For the first time since it began in 2015, the Agriculture Law Education Initiative’s annual Agricultural and Environmental Law Conference featured a panel discussing the challenges for Maryland’s urban farmers. It was also the first time that law students presented on a panel at the conference. Nicole Cook, Environmental and Agricultural Faculty Legal Specialist for the Agriculture Law Education Initiative (ALEI) at UMES, moderated the panel, which highlighted the legal challenges urban farmers in Baltimore in particular face in securing land and water to sustain their farms.
“Although urban agriculture has become a meaningful part of many communities like Baltimore and many communities throughout Maryland are trying to support and encourage urban agriculture, there are still legal barriers to long-term sustainability for urban farming in Maryland and across the country,” Cook said.
Titled, “Urban Agriculture: Land, Leasing & Liability Challenges,” the session highlighted the work of students from the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law. The law students assisted the Farm Alliance of Baltimore in its efforts to strengthen the city’s current policies and practices securing land for urban farmers in the city as well as ensuring access to water for their farms.
Panelists were Mariya Strauss, executive director of Farm Alliance of Baltimore; Patrick Jenkins, a law student in the Small Business and Community Equity Development Clinic; and Kyla Kaplan, a law student in the Environmental Law Clinic. The panelists reviewed some of the success stories of urban farms in Baltimore as well as the challenges farmers and the Farm Alliance have worked to overcome, Cook said. Some of the challenges in Baltimore, she said, include ensuring a stable, affordable rate for farmers for their water usage and creating laws (rather than policies) that provide urban farmers with a clear path to long-term access to land for farming. “Some of the students are specifically working on drafting laws that will provide transparent criteria for leasing land from the city to use for farming and provide farms with a long-term lease so that the farm can plan and make investments in the land,” she said.
“Another legal challenge for urban farmers in Baltimore,” Cook said, “is that, although Maryland’s General Assembly provided that cities could provide a property tax credit for urban farms regardless of whether the land is used solely for farming, Baltimore still requires that the land not be used for anything other than farming. This includes having a residential property on it in order for the farm to receive the tax credit. The students are assisting the Farm Alliance in advocating for Baltimore to align its tax laws with those of the state.”
In addition to the panel discussing the legal challenges for Maryland’s urban farms, this year’s sold-out crowd of agricultural professionals, attorneys, educators, environmentalists, farmers, elected officials and students also heard from a number of farming and environmental experts about various legal topics impacting Maryland’s farming and environmental communities. Among them were leasing farm land for solar energy generating and the new nutrient trading market that provides an opportunity for farming and aquaculture operations to increase their revenue streams.
“The conference is designed to discuss the complex intersection of environmental regulation and agriculture in Maryland,” Cook said. Past conferences have included expert panels on challenges to aquaculture in Maryland, conservation leasing and restrictions on the use of antibiotics in livestock.
For more information about ALEI and to see archived videos of all of the conferences, visit umaglaw.org and click on the “ALEI Conferences” tab.
