FIGURE 9. Methods of Racialized Land-Based Oppression

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.

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 Meanwhile, a diverse coalition of advocates, among 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.

In 2017, FPAC began laying the groundwork for the creation of an Urban Agriculture Plan. FPAC contracted with Corajus (Coalition for Racial Justice) to survey the needs of growers, residents who raise agricultural animals, neighborhood leaders, nonprofits, and City agencies. Over 300 Philadelphians participated.

In the years since, responsibility for carrying out food policy work within the City has been broadly shared across departments including Philadelphia Parks & Recreation, the Department of Public Health, and the Office of Sustainability. FPAC has made progress with interdepartmental relationship building, but struggled to establish leadership support, a sense of urgency for urban agriculture, and an accountability system for carrying out the food policy recommendations presented to the mayor on an annual basis.22 Finding a permanent home for urban agriculture within City government became a priority. In 2019, advocacy culminated in the creation of a new director of urban agriculture position within Parks & Rec and the launch of the process to develop the City’s first Urban Agriculture Plan, Growing from the Root.

The release of this plan follows two other aligned City documents: the Philly Tree Plan and FPAC’s Strategic Plan. All three of these documents underscore the need and point the way toward a greener, more just, and more sustainable food and land future for Philadelphia.