DRAFT Meanwhile, a diverse coalition of advocates, among
In 2009, the Office of Sustainability published its first Greenworks plan, targeting an improved local food system with urban agriculture as a key component of a more sustainable city. In 2011, the Philadelphia City Planning Commission published Philadelphia2035, which wrote urban agriculture into the citywide vision. Also in 2011, the Office of Sustainability together with Philadelphia Parks & Recreation (Parks & Rec), created the Philadelphia Food Policy Advisory Council (FPAC), a diverse body of volunteer local and regional stakeholders appointed to advise the City in efforts to create a more just food system.
FROM THE ROOT: AN INTRODUCTION
While institutional change was afoot within City Hall, farmers, gardeners, and urban agriculture advocates across the City were organizing, educating, and campaigning for more sweeping change. Youth food justice leaders presented the Youth Food Bill of Rights at the National Constitution Center, naming their rights to “culturally affirming foods,” “nutrition education,” and “healthy foods in school.” The Public Interest Law Center, a nonprofit law firm that fights for Philadelphia communities facing discrimination, inequality, and poverty,17 launched the Garden Justice Legal Initiative (GJLI) to provide pro bono legal support to gardens and farms at risk of losing their land, and to offer community education.18
26
them the Garden Justice Legal Initiative, the Campaign to Take Back Vacant Land, Healthy Foods Green Spaces, and the Philly Land Bank Alliance worked to pass the Philadelphia Land Bank Law19 through the City Council. Successful advocacy helped pave the way for the new Land Bank, empowered to “return vacant and underutilized property to productive use through a unified, predictable, and transparent process,” including urban agriculture. The first Land Bank Strategic Plan, published in 2016, identified seven primary goals to guide Land Bank activity, among them to “reinforce open space initiatives and urban agriculture.”20 As the Land Bank operationalized, development continued to threaten and destroy gardens and farms. In early 2016, Soil Generation—a Black- and Brown-led grassroots coalition of growers—organized alongside other community organizations, gardeners, farmers, and nonprofits to bring over 100 advocates to testify at City Council’s first Urban Agriculture Public Hearing. At the hearing, Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown, chair of the Committee on the Environment, said: “I have struggled as I sit here, trying to figure out and remember the last time we had an audience of witnesses, testifiers, and advocates that were as richly diverse—in terms of age, in terms of cross-sections of the city, in terms of ethnicity, in terms of energy and enthusiasm.”21 The collective voice of the community helped build support for urban agriculture and raise awareness that a plan was needed.
Prior City plans that identified the need for urban agriculture and preservation of growing spaces in Philadelphia, helping to set the stage for Growing from the Root. PHILADELPHIA PARKS & RECREATION
