Editor’s note: This story is the first in a new series about urban farming.
Urban agriculture is as varied as its locale and model. Whether a community garden, an urban rooftop or green roof garden, controlled environment agriculture or edible landscaping, all forms are contributing to the local food supply, according to the USDA Climate Hubs, particularly in areas with shorter growing seasons.
Depending on local statutes, urban farms can supply local chickens, eggs, goat milk and honey in addition to fruits and vegetables, which the USDA says helps urban areas contribute to “reducing emissions from long supply chains and land conversion.”
Along with adding to the local food supply by selling at farmers markets, through community supported agriculture programs and restaurants or by donating to food banks, the USDA says urban farms are integral to providing education “about climate change, food security, biodiversity, pollinators and nutrition to the community.” The agency says urban agriculture also can increase food access and green spaces in parts of a city that are historically disadvantaged and can help reduce problems related to pollution and climate change.
“Urban farms have the potential to change the world’s agricultural landscape. …urban farms can bring greater yields in smaller areas, increase access to healthy options in urban food deserts, and mitigate the environmental impact of feeding the world,” Futurism’s Patrick Caughill wrote in “Urban Farming Is the Future of Agriculture.”
Urban agriculture’s impact also goes beyond the immediate community; the USDA says these farms contribute 15% to 20% of the global food supply.
In an ongoing series, The Packer will feature urban farms throughout the country, highlighting each of their particular challenges and opportunities, such as restructuring unused land, enabling year-round crop production or the ability to control the growing environment, to the obstacles of limited access of affordable land, the need for volunteer labor, lack of startup capital or, in the case of Urbavore Urban Farm, challenges that can arise from zoning and land use codes.
Planting seeds of change
In 2010, a young couple, Brooke Salvaggio and husband Dan Heryer, created Urbavore Urban Farm in Kansas City, Mo., with little more than determination and, in the early days, a baby strapped to the husband’s back as they tended chickens and hogs and planted crops.
Fourteen years later, their burgeoning farm has grown, along with their two children, but the urban endeavor has recently faced hardships arising from a clash between the farm’s operations and the city’s zoning laws.
Salvaggio says the couple was drawn to farming to make a difference. Both she and Heryer grew up in Middle America and were struck by the unsustainable lifestyles of large automobiles, convenience foods and lawns instead of gardens. In a sense, she says, the sustainability-focused farm was their rebellion against the status quo — and a way to have a direct influence in the region’s food landscape.
“We couldn’t positively affect our environments, our communities, if we didn’t start at the center of the web, which was just food and sustenance and nutrition for people on the planet, because that’s kind of a No. 1 basic need,” she says.
“Our mission is nurturing the earth and conjuring food from it and creating equitable spaces for people and creatures and community to coexist,” she adds.
They decided they could have the most influence by farming where people live and eat.
Nurturing the land
Progressive plans in mind, the couple acquired 13.5 acres in 2010 without fencing, housing or utilities. From that raw canvas, they constructed a biologically diverse farmstead at 5500 Bennington Ave.
About a decade later, they purchased Compost Collective KC, a composting business that serves over 3,000 households, taking in 25,000 pounds of food waste every week — or more than 1 million pounds of food waste a year. Salvaggio says the couple feeds 135 families a week via the farm’s community supported agriculture program and its online store, as well as through restaurant sales.
“More or less, you could say we are producing close to $300,000 worth of food every year,” she says.
The output is also tied to the couple’s commitment to environmental integrity, which includes using energy-efficient systems for food production, waste, water and shelter. The farm’s growing methods produce vegetables, fruits, eggs and pork.
“Through minimal tillage, compost applications, cover cropping, deep mulch and animal rotations, the farm builds biologically active soil,” Salvaggio says. “Food crops thrive in this living soil, and as a result, are never sprayed with pesticides or fungicides [including those approved for certified organic farms].”
Urbavore Urban Farm’s growing practices, which Salvaggio calls “beyond organic,” consist not only of forgoing chemicals, but also creating truly regenerative soil.
“The soil is the focus. The soil is the medium. The food is sort of a byproduct when you create thriving soil communities,” she says.
Part of the issue, Salvaggio says, is that conventional and organic farmers are told to use products to grow better food and have higher yields, but if the soil is in the healthy state it’s meant to be, it provides all “nutrients, moisture and everything the plant’s roots ideally want.”
The farm’s practices are the formula that Mother Nature intended, Salvaggio says.
Still, there are multiple layers to the couple’s farming approach.
“There’s a bigger ecosystem at play than just soil regeneration. It’s not like we have crop fields, end of story,” she says. “We have animals that rotate through the crop field — pastured chickens, pastured hogs. We grow different types of beneficial flowers and shrubs and plants and herbs that help create a thriving ecosystem, both insect wildlife, birdlife, etc. All of these players are working together to create a situation where healthy food can thrive.”
For example, the farm uses specific flowers to attract insects that help manage harmful invaders.
“That insect is eating the pests that might be a problem for, say, tomatoes or other crops,” Salvaggio says. “It’s creating an ecosystem where the checks and balances are naturally built into the farm.”
The farm’s output is varied. The couple grows popular perennial crops like strawberries and asparagus. There are apple and peach orchards, though these yields depend on whether there’s a late frost or an abundance of damaged fruit from pests, she says.
There’s also a wide variety of vegetable crops, such as “… arugula to zucchini and everything in between,” Salvaggio says. “And a lot of storage crops and things that are kind of kitchen staples, like garlic and potatoes and sweetpotatoes and onions …
“It’s very unique varieties — heirloom varieties, stuff you’re not going to find in the grocery store; things that are unique colors and shapes and flavors and really different than the status quo vegetables that people are used to,” she adds.
Before ever getting invested in the dirt, however, the aspiring urban farmers had to take care of business on paper.
Navigating zoning rules
The property that would become Urbavore Urban Farm had been previously owned by a nonprofit that developed low-income housing projects, Salvaggio says, meaning the couple had to satisfy city codes to rezone the land from residential to agricultural use.
“We also had to get the community on board,” Salvaggio says.
The couple knocked on doors, explaining their plan and asking what neighbors thought of it.
“We had pretty much 100% community support. We even held a big community meeting,” Salvaggio says. “We went through this lengthy process to ensure that our vision for this site was in accordance with what the neighborhood wanted.”
Though neighbors the couple originally spoke with were on board, Salvaggio says, the situation changed gradually as people moved.
In 2011, the couple started a free composting program that the community used to compost food scraps, Salvaggio says. Then in 2020, they decided to buy Compost Collective KC, an established curbside composting company that collects food waste from area residents.
“Before taking in this larger volume of waste, we needed to make sure everything was within codes and the land use,” she says.
Salvaggio says Heryer contacted the city planning department about their intention and details for building a new composting site to complement the new aspect of their business.
She says they thought it might require a special-use permit but were told that because the composting they were doing is an accessory use to the primary agricultural use of the land, they could build the site exactly as described it without the additional permit.
Following that, the couple invested $500,000 to buy Compost Collective KC, Salvaggio says, and they dedicated about a quarter-acre with nine bays made from concrete blocks. Each bay contains piles of what looks like black dirt in varying stages of decomposition, she explains.
All was well, Salvaggio says, as they began to build the site, invest in equipment and work with employees of the recently purchased composting company.
Then came objections from neighbors.
“Not just about the compost, but the farm in general,” she says. “Varied complaints such as traffic, animals, smells and more.”
Complaints to the city’s Neighborhood Services Department ultimately led to site visits.
“Inspectors even from animal control were coming out, and we’d show them around. We’d go to the compost site and then to see the animals,” Salvaggio says. “They came to assess if there was any odor, and they found nothing and were unable to issue us any violations.”
However, the city government ultimately notified the urban farm’s owners in May 2023 of four alleged violations:
- Compost facility — It determined Urbavore Urban Farm’s composting operations constituted a composting facility under the zoning code.
- Retail sales — The city interpreted the farm’s distribution of local products that are not produced on Urbavore Urban Farm as retail sales, in violation of the farm’s zoning at that time.
- Vehicle use areas — The city requires driveways and roads entering a property to be paved for the first 25 feet from the edge of the property line. Both entrances at Urbavore Urban Farm are graveled, not paved, says Salvaggio, who claims they are grandfathered in, as they existed in the 1960s.
- Shipping container — The city states shipping containers cannot be stored on residentially zoned property.
The cost of compliance
The couple thinks the violations outlined by the city contrast with prior zoning approvals, says Salvaggio, who added that it will be costly for the small farm to correct.
“The violations also threaten the broader urban farming community by setting a negative precedent for community composting and urban farm stands at-large,” she says.
Salvaggio says the couple appealed the violations within a 10-day window. That ultimately led to a recommendation for a master plan development rezoning, which would ideally bring the farm into compliance for about the next couple of decades or so, Salvaggio says.
The process for the zoning change took almost a year to complete, a timeline compounded by requested revisions and having the matter pushed back over multiple meetings, she says.
The community, Salvaggio says, came together to support the effort to save the farm and compost program. Through crowdfunding, the couple raised $70,000 to aid their cause.
“If there’s any silver lining, it’s that this horrible process has shown us the community support is just massive and how it’s truly grassroots,” she says. “So, we’re proud that … we could all come together and stand strong.”
But the time consumed by meetings, hearings and presentation preparation while seeking a solution took a toll. Salvaggio says they’ve struggled financially and emotionally, with the ongoing circumstances impacting their ability to farm and manage their team.
“It’s incredibly hard for farmers anywhere — rural, urban, conventional, organic — it doesn’t matter. Making a living from growing food is nearly impossible, so it’s a feat in and of itself that this situation hasn’t drained us financially,” Salvaggio says. “It has, possibly worse still, just drained our time. Normally our time is spent 24/7, working in the fields, growing food for people, and we have been out of the fields to deal with this.
“In the two years that we’ve been dealing with this — two solid growing seasons — we’ve just lost so much momentum on the farm,” she adds. “On a farm, not only are you growing the food daily, but you’re also slowly but surely building the farm and crafting it over time. We feel as if we’ve not only lost momentum but taken steps backward.”
The path ahead
When the city council held its final vote Jan. 30, the decision left a path forward for Urbavore Urban Farm — but not exactly as its owners had hoped.
The master plan development rezoning was denied, however, the couple could proceed with their compost operation and the farm with some modifications.
In many ways, the farm can continue business as usual, Salvaggio says. They’ll still have to address some costly changes, such as paving the first 25 feet of the farm’s drive entrances, and they will lose the revenue from selling other merchants’ goods through the farm.
Salvaggio says the hardest decision to accept was the rejection of their master plan.
“We’d spent over a year and thousands of hours with design professionals and the community coming up with this beautiful 30-year vision for the farm, and this rezoning would have sort of codified all these uses of the farm and allowed us to evolve the farm and make it more of an educational center,” says Salvaggio, adding that the plan would have included initiatives such as community solar, a farm-to-table kitchen, nature-based education and more.
In the end, the couple thinks nothing was ultimately gained from the ordeal.
“In essence, we wasted [$100,000], thousands of hours and two years of our lives,” Salvaggio says. “We got nothing. The community got nothing. The youth we want to educate got nothing.”
The couple plans to take some time to recover from the experience while considering their path ahead, and they will scale back over the next year, Salvaggio says. The farm will continue with perennial plants like strawberries and asparagus, along with having pigs and chickens, but it will grow fewer annual vegetables as it is reorganized.
“We’re discontinuing our [community supported agriculture program], which is our bread and butter and what we’ve been working toward for so long,” Salvaggio says.
Instead, they’ll sell on a smaller scale at farmer’s markets and bi-weekly pickup orders.
And while the situation has taken a toll already, Salvaggio says, the outcome’s effect could linger.
“Moving forward, without that master rezoning plan in place, we feel we’re very vulnerable for something like this to happen all over again,” she says.
Follow Urbavore Urban Farm at urbavorefarm.com.
