Agriculture

Rural Agriculture

Equity Trust:  Equity Trust has done amazing work protecting agricultural lands.  They have a great resource page on their website focusing on land tenure issues and preserving farms for farmers. 
 

Urban Agriculture

Examples of Urban Agriculture Projects Done by Land Trusts

Both community land trusts and conservation land trusts have been getting involved in urban agriculture projects. Here is a list that describes some of the projects we know about.

• Badger School: This is the newest urban agriculture project in Madison, WI. It is a partnership of three land trusts: Center for Resilient Ciites, Growing Power, and Madison Area CLT.
  
• Growing Power: This is an absolutely fantastic organization headed up my urban farming superstar Will Allen. People come from all over the world to learn from these folks.
  
• Lake Claire Land Trust: This is a fascinating project in Atlanta, which is right next door to a cohousing community.
  
• NeighborSpace:  This is a land trust in Chicago that holds land for community gardens all across the city, and then leases them to community-based urban ag groups.
• Troy Gardens: The first thing to check out is the Troy Gardens Case Study website.  Then  take a look at the website of the organization that runs the agriculture programs at Troy Gardens, Community GroundWorks. And last is the website of the overall developer of Troy Gardens, the Madison Area CLT.

Other Urban Agriculture Efforts Across the U.S.

• Atlanta: Atlanta Community Food Bank -- Community Garden Market Co-op
  
• Boston: Open Space Management Mission
• Cleveland: Cleveland Urban Gardening District (zoning code language)
• Houston:  Urban Harvest.  This is the program that got Kwabena Nkromo interested in urban agriculture.
• Michigan: (1) Greater Grand Rapids Food Systems Council, (2) Article about urban ag in Grand Rapids, (3) Bibliography about urban ag in Michigan, (4) Research paper about urban ag in Detroit
• Milwaukee: (1) draft beekeeping ordinance, (2) draft chicken ordinance
• Multiple Cities: The Promise and Pitfalls of Municipal Policy for Urban Agriculture, Nina Mukherji’s masters thesis on urban ag in Portland, Chicago and Boston
• Portland: The Diggable City Project (zoning recommendations) -- asset mapping project looking at urban ag land within the city of Portland.
• Providence: Urban ag in Providence, RI
• San Diego: (1) urban ag proposal (2) city response
  

Other Resources

• American Community Gardening Association
• The City Chicken
• Farming Inside Cities: Entrepreneurial-Urban Agriculture in the United States, by Jerry Kaufman and Martin Bailkey
• Rocky Mountain Land Use Institute - Sustainable Community Development Code Initiative: This framework was referenced extensively during the development of urban ag language for the revised Madison zoning code.
• Slow Food USA
  
• Urban Agriculture Primer