The case for investing in urban farming at the federal level

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Cities across the country are home to farms and gardens producing food, building community, and greening urban landscapes. And yet federal support for this work remains thin, fragmented, and perpetually at risk. In a policy brief published in the Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development, my co-authors Capnerhurst and Quigley join me in laying out why that needs to change — and what a more serious federal commitment could look like.

The brief zeros in on three chronic obstacles that urban farmers face: insufficient funding, insecure land tenure, and environmental pollution. None of these are new problems. Urban farmers have been navigating them for decades. What the current moment offers is a specific institutional opportunity: the USDA’s Office of Urban Agriculture and Innovative Production, established under the 2018 Farm Bill, now exists as a policy home for exactly this kind of work. The question is whether it gets the mandate and resources to actually move the needle.

The funding picture is particularly stark. Most urban farms and gardens survive on local government support and philanthropic dollars — both of which are intermittent and vulnerable to shifting priorities. When a city changes its parks budget or a foundation pivots its strategy, a farm that has spent years building soil health and community relationships can lose its operating support overnight. A stable, permanent federal funding stream — one that doesn’t have to be re-won in each annual appropriations cycle — would be transformative for the sector.

Land tenure is the other chronic vulnerability. Community gardens, in particular, have a long history of springing up on vacant lots only to be displaced when land values rise and developers move in. You can’t build soil, invest in infrastructure, or develop lasting community relationships around a garden you might lose in three years. Federal policy could help by supporting long-term land access mechanisms — community land trusts, long-term leases on public land, and other tools that give urban farmers the security to invest in their sites.

The environmental pollution piece is less discussed but equally important. Urban soils carry a legacy of industrial and municipal contamination that creates real barriers to food production — both practical and perceived. Technical assistance for soil testing, remediation, and raised-bed systems is essential for expanding urban agriculture into neighborhoods where it’s most needed.

There’s a certain irony in making this case in the current political moment, when federal support for climate and community programs faces significant headwinds. But the argument is ultimately a conservative one: the federal government has a long history of investing in agricultural systems that serve the public good. Urban agriculture delivers documented benefits — for food security, for community health, for urban greening — and it deserves the same kind of institutional backing that has supported rural agriculture for more than a century.

Capnerhurst, H., Quigley, H., & Hawes, J. (2025). Sustainable agriculture impacts in urban settings make the case for federal investments. Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development, 14(1), 1. https://doi.org/10.5304/jafscd.2024.141.002

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