County Councilman Hopes to Establish Urban Farming Program
08.10.2009 by Jeff Robinson
(KCPW News) Salt Lake County Councilman Jim Bradley wants to launch an urban farming program to put unused properties owned by the county or local municipalities to good use. Under the proposal, local, small-scale farmers would rent the parcels at a subsidized rate, then produce either food or biofuels.
“We have the land, we have water on that land in many cases, and we can put that to beneficial use and solve a lot of problems that are either facing America now or will in the near future,” he told KCPW.
Bradley says those problems include declining food security as small-scale farms are taken over by large, corporate operations. He believes there are plenty of farmers in the Salt Lake Valley who would want to participate.
The councilman says some properties could be used for farming on a short-term basis, then developed into open space, while others could be used for farming permanently.
“For instance, Mountain View golf course, we have about eight acres adjacent to the golf course that’s just there; it grows weeds and they cut them down. That would be a possibility, that we could use that forever as well; that would be a great spot for an orchard,” he said.
Bradley says Salt Lake City has already expressed interest in the urban farming proposal. He’ll pitch his idea to the county council’s community services subcommittee tomorrow morning.
What is helping to spur the type of farming industry that Councilman Bradley envisions is a franchise-ready sub-acre farming system called SPIN-Farming. SPIN makes it possible to earn $50,000+ from a half-acre. SPIN’s growing techniques are not, in themselves, breakthrough. What is novel is the way a SPIN farm business is run. SPIN provides everything you’d expect from a good franchise: a business plan, marketing advice, and a detailed day-to-day workflow. In standardizing the system and creating a reproducible process it really isn’t any different from McDonalds. By offering a non-technical, easy-to-understand and inexpensive-to-implement farming system, SPIN allows many more people to farm commercially, wherever they live, as long as there are nearby markets to support them. By using uderutilized municipal land, SPIN farmers are recasting farming as a small business in a city or town, and you can see some of these entrepreneurial farmers in action at http://www.spinfarming.com Aspirirgn farmers in Salt Lake City are welcome to join them!