Kingston’s Food Policy Bites
Issue 4: March 2025
Welcome to the fourth edition of Kingston’s Food Policy Bites! After a successful 3 month pilot in the last quarter of 2024, we’re back with quarterly editions in 2025.
The City of Kingston’s Department of Health and Wellness is tasked with facilitating policy, systems, and environmental change to benefit the people of Kingston. We know that effective policy is built on transparency and consensus — but also know that policy can be complicated and hard to read. To that end, we want to make the world of food policy more accessible and relevant to our city. That’s why we’ve created Kingston’s Food Policy Bites.
This month we’re asking the question “Does urban agriculture reduce food insecurity?” But first, we need to talk about what urban agriculture is and what it looks like in Kingston.
A Primer on Urban Agriculture
The USDA defines urban agriculture as “the cultivation, processing, and distribution of agricultural products (food or non-food) in urban and suburban areas.”
Urban agriculture has been around for a long time, since at least 3500 BCE when farmers of Mesopotamia set aside plots for farming in their cities. It continued to be found across the globe
throughout the passage of time, including in Persia, Machu Picchu, and the Aztec Civilization. More recent urban agriculture roots can be found in the “allotment gardens” of major European cities like London and Paris during the turn of the 20th century to help the “urban poor,” and in the Victory Gardens of the World Wars. However, the expansion of car culture along with racist zoning policies contributed to “supermarket redlining” during the mid-20th century and the reorganizing of cities, leading to a decline in urban agriculture.
Yet urban agriculture never really disappeared, experiencing the seeds of a renaissance during the 1970s as Black and Latinx urban communities reclaimed vacant lots by establishing community gardens to provide a space for community while feeding people. Detroit is a oft-cited case study of this, from Mayor Coleman Young’s “Farm a Lot” program in the 1970s that sought to transform 3000 empty lots into community gardens to the creation of Keep Growing Detroit in 2013 and the Detroit Black Community Food Sovereignty Network (DBCFSN) in 2018, the latter which ensured residents had access to food during the COVID 19 pandemic with a seed sharing and instructional video program.
Today you can find examples of urban agriculture all across the country, including nearby large farms like Brooklyn Grange, a rooftop farming and green rooftop business that operates 2 rooftop farms in New York City that span almost 5 acres and produce over 80,000 organically grown vegetables annually, to our very own Kingston YMCA Farm Project, a nonprofit educational farm located in the heart of Midtown.
As our world increasingly urbanizes, we can only anticipate a growth in urban agriculture. In our state alone there are over 1,000 registered or permitted community gardens in cities, according to New York State Department of Agriculture & Markets, so let’s talk about them!
Benefits of Urban Ag
Whether looking at backyard gardens, community gardens, or slightly larger scale farms for production, there are numerous benefits to urban agriculture that could be loosely grouped into themes like environmental impacts, health & wellness, local food economy, and community & culture (see below).
In a quantitative analysis on the social impacts of urban agriculture by CUNY, reported benefits from farmers and gardeners varied depending on the type of farm, which makes sense! A farm that primarily sells their products would rank the economic benefit as the highest just as a community garden might rank social connectedness as a top benefit.
One thing that was interesting was that general wellbeing and social impact benefits were more important than the explicitly nutritional benefits for almost all farms.
Urban Ag in Kingston
Urban agriculture isn’t new to Kingston. Below is a partial timeline of policies and programs over the past 25 years.
Capturing the state of urban agriculture in Kingston is challenging. According to the Grow Well Community Garden Map, there are 15 gardens, including:
- community gardens with private plots or shared labor models
- gardens that give away or sell food
- school gardens
- pollinator gardens (and more!)
There are also numerous organizations supporting urban agriculture in Kingston, such as the Kingston YMCA Farm Project, Kingston Land Trust, The Coop Concept, and more.
Kingston Planning Documents
Urban agriculture (UA) has been incorporated in a number of Kingston planning documents and policies in recent years, including the following.
PLANNING DOCUMENT: Kingston Urban Agriculture Planning & Zoning Study
YEAR: 2014
UA MENTIONS:
This was a targeted assessment of urban agriculture led by the Kingston Urban Agriculture Committee.
One of the goals of this study was to provide recommendations in coordination with the development of the Kingston 2025 Comprehensive Plan and advocate for more urban agriculture-friendly zoning changes, many of which were successful with the City’s updated form-based zoning code adopted in 2023. A Phase 2 was developed in 2017, but never finalized or adopted.
PLANNING DOCUMENT: Kingston 2025 Comprehensive Plan
YEAR: 2016
UA MENTIONS:
Goal 1: Promote a Sustainable Citywide Land Use Policy
Objective 1.3: Promote urban agriculture as a sustainable practice as a part of local and regional food systems change, with a focus on Midtown; – includes allowing agriculture in City parks
Goal 2: Promote maintenance and improvement of existing stable neighborhoods outside the “mixed-use cores;”
Objective 2.5: Promote social interaction through the provision of neighborhood gardens, community gardens, parks and other open spaces;
Goal 3: Preserve constrained lands as open space, agriculture or very low-density residential clustered development as appropriate
Goal 8: Promote a new planned commercial node in Midtown centered around
Education, the Arts, Entertainment and Ethnic Diversity;
Strategy 8.1.2: Acquire vacant lots and blighted properties for public spaces and urban agriculture.
PLANNING DOCUMENT: Kingston Open Space Plan
YEAR: 2019
UA MENTIONS:
“More than 800 acres of land in Kingston are classified as vacant, including 38 acres owned by the City of Kingston. While every effort should be made to promote investment in blighted properties, those properties that are beyond saving and that tend to be located in the most at-need areas of the city should be considered for incorporation into the network of community gardens.” (pg 50)
PLANNING DOCUMENT: Climate Smart Kingston Action Plan 2030
YEAR: 2021
UA MENTIONS:
Strategy Spotlight 20: Increase Local Participation in Community Gardens (pg 69)
PLANNING DOCUMENT: Kingston’s New Form-Based Zoning Code
YEAR: 2023
UA MENTIONS:
Urban agriculture is addressed in Kingston’s updated form-based zoning code under Section 405.21. This permits urban agriculture in nearly all neighborhoods of Kingston. Transect Districts T5-MS (Urban Center- Main Street) and T4-MS (Neighborhood- Main Street) require special permits.
Other specific zoning details are addressed, such as:
- Dimensional standards for structures must comply with the standards of the underlying district
- Urban agriculture shall not be a nuisance or hazard to surrounding neighborhood, and shall be maintained in healthy growing condition
- Rooftop locations are allowable
- Composting allowable, with size and location standards
- Accessory beekeeping allowed with standards and limitations
- Accessory chickens allowed with standards and limitations, such as enclosure and flock specifications
Does Urban Agriculture Reduce Food Insecurity?
So, now that we’ve laid a foundation of what urban agriculture is and what it looks like in Kingston, let’s get back to the question– Does urban agriculture reduce food insecurity?
The results are mixed. While an increase in food security is often touted as a benefit, there is not an extensive amount of evidence to validate this statement. A great place to start is UC Berkley’s systematic review on Does Urban Agriculture Improve Food Security?
What mostly arises in the research is that urban agriculture contributes to a modest increase in food security by providing access to fresh fruits and vegetables, which are typically more unaffordable food items. For example, a literature review from the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future found that food insecure people could save between $240-720 per household per year from home or community gardens. This helps to fill a crucial gap in our food system!
However, at the scale that urban agriculture currently operates, there are mixed results on meeting all food needs. One study found that there is simply not enough land to grow food to meet all nutrient requirements, notably vitamins D and B12, which are more available in animal sources of food.
Additionally, as discussed in the Food Policy Bite on tax incentives to increase food retail locations, food access is defined in more ways than just physical access. Just because there is an increase in agriculture nearby does not always guarantee that the harvests will be available, physically, economically or socially, to people who are food insecure. A mapping of urban agriculture in Chicago found that many urban core, low-income census tracts lacked access to community or residential gardens. Another study found that the 68 urban gardens in Phoenix serve less than 9% of “food desert” residents, although there is the opportunity for gardens to theoretically serve more than 96% of the residents.
It could be argued instead that urban agriculture, at the scale it exists currently, can increase food sovereignty. According to the US Food Sovereignty Alliance, “food sovereignty is the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems.” Allowing and promoting urban agriculture gives people more power to define their own food system, even on a small scale.
How Can Cities Use Policy to Support Urban?
Yet, just because urban agriculture doesn’t have evidence of significantly improving food security does not mean it doesn’t have numerous benefits, including food access. Let’s take a look at other cities with a vibrant urban agriculture scene and the policies they’ve adopted to support that.
New York City & Boston
New York City and Boston both have urban agriculture departments (NYC Mayor’s Office of Urban Agriculture & GrowBoston: Office for Urban Agriculture) that work closely with food policy offices (NYC Mayor’s Office of Food Policy & Boston’s Office of Food Justice). NYC has a major focus on collecting and measuring data, including the NYC Urban Agriculture Explorer Hub. Boston is focusing on planning and policy, outlined in their 2024 Urban Agriculture Recommendations Report.
Salem, MA
There is plenty of urban agriculture work being done in small cities as well. Take Salem as a city more comparable in size to Kingston than NYC. Salem doesn’t have a separate urban agriculture department, but community agriculture was one of 4 main sections in its 2018 Community Food Assessment. This ultimately led to revisions to Salem’s urban agriculture ordinance and the creation of a municipal farm, Mack Park Farm, a transformed neglected ball field that grows healthy food for the community and is the site of Salem’s first community food forest.
Other Examples
Other examples of ways cities have used zoning and policy to define urban agriculture can be found at the Healthy Food Policy Project.
For example, Washington DC has a law that reduces property taxes by up to 90 percent for the portion of the property that is used as an urban farm.
Or Cleveland, Ohio, which adopted numerous policies, such as its Urban Garden Zoning District which reserves land for gardening and permits the sale of produce, along with its Summer Sprout Program, which offers seasonal access to water for community gardens.
So should cities adopt policies to encourage and support urban agriculture?
Yes! While the evidence is not there (yet) that urban agriculture significantly reduces food insecurity, there are many other benefits of urban agriculture.
Until our food system is able to address the tension between farm security and food security in our economic system, one way to view policies that support and incentivize urban farms might be as a public good for the numerous benefits listed above, rather than requiring that the urban farms operate as a for-profit venture where success is only measured by sales and revenue. This helps communities not to fall into the expectation of the “unattainable trifecta” of urban agriculture, a myth that (without significant, long-term investments) urban agriculture can 1) provide good food to all at affordable prices, 2) provide career opportunities for people typically excluded, AND 3) generate enough income.
A great next step for Kingston will be the its upcoming Food System Plan (to be released for public comment this spring), which will include some recommendations that build on Kingston’s already incredible urban agriculture foundation and our an award-winning, innovative zoning code. Kingston might take inspiration from other cities that have incorporated a food systems lens into their planning processes, prioritizing things like food hubs, required agriculture and/or food retail in development projects, mobile food distributions, and more. The American Planning Association’s Food System resources are a great place to start.
Regardless of the direction, it will be important for Kingston to continue to consider its unique community characteristics such as user needs, desired community impacts, and urban agriculture type to foster a healthy food systems with urban agriculture that is just right for Kingston.
For more information on food & nutrition projects at the City of Kingston, reach out to Kristin Kessler, RDN, CDN, RYT at kkessler@kingston-ny.gov
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