Farm-friendly cities: Increasing food access through policy change to support urban agriculture

Introduction: In recent years, the U.S. food system has been faulted for failing to meet the nation's food security, nutritional, economic, environmental, and social needs. Four of the six leading causes of death in the U.S. are chronic diseases related to the food we eat. Research illustrates wide disparities in access to food stores along racial, ethnic, and income lines. A small, but growing, number of urban and suburban agriculture practitioners are working to increase community-level food production. Government regulations, however, often present obstacles and limit a community's right to define its food system.

Methods: Changing municipal planning policies is one strategy to decrease food access disparities. We are identifying specific regulations and other policies that restrict local food production by interviewing municipal planners and urban agriculture practitioners. Specific policy and programmatic changes planners can implement to address these obstacles will be recommended.

Results: We are partnering with the American Planning Association to produce and pilot a nationally replicable TA workshop curriculum and toolkit for local and regional planners. These will include a template for (i) an initial, region-wide assessment; (ii) workshop content and format; and (iii) evaluation tools to measure both short and long-term impact of the event.

Discussion: Adopting urban farmer-friendly planning regulations will promote the local production of food and increase access to healthy, affordable food for all. Our goal is that at least 10 governments will make policy or program changes to accommodate urban agriculture within six months of the pilot workshop.