, she said.

City policies can support community gardens

Saylor and other experts say that cities and counties can do a lot to support the formation and success of community gardens, farmers markets and commercial urban agriculture.

“Making land more accessible, providing soil testing, supporting access to water – these are just a few of the ways that local governments can support community gardening,” Saylor said. She shared a list of recommendations with planners at a recent meeting of the Minnesota Chapter of the American Planning Association (APA).

Community gardens help strengthen neighborhoods

A community garden, according to Gardening Matters, is “any space where plants are grown and maintained by a community to meet the needs of that community.” The benefits of community gardens include:

• Education. People share localized knowledge about how to successfully grow food. Children learn about where food comes from and can be successful gardeners.
• Higher quality food. Supermarket produce often travels thousands of miles and is often bred for longevity and looks, not nutritional value. Food grown locally is fresher and thus more nutritious.
• Bridging differences. People from a variety of backgrounds and ages come together with a common purpose. The result is stronger communities. 
• Increased property values. Studies have shown that community gardens increase property values, decrease turnover and attract diversity of income to neighborhoods.

For individuals and families, gardening can also lower food bills and provide exercise.

Reducing food transportation costs

“There’s a much greater recognition today of issues like food deserts, food miles – how much energy is expended getting the average food item from farm to table – and of food-related diseases,” said Jerry Kaufman, chairman of the board of Growing Power, Inc., a national nonprofit dedicated to equal access to healthy, high-quality, safe and affordable food for people in all communities. Kaufman was in Minneapolis for the APA national conference in April, and he also spoke at an event sponsored by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.

“Small-scale agriculture should be a permitted use in every zoning district of the city,” Kaufman said. He also advocated for special districts for agricultural activities. Permitted uses would include things like hoophouses, greenhouses, community gardens and market gardens.

Will Allen, CEO of Growing Power, said that less than 1% of food in cities is grown locally or regionally, and the average food item travels 1,500 miles and is at least two weeks old. One challenge the local food movement faces, he said, “is growing new farmers.” Since 1960, the U.S. has lost a million farmers and “we’ve got a lot more hunger in the world,” Allen said.

Homegrown Minneapolis: Building a strong local food system

The City of Minneapolis is addressing the issue of building a strong local food system through a project called Homegrown Minneapolis. City officials, community organizations and residents have been working since last December to craft recommendations for consideration by the city council. The project’s website lists the broad benefits of building a local food system:

• Strengthening the local economy
• Increasing consumption of healthy foods, leading to reduced levels of obesity and chronic diseases
• Increasing food security and self-sufficiency for families and the community
• Reducing fossil-fuel consumption and pollution by reducing the transportation and packaging required to get food from farm to table.

Several of the draft recommendations coming out of the initiative relate to community gardens, but they are only one piece of the puzzle. Another is small-scale commercial urban agriculture, explained Kristen Klingler, staff coordinator for Homegrown Minneapolis. The City’s comprehensive plan allows community gardens in almost every zoning district, but it does not address small enterprise agriculture, she said. 

“The policy framework needs to be expanded to identify where we want this activity to take place in the city,” she said. The project’s draft recommendations are scheduled to go before the City Council’s Health, Energy and Environment Committee on June 15.