Spring/Summer 2006: Land

A City Sows Its Seeds

Urban agriculture in Portland? Why here? Why now?

By Kristin Kaye

Portland's Zenger Farm should have as its roadside shingle either a neon sign or a large, rectangular, plastic sign with bold, black letters like most other businesses along the industrial stretch of four-lane Southeast Foster Road just east of I-205: Thompson's Auto Body, U-Pull-It Auto Wrecking, and Foster Feed & Garden, whose sign reads "We Are Your Mole Killer Headquarters." However, Zenger Farm's sign sports a delicate, friendly font printed over a bucolic scene. But then again, none of the owners over the course of Zenger Farm's history have been interested in keeping up with the development that has surrounded them. Neither Ulrich Zenger, who lived on the property and operated the Mount Scott Dairy there from 1913 to 1954, nor his son, Ulrich Zenger, Jr., who also lived on the property until his death in 1989, responded to the siren call of developers with their fistfuls of dollars. The current owner, the City of Portland's Bureau of Environmental Services (BES), purchased the property from the Zenger Estate to preserve the farm and adjoining wetland as part of its long-term conservation plans for the Johnson Creek Basin and Watershed.

Because of these protective landowners, the sixteen-acre parcel now sits surrounded by an urban patchwork of warehouses, housing developments, and strip malls, looking like one of four things depending on your point of view: fertile soil for in-fill housing, a great spot for a baseball diamond, a place to get your hands dirty and reconnect with the state's agricultural past, or an exercise in environmental stewardship that is critical to our very survival. I happened to relish the fact that I could park my car at the curb, step across the sidewalk, and, because of the large rectangular plots of churned earth and the run-down barn, feel like I was suddenly in the country. The droning whzzzz from the passing cars and trucks, however, was a constant reminder that I was still within city limits.

Zenger Farm consists of a ten-acre wetland and a six-acre upland that is still suitable for farming. A group of community members formed a nonprofit called the Friends of Zenger Farm in 1999 and negotiated a fifty-year lease with the city; it now operates, among other things, an agricultural education center that features the Grow Wise Youth Education program, an Immigrant Market Garden, and a Community Supported Agriculture program in which one can buy shares and regularly receive fresh food. For yet another venture, Zenger Farm is about to negotiate a lease with BES for an additional three-acre parcel that lies adjacent to the existing property--Zenger Farm will become one of three pilot programs in a city-backed initiative called The Diggable City. Sponsored by City Commissioner Dan Saltzman and implemented by the Office of Sustainable Development's Food Policy Council, the initiative seeks to identify all unused, city-owned land and then use the parcels for urban agriculture. Planning for Diggable City is still in its early stages, and the specific use for the three-acre plot that will be annexed by Zenger Farm is undetermined. Recognizing that a working farm such as Zenger would be an optimal site on which to explore the daunting list of infrastructure questions that need to be addressed for a large-scale urban agricultural program to flourish, the city decided it would be a natural fit in the pilot program.

The popularity of gardening in Portland was the impetus behind the Diggable City initiative. Leslie Pohl-Kosbau, community gardens director for the Portland Parks Commission, estimates that at any given time 300 to 400 people are waiting for a plot to become available in one of the city's thirty community gardens. In fall 2004, Pohl-Kosbau approached the Portland City Council about funding for three new gardens, one of which was a neighborhood garden that she proposed establishing on unused BES property in the Sellwood neighborhood. She noticed a light go on in Commissioner Dan Saltzman's eyes--if demand was so great, he wondered, then how many other unused, city-owned properties could compatibly support some type of urban agriculture? Saltzman proposed a resolution, which the Council unanimously passed, directing city bureaus to "conduct an urban agricultural inventory of city-owned land that may be suitable for community gardens and other agricultural uses." Saltzman then charged graduate students in the Urban Studies and Planning Program at Portland State University with the task of working with several city bureaus to take an inventory of the properties. The resulting Diggable City report identified 289 city-owned sites for possible use.

However, before a formal policy could be codified and implemented, there were many questions that needed to be answered. For example, what bureau should oversee urban agriculture? How would it be funded--through city funds and in-kind donations or partnerships with for-profit companies and nonprofit agencies? How would parcels be determined suitable and for what types of use? What zoning laws might need to be reassessed? What would the application and review process be for proposals for land use? City Council gave the initiative to the Food Policy Council to further explore the challenges to urban agriculture and to develop a plan for the proposed land. Diggable City Phase II was presented in February 2006. The plan proposes a land management program that determines how access to land would be granted, asks bureaus to confirm that the properties identified in the students' study indeed were usable for Diggable City, initiates three pilot projects that would serve as testing grounds for creating policy, and advises further zoning and water policy exploration. Diggable City is now ready to sow its seeds.

A definition is required here. "Urban agriculture" has become a catchall phrase that can include anything from herbs in pots on a balcony to a native plant nursery to a full-production farm within the city limits. There's a big difference between a community garden and a farm that produces a significant yield, and when it comes to talking about the size and scope of a urban agriculture, people have different views about how much of a city's resources should go toward giving residents a chance to exercise their green thumbs. The Diggable City Phase II report describes urban agriculture this way:

Urban agriculture is an activity located within the urban growth boundary, which includes raising, processing, and distributing a variety of food and non-food products using resources, products, and services found in and around the city, and in turn supplying resources, products, and services for local consumption. Urban agriculture encompasses a wide range of food-related activities, from education to production, collection to consumption, and can include community gardens, small farms, farm stands, farmers' markets, and native plant nurseries.

For further clarity, the report differentiates urban agriculture from traditional commercial farming by placing urban endeavors on a continuum using criteria such as scale (the site should rarely be larger than a few acres), location (sites are often leftover spaces within developed areas, remnants of historic farms, difficult-to-develop sites, or portions of sites developed in compatible use, such as a school, a utility right-of-way, or water storage facility), techniques (hand tools and smaller machinery work better on this small scale), and community orientation (sites are often considered a community asset, providing open areas, educational opportunities, or food security). Essentially, Diggable City proposes that more Portland land be used for large, productive gardens that offer tangible benefits to the community.

It is not surprising that a report like Diggable City was commissioned by a public official in a city like Portland. After all, Portland has achieved a balance between nature and urbanism rarely experienced in other metropolitan areas. In April 2006, Portland placed third in a list of the Top Ten Green Cities in the U.S. by The Green Guide magazine, behind Eugene, Oregon, and Austin, Texas. Criteria evaluated included air quality, green design, electricity use and production, and green space. Historically, city planners have promoted green, open space as essential to the livability of the city and protected 11 percent of Portland's total area for parks and forest. But why focus on urban agriculture? And why now? City officials are already struggling with a host of complicated issues that demand resources, for example, funding public schools, extending the public transportation system, maintaining streets, managing storm water, maintaining the parks that we already have, and getting parks into areas of the city where there aren't any. Not to mention that maintaining agriculture requires a significant commitment not only from the city but also from nonprofits and other organizations that might assist in garden administration, and also from the gardeners themselves. Why is it suddenly so important to have plots of corn and tomatoes liberally scattered across the cityscape?

When asked, "Why urban agriculture?" farmers and city planners alike quickly rattle off a list of benefits as if the question has obvious answers: Community gardens develop community, promote cultural exchange, encourage health, educate children, and connect us with the earth, to name but a few of the evident benefits. But Marie Johnson, senior planner for Portland's Bureau of Planning, says there are instinctual, emotional, and even spiritual benefits as well, adding that planners and public officials tend to couch these intangible values in terms of more concrete things like education. "We have a value for being connected to our farming past, so we talk about it in terms of children being able to have that experience," she says. "I also think we have an instinctual need for open space, so, when we talk about urban agriculture, we're looking at those benefits more than at food production."

Adam Davis, partner at Portland-based opinion research firm Davis, Hibbits, and Midghall, found that protecting green spaces like forests and farmlands was, indeed, a top value of Oregonians. The firm has polled Americans on issues like renewable energy, forest management, community planning, and education reform for decades, and over the years, Davis says, Oregonians have consistently valued recreation and family activities, which he thinks is reflected in our interest in urban agricultural pursuits. His firm's most recent survey, which was conducted in 2006 for Metro, the Portland-area regional government, evaluated attitudes toward population growth and land use. When given the option between preserving forests and farmland and turning the land over to high-tech businesses for urban economic business expansion, 76 percent of Oregonians would choose to preserve farm and forestland. Agriculture is part of the state's heritage, and valuing agriculture seems to be integral to the Oregonian ethos.

Jeff Johnson, manager of landscape architecture for Alpha Community Development, a Portland-based firm with expertise in developing communities, agrees and feels there is a direct correlation between the increasing density of urban environments and what he describes as our need to dig our hands in the soil. Open, green space does not go far enough to relieve this tension, he says, adding that designing vegetable and flower gardens into communities makes a significant contribution toward this end. "Lawn is just leftover green space," he says. "I think it can be used as a different kind of green. " In one community, Johnson placed garden plots in the front yard not only to create a central public space, but also to provide residents with the opportunity to till the soil and socialize with their neighbors.

Reconnecting with the earth is part of a larger sustainability movement, from which Portlanders' newfound passion for urban agriculture has emerged, says Carl Abbott, professor of urban studies and planning at Portland State University. We've traded in our SUVs. We bicycle to work. We want to do good things and growing our own food seems to be the next good thing we can do.

In Abbott's view, urban agriculture is also attractive because it is relatively undiscovered by bureaucracy. It remains an area where one can find ways to make change--even if it is as simple as growing one's own vegetables. "Food systems is an area that has been assumed to be monopolized by big business--businesses, farmers, international trade," he explains, conceding that it is a big system. "If you're looking for a cause, you're not going to change Safeway overnight, but you can look for areas that nobody is paying attention to." One example would be converting plots of city-owned land into gardens that can deliver fresh produce to local food pantries that otherwise primarily serve processed foods.

Portland city planner Marie Johnson admits that food policy hasn't been a high priority in city planning nationwide until the last five years. "I think our assumption has been that the private market will provide for food and that the federal government will subsidize that for people who are struggling," says Johnson. "I think those assumptions have been so taken for granted that it has been kind of a shock to some of us planners when we said, 'We should be talking about food policy. Oh my goodness, why didn't we think about this before?'"

Just four years ago, the City of Portland set up the Food Policy Council, which is one of only a few dozen nationwide. Director Steve Cohen shares Johnson's disbelief at how such a basic thing as planning for food within communities has been overlooked nationally. Housing, education, transportation, and safety have all been addressed, but planning for how a city ensures food security for its residents--from school food programs and agricultural land-use planning to grocery store access and institutional purchasing--has never made it on the agenda.

In light of this burgeoning interest in food policy, Abbott sees Diggable City as a valuable opportunity for activists. City governments, he says, are not very good at innovation. They can do progressive things, but the ideas usually come from somewhere else. The role of a city is to facilitate. In the instance of Diggable City, Abbott proposes that activists could set the agenda. To get a conversation started, Abbott lists some questions that activists could ask: Since we're really not going to grow much food in a community garden, is the movement really an educational movement? Is urban agriculture about educating children and households on how to reconnect to nature? Is Diggable City similar to Victory Gardens the government asked citizens to grow during wartime to relieve food shortages? Still hypothesizing, Abbott posits that an activist could then suggest innovative, creative actions, such as proposing that Portland tear out the Rose Garden and establish a vegetable test garden instead. After all, Portland already knows how to grow roses. Why not truly conduct an exercise in local, sustainable urban agriculture?

For Marie Johnson, as long as the exercise remains reasonably sized and maintained on city-owned land that is otherwise undevelopable, she supports it fully. Johnson served on the technical advisory committee for the Diggable City initiative. Though her personal preference is to see gardens in as many places as possible, as a bureaucrat, she feels she has to ensure that policy is being set within the context of the broader land-use infrastructure in Oregon--the Urban Growth Boundary (UGB), which was instituted in 1978 to manage sprawl and protect agriculture. "If we want to protect the agricultural industry and food production--and agriculture in Oregon is about food production--then we need to keep farmland affordable," says Johnson. "The most efficient way to do this is to have the UGB and to concentrate our growth inside the boundary." Given that Oregon's method of protecting agriculture is to focus development within the UGB, then bringing agriculture back within that boundary--even in the form of pocket farms--gets very tricky from a policy perspective. In her role as an advisor, Johnson wants to ensure that the discussion of food production in Diggable City focuses on local benefits and not on quantity. Quantity, she emphasizes, shouldn't be part of the equation. If it is about quantity, then agricultural production on that scale should probably take place outside the UGB.

Brenna Bell, president of the board of directors of the Try/On Life Community Farm, a sustainability education and demonstration center in Portland, agrees that the purpose of urban agriculture is not so much to feed everyone, but to put people in closer proximity with their food. Bell supports the UGB and the idea of protecting rural agriculture, but she is concerned that the UGB has served as a kind of divider, separating urban and rural communities and exacerbating city dwellers' detachment from the earth. Such separation, she says, keeps us from understanding where our food comes from. In her view, the way we think about the UGB has helped to foster an attitude that says, "We need to keep agriculture in one area and density in another; they can't coexist." Bell would like to see cities take a much bigger step toward integrating garden plots. She looks across an urban landscape and sees a plantable city--roofs and parking lots just waiting to be converted to crops. To Bell, understanding sustainability and learning agricultural self-sufficiency isn't just a good idea, it's a necessity: "I expect that, if not in my lifetime, then definitely within my daughter's lifetime, lack of fossil fuels will be an issue and there won't be trucks driving down I-5 to deliver food."

Back at Zenger Farm, Wisteria Loeffler, the executive director of the Friends of Zenger Farm, the nonprofit that runs the farm's programming, gives me a tour. The value of the farm's sixteen, soon-to-be nineteen, acres is particularly evident, especially because, as researcher Adam Davis explains, people are becoming supportive of growth management and holding the line on sprawl not just because of environmental values anymore, but because there is a strong economic argument to be made for redeveloping cities. That is, it costs less to fill in the space within the city than to develop infrastructure to expand out from the city. With Portland's population expected to grow from the current two million to three million by 2030, there will be much greater competition for land inside the UGB.

Loeffler feels it is crucial that a place like Zenger Farm--whose name will be changed to Zenger Urban Agricultural Park--exists within the UGB to teach urban residents about stewardship and food security. "Our relationship with food is very basic and profound," she explains. "We could make anything else synthetically--clothing, building materials--but we can't go without food. Yet people are very disconnected from their food source and don't even know how to cook and eat fresh food. They know how to eat processed and packaged foods, but the further we get away from understanding where our food comes from, the more our health will suffer. I think urban agriculture can help change that."

She points to the parking lot and warehouse that abut Zenger Farm's green pasture and describes a familiar kind of land use--the storm water runs off the roof, goes into the storm water system, and floods, sending sewage into the river. "And then you have our option," she says, waving her hand over the expanse of the farm's lush wetlands, immigrant garden plots, farmed fields, and greenhouses. "All the storm water will be managed on site. We have diverse cultures over here. We have a for-profit farm providing foods for families. We're here not because farming should happen inside the city. We're here to link up urban residents with a rural lifestyle and reconnect ourselves to that. We're showcasing the future."

Zenger Farm's protected parcel has suddenly become a litmus test revealing contemporary needs and values. So, too, have the 289 parcels identified in the Diggable City project. Today we value getting our hands dirty and reconnecting with our agricultural past. What will we value tomorrow? Will our needs require fertile soil for in-fill housing, a baseball diamond, or environmental stewardship that is critical to our very survival?

Published in the Spring/Summer 2006 issue of Oregon Humanities.

© 2006 Oregon Council for the Humanities