Aspiring urban farmers face issues ranging from laws regulating bees and goats, to potential tax liabilities for backyard gardeners, according to experts who participated in the Urban Agriculture Conference hosted by the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law.
The Sept. 19 event, co-organized by the Community Law Center, brought together 200 law professors, farmers, students, and professionals in fields from city planning to public health. The conference also included a tour of three urban farms in Baltimore that gave participants a chance to see, and to taste, the fruits of urban agriculture.
"Urban agriculture is a very big tent," says Maryland Carey Law Professor Barbara Bezdek, JD, LLM, who organized the conference and whose research focuses on urban redevelopment. "Some people enjoy growing flowers to beautify urban spaces while others may be engaged in agriculture to reduce health disparities and address food deserts."
Agricultural law, as it pertains to urban land, is difficult and hard to adhere to, adds Bezdek. That's because agricultural law developed in rural areas. Issues such as raising livestock, applying pesticides, noise, and odors, can have a very different impact within city limits.
"Agriculture laws can be complex," says Maryland Carey Law Professor Michael Pappas, JD, who teaches an environmental law course on food, farming and sustainability, and who participated in the conference. "Our extensive outreach tells us that farmers are looking for help with right-to-farm laws, estate planning, and understanding food regulation," he says.
In recent years, agriculture has generated increasing public concern and scrutiny. Food safety, environmental sustainability, agricultural labor, plant variety protection, and patents in genetic resources are just some of the issues that have attracted the attention of consumers, the media and elected officials.
During a tour of Real Food Farm, an eight-acre farm in northeast Baltimore that raises tomatoes, eggplant, corn, spinach, peppers, mushrooms, fruit, and other crops to be sold at local farmers' markets, conference participants sampled food grown on urban farms. Larry Hountz, owner of City-Hydro, told participants about his novel "vertical farm" that grows 'microgreens" (created during the infancy of an edible plant), exotic herbs, and edible flowers hydroponically in his Baltimore row house. Hountz passed trays of microgreen cress, sorrel, arugula, and chard for tour participants to sample.
Applying rural agricultural rules to urban agricultural land uses poses questions like "do we need to reconsider what a farm is?" and "do right to farm laws include urban farming?" says Paul Goeringer, LLM, an extension legal specialist with The Agricultural Law Education Initiative (ALEI), a collaborative under the University of Maryland: MPowering the State.
ALEI combines the expertise of Maryland Carey Law, the College of Agricultural and Natural Resources at the University of Maryland, College Park, and the School of Agricultural and Natural Sciences at the University of Maryland, Eastern Shore. Launched in 2013, ALEI builds capacity in agricultural law in Maryland to help meet the legal needs of farmers.
Establishing and running an urban farm is a labor of love, says Michael Primm, principal of the Green School in Baltimore, which grows flowers, fruit trees, and vegetables. Primm noted that his school could face legal challenges such as liability for accidents when it expands the garden to an adjacent property. He also wonders about the future of the farm should the land be sold. "I'm learning that there seem to be more questions than answers at this point," he says.
About MPowering the State
The University of Maryland: MPowering the State brings together two universities of distinction to form a new collaborative partnership. Harnessing the resources of each, the University of Maryland, College Park and the University of Maryland, Baltimore will focus the collective expertise on critical statewide issues of public health, biomedical informatics, and bioengineering. This collaboration will drive an even greater impact on the state, its economy, the job market, and the next generation of innovators. The joint initiatives will have a profound effect on productivity, the economy, and the very fabric of higher education.