In recent years, the food justice movement has been gaining momentum with a growing network of grassroots organizations, urban farmers, public health advocates, and community allies.  However, many cities remain saddled with outdated zoning codes, pricey permit fees, and legal barriers to growing and selling produce on public and private lands.

Bay Localize’s Grow Local campaign is working hard to make urban agriculture more sustainable and economically viable. By helping to boost local food growing and selling, we're creating local green jobs and livelihoods while improving community health.

We need more community gardens, urban farms, and living roofs. We need more accessible, culturally relevant, fresh, healthy foods for everyday people, especially those in low-income neighborhoods. To do this, Bay Localize is bringing together a diverse cross-section of community members to advance a more locally resilient, socially just food economy.

So far, our Grow Local campaign has worked from the ground up, connecting grassroots community efforts with policy efforts at the local level. We have built and revitalized rooftop and community gardens, partnered with the San Francisco Urban Ag Alliance to legalize food growing and selling throughout the city, and organized a broad, diverse coalition in Oakland to ramp up urban ag in the heart of the East Bay.

As our corporate-driven food system increasingly fails to serve us, it is essential for our communities to build up our own capacity to provide for our people's fundamental needs. It's time to grow local food resilience.  It is time to grow local!

GET INVOLVED! To get involved in our Grow Local campaign, please contact Aaron Lehmer at aaron@baylocalize.org.

EVENT NOTICE! On July 21st, the City of Oakland Planning Department is hosting an urban agriculture community workshop 6:30-8:30pm at the North Oakland Senior Center, 5714 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Oakland. This will be the first of two workshops before draft zoning regulations are presented to the Planning Commission and the City Council, and will focus on identifying issues that the city should consider in formulating urban agricultural policy.