Urban agriculture, a comparative newcomer to the American food system, would gain wider access to loans and farming advice from USDA experts under a bill announced by Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow, the lead Democrat on the Senate Agriculture Committee. The legislation is an early, if not the first, entry for inclusion in the 2018 farm bill.
Lawmakers will begin work this winter on assessing the successes of the 2014 farm law and deciding what needs to be changed or added, Stabenow told reporters. “We want to be at the beginning of the process.” The bill, which includes a research program aimed at city farmers and “a new, affordable risk management tool for urban farmers,” is estimated to cost $46 million a year compared to the current law, which costs $100 billion a year.
“This (sector) is definitely growing,” said Stabenow. The urban farming bill “will continue this momentum by helping urban farmers get started or expand their business, so they can sell more products and supply more healthy food for their neighbors.”
“Cities are a really important link and part of the pathway young people are taking” to enter the profession of farming, said Lindsey Shute, executive director of the National Young Farmers Coalition. National Farmers Union president Roger Johnson and food advocate Tom Colicchio supported the bill as a way to help farmers as well as link communities with their food supply.
There are few statistics on the number of U.S. urban farms, which run the gamut from pocket gardens to rooftop farms and indoor “vertical” farms, or their volume of production. The Stabenow bill calls for national data collection and would add an urban agriculture section to USDA’s reporting of local food prices.
In March, NYU researchers said two of three urban farmers “have a social mission that goes beyond food production and profits.” The bulk of the 370 farms surveyed across the country had sales below $10,000 a year.
Stabenow was a stalwart defender of the food stamp program against steep cuts proposed by Republicans for the 2014 farm law. “We are not going to negotiate food programs versus urban agriculture,” she told a reporter who asked if she would make concessions in exchange for inclusion of an urban agriculture program. “These are not trade offs.”
Among provisions, the Stabenow bill would expand USDA authority to support farm cooperatives in urban areas, create an urban agriculture office within USDA, and create a pilot program to provide urban farmers access to compost while reducing food waste that otherwise would go to landfills.
The National Agricultural Library home page on urban agriculture is available here.