Urban Farming Insights explains how cities grow food, close the loop on waste and build local food systems - one practical guide at a time.
This site is an independent, source-based guide to urban agriculture in the United States, with a particular focus on Cincinnati and Ohio. It covers how urban farms operate, how cities fund and regulate them, and how residents can get involved, from a single raised bed to a managed commercial operation.
Food access is one recurring thread across these articles. USDA's Economic Research Service defines a food desert as a low-income census tract where a large share of residents live more than 1 mile from a supermarket (10 miles in rural tracts); a 2021 Congressional Research Service analysis of 2019 data estimated that roughly 19 million people, about 6 percent of the U.S. population, lived in such areas.
Education is another. USDA's 2023 Farm to School Census, covering the 2022-23 school year, found 74,433 schools serving locally sourced food on their menus, reaching students at school food authorities that reported at least one farm to school activity; about 15 percent of responding school food authorities also ran at least one edible garden.
Community experiences are a third thread. The American Community Gardening Association, founded in 1979 out of a national conference held in Chicago the year before, is one of the longest-running organizations coordinating community garden networks in the United States and Canada; by its own count it now has more than 1,000 individual members and 252 organizational members. See urban farm networks for how a coordinating network like this actually functions for the gardens that join one.
Native and edible landscaping is a fourth. The Xerces Society, a nonprofit focused on invertebrate conservation, reported in 2021 that western monarch butterfly numbers had fallen more than 95 percent since the 1980s, attributing the decline mainly to habitat loss, including loss of the milkweed plants monarchs depend on to breed. Planting native and pollinator-friendly species in a garden or farm border is a small-scale response to that same habitat loss.
Where a city's own policy shapes what is possible, this site tries to name the specific ordinance or program rather than speak in generalities. Cincinnati's urban agriculture zoning ordinance, which took effect in September 2019 after roughly two years of development with the city's Food Policy Council, is one recurring example: it clarified rules for community gardens, backyard gardens, small-scale farming and composting, and made several uses permitted by right across zoning districts that had previously required a case-by-case exception. See urban farming in Cincinnati and urban agriculture policy and zoning in Cincinnati for more detail.
It is not affiliated with Urban Farming Initiative or Urban Agriculture Initiative - see about this guide for the full disclaimer.
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