A new proposal is aiming to make fresh food more accessible to Madisonians through expanded use of the city’s Land Banking Fund, according to the Wisconsin State Journal.
Typically, the city buys land using this fund or tax incremental financing to hold for future use — for projects like low-cost housing or a mixed-use development — and then requests developer proposals to find a private or nonprofit partner. The new proposal by Alds. Tag Evers and Dina Nina Martinez-Rutherford would expand the priorities of the fund to include urban agriculture as a secondary use, in the form of community and market gardens, vertical farming, greenhouses, and more.
The policy would allow developers responding to city requests to add these agricultural uses to their proposals. It would not open city-purchased properties for urban agriculture use as the city holds them for future redevelopment, however, and it also is not intended to create competition for city land between uses like urban agriculture and housing.
