by Kelly Thompson
Photos: Toledo Botanical Garden
Urban agriculture will be an essential part of our city’s future. In fact, it already is.
Gardening outreach program Toledo GROWs has helped to establish 120 community gardens in the area. Our weekly downtown farmer’s market offers fresh organic produce, raw honey and baked goods for a fraction of what these items would cost in a supermarket. Urban agriculture—growing our own food within city limits—solves many economic and community health problems.
It’s time for a discussion on the future of urban agriculture in Toledo because our community has “food deserts”—places defined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as “vapid of fresh fruit, vegetables, and other healthful whole foods.” There are too many neighborhoods in our city where the only “groceries” within walking distance are at convenience stores or gas stations, and the most healthy thing you could find there is a questionable package of crackers.
ProMedica announced plans last October to include a corner grocery store at 18th and Madison Sts. in the Uptown District, trying to address this concern in the downtown area. (ProMedica declined comment for this article.) Sam Okun Produce is heading up an initiative that includes the delivery of fresh food to city convenience stores. The urban agriculture movement is already happening here.
And this kind of initiative is not unique to Toledo; lack of quality food is a concern shared by cities all over the country. But before the Glass City can join the urban growing movement, our lawmakers have some decision-making to do.
The problem
“You’re seeing a lot of gardens pop up throughout the city of Toledo. People are doing it for a few years, getting great results, feeding their families and their neighbors,” said Joe Perlaky, executive director of the Maumee Valley Growers Association. “It gives these neighborhoods pride; it keeps people busy.
“[Neighborhood gardeners] are getting better, and they could extend their growing season about one or two months either way if they had a hoop house on the property,” Perlaky explained. One great solution for cold-weather growing is a hoop house, also known as a polytunnel or a high tunnel—an unheated greenhouse that allows for organic vegetable harvests during the dead of winter, when it’s most difficult for “food desert” residents to find nutritious options elsewhere. Hoop houses also allow larger market/wholesale gardeners to bring fresh produce to the urban core year-round, making it an economical option.
But therein lies the problem: not unlike the Council’s 2014 Food Truck Contretemps, the city currently doesn’t have permit or zoning laws for hoop houses; they’re classified as permanent structures, which translates to mandatory architectural renderings and roughly $3-5,000 in permit fees for owners.
Yvonne Dubielak, the Education and Outreach Director at Toledo GROWs, agreed with Perlaky on the importance of hoop houses. “One of the main hurdles is being able to grow year-round. [Since] a hoop house is a smaller structure [it is], in theory, movable, not attached to the ground,” Dubielak said.
The director stressed that, from the agricultural aspect, it should be an obvious to classify them as temporary structures, as hoop houses are movable objects. She also mentioned that the city’s amendation of the law would be a two-step process; once the building code classification is changed in the rulebooks (to determine specifications), the city would then need to determine zoning laws for the structures (to determine where they can be built). In short, these determinations will impact whether or not urban agriculture can thrive in Toledo.
The horizon
In response to this growing need, members of Toledo’s City Council will host an Urban Agriculture Summit at 10am, Wednesday, February 25 in Council Chambers (One Government Center). As a member of both the Economic Development Committee and the Northwest Ohio Food Policy Council, Toledo Councilwoman Sandy Spang and County Commissioner Carol Contrada are heavily invested in the summit. “We have some challenges to overcome locally that may be eased if we can present the potential of urban agriculture to improve the economic and physical health of our citizens and our economy,” Spang said.
Open to the public, this presentation to the council and EDC will include a tour of sustainable local farms and a presentation from two keynote speakers: Morgan Taggart, County Extension Educator with OSU, and Carlton Jackson, co-founder of TunnelVision Hoop Houses. Both speakers have worked with the city of Cleveland to adapt building code regulations and zoning to accommodate urban agriculture. Their experiences, hopefully, will inform and influence Toledo’s future legislation.
Commissioner Contrada noted that if city lawmakers can agree on a policy that works for urban agriculture, it won’t just benefit our economy and neighborhoods—it’s also essential to Toledo’s identity. “Various ethnicities are able to keep their culture alive through the food they grow and serve,” she explained. “Toledo’s a wonderful tapestry of ethnic neighborhoods, so that makes urban agriculture a cultural issue as well.”
Karen Wood and Peter Ujvagi are garden leaders at East Toledo’s Magyar Gardin [sic], a community plot that’s existed for more than 100 years. Ujvagi described the different kinds of peppers and vegetables grown there—Hungarian and Slovak cooking staples that “many people have never heard of.” In 2013, the garden was granted a free hoop house (equivalent to $10,000), along with a $5,000 grant from The Andersons to repair the house, pay for permits and start the growing process. “We had the tools, we had the grant money. In a perfect world, we could’ve had it up and running in two weeks,” she said.
Since Toledo doesn’t currently have policy in place for the houses, Wood’s request was met with demands for architectural plans and a slew of additional fees. It was a perfect illustration of what Commissioner Contrada deemed “the need to revamp our policies,” adherence to laws that may have made sense in a different time—but not in 2015.
Wood’s frustration was compounded by the fact that she has 30 years under her belt as a city government employee, working as Assignment Commissioner for Toledo Municipal Court. “As a former bureaucrat, I know that we have the power to make changes in government. I went into [the greenhouse project] thinking it would be no problem, and it was a humbling experience,” Wood said.
Similarly, Woodward High School, in partnership with Toledo GROWs, recently met requests from the city to cut down the square footage of their hoop house to comply with current regulations.
Scott Delaney, garden leader for University Church, echoed both Wood and Contrada’s sentiments about the benefits of greenhouses. “Growing in a confined area with subpar soil rules out a lot of conventional farming or gardening in our city. Anytime you can extend your season with a hoop house, the environment for food production skyrockets, ” he said.
The solution
Urban agriculture is an umbrella term, used to describe community gardens, backyard gardens, and urban farms, like that of the Glass City Goat Gals. Co-founders Elizabeth Harris and Unique Jones have worked for nearly four years to design a small urban farming system on Mentor Drive, close to the intersection of Cherry St. and Central Ave. The small farm will include a variety of animals—goats, chickens, bees—and will be a destination for hands-on education projects, including 4-H programs for children. Their focus, like that of many community gardens, is also on education and neighborhood improvement.
“I recently asked a group of children, ‘Where does an apple come from?’ And they didn’t know,” Harris said. “We’re so far removed from where our food comes from . . . urban farms and local growing provide systems that can educate everyone. It just makes sense.”
Harris and Unique Jones started the farm project four years ago, and both of them obtained their urban agriculture and sustainability certificate from Owens Community College. They’re ready to break ground this spring. “There are plenty of reusable lots, and it makes local agriculture a perfect fit for Toledo. It adds new life to the community, and that’s one of our biggest goals,” Jones said. Like local market and community gardeners, Harris and Jones are emphatic about bringing food education and sustainability to our city’s neighborhoods.
And despite her recent disappointment, Magyar gardener Karen Wood is optimistic for the future. “We’re willing to do whatever would make the city happy, and to make our greenhouses safe, sound structures,” she said. “I have a vision of Toledo where we can set the stage nationally with urban agriculture . . . as a place where people come to see what we’re doing, not the other way around.”
Support local agriculture in our city at 10am, Wednesday, February 25 in City Council Chambers, 1 Government Center.
