Toledo urban farmers form an alliance
A cohort of Toledo-area farmers has formed an alliance to promote and protect urban agriculture.
The Urban Agriculture Alliance of Lucas County held its first meeting Sunday at St. Lucas Lutheran Church in Toledo. The organization’s primary goal is to reshape local policies to be more amenable to urban farmers, said Sean Nestor, the group’s organizer.
“We want to make it easier for people and remove barriers that may exist because our local policies haven’t responded sufficiently to make it easier for people to do urban agriculture,” Nestor said.
Moving forward, Nestor said the alliance would transition from a reactive organization to writing laws.
“Nobody knows the policies (better) than the growers themselves,” he said.
The advocates were galvanized and inspired to create a nonprofit after Thomas Jackson, a local urban farmer, endured a nearly two-year legal battle.
“I felt I wanted to preserve our rights to be able to grow for myself and others,” Liz Dickens said.
Jackson was ordered last year by a Toledo Municipal Court judge to pay $3,000 in fines after he was convicted of a nuisance misdemeanor for refusing to remove the wood chips piled on vacant lots in the city’s Auburndale neighborhood.
The city said the wood chips were creating a nuisance after Jackson’s neighbors complained wood-chip piles were unsightly, smelled, and attracted rodents. Jackson said the wood chips were part of a process of turning parcels into productive urban organic agriculture.
He won his legal battle when Ohio’s 6th District Court of Appeals ruled in June that the city of Toledo failed to prove Jackson was not attempting to abate the alleged nuisance.
The newly formed alliance identified five policies it wants to pursue: to assist growers with tapping water on Toledo property, create a composted leaf delivery program, reduce the prevalence of harmful chemicals sprayed by public agencies, simplify hoop house permitting, and tax reduction for urban agriculture lots.