Path to a New Farm Bill: Securing Resources for Urban Agriculture and Innovative Production

Senator Stabenow (D-MI) has proposed a more comprehensive approach to addressing urban and innovative production services throughout existing USDA services.

Sustainable Agriculture
July 30, 2024

Excerpts:

The Senate offers a comprehensive solution to addressing funding shortfalls and improving the accessibility of supports to urban producers by incorporating the vast majority of provisions from S.2591:

Expanding the responsibilities of the office to better serve the conservation and business planning needs of urban producers;
Enabling community partners to act as an extension of the Office through cooperative agreements, prioritizing organizations that have established relationships with underserved population and experience providing technical assistance to these producers;

Generating business growth for urban producers by supporting microgrant opportunities and expanding grant eligibility to farmer cooperatives; and
Investing in the long-term development and growth of the Office by providing mandatory funding at $10 million annually.

Adequately resourcing the Office of Urban Agriculture and Innovative Production is only one step to ensure all scales and agricultural production techniques are represented in USDA programming. Any final farm bill must additionally:

direct USDA to consider and develop resources that meet the unique needs of small scale farmers operating in urban and metropolitan areas,
create opportunities for trusted community partnerships to lead outreach and build relationships between growers and USDA through cooperative agreements,
expand the reach of grants by funding farmer cooperatives and offering microgrants to urban farmers, and
invest in research and data collection to understand the prevalence and economic impact of urban and innovative production.

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