On Thursday, May 12th, 2011, the proposed Community Garden Ordinance was reviewed at the City’s Planning Commission Meeting. The discussion on community gardens was first presented to the Law and Legislation Committee in August of last year. Since then, it has moved forward due to general support for urban agriculture in Sacramento. The current ordinance is a proposition to amend the zoning law, which prohibits agriculture in residential or non-agriculture zones. The new amendment extends only to private property and does not apply to city-owned land. The public land issue has currently been tabled but is nevertheless pertinent to the future of sustainable urban agriculture. Let’s take a

Starting this coming Saturday, Soil Born Farms will operate a farm stand in front of the library at McKinley Park in East Sacramento. The stand will sell fruit and vegetables grown by farmers in Sacramento, Yolo, Placer, El Dorado, Yuba, Sutter, Solano and San Joaquin counties. Randy Stannard, Soil Born's food access coordinator, is heading up the stand. It is one of many food-delivery models that the farm is using to bring healthy, locally grown food to the community. "Instead of bringing ten to 20 farmers to one spot, we go to the farms and we basically buy and resell produce as well as our own," Stannard said, comparing the stand to a farmers market. The stand is one component of sev

Joanne Neft is on a mission to change the poor eating habits common in many households today. "We're eating really inappropriately," she explained to dinner guests at her home this past week. She pinpoints Americans' "inappropriate" eating habits to the cause of many problems. "We eat subsidized food because it's cheap, forgetting the huge price we pay for the resulting obesity, diabetes, cancer, and coronary problems. Americans pay a high price for cheap food." She is currently self-employed and owns a couple of commercial properties but these days she is putting most of her energy and passion into a crusade against poor eating habits found in the form of a cookbook. Neft and her clos

 Sacramento gardening activists want to take urban agriculture to the next level and legalize raising chickens in your back yard. "It's really been a hot topic lately," said Jaclyn Hopkins, volunteer coordinator for Environmental and Agricultural Taskforce Sacramento. "A lot of cities are changing their regulations to allow chicken-keeping, and Sacramento's on it's way." EAT Sacramento and its partner group Campaign to Legalize Urban Chicken Keeping (CLUCK) were founded this year to advocate for more sustainable and organic gardening in the city. To promote the cause of backyard chicken coops, CLUCK will be hosting screenings of the indie documentary Mad City Chickens at the Guild Theatr

With the prices of groceries on the rise, one local Sacramentan is planting his economic vision directly in the ground. Kory Grant Clift of Freedom Farms isn't your typical farmer. First off, he doesn't charge money for his fresh organic produce. Second, he's African American, and less than one percent of all California farmers share his ethnicity. Clift's vision for Freedom Farms is to create a nutritious sustainable food system for South Sacramento. In order to build awareness of locally grown food, Clift has set up over 30 community gardens for Oak Park residents. He provides cooking demonstrations for local schools, and he's trying to get Sacramento school boards to use more l

Mark Winne, author of Closing the Food Gap: Resetting the Table in the Land of Plenty, opened Thursday morning’s Sacramento Region Food Collaborative (RFC) conference with a powerful message of hope. “The loss of land, hunger, insecurity, obesity are real…but so is the opportunity for change," he said. The guest list for the four-hour brainstorm session, coordinated by Valley Vision, included more than 70 movers and shakers in the food and urban agriculture industry plus representatives from congress and environmental agencies. Held in TV station KVIE’s community room, Winne began the collaborative by asking the audience for general feedback, both positive and negative, on the state of

On Wednesday night around 40 urban agriculture advocates, gardeners and Sacramento residents gathered at the Sacramento chapter of the American Institute of Architects to discuss a subject that has been on many Sacramentans' minds lately. This month's topic for the 4th Wednesday Urban Design Alliance (UDA) Design Dialogue was "Design Challenges in Urban Agriculture." Those who attended were divided into groups for an interactive workshop that involved designing a faux-garden despite a list of challenges given to them. While mulling over the different scenarios and solutions, participants snacked on fresh fruits provided by Soil Born farm, appropriate fare given the night's theme. Bill Ma

This is the second growing season that Sacramento residents have been able to grow vegetables, fruit trees and other food plants in their front yard thanks to a revised city ordinance. After a three-year effort by food activists, the city's Front Yard Ordinance was reworded in 2007 to specifically allow veggie gardens in that soil near the sidewalk. That change has enabled more and more Sacramento homeowners to grow their own food in an edible landscape, mingling [with] or replacing decorative foliage. Blueberries with your zinnias, perhaps, or tomatoes with your chrysanthemums, or lettuce where that brown scrubgrass used to be. The original FYO was written into zoning code in 1941 and ac

In a celebration of Urban Agriculture Day, Slow Food Sacramento hosted a series of workshops and tours throughout the day Saturday to benefit Sacramento Hunger Coalition and Sacramento Area Community Garden Coalition (SACGC). For $25, ticket holders were able to choose from an itinerary of workshops, tours and movie screenings after either touring Soil Born Farm or cycling around town on the "What's 'Growing' On" Bike Tour. The morning cycling tour led roughly 25 cyclists on a 10-mile guided trek around local community gardens, starting at Southside Community Garden and making stops at McClatchy Park Farm Stand, David Lubin School Garden and the Sacramento Food Bank's garden along with

The Sacramento Parks and Recreation department has responded to local calls for more community gardens by slating two new sites to be publicly cultivated , bringing the total number of city community gardens to seven. One of the fresh gardening plots is on the downtown grid - E and 8th in Zapata Park - and is planned to be opened to the public by the end of the year. The other is in North Oak Park and will be sprouting next spring. Locally grown produce is a burgeoning attraction for Sacramentans and Community Garden Coordinator Bill Maynard has taken note. "We've seen a dramatic increase in interest recently," he said. "In a 2008 Master Plan Development survey, more than 10 percent of su

Whether you've got drip-irrigated corn in the front yard or just some potted mint on top of the fridge, the Common Table agriculture festival has something for you. Slow Food Sacramento, the local chapter of the worldwide food community Slow Food, is offering city residents the chance to spend this Saturday getting green at their first AgFest workshop series, called the Common Table. Saturday's AgFest is taking place on the Sacramento's first Urban Ag Day. The Sacramento City Council recently adopted a resolution to make July 11 an annual citywide celebration of local gardening. Starting at 8:30 AM, AgFest activities include lectures on how to grow and manage food crops at home, tours o