UPDATE: California Law Creates Financial Incentive for Urban Farming

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Small-scale farming in the city is risky business, especially if you don’t own the land you’re farming. Low profit and high rent can leave these urban spaces to grow healthy food to dry up.

Brooke Budner and Caitlyn Galloway, the co-founders of San Francisco’s Little City Gardens, understand this better than anyone. They don’t own the three-quarter acre lot they farm and scrape by on a month-to-month lease.

A new law proposed by California Assemblyman Phil Ting (who represents San Francisco and San Mateo) might give Little City Gardens a bit more security so the small business can thrive.

The idea is simple: Property owners who commit to leasing their land to agricultural enterprises for at least 10 years will be able to receive a re-valuation of their parcels that will lower their property tax bill. The act would work on an opt-in basis, with California’s 58 counties getting to decide if they want to participate in giving urban farmers a hand.

The measure has a natural champion in Ting, the former county assessor for San Francisco, which has a thriving urban agriculture scene. “During my time as assessor, I learned about, and was impressed with, the vibrant and growing community of people engaged in urban farming throughout San Francisco,” Ting says. “When I was elected to the Assembly, I reached out to them [San Francisco’s urban farmers] to have a conversation about what could be done at the state level to encourage more urban farming. One of the obstacles they pointed to was the difficulty in accessing unused parcels of land because the high rate of taxation on those lands in urban areas made it financially infeasible for a landowner to allow farming on the property.”

UPDATE: In early October 2013, the bill was signed into law. Urban agriculture activists in California, like Little City Gardens, are optimistic about the future of urban farming, thanks to the new tax regulations.

2014 UPDATE: The Urban Agriculture Incentive Zones Act will go into effect September 8, 2014 and owners of empty lots could save thousands of dollars a year in property taxes in exchange for allowing their land to be used for agriculture for five years or more. Read more.

Read more about the law here!