City Eyes Urban Agriculture

Policy Changes Could Promote More Gardens, Animals

FAYETTEVILLE — Local food advocates and city staff want to start looking at policies to promote urban agriculture.

If the City Council approves, a group will be formed to encourage more gardens in parks and public rights of way; looser rules for selling produce in town; a city-run food composting service; and a provision allowing for bees, rabbits, ducks and goats in residential areas.

Mayor Lioneld Jordan recently asked members of the Fayetteville Forward Local Food Group to prioritize what changes they would like to see. The group suggested planting nut- or fruit-bearing trees in public spaces, amending the city’s animals and fowl ordinance and making it easier for low-income residents and apartment dwellers to buy and grow their own food.

“If people want to be able to grow their own food, I want them to be able to do that,” Jordan said Wednesday.

Current code prohibits people from selling produce in most residential areas. Up to four chickens are allowed on single-family properties, but other farm animals aren’t permitted on nonagricultural land. The city accepts tree limbs and yard clippings at its compost facility, 1708 S. Armstrong Ave., but food scraps aren’t collected.

Peter Nierengarten, city sustainability and strategic planning director, said some of that could change in an effort to address “food insecurity” and local hunger issues.

Urban Chickens

Fayetteville’s animals and fowl ordinance, enacted in 2008, allows residents to raise up to four hens on single-family, residential properties. No roosters are allowed. Neither is outside slaughtering. All hens must be contained in a secure, fenced enclosure. The enclosures must be in a residents’ side or backyard and at least 25 feet away from any residential buildings. The ordinance requires residents to keep enclosures in “a neat and sanitary condition at all times.”

Source: City Of Fayetteville

“Allowing people to produce food for themselves or food they can sell is a way of boosting people’s income or boosting access to local healthful foods,” Nierengarten said.

According to the Arkansas Hunger Relief Alliance, more than one in six Arkansans lives below the federal poverty line and struggles to afford enough food to eat.

Several Fayetteville organizations have cropped up in recent years to address food insecurity.

Apple Seeds was established in 2007 to promote healthy eating in schools. More than a dozen community gardens and urban farms have sprouted up, according to the Community Garden Coalition, which formed in 2009.

The nonprofit group, Feed Fayetteville, has been involved with creating community gardens and encouraging people who receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits — commonly referred to as food stamps — to grow and prepare their own food.

Feed Fayetteville’s parent organization, Feed Communities, recently received a $7,000 donation from the Willard & Pat Walker Charitable Foundation to help implement a “community food hub” in an old church on South Locust Avenue. The hub will serve as an aggregation site and demonstration kitchen for low-income residents, according to Melissa Terry, regional programs coordinator for Feed Communities.

“The amount of food we produce is important,” Terry said Friday. “But what’s really important is cultivating that sense of independence and ownership for individuals and families.”

Nierengarten said city officials will need to be mindful of community concerns before plowing forward with broad changes to city code. He said certain uses, such as more chickens or goats, could be reserved for properties of a certain acreage. Large farm animals that can be noisy and emit foul odors, such as cows and pigs, will still be restricted in residential zones, he said.

City staff will assemble a group of stakeholders to evaluate ordinances if they get the go-ahead from aldermen Tuesday. Group members could include farmers, agricultural law students at the University of Arkansas and members of community organizations.

Nierengarten said it could take the group and the city’s Sustainability and Strategic Planning Department six months to review other cities’ urban agriculture policies before proposing concrete ordinance changes.

“We’re following a path that’s been set by a lot of other progressive cities,” he said.

Upcoming Events