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Salt Lake County hopes to sprout more community gardens
Urban farming » Parkland could give way to cropland under Bradley's plan.
By Jeremiah Stettler
The Salt Lake Tribune
Salt Lake Tribune
Updated:08/18/2009 07:28:42 AM MDT
The tomatoes grow high and heavy in Tyler Montague's garden just outside the downtown bustle of Utah's capital.
It's lunch time. And Montague, who runs the grocery department at the nearby Liberty Heights Fresh market, is harvesting a hefty crop in a community
garden so popular that the waiting list now stretches five years long.
It's a tiny patch of the Wasatch Front's agrarian past that could spread like summer squash under an urban-farming proposal that Salt Lake County
Councilman Jim Bradley is expected to introduce today.
The councilman's plan could transform some "under-utilized" neighborhood parks throughout the county into community gardens and allow farmers to
lease government-owned turf for food or biofuel production until the land is needed for parks or public infrastructure.
"If we can start putting this land to a beneficial use and growing produce," Bradley says, "everybody wins."
Wearing a wide-brimmed hat and sunglasses, Montague reaches into a bag and shows off a red-speckled beauty from his Salt Lake City soil.
"Let me give you a tomato," he tells a reporter. "You can't buy tomatoes this good."
He is a believer in urban farming -- and in Bradley's proposal. Any plan that increases local crop production and enables more people to grow their
own food, he says, would serve the community well.
"It is a really smart move in terms of strengthening the Valley," Montague says. "I'm totally for it."
So is County Mayor Peter Corroon, who described the proposal Monday as a "great way to bring sustainable development into the county and a great
way to remember our agricultural roots."
Bradley's vision isn't to buy up farmland. Instead, he wants to put the public's vacant land to better use.
In Salt Lake City, for instance, officials have set aside 200 west-side acres for a future wastewater-treatment plant. But the city won't need the plant
for at least 15 years. So the parcel could grow weeds -- or it could grow safflower, an oil-seed crop that could produce up to 10,000 gallons of biofuel
each year.
Ben McAdams, senior adviser to Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker, said the city is eager to participate in Bradley's program.
"We thought it was a no-brainer," he says.
While proponents of the Bradley plan haven't identified how much acreage could be used for agriculture, Dallas Hanks, a research scientist for the
Utah State University Extension, says the farming potential on the county's open lands are "absolutely" worthwhile -- even on smaller strips of unused
land.
Consider an 8-acre West Jordan swath outside Mountain View Golf Course, for example. That land, Hanks says, could produce a profitable
raspberry patch or serve as a tree farm for the county's parks division.
The county also is considering farming possibilities on larger tracts such as the 64-acre Wheadon Farms property in Draper. Government wouldn't do
the farming. It simply would lease the land to a farmer or help create a co-op.
On a smaller scale, Bradley's plan would urge the county and its cities to create more community garden space, potentially converting some
neighborhood parks to that purpose.
"It's a beginning," the councilman says. "But I think there is a tremendous amount of potential."
Bradley will ask the County Council today to move forward with his urban-farming proposal by creating a technical advisory committee and
assigning the county's open-space coordinator as the program's full-time manager. He says the program would tap the county's existing resources and
require no additional expenditure.
If all goes as planned, Bradley hopes to have the county's properties ready to plant by next spring.
jstettler@sltrib.com
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What's next?
The Salt Lake County Council will discuss the urban-farming proposal during its 2:30 p.m. committee meeting today at the Salt Lake County
Government Center, 2001 S. State St.
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