Before: Fall 2009, View from 51st Street

There has been a lot of press about the ideas of urban agriculture, or Urban Ag, for short. The Brownfields 2011 Conference in Philadelphia in April had over 10 sessions and workshops dedicated to the topic. Urban Ag can make a good redevelopment option for some brownfields. The transition from Urban Ag concepts to getting shovels in the ground, however, can be daunting. Implementation revolves around solving the issue of “unconventional use meets community regulations.” Implementation requires growers and the community to come to grips with permits, liability, retail sales, aesthetics, land ownership, and safety.

Urban Ag seems to naturally divide into two major categories: “Community Gardening” and what can be referred to as “Urban Farming.” Community gardens are growing rapidly (see companion article), and are generally accepted, if not welcomed, within communities. Community gardens are most commonly plots of land owned by the community, run by a department of the community, and are offered as a service to residents for growing vegetables. Rental fees, liability waivers, and rules of conduct resolve most of the issues related to community gardens.

After: Fall 2010, View from CTA platform

Urban Farms are generally larger scale operations, and can be either for-profit or non-profit. The larger scale and desire to sell or distribute large amounts of produce can raise questions within a community. The following are some of the issues in play in the development of Urban Farms.

• Updating building codes. Many communities have used the lull in property development to take the time to update their building codes. Urban Ag is frequently added as a new permitted property use. Definitions have been developed to define acceptable uses of property for agricultural uses. The issue is not generally contentious, and there are communities where public and private working groups have rapidly developed new building code definitions.
• Permits and fees. Urban Ag uses, like farming, trigger the usual community permit process which can be time consuming and expensive. Urban farmers, sometimes on a shoestring budget, rail over the idea of paying high permit fees and administrative expenses. On the other hand, large for-profit urban farms can represent a real income to a community, so the issue of fees and taxes is a viable concern to many communities.
• Land ownership/leasing. Communities tend to consider an urban farm as a short-term use of property. The community would rather have a home or business on a piece of property than a farm. Therefore there is tendency not to sell property but rather rent it for a short term, generally three to five years.
• Sale of produce. Community gardeners generally grow food for their family or for donation. Urban farmers grow food as a business, and therefore need a place to sell their produce. Targeting nearby farmers markets and “local food” restaurants are a good source for sale, but many gardeners would like to set up a stand and sell at “the farm.” Some communities consider this to be a retail sale, which generally triggers a whole new set of permitting and regulatory/taxing issues.
• Aesthetics. Perhaps some of the most controversial issues relate to aesthetics. Most citizens don’t mind a well-tended green garden on the plot next door, but many become concerned when the use expands to bees, chickens, goats, fish farms, and other broader farming activities. Farm structures like green houses, hoop houses, large sheds or small barns are not typical in many communities, and may take some neighbors time to get used to seeing. Bees, chickens, and goats do pose some level of additional risk or potential annoyance to neighbors and their presence needs to be dealt with sensitively.
• Fencing can be an issue. Small scale pilfering of produce is an occasional occurrence in some urban settings. Some gardeners have installed locked 6-foot cyclone fences to minimize the issue. To some communities this is an affront to the aesthetics of a neighborhood. Fencing, if required, is limited in some building codes to architecturally sensitive lower-height metal or wooden fences. (See companion article on how the inclusion of a fence at Chicago’s Bronzeville Community Garden would have been intrusive.)
• Safety. Gardening on a brownfield site can raise issues related to public safety. Brownfields, by definition have the real or perceived stigma of being contaminated. So how can we grow produce on contaminated ground and keep the public safe? Two basic approaches have been proposed. First, assume the ground is contaminated, so the concept of growing crops in raised beds (see Bronzeville article), or by vertical farming methods, thereby avoiding the issues of contact with potentially contaminated ground.

For example, GreensGrow, a successful urban farm on a Philadelphia brownfield is totally above ground. GreensGrow sold nearly $1 million in produce and supplies last year to local restaurants and residents. The second approach is to test the ground to assess whether potential constituents of concern within the soils at the property occur at levels that impact users.

The dirt on soil quality

There are no widely accepted government standards for assessing the acceptable levels of constituents in soils used to grow produce, especially in urban settings. The issue is confounded by the history of most urban settings that may be used for urban farming. For example, many Midwestern and Eastern cities have historically used coal as an energy source. The by-products of coal burning have spewed from tall smoke stacks for decades, spreading a layer of ash and dust large distances over downwind urban properties.

Environmental sampling generally has indicated that surface soils may exceed common state standards for incidental gardener contact or ingestion of some carcinogenic compounds related to the prior use of coal. Some argue that the ubiquitous presence of low concentrations of historic coal-based compounds should not be a limiting factor for determining the safety of urban farming (i.e., “all residents as well as growers face the same issue”). Other groups argue that a scientific risk-based approach related to the potential contact and ingestion of the soil (i.e., incidental hand to mouth ingestion), and time spent gardening, would be a more appropriate method to assess the risks of soils for Urban Ag.

Some university studies are available or underway that consider the uptake of constituents of concern into produce grown in urban settings. Limited definitive conclusions are available, but these studies will likely form the basis for decision making in future approaches to safe Urban Ag. Some initial findings suggest that uptake may not be as important for common vegetables as initially considered. Fruit trees may be a more significant concern. A caution is that many people, especially children, have different metabolic functions and may have limiting considerations.

In the interim, the city of Chicago has proposed protective approaches in their draft ordinance, that presume the soils have constituents of concern above state limits. Therefore Chicago will require a relatively low cost constructed barrier between the existing ground and a new growing soil media. The barrier will restrict a gardener’s contact and ingestion of the underlying potentially contaminated soil.

Collectively we have a ways to go to “get our arms around the issues and our shovels in the ground”. Fortunately most people are working together toward the same goals. Stay tuned!

Ken Kastman is a Vice President and Senior Principal Engineer in the URS Corporation Chicago office. Ken is also a Principal Engineer of Earth-Whys, LLC, Evanston IL.