Meeting Draws Urban Agriculture Advocates

By Davi Koszka

On April 25 over 80 people packed the Olympia City Council Chambers. Community members of all sorts had taken every last chair and the walls around the chambers were lined with those that could sit on the ground or stand, as TJ Johnson of Sustainable South Sound, and Jennifer Kenny, Associate City Planner of the City of Olympia, introduced themselves and the agenda for the evening.

Johnson’s organization and Kenny’s department teamed up to host a review of how the city approaches urban agriculture in its planning, ordinances, and comprehensive planning. Urban agriculture is the practice of growing, processing and distributing food in urban and peri-urban environments and can involve livestock, arboriculture, or aquaculture. The City of Olympia had sent out a call to seek community input into its efforts and to help Olympia catch up to the national trend.

Johnson and Kenny outlined the evening: discussion on additions and changes to the comprehensive plan, discussion of barriers to successful urban agricultural development in Olympia, and solutions and ideas to bring forward to the planning commission. The room divided into small breakout groups, in which greeners, peaceniks, local community volunteers, transition town-ers and dystopians all teamed up to discuss what is to be done with urban ag (as it was affectionately called at the meeting) in Oly.

Sample ideas were introduced from Philly, Baltimore, and Seattle – city supported farmer’s markets, achieving access to fresh and local food within 10 minutes of most peoples’ homes and farming vacant lots are among the policies being implemented across the US. The groups were set loose and the buzz filled the room and everyone set out to dream up the Olympia they want to farm…and harvest.

Olympia citizenry showed their no-holds-barred approach to getting fresh and local food into the hands of their neighbors, listing problems that limit their ability to grow and keep their food supply local. Most discussed administrative hassle: the single most important thing that the City of Olympia could do to address urban ag needs is make codes and regulation accessible and easy to understand. Beyond accessibility issues, there are challenges with setbacks – one woman pointed out that if she were to adhere to all property line setback regulations for her chicken coop it would have to be inside her house. Additionally, zoning laws prevent someone with agricultural zoning to sell veggies from their property, residentially zoned properties cannot grow food products that will be sold and cannot be sold from the property. All in all we, as a city are not set up for this.

As in all things Olympia, creativity flowed freely. When asked about his reaction to the meeting, Johnson commented on the energy of the 80 plus people in the room, “I am really excited! We can get a lot done if we put our minds to it.”

Participants listed many ideas: allowing vacant lots to be gardened without liability to the owner who may not live locally, incentivizing roof-top gardens on apartments, requiring food productions space in all new developments, and levying impact fees that would be set aside for farm land conservation inside the county. Others requested the city focus on Puget Sound as a viable food source and dedicate resources to regeneration of the toxic waters.

What seems required is that City of Olympia planners and developers think creatively about how to allow for increased food sovereignty in Thurston County. Johnson adds, “There are a couple categories of next steps. Some of these things will be quick and painless to implement. Some of these wont be able to be done in 2012. We need to do what we can in the short-term and keep the momentum up in the long-term.”

To that end, the next stop for most of the urban agriculture recommendations generated is the Land Use and Environment Committee. Anyone interested in urban agriculture and the development of city policy is welcome to attend the next committee meeting May 24^th at 5:30pm at City Hall.

If you are interested in getting email updates regarding the development of urban agriculture in Olympia, you can email Associate City Planner, Jennifer Kenny at or TJ Johnson at and be added to the distribution list for email announcements and updates.