City Hall continues push to make locally grown food accessible to all Atlanta residents

• Dustin Chambers/CL File
• East Atlanta Village Farmers Market

During his time in office, Mayor Kasim Reed has talked a big game about increasing access to healthy and affordable food for all Atlantans.

Now he's tasking the Atlanta's Office of Sustainability with a goal of ensuring that all of the city's residents live within a half mile of locally grown food source. To do that, the Atlanta City Council has recently worked to revise zoning codes to loosen restrictions on urban farms and community gardens.

In Atlanta Magazine's new issue, Deputy Editor Rebecca Burns offers a short update on the city's latest efforts:

To this end, Denise Quarles's office - along with Georgia Organics and the Atlanta Local Food Initiative - drafted zoning changes to make it easier for urban farms to operate in areas now zoned residential or for other commercial uses. The "Urban Ag" ordinance was introduced by city council member Aaron Watson last fall; it is working its way through the approval process and is anticipated to pass this spring.

Under the ordinance, urban farms could operate in - but not sell from - residential areas. The zoning will make it easier for homeowners to tend their own crops. Now, "there's ambiguity," says Alice Rolls, executive director of Georgia Organics. "There's not a way to deal with the 'lettuce police' if a neighbor suddenly objects to what you're growing in your front yard."

The proposed ordinance, which currently sits with both Council's zoning committee and the city's zoning review board, would also allow under gardens to be planted on undeveloped residential lots provided that the owner obtains a special permit. It's currently winding its way through the city's Neighborhood Planning Unit system. You can see the meeting schedule and how those advisory groups have voted here.

While we're on the topic of urban agriculture, some of you are probably wondering: What's going on with Trinity Avenue Farm, the city's proposal three years ago to turn a 1.3-acre site across the street from City Hall into a urban farm? In early 2013, Reed's office told CL that cost estimates would be available back in July. Last week, Quarles told us that little progress has since been made and she was uncertain about when the project would move forward.