Publications

• Report: Growing Our Community by Growing Good Food
• White Paper: A New Approach to Development in Providence
• White Paper: Planning for Appropriately Scaled Agriculture in Providence
• Report: Farm-to-School Subcommittee Summary
• Soon: Lead-Free Safe Gardening in the City

The Urban Agriculture Policy Task Force gratefully acknowledges the generous support of The Jessie B. Cox Charitable Trust and USDA Community Food Project Grant.

Urban Agriculture in Providence: Growing Our Community by Growing Good Food (PDF)

Report prepared for the Providence Urban Agriculture Policy Task Force.

Summary: The City of Providence faces the same challenges as cities throughout the country: the need for economic growth, the need for a healthier environment in which to raise families, and the need to plan for the sustainability and security of our community in the face of emergencies and changing global circumstances.

Providence is beginning a city-wide process to update our Comprehensive Plan and zoning ordinances. This process offers us a unique opportunity to meet the city’s challenges by creating land use policies that include Urban Agriculture in the long-term strategy for the city’s development. Doing so will create economic opportunities for small businesses and for families throughout the city. We will contribute not only to the environmental health of our city and state, but to the physical health of citizens of all ages and economic backgrounds. We will create ways for residents to take pride in their neighborhoods and showcase the cultural vitality that makes Providence great.

Providence’s Urban Agriculture pioneers have already made a positive impact on our communities through farmers’ markets, community gardens, home gardens, non-profit community initiatives, home kitchens and school lunch rooms and gardens. Please learn more, support these efforts, and help our community grow by growing good food!

Urban Agriculture: A New Approach to Development in Providence (PDF)

By Greg Gerritt. White Paper prepared for the Providence Urban Agriculture Policy Task Force.

Summary: Providence 59 food gardens were counted in about 5 hours of walking in 4 neighborhoods. Fifty-nine food gardens is an undercount, and only a very small part of the City’s 25 neighborhoods was surveyed. It seems reasonable to estimate that more than 500 food gardens are to be found in the city. Southside Community Land Trust has space for 200 garden plots. Several other community gardens exist across the city. Extrapolating from these numbers, we estimate that there are 1000 food gardens in the city of Providence. In a city of 63,000 families that means something like 1.6% of families in Providence are growing food.

Compared to other cities world-wide, Providence is at the low end for urban agriculture. For instance, there are 30,000 gardens on public land in London and 40% of families grow food in Canadian cities.

Reasons for the limited amount of agriculture in Providence compared to other places include: Providence is one of the most densely populated cities in the US with only New York, San Francisco, Chicago, and Philadelphia being significantly more densely populated. Besides all of the land at one time given over to industry, 10,000 people per square mile with all the streets and cars does not leave much room for agriculture. In addition, the City’s small lots often have large trees and toxic soils. But even so, there is plenty of land to double the number of gardens in Providence.

Home gardeners and community gardeners in Providence who spoke with our researchers all reported that they like to garden, and find the food produced makes a real difference in the quality of their families’ diets. There is every reason based on the research reported here that if more good opportunities for gardening were available in Providence, more people would garden.

Planning for Appropriately Scaled Agriculture in Providence (PDF)

By Benjamin Morton. White Paper prepared for the Providence Urban Agriculture Policy Task Force.

Summary: If we are to redevelop and strengthen our local food web, agriculture at a variety of scales must be nestled into our region. In Providence this requires the calibration of planning and development policies to allow and promote appropriately scaled food production in diverse neighborhoods. Affecting this kind of change requires new language in Providence's Comprehensive Plan, followed by corresponding changes to the City's Zoning Ordinance, and new practices in affected city agencies.

The concept of agriculture in an urban setting often raises eyebrows. As food production has industrialized its integration with the city has become harder to fathom. Nevertheless there are a variety of scales of agriculture that fit urban spaces and serve a variety of urban needs. The figure below illustrates these various scales across a rural to urban transect. Transects have been used by ecologists for some time to understand natural systems. The urban design firm of Duany Plater-Zyberk, a leader in the Congress for the New Urbanism, brought the concept to world of planning and land development. The Foodstuff Transect illustrates that just as certain forms of residential or retail development are appropriate in each T-zone, there are also appropriate forms of agriculture.

DPZ uses such Transects as part of a radical new approach to land use regulation known as the SmartCode, a replacement for traditional zoning. It is a testament to the growing recognition of the importance of urban agriculture that DPZ's Foodstuff Transect proposes food production across the region. The Transect diagram provides great terms and definitions for the various scales of production. This common language and the Transect should be very important tools as we work to change local regulations.

We are concerned with urban agriculture at three scales: hand tended agriculture, such as City Farm, community gardens, and backyard gardens. The Foodstuff Transect shows that these forms of agriculture are appropriate in Providence.

Farm-to-School Subcommittee Summary (PDF)

By Louella Hill, Dorothy Brayley and Bonnie Dixon. Report prepared for the Providence Urban Agriculture Policy Task Force.

Linking farms and schools is a great idea: Not only is the food fresher (which translates into kids eating more healthfully) but connecting city kids with the open space that surrounds them (both in the city and on the outskirts) is the simplest form of environmental education. Tomorrow’s citizens need to know what fertile soil and open space means to them. They need to know where food comes from.