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handle is hein.crs/govcewp0001 and id is 1 raw text is: 01;0i E~$~ & p\w gnom ggmm mppm qq\ , q I as 11LIANJILiN, Updated January 9, 2017 Expanding Federal Support for Urban Agriculture Over the past decade, food policy in the United States has addressed ongoing shifts in consumer preferences and producer trends that favor local and regional food systems. This has led to increased agricultural production in urban areas within and surrounding major U.S. cities. Congress has influenced this shift through various enacted changes in U.S. farm policy. The previous two farm bills- the Agricultural Act of 2014 (P.L. 113-79) and the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008 (P.L. 110-246)- expanded federal support for local and regional food systems. These legislative changes, mostly in the form of new or expanded grants and loans, support urban agriculture although not explicitly so. Many of these changes resulted from introduced legislation representing comprehensive marker bills addressing provisions across multiple farm bill titles, recommending changes to provide additional support for local and regional food systems. In addition to implementing these legislative changes, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) implemented a number of agency-wide initiatives to further institutionalize these programmatic changes. Its leading initiative-Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food-was launched in 2009 to eliminate organizational barriers between existing programs and promote enhanced collaboration within USDA. In 2016, USDA also launched its Urban Agriculture Toolkit to support production and increase access to healthy foods through urban agriculture. During this period, USDA has invested $1 billion in 40,000 projects to develop local and regional agricultural market opportunities. In anticipation of the 2018 farm bill reauthorization, the Urban Agriculture Act of 2016 (S. 3420, Stabenow) was introduced in the 114th Congress. A similar bill was introduced in the 113th Congress (H.R. 5616, Kaptur). These bills proposed to expand existing farm programs and funding, as well as fund new programs and incentives, to promote urban agriculture (see text box). For example, in the 114th Congress, S. 3420 would have provided additional mandatory funding and authorize appropriations to support competitive grants and research initiatives supporting urban farming along with expanded risk management tools. It would have also provided new support for business planning, composting, community access to healthy foods and expanded USDA data collection. The expected total cost of the bill is not available, as the Congressional Budget Office did not provide a cost estimate. In the United States, urban agriculture has evolved over time, starting with vacant lot cultivation and encompassing school gardens, the city beautification movement prior to World War I, Victory gardens during World Wars I and II, and relief gardens during the Great Depression. Urban farming now covers a range of operations including vacant city lots, city parks, churchyards, schoolyards, backyards, and community gardens. Operations may be on private or public land owned individually or by a community group, institution, municipality, or land trust. Operations may be managed by a nonprofit organization or private enterprise to grow food for sale at retail stores, or they may be smaller- sized operations that grow exclusively for sale at farmers' markets or for field-to-direct-sales to consumers, food processors, and cottage food makers (home kitchens). Among the types of foods grown are row crops (including medicinal and ornamental plants), fruit trees, and some types of livestock (e.g., chickens, goats, and honey bees). Urban farming operations, however, can be very diverse in terms of the types of systems and practices used. For example, increasingly urban agriculture involves large-scale innovative systems and capital-intensive operations, vertical and roof-top farms, hydroponic greenhouses (such as using soil-less systems), and aquaponic facilities. USDA does not collect comprehensive nationwide data on urban agricultural sites in the United States, and only limited information is available for select localities from individual case studies of urban agricultural and community operations in larger cities and broader production regions. Cities with a larger number of urban agricultural operations include Chicago (IL), New York (NY), Philadelphia (PA), Detroit (MI), Oakland (CA), Portland (OR), Cleveland (OH), Los Angeles (CA), Providence (RI), Seattle (WA), San Francisco (CA), Austin (TX), and Minneapolis, MN, among other areas throughout the country (Figure 1). Some existing or planned large-scale facilities include Grange Farm and Gotham Greens (New York, NY); Hantz Farms (Detroit, MI); Growing Power (Milwaukee, WI, and Chicago, IL); FarmedHere (Chicago, IL); AeroFarms (New Jersey); and Bright Farms facilities (Illinois, Missouri, Pennsylvania, and Virginia). Figure I. Reported Urban Agriculture Sites X ..... . . . . 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