Planning for Equitable Urban Agriculture

Drawing on the book, the symposium makes the case for re-imagining agriculture as central to urban landscapes, and unpacks why, how, and when city planning should support equitable urban agriculture. The symposium frames questions of equity and justice as central to planning and policy efforts to promote urban agriculture (Panel 1), examines how civic agriculture is unfolding across urban landscapes in the US and the globe, led largely by community organizations (Panel II), and showcases policy leadership by cities from around the country (Panel III). 

The symposium will conclude with a call for action to promote equitable urban agriculture in the city of Buffalo.  The call for action draws on new analysis from the Growing Toward Equity report, co-produced by a community-student-research team including graduate students from the Department of Urban and Regional Planning, public policy partners from Erie County, Juneteenth Agricultural Pavilion, Buffalo Food Equity Network, and the UB Food Systems Planning and Healthy Communities Lab. 

Symposium speakers include community leaders, scholars, policy leaders, and urban growers from Buffalo and around the country. The symposium will be opened by Dan Kaufman, Jerry Kaufman’s son and writer for New Yorker.

The symposium celebrates the legacy of food systems planning scholar, teacher, and advocate, Jerome (Jerry) Kaufman (1933-2013) with the launch of a book in his honor. An emeritus professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a former staff member at ASPO (APA’s predecessor), and a founding member of the APA Food Interest Group (now APA FOOD), Jerry blended the roles of activist, practitioner (of planning), scholar, and teacher throughout his professional life. Jerry was a quintessential planner, diving into disparate questions if the answers got him strategically closer to making places work better for people, especially those pushed to the margins. Principles of fairness and justice were a central tenet of Jerry’s life and work. Jerry wrote about urban education and race, central city planning, gender in planning, ethics — and, later in his life, food systems. During his lifetime Jerry did not publish writings that explicitly connected planning ethics with planning for food systems, though there is plenty of evidence that this link nourished his scholarship, teaching, and actions on food systems. The editors of the book surmise that Jerry’s early preoccupation with planning ethics influenced his openness toward food systems, a topic that was largely overlooked in formal urban and regional planning practice. 

Jerry’s work is linked to Buffalo and UB. As part of a study funded by the Lincoln Land Institute, in the late nineties Jerry Kaufman (and Martin Bailkey) studied Village Farms, an indoor urban agriculture operation established on a former Brownfield site in Buffalo. UB’s Food Systems and Healthy Communities Lab founder and director Samina Raja trained with Jerry Kaufman while she was a graduate student at UW-Madison.

The event is co-hosted by a collective that represents varied strands of Jerry’s life. Co-hosts include: Buffalo Gardens Niagara, Cornell Cooperative Extension, University at Buffalo Food Systems Planning and Healthy Communities Lab (UB Food Lab), and many of Jerry’s former colleagues and students.

The book and event is supported financially in part by grants from the Foundation for Food and Agriculture, School of Architecture and Planning, and Food Systems Planning and Healthy Communities Lab and the Western New York Foundation. Additional symposium partners include Growing Food Policy from the Ground Up team including Appetite for Change, Buffalo Go Green, Johns Hopkins University, Massachusetts Avenue Project, University of Minnesota, and Urban Fruits & Veggies.