April 20/Cleveland: Urban Agriculture: It’s Not an Oxymoron. Policies for Cultivating City Land and Increasing Access to Local Food

As the movement towards local food continues to grow, cities are finding that they must develop law and policies to allow for and regulate agricultural practices within urban communities.   Many cities are implementing policies to increase urban food production through regulation, incentives, and more comprehensive land-use and public-health policies.  Cities are doing so because they recognize that increasing agricultural land use can be a good answer to declining populations and an excess of abandoned or foreclosed properties.  Cities are also recognizing that increasing access to local food can provide economic and public health benefits.  And, regions are realizing that increasing the connections between rural farmers and urban consumers can provide a synergistic relationship with economic benefits to the farmer, health benefits to the consumer, ecological benefits to the environment, and a more sustainable and secure food sources for the community.
This symposium will first discuss why local food benefits the community, and then will elucidate the laws and policies that Cleveland and other cities have implemented to increase local food production and access to local food.  It will also address some of the benefits and challenges of implementing these policies.  Finally, it will address the need to strengthen the urban, suburban, and rural food connection to move towards more sustainable and reliable local food production.
Title:
Urban Agriculture: It’s Not an Oxymoron. Policies for Cultivating City Land and Increasing Access to Local Food
When/Where:
Fri, 04/20/2012 - 2:00pm - 5:00pm
Cleveland-Marshall College of Law
1801 Euclid Ave, Cleveland, Ohio 44115 (Moot Court Room)
As part of the symposium, we will also have a lunch meeting where a smaller group, including the speakers and others who have a vested interest in the area of urban agricultural policy, can talk more freely about how other Cities can benefit from Cleveland’s success, and how Cleveland can learn from what other cities have done.
Speakers:

• Karen Butler – Director of the City of Cleveland’s Department of Public Health
• Joe Cimperman – Cleveland City Councilman.
• Brad Masi – Founder City Fresh and George Jones Farm
• Rich Hoban – Cleveland Crops, Stanard Farm, and Director of Economic Development at Cuyahoga County Board of Mental Retardation.
• Darwin Kelsey - Executive Director at Cuyahoga Valley Countryside Conservancy
• Morgan Taggart – Cuyahoga County Food Policy Coalition and Ohio State University Extension.
• David Orr – Oberlin College
• Neil Hamilton – Drake University - Dwight D. Opperman Chair of Law and Professor of Law & Director, Agricultural Law Center.
• Jacqueline Hand – Professor at Detroit Mercy College of Law
• Kimberly Hodgson- Owner/Consultant, Cultivating Healthy Places, Former Senior Research Associate and Manager of the Planning and Community Health Research Center at the American Planning Association

CLE credit: 
3 free hours
Sponsor:
Cleveland-Marshall College of Law
More:
https://www.law.csuohio.edu/newsevents/events/2012042014001398