Urban Agriculture Embedded in a Food Systems Approach: The Baltimore Story

Abstract

The City of Baltimore has made great progress in developing its urban agriculture policies over the last decade, as part of an overall food systems approach to sustainability. This work has been the result of intensive investment in planning efforts, mapping, inter-agency partnerships, and community engagement. Specific areas of policy development include zoning and permitting, land leasing, healthy soil regulations, and incentives for growers. There have been challenges along the way, specifically around staffing and funding, appropriately including resident voices, and differing city agency priorities, particularly on the issue of land access.

Examining Baltimore’s trajectory yields insights and lessons for other cities seeking to develop their own policies around urban agriculture, particularly in regards to establishing food and farming as city priorities, using food environment mapping as a powerful tool to show areas of need and opportunity, and properly framing the issues at play for decision-makers and community members. The greatest takeaway from Baltimore’s experience is the importance of mainstreaming food policy into urban planning, not as a sidebar but as a consistent bedrock priority. A key community partner, the Farm Alliance of Baltimore, is highlighted at the end of the chapter.

1 Introduction

Baltimore City is the most populous municipality in the state of Maryland and home to an estimated 602,000 residents. Covering about 80 square miles, divided into 14 council districts, Baltimore is the second-largest seaport in the Mid-Atlantic, serving dozens of ocean carriers (Liu 2013). Following a decline in manufacturing jobs, the steel industry, and restructuring of the rail industry since the 1950s, Baltimore has shifted to a service-oriented economy, with educational and health care services as the city’s top employers today.

Urban agriculture has more recently become a growing enterprise in this setting with an estimated 100 food-producing school and community gardens and more than 20 urban farms, growing a variety of fruits and vegetables (Flickinger 2018). At the state level, food production is an important component of the economy, comprising agricultural products that include livestock, dairy, corn, wheat, and other vegetables and fruits (Census of Agriculture County Profile: Baltimore County Maryland 2012).

1.1 Socioeconomic and Health Disparities

Within this context, however, nearly one-quarter (or 146,000 residents) still face significant barriers to accessing healthy food options, and over one-third of children in Baltimore lived below the poverty line during 2012–2016 (Misiaszek et al. 2018; Iyer et al. 2017). Barriers to healthy food access reflect racial disparities. Forty three percent of predominantly Black neighborhoods have low healthy food availability compared with just 4% of predominantly white neighborhoods (Emple 2011).

In terms of the overall health status and challenges with diet-related diseases, Baltimore fares worse relative to other jurisdictions in Maryland. The overall mortality rate in Baltimore is 40% higher compared to the rest of the state, and many of the leading causes of death, including cancer and heart disease, are closely linked to food (Misiaszek et al. 2018; Wen 2018). Disparities can also be seen in the city’s mortality rates, with Black and Hispanic populations facing higher incidents of cancer, heart disease, and diabetes than their white counterparts (Barbo 2014).

1.2 Baltimore’s Food System

The food system encompasses the production, transportation, sale, consumption, recovery and disposal of food; as well as the structures, policies, goals, and values that accompany each step of the process. Food system opportunities and challenges differ with historic, social, economic, and environmental contexts. In Baltimore, structural inequities tied to historical planning and policies have led to disenfranchised communities with limited access to resources critical for healthy living and wellbeing, including access to healthy food (Biehl et al. 2018). A diverse network of food producers, processors, wholesalers and distributors, retailers, restaurants and other direct food providers, and food assistance organizations supply food to residents throughout the city (Biehl et al. 2017). However, opportunities remain to strengthen the food system, especially in communities of color and lower income neighborhoods. For example, while the number of urban farms and community gardens continues to grow in Baltimore, much of the food consumed by city residents is grown and processed into ready-to-eat form beyond Baltimore’s city limits; distributed through public and privately owned warehouses in Jessup, Maryland and then delivered to city retailers.

Because of the complex and intertwined nature of the food system, and its overlap with many sectors, such as housing, economic development, and transportation, a comprehensive food policy agenda – centered on equity – is crucial.

This chapter seeks to capture and analyze how Baltimore has used its sustainability plans and other plans to anchor its food work in city government, as well as how the work, framing, priorities, and goals have evolved over the past decade. It will show how a city can move from a set of goals and recommendations to an interagency collaborative initiative with staffing and a full policy agenda on food and agriculture. This chapter will discuss various entry points for cities to engage on urban food systems and urban agriculture work, and discuss policy success and challenges Baltimore faced along the way.

2 Setting the Stage for a Food Policy Agenda

Plans are critical to city government. Institutionalizing priorities, goals, and policies in a plan is both a beneficial exercise for those included in the process and helps to legitimize and distill collective interests, especially to advance a “new” framework. In 2009, having a dedicated Office of Sustainability was a nascent concept among city governments (Plastrik and Parzen 2013). Baltimore’s 2009 Sustainability Plan sought to illustrate how city government services and priorities could support community-based efforts, and how these efforts could align with the tenets of sustainability. This provided a guiding document to the newly created Baltimore Office of Sustainability (BOS) and would help the office establish itself within government and the community.

The 2009 Sustainability Plan is organized by seven priorities (The Baltimore Sustainability Plan 2009). Food policy and food production are captured in just one place – “Greening Goal #2: Establish Baltimore as a leader in local sustainable food systems.” The plan listed six high-level strategies to accomplish this goal. That same year, the Baltimore City Planning and Health Departments directed a Food Policy Taskforce, comprising professional stakeholders across city government, nonprofit organizations, and academia. The Taskforce was in progress during the writing of the Sustainability Plan and their ten recommendations were released in late 2009 (Santo et al. 2014). The Sustainability Plan cross-referenced the Food Policy Taskforce recommendations, thus, the Sustainability Plan became a guiding document and a basis for legitimizing food policy work in Baltimore.

Building from the 2009 Sustainability Plan and the Food Policy Taskforce recommendations, Baltimore developed a Healthy Food Environment Strategy that captured a wide view of the food system, reduced duplication between the two sets of recommendations, and provided a roadmap for Baltimore to launch into food policy work in full force (Santo et al. 2014). These strategies included:

• 1. Support resident-driven processes to guide equitable food policies, priorities, and resources

• 2. Improve small grocery, corner, and convenience stores

• 3. Retain and attract supermarkets

• 4. Increase the ability of the public markets to anchor the healthy food environment

• 5. Implement supply chain solutions that support healthy food distribution and small businesses

• 6. Maximize the impact of nutrition assistance and meal programs

• 7. Support urban agriculture, emphasizing historically disenfranchised populations and geographies

• 8. Address transportation gaps that impact food access

The beauty and utility of these strategies come from their broad nature, which captures the necessary elements of a comprehensive food policy agenda without being overly prescriptive and restrictive. This has allowed Baltimore to grow into its food and agriculture work over time and facilitated the incorporation of new and innovative strategies into the agenda that would not have been feasible or considered when the recommendations were first released.

2.1 Governance and Organizational Structure

At the time the 2009 Baltimore Sustainability Plan was written, BOS had a small staff, none of whom were responsible for specifically working on food or agriculture. Understanding that food does not fit solely into one government agency, then-Mayor Rawlings-Blake hired a full-time Food Policy Director in 2010, fulfilling a recommendation from the Food Policy Taskforce. The Director was tasked with building stakeholder capacity and agency collaboration to implement Greening Goal #2 and to “address health, economic and environmental disparities by increasing access to healthy affordable food in Baltimore City’s food deserts” (Baltimore Office of Sustainability 2010).

In order to accomplish these goals, the Food Policy Director created the Baltimore Food Policy Initiative (BFPI) to address the complex systemic problems of access to healthy, affordable food and sustainable food systems. BFPI was initially a collaboration between BOS, the Department of Planning, Health Department, and Baltimore Development Corporation, and has now expanded to many more agencies. BFPI and the Food Policy Director are responsible for implementing the Healthy Food Environment Strategy and other food-related goals and actions laid out in city plans.

2.2 Staffing

BFPI’s staffing structure has expanded from a part-time, grant-funded Food Policy Director to six full-time funded positions strategically placed across three agencies. In 2011, the Food Policy Director became a city government-funded full-time position within BOS, which is a division of the Department of Planning. An Environmental Planner in BOS has been primarily responsible for urban agriculture activities since 2011. Since 2013, four new city government-funded positions were created: a Food Resilience Planner and a Food Access Planner; a Food Retail Economic Development Officer at the Development Corporation; and the Baltimarket Food Access Director at the Health Department. These six positions staff BFPI to develop strategic partnerships with 13 city government agencies to address food system policies, strategies, and programs from multi-agency perspectives. The commitment by city government to embed food positions across many agencies helped Baltimore win the 2016 Milan Urban Food Policy Pact award for Governance. Concurrently, from 2009 to 2019, BOS has expanded from 3 staff to 13 (Fig. 16.1).

Fig. 16.1

Baltimore’s interagency collaboration on food and agriculture

Creating full-time civil service positions institutionalized food as a priority in city government. Further, work completed with grant funds must often align to funder-identified priority areas and specific grant deliverables. Therefore, an additional benefit of moving these positions off of grant funding has been added flexibility to respond to unforeseen issues that arise and to adapt to changing needs over time.

2.3 Organizational Engagement

Since 2010, BFPI has convened and coordinated the Food Policy Action Coalition (Food PAC) to continue engagement on the Food Policy Task Force and Sustainability Plan recommendations, inform policymaking, and build upon the efforts of local organizations with missions and visions around food issues. Initially Food PAC focused on breaking down silos, reducing duplicative efforts, building coalitions, and spurring professional networking. In 2017, Food PAC became open to the public to facilitate more resident participation. In addition to a regular convening space, Food PAC serves as a mechanism for stakeholders to raise policy issues to BFPI.

2.4 Resident Engagement

Recognizing that resident-informed and resident–driven policy ultimately leads to the most equitable processes and outcomes, BFPI added a third component to its structure – Resident Food Equity Advisors (RFEA). Since 2017, RFEAs have met regularly with BFPI to discuss food policy and planning in a transparent way, giving residents’ voice in government and policymaking, as well as in-depth knowledge of the complexities of food access issues. RFEAs go through a competitive application process to achieve representation from each of the 14 City Council Districts. RFEAs commit to a series of six meetings and are compensated for their time. The RFEA model is an important tool to create resident-informed food policies.

3 Plans and Policies Strengthening Baltimore’s Urban Food System and Urban Agriculture

The Sustainability Plan and Food Policy Taskforce Recommendations helped provide the initial outline to guide a food policy agenda, which BFPI agencies have refined, built upon, and implemented over the past 10 years. Baltimore has found that anchoring goals and commitments in plans has led to establishing legitimacy and long-term outcomes for new priorities. Baltimore’s structure, framing, and collaborative approach to urban food systems and urban agriculture have created great success in implementing a policy¹ agenda.

3.1 Urban Agriculture Plan

Local food production has a long history in Baltimore City (Poulsen et al. 2013). The modern-day approach to urban agriculture as a means for blight reduction, economic development, and local resilience arguably emerged into the public consciousness in Baltimore in 2008, when an Urban Agriculture Task Force convened, composed of representatives from the Mayor’s Office, local non-profit and business entities, and interested individuals. When BFPI and BOS were formed, the question was not how to start a new urban agriculture sector in Baltimore, but rather how to support the movement already underway as one piece of a holistic food systems approach (Fig. 16.2). In this section, we will examine the specific policy and program responses that these new institutions of government took to address the needs of growers.

Fig. 16.2

Urban Agriculture Sites in Baltimore City, 2018

One of the strategies in the 2009 Baltimore Sustainability Plan was to write an Urban Agriculture Plan. Over the course of 2012 and 2013, BOS completed Homegrown Baltimore: Grow Local (HBGL) (Poulsen et al. 2013). At the time, the United States Conference of Mayors Food Policy Taskforce was considering joint branding on urban agriculture initiatives, so this was branded after Homegrown Minneapolis. The Urban Agriculture Plan set out 25 recommendations to better support and expand Baltimore’s urban agriculture sector, divided into the following categories: land, water, soil, capital, and support. Directed by BOS, the plan was largely written by contract employees, drawing on input and feedback from over three dozen stakeholders representing Baltimore City agencies, growers, and support agencies, organizations, and businesses. It was adopted in November 2013. An update to the plan is currently being considered to focus on neglected areas such as indoor and vertical growing; equity, diversity, and inclusion issues in agriculture; and the incorporation of expertise of immigrants and refugees into the movement.

3.2 Urban Agriculture Zoning & Permitting

Until 2011, farmers were required to get building permits to erect hoop houses. BOS developed and supported a bill that brought Baltimore’s Building Code in line with the International Building Code by exempting hoop houses from normal permitting requirements, making it much easier for growers to start new projects without undue cost and delay.

Another fundamental barrier for urban farmers was that Baltimore’s Zoning Code did not provide the majority of growers with a way to formally legitimize their land use. This had been a tolerable state of affairs for community gardens but proved a serious barrier as more business-oriented farmers began to start projects in the city and could not answer the question, “Who says you’re allowed to do this?” when asked by skeptical neighbors, loan-makers or other assistance programs. This issue arose at an opportune moment, as the Department of Planning (DOP) was fully rewriting the Zoning Code in the first comprehensive overhaul since the 1970s. BOS developed new permitting categories for Community-Managed Open Spaces (including community gardens) and Urban Agriculture, drawing on model language from experts and other cities (Wooten and Ackerman 2011).

BOS convened an Urban Agriculture Sub-Committee to BFPI’s Food PAC, made up of growers and advocates, to consult on the Zoning Code language and to help identify further barriers and opportunities. This group provided crucial input on a range of issues, and in particular, helped ensure that the new Zoning Code language was balanced between providing reasonable guidance and not creating new unintended barriers. While zoning ordinances for urban farms have been controversial in other cities, the opportunity to include them in a larger rewrite of the Zoning Code made their acceptance far smoother. After a lengthy public process that largely focused on issues related to housing, the new code took effect in 2017.

In partnership with the Health Department, BOS suggested updates to the Health Code dealing with the keeping of chickens and bees. Drawing from model regulations (Wooten and Ackerman 2011), and in consultation with the local agricultural community, BOS made recommendations to expand the number of chickens and bees that may be kept on a property; add a process for community gardens and urban farms to request to keep an expanded number of chickens (up to 50); add regulations relating to rabbits, and dwarf, miniature, and pygmy goats; and waive the permit fee (normally $80 per type of animal) for the keeping of bees, in recognition of their important ecological role.

3.3 Land Leasing

On account of a long history of disinvestment, Baltimore currently has approximately 14,000 vacant lots, of which about a third are city government-owned. BOS conducted an urban agriculture land assessment to look for parcels that were a minimum of one acre in size, flat, mostly clear of trees and shrubs, and with no short- to mid-term development plans – identifying approximately 35 acres of potentially appropriate city government-owned land. While many of these sites would prove to have significant barriers to use (such as old and crumbling impervious surfaces, use histories that raised the specter of contamination, or neighbors uninterested in having a farm next door), knowing that so much land could potentially be available was an important starting point.

Based on this analysis, BOS spearheaded the Homegrown Baltimore Land Leasing Program, a partnership with the Department of Housing & Community Development (HCD). BOS created a Request for Qualifications application, which asked respondents to provide an urban agricultural concept, financial plan, community engagement plan, and other details. Applications are reviewed jointly with HCD. Qualified applicants are invited to work with city government to identify an appropriate parcel of city government-owned land, meet with the community, and, if residents are on board, to sign five-year leases at a rate of $100/year, with the option of either renewal or an 18-month notice to vacate period at the end of the term, essentially making it a minimum 6.5 year lease.

Only two leases have been finalized through this program so far – one for 1.5 acres in west Baltimore to Strength to Love Farm, a workforce reentry initiative, and another 1.5 acres in east Baltimore to Civic Works for a second Real Food Farm site (the first being one of the oldest urban farms in Baltimore, located in a nearby park). Both of these projects are going strong. Several additional Homegrown Baltimore leases with other farming organizations, both for- and non-profit, are currently in progress at the time of this writing.

Partners have asked that city government intentionally support and facilitate urban growing activities as long-term or permanent strategies, rather than interim uses on vacant land until a “higher and better use”² emerges. As has been seen in cities such as Chicago, Detroit, and New York City, urban agriculture can be displaced in favor of development, even though often it was the urban agriculture project that helped spark a renewed interest in the area and made the market more favorable for development. This pressure has not been felt as keenly yet in Baltimore, and city government hopes to develop strategies that will encourage very long-term, if not permanent, space for growing food. A move towards land tenure could include more community and farmer control of land; incorporating permanent growing space into city-owned land that is otherwise protected, such as parks; or building growing space into both public and private housing developments.

3.4 Water Access Program

Many gardens and farms in Baltimore use the city government Water Access program, which provides community projects access to municipal water at a flat rate of $120 per year via water meter pits in the sidewalk. However, meter pits are not available for all sites. To support growers in this situation, BOS worked with the Parks & People Foundation to establish a Garden Irrigation Fund. Community gardeners or non-profit urban farmers could apply to the fund for up to $3000 towards a new water line. A total of six projects received support through the fund. Many projects turned out to cost more than the allotted amount; the hope initially had been that growers would leverage their grant from the fund to raise the additional money needed, but this proved difficult.

After several rounds of funding, the decision was made to use the remainder of the money in the Garden Irrigation Fund to fully fund the incomplete projects, and then to close it out. Since then, BOS has used capital bond funds from HCD to install new water lines at farm and garden sites on public land as needed and as money has been available. This has the advantage of not requiring growers to go through an application or fundraising process, but may be less equitable in terms of how funds are distributed, since the process is not open and transparent. Farms or gardens on private land are not eligible for such funds.

3.5 Soil Safety Policy

It was imperative for Baltimore City government to develop a set of soil safety standards in advance of the adoption of the Zoning Code, since the Use Standards for community gardens and urban agriculture required that permit-seekers who intend to grow food for human consumption and who will be using the existing soil on their site, submit soil test results and, if needed, a soil safety plan.

In response to this need, BOS developed a Soil Safety Policy with support from the Abell Foundation, the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future (CLF), and other partners. The policy provides guidance to food growers in Baltimore, and lays out requirements for permit-seekers. It covers how to identify potential risks at a particular site, where to go for testing and analysis, best practices if contamination is found, and types of remediation to consider. Over the past several years, CLF has undertaken a massive study of the soils at Baltimore’s urban farms and gardens, entitled the Safe Urban Harvests study. CLF researchers and BOS staff will work together to review the results of this study and consider updates to the Soil Safety Policy.

3.6 Urban Agriculture Incentives

In Maryland, farmland can be assessed for purposes of property taxes at a rate of just $500 per acre, greatly reducing the financial burden on farmers. However, a property must be at least five acres to qualify, excluding most urban farms. In 2014, at the request of Baltimore activists, the State of Maryland updated its Tax Code to allow local jurisdictions to create tax credits for urban agriculture. In response, BOS and Baltimore City Council developed a local credit. This faced internal pushback from the City’s Department of Finance, which was very concerned that developers engaged in speculation on vacant land might put up a hoop house as a way to avoid taxes, then scrap their “farm” as soon as the right buyer came along. The resulting compromise bill, adopted by the Baltimore City Council in 2015, provides a property tax credit to farmers of 90%, but the property must produce at least $5000 in gross value of plants, plant products, animals, or animal products annually (with exemptions available for the year a farm starts up, or in the case of a disaster such as drought, vandalism, or infestation); may not be used for any other purpose that would normally subject it to property taxes; and must remain a farm for at least five years or else pay back the credit.

As of the time of writing, only one Baltimore farm has received the tax credit. Several have applied but have been turned down, usually because the site was also being used for another purpose, such as a private residence or an unrelated business. In one case, the applicant decided to subdivide the property and reapply – it is expected that this application will be approved. However, few growers have the resources and the know-how to go through the subdivision process, nor is it feasible to subdivide a property in all cases. BOS aims to update the law such that it is useful to a wider number of growers, including considerations such as scaling the credit depending on the percentage of the site used for other purposes, or applying it only to the value of the land and not to the value of any improvements.

3.7 2019 Sustainability Plan

Ten years after the first Sustainability Plan and learning from the policies and programs mentioned above, BOS released a full plan update (Fig. 16.3). The 2019 Sustainability Plan sought to create an equitable process for goal and strategy identification and prioritization (Baltimore Office of Sustainability 2019). Teams of Sustainability Plan Ambassadors engaged over 2000 stakeholders to hear about Baltimore’s strengths and opportunities for improvement. Answers were categorized into themes, and the plan was divided into 23 sections organized under five overarching topics: community, human-made systems, climate and resilience, nature and the city, and economy. Building from resident-based outreach and engagement, the plan also asks agencies and organizations to consider the implementation through an equity lens.

Fig. 16.3

Timeline of Baltimore’s Urban Agriculture Policies and Plans

The 2019 Sustainability Plan has two sections dedicated to Urban Food Systems and Urban Agriculture (Table 16.1). The goals and actions will be implemented by the City and partners alike.

Table 16.1 Baltimore 2019 Sustainability Plan chapters related to food and agriculture (Baltimore Office of Sustainability 2019)

4 Challenges

4.1 Staffing and Funding

While a great deal of effort has gone into creating plans for urban agriculture in Baltimore, implementation of specific recommendations, particularly around urban agriculture, has often lagged due to a lack of dedicated staff time and funds. For example, recommendations to create a farm incubator in the city or conduct a citizen education and engagement campaign around urban agriculture have crawled along or stalled out in recent years. Dedicating additional resources to this work will be crucial in moving the urban agriculture movement forward in Baltimore.

Delayed progress of the land-leasing program for farms is also evident. While the program has enabled land security for a couple of farms (with several more pending), the process has been frustrating for other aspiring farmers. Many sites look good on paper but need significant capital upgrades to be suitable, such as impervious surface removal, water and electric line installation, or fencing, but city government has been slow in identifying and expending such funds. In addition, the pace of the review and contracting process has discouraged some would-be farmers.

4.2 Resident Voices

In many cases, incorporating resident voices into policymaking involves slowing down the process so that more voices can guide the development and the outcomes. This can be a challenge in government where timing is often perceived as one of the most critical aspects of whether a policy will be successful.

Conflicting opinions also present challenges during community engagement. Differing resident concerns about potential new farms have shut down conversations about leasing otherwise promising parcels of land, and city government has struggled to find the right approach to measuring community acceptability for sites under consideration for agricultural land leasing. For instance, simply presenting a proposed project at a community meeting may not actually reach residents who would be impacted, but surveying all residents around a proposed project site is almost certain to turn up at least one dissenting voice. Without clear methods in place for mediating multiple opinions, and with urban agriculture having been, for a long-time, a new and unfamiliar prospect, community leaders and government decision-makers have tended to err on the side of caution and nix projects without unanimous community support. BOS and BFPI are currently considering how to streamline and improve this process.

4.3 Land Access

A major barrier to successful policy implementation arises when different city agencies have different, sometimes conflicting priorities, for instance, around the disposition of land. HCD, which is responsible for most of Baltimore’s city-owned vacant land, tends to focus on housing and retail developments, as part of their role in revitalizing the city. Agricultural efforts have been seen largely as an interim land-holding strategy and not as a long-term community development strategy in their own right. As a result, farms have been limited to locations where there is little to no short to mid-term development potential, and, even at those sites, land tenure for farmers has so far been limited to five-year stretches at a time.

Along with preserving existing farms, through the 2019 Sustainability Plan, Baltimore has committed to identify land for new agricultural projects, both on city government-owned lots as well as institutional and private parcels. This involves a major shift in policies and priorities. DOP and HCD have worked together successfully to incorporate pocket parks and playgrounds into development projects, with the City’s newly-established Baltimore Green Network program placing even greater emphasis on creating new parks, gardens, and other green spaces. So far, however, agriculture has not been a significant part of the mix of new development. BFPI and BOS staff are working with HCD to map out a strategy for how to better incorporate food production into the city’s overall landscape going forward.

5 Insights & Lessons

5.1 Establishing Food and Farming as City Government Priorities

When considering staffing, it is critical for cities to assess the benefits and constraints of where to house staff. Across the nation, city-level food policy and agriculture initiatives or positions have been housed within Mayor’s Offices, Health Departments, Planning Departments, Offices of Sustainability, or as special projects (United States Conference of Mayors Committees and Task Forces 2019). Each of these postings brings different levels of scope, influence, and longevity, depending on the city. Although more staffing and resources are needed for Baltimore’s food policy plans to reach fruition, Baltimore is still far ahead of many cities in staffing its food-related efforts, and has particularly been successful in spreading these efforts across different parts of city government, which has resulted in longer-term sustainability of the work in Baltimore. An important next step is to place a staff position focused on greening (including agriculture) at HCD to significantly enhance the prospects of successful cross-agency collaboration and develop the consistent relationships necessary to establish successful new farms in the city.

While competing agency priorities have limited the establishment and tenure of Baltimore’s farms in the past, working within those constraints to support and uplift the successes of Baltimore’s farmers has improved the state of affairs. Both farms that were started under the land-leasing program have now been in existence for over five years, and, along with other successful farms in the city, have proven their benefits to decision-makers. The policy conversation is now beginning to shift towards long-term land tenure, as called for in the 2019 Baltimore Sustainability Plan. BOS, HCD, and the Farm Alliance of Baltimore (FAB) are currently in discussions about how to proceed towards this goal.

There is already a strong precedent for green space preservation in Baltimore when it comes to community gardens and forest patches, thanks to a partnership between the DOP, HCD, and the non-profit Baltimore Green Space land trust (BGS). In 2010, BGS helped city government formulate a policy by which city government-owned, community-managed open spaces can be transferred from HCD to a qualified land trust for preservation for $1 per parcel Avins (2010). This model could be appropriate for established urban agriculture sites, especially those operating under a strong community-based model. Longer-term leases, a lease-to-own arrangement, outright purchases, or a co-op ownership model are all under discussion as other possible paths forward.

5.2 Food Environment Mapping as a Tool

BFPI has relied on mapping to make the strong case that food access issues are widespread in Baltimore City. In BFPI’s early days, the concept of “food deserts” was entering the American consciousness, and BFPI capitalized on this dialogue to link these issues to Baltimore. The US Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) original food desert definition was based on income and proximity to a supermarket and did not paint an accurate picture in Baltimore, as many areas with concentrated barriers to accessing healthy food were not included (Misiaszek et al. 2018).

Baltimore sought to create a definition and mapping tool that better reflected food access locally. BFPI and CLF released the first City-issued Food Desert Map and City-specific definition of food deserts in 2012. Compared to USDA’s definition and map, Baltimore’s included four factors: distance to a supermarket, vehicle availability, poverty, and Healthy Food Availability Index Score (HFAI) – a measure of whether a retail outlet has healthy food, which was measured at over 800 stores across the city. Baltimore’s Food Environment Map was created to show that lack of access to healthy food was concentrated in certain areas, but that food insecurity and inequitable food environments had to be addressed citywide through policy solutions. This resonated with policymakers and led to the creation of policies like a personal property tax credit for supermarkets in Food Desert Incentive Areas.

While the impact they can have is great, citywide policies take a significant amount of time to come to fruition and show change, so it became clear that more place-based strategies would need to continue simultaneously, and BFPI began adapting its mapping to suit those needs. BFPI released City Council District maps in 2015 and full food environment briefings for City Council Districts and State Legislative Districts in 2018. These maps include food retail, urban farms and community gardens, farmers markets, and food access sites such as summer and afterschool meals for kids, senior meals, and food pantries. Food environment maps are now included in many small geographic plans such as the plans around newly constructed schools, and have proven a valuable policy tool.

5.3 Framing of an Issue

5.3.1 Urban Agriculture

How an issue is framed has a large bearing on the policies considered to address it and the coalitions that come together around it. In the early years of Homegrown Baltimore, urban agriculture was framed as a way to revitalize neighborhoods, bring fresh food en masse to under-resourced neighborhoods, and create jobs (Santo et al. 2016). Baltimore followed this ideology, and much of the Urban Agriculture Plan and available technical assistance focused on increasing for-profit food production in an urban setting. Research and experience has shown that many of the purported monetary and employment benefits did not meet expectations, but there are many other benefits to encourage using urban land for food, flower, and fiber production (Santo et al. 2016). With these realizations, BFPI and BOS shifted focus towards recognizing the benefits of urban agriculture from a broader perspective as they relate to individual participation in the food system, increased local food sovereignty, and increased household and neighborhood-level resilience.

5.3.2 Food Access

While national conversations and funding streams centered on food access and childhood obesity, especially through retail, outcomes of reducing obesity or food deserts are nearly impossible to show change over short to moderate periods of time. Distilling food issues down to these frames often ignores why many structural barriers exist in the first place, such as poverty exacerbated by long-term disinvestment, structural racism, and the industrialization and consolidation of the food system.

BFPI has shifted its framing to better acknowledge the core issues that cause inequitable access to healthy affordable food. Actions have included anti-racism courses and workshops for staff and stakeholders; racializing data and framing disparities in the context of racial segregation; and acknowledging that the people closest to a problem are the most equipped to fix it. One major shift included changing the name from “food desert” to “Healthy Food Priority Area” on the 2018 Food Environment Maps. While the four factors did not change, the term was changed to better characterize what is being measured and recognize that a suite of structural elements shape Baltimore’s food system. Local and national discourse claimed that the term “food desert” has negative connotations and implies low healthy food access is a naturally occurring phenomenon (like a desert). Local residents described that food desert connotes a pejorative status to neighborhoods that are home to vibrant communities with passionate and resilient residents and on-the-ground programs that meet needs, even in the face of food access challenges.

Moving away from the term “food desert” was met with pushback as well as support. Advocacy organizations felt like the idea of food deserts had finally been entrenched in the public consciousness and that they would have to start over with a new term. Grassroots activists felt like the new term did not go far enough, instead preferring to use the term “food apartheid”³ to describe the “structural oppression based on race and class that limits access to power and resources related to food and land and results in poor health and poor people.” BFPI acknowledges and validates both of these terminologies and has tried to promote the message that the Food Environment Map has its place as a policy tool and that people experiencing barriers to healthy food should describe their circumstances any way they choose to.

5.4 Mainstreaming Urban Food Systems in Planning

Because the food system touches so many sectors, much of the work BFPI does is in partnership with other agencies or local organizations and communities. In the early years, the concept of food in government was very new, and BFPI had to spend time building credibility and awareness in order to convince other agencies to partner on food issues. The beauty of food policy is that because it is so broad and has so many potential priorities, a person who understands the food system can see how it intersects with any topic area.

As time went on and allies were made across agencies, a productive shift and crystallization happened by which BFPI realized that one of the primary purposes it serves in city government is to provide technical assistance to agencies that are already doing food work, whether they realize it or not. BFPI grew to understand that building a groundswell across city government would not be accomplished by asking agencies to change what they do, but rather by helping them see the connections between their existing work and the food system.

Moving forward, BFPI will continue expanding its scope and using food as a lens to explore solutions in new topic areas by “mainstreaming” food into planning. For example, INSPIRE is a planning effort that focuses capital investments and public-private commitments for the physical environment in the quarter-mile around new and renovated schools (City of Baltimore INSPIRE 2018). The first INSPIRE plan in 2016 did not mention food, even though food access was a known concern in that area. The project planners said they did not know enough about food policy to bring it up. Since then, BFPI has helped facilitate various food access meetings as part of INSPIRE and has helped include a food environment section in each plan, many of which include urban agriculture activities like community gardens.

Another area in which BFPI seeks to mainstream food is the emerging field of “resilience” so that resilience planners fully consider all of the intersections of the food system with their planning efforts. In 2015, BFPI convened a working group that ultimately led to the Mayor’s Office of Emergency Management and other agencies to come to the conclusion that “food is critical infrastructure,” and, therefore, it is part of their charge to protect food system functioning during times of emergency. Building on that, in 2017, BFPI partnered with CLF on an assessment and advisory report on local food system resilience (Biehl et al. 2018). For instance, urban agriculture has many implications related to climate change, stormwater management, self-sufficiency, and community cohesiveness – all aspects of resilience. By working to make that understanding more common in Baltimore and sharing it as a best practice nationally, BFPI hopes that urban food systems and urban agriculture will not be considered as an afterthought in resilience planning.

5.5 Baltimore’s Emergency Food Response

At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, BFPI was charged to lead the City of Baltimore’s Emergency Food Response. BOS staff consulted with FAB and other partners in agriculture to understand growers’ immediate needs. Simultaneously, as Maryland Governor Larry Hogan’s stay-at-home order took effect on March 21, 2020, FAB requested that the Baltimore Police Department (BPD) recognize urban farmers and gardeners as essential workers who were not to be subject to enforcement actions related to the stay-at-home order. A spokesperson for BPD agreed, and FAB and the University of Maryland Extension office provided farmers and gardeners with letters of passage that could be carried to and from farms and greenhouses to prove essential worker status. Farmers and gardeners later reported that these letters of passage proved useful on several occasions.

Additional needs were written into the city’s Emergency Food Strategy, including food safety supplies and PPE for farm and market workers, critical infrastructure repairs, labor support, seedlings, and more space for food production. The needs expressed in the Emergency Food Strategy were paired with resources from the federal, state, local, and private foundation levels. As a result of this and its own fundraising, FAB was able to create the Urban Agriculture Resilience Fund with $92,000 in support from six foundations. Since the creation of the fund in late-May 2020, FAB member farmers have received equipment, supplies, mini-grants, and infrastructure repairs to assist them through the pandemic. Some of these materials included: ground stakes, air conditioning units, produce scales, irrigation system supplies, tents, and post-harvest handling stations with food-safe chemicals and equipment. In addition, FAB started a special fund for Black-led farms in its network.

To address the need for additional seedlings for local farmers, BOS partnered with the Bon Secours Community Works Farm, a small urban farm sponsored by Bon Secours Hospital in southwest Baltimore, to grow and distribute thousands of seedlings to farmers and gardeners across Baltimore City. BOS also consulted with HCD and the Baltimore City Department of Recreation & Parks to identify additional land for growing. FAB is currently working with community members near three parks to determine a path forward for a farm incubator. Finally, to mitigate the need for additional labor for growers, BOS is working with University of Maryland Extension and Baltimore Green Space (a non-profit land trust for gardens, community farms, and other community-managed open spaces) to match volunteers with sites in need.

6 Conclusion

Baltimore has found long-term success in urban food systems and urban agriculture policy by anchoring its work in plans and planning processes. These processes that bridge policy and community are even more important in a time when the country is wrestling with its history of racialized policies and practices. Armed with the ability to build strategies around a set of broad recommendations and driven by resident expertise, Baltimore was able to create a roadmap that has been flexible enough to allow for evolution, growth, and responsiveness to community and City needs.

The COVID-19 pandemic has only heightened the importance of maintaining and expanding local food production that is essential to the city’s food resiliency and sustainability. BFPI’s multi-pronged approach to supporting urban agriculture during a time of crises was made possible due to established relationships between the City and local urban agriculture communities. Responses were developed quickly and collaboratively to address immediate needs, and the results have been tangible and significant.

Any of the policies or topics discussed in this chapter could be used as an entry point for cities to start or expand their work on urban food systems and urban agriculture policy. This could be initiated by a designated food policy staff member or by any subject area expert who incorporates food into their existing work and plans. There is no set template for incorporating food into planning processes and government. The most important element is for cities to give food and agricultural policies and priorities the room, legitimacy, and funding they need to grow and evolve over time. The success of this policy work is further assured through coalition-building with other government sectors and especially with residents in the broader community.

In Baltimore, there are many urban agriculture and community gardening organizations doing strong work and compelling the City to rethink urban agriculture. These organizations include The Farm Alliance of Baltimore (see Spotlight), The Black Church Food Security Network, Baltimore Green Space, and University of Maryland Extension, among many others. BFPI and BOS convened many of these organizations and other farming and gardening stakeholders in advance of the 2019 Baltimore Sustainability Plan writing, and continue to engage with diverse actors to build equitable, adaptive capacity and food resilience in the City’s food system. The challenge going forward will be to maintain a focus on local food production, ensuring that it remains a priority for the city and partners; it should not take a global pandemic to recognize that there is no food distribution without food production, and that relying solely on food resources from elsewhere is a dangerous strategy.

Spotlight | Farm Alliance of Baltimore: Urban Farms Planting Community Self-Determination

Urban farming for production – beyond the scale of the homesteader growing food for their family – has long been a tradition in Baltimore. Long-time residents and transplants alike have spent decades planting crops on vacant, city government-owned property. People grow food and flowers in the city as a means of feeding their neighbors, building healthier soils, and achieving greater economic self-determination. In 2011, farmers began meeting around kitchen tables to resolve some of the problems they had been having: accessing municipal water, getting permits to use city government-owned land for farm businesses, paying for greenhouse space and tools, and more. With help from an Open Society Institute Community Fellowship and a USDA Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education grant, farmer Maya Kosok led the effort to create the Farm Alliance of Baltimore.

The group’s mission was to support the farms by providing marketing opportunities, tool sharing, and other avenues. Its stated ambition was to make farms more economically viable as businesses by creating collective solutions to individual problems. It set up a shared market stall at the farmers’ market in Waverly, a mixed-income neighborhood near Johns Hopkins University that was quickly gentrifying. Today, this market boasts many well-to-do patrons, with vendors able to command the highest prices of any farmers’ market in the city. With foundation grants, in 2013, the Alliance was able to build a shared greenhouse on parkland, where the farms still grow seedlings in winter. Also in 2013, the Farm Alliance launched its flagship program, a Double Dollars grant that matches the dollars that those receiving SNAP and WIC benefits spend on produce from Baltimore farms. The Double Dollars program includes a year-round series of popular cooking and nutrition demonstrations in low-income housing developments, community centers, and senior citizens’ apartment buildings.

A Crisis of Representation

Six years after its launch, the Farm Alliance of Baltimore achieved the milestone of nonprofit status. Its mission statement included the sentence: “We are united by practices and principles that are socially, economically, and environmentally just.” Yet, in a city where nonprofit organizations frequently reproduce racial and wealth disparities, the Farm Alliance’s newfound structural stability also prompted a difficult internal conversation about its racial makeup. Questions arose about why 75% of its members and nearly all board members were European American in a city that is 64% African American. Some European-American farmers worked in majority-African American neighborhoods, and while they intended to contribute to the health and well-being of residents in those neighborhoods, the Farm Alliance had not reckoned with the legacy of redlining and racist oppression in Baltimore. Developers launched efforts to purchase land being used by Farm Alliance member farms, and Farm Alliance members realized that the farms could inadvertently become agents of displacement in poor communities. Such an outcome was unacceptable to farmers. Some members of the board and farmer members led a strategic planning process in 2017 and 2018 that identified the need to shift to an explicitly anti-racist framework for representing urban farmers if the organization was to remain relevant to the needs of existing communities.

A Shifting Identity

The explicit commitment to an anti-racist approach to urban farming meant shifting the needs of African American and immigrant farmers from margins to center. As of this writing, the change in organizational culture, practices, and priorities is beginning to yield results: in late 2017, under a new Executive Director, the Farm Alliance grew by 25%, and over the course of 2018 saw a demographic shift among both farmer members and board members, with the share of farmers who are African American growing from 25% to one-third; and the board’s share of African American members going from 22% to 40%. The change is reflected in the organization’s programs and advocacy work, too: in response to African American farmers expressing concerns about tenure on their land, water access, and the difficulties in balancing the need to feed their communities with the need to earn a living, the Farm Alliance is starting to host community conversations around African American land ownership, food apartheid, and the need for greater government support of urban farms.

Becoming Accountable to Communities

The Farm Alliance’s members and board are starting to look more like the communities they serve, but representation is only one step. A new approach to agriculture, both rural and urban, is emerging in the national conversation that recognizes the small-scale farm as critical infrastructure. Policies need to shift to remove more barriers and provide land and water security so that more existing residents can farm food without fear of displacement. Recognizing this national shift, as Farm Alliance advocates for greater transparency and enforceable city policies to support urban farms, it is also reaching out. If urban farming infrastructure is to survive as a long-term land use, it is necessary for the Farm Alliance to work alongside farm and food organizations that are led by people of color, LGBTQ people, and those from other marginalized communities. Urban farmers must form coalitions and bring examples of struggles from other cities to inform this work. This practice of solidarity, mutual aid, and shared struggle among urban farmers and their communities is still in the early stages; the next few years will reveal whether and to what degree city and state governments are prepared to respond.