Sacramento Considering Allowing Urban Farming To Fight Blight, Promote Farm-To-Fork
SACRAMENTO (CBS13) — City life and country life are about to collide in Sacramento as farms may soon crop up in the city limits.
Part of the push is to bring home the Farm to Fork movement, but also more urban farms could be a way to clean up the city.
Gardener Paul Trudeau isn't harvesting vegetables on some remote farm down a dusty road off of Interstate 5, he's doing it in the middle of Sacramento on his urban farm.
He's one of many city farmers giving a green thumbs up to a plan to make it easier to farm within city limits.
"This was a mess back here; it had an old dryer, had an old bed," he said.
That was before Paul turned an empty lot into a lush, food-producing pilot.
Right now, you can grow vegetables in your yard, but you can't sell them unless the land is zoned as agricultural.
"Some people may actually want to run a farm as a business and have that be their source of income," said city planner Tom Pace.
He says they hope to change the zoning to allow small urban farms and sales on residential, commercial and industrial zones. He says this could not only clean up blighted lots, but it also goes perfectly with Sacramento's Farm to Fork movement.
"It's one of our assets, agriculture is one of our great industries, we have fertile land here, ya know, it's part of our heritage," he said.
And if you're wondering about the idea of more farms during a drought, Trudeau says the crops don't use much.
"The water doesn't go all over the garden, it only comes out of these little emitters right here, so it goes drip drip drip only on a timer," he said.
