Muskegon Urban Farming Update
By Joshua S. EldenBrady

At the public meeting on December 8th, 2014, after much hemming and hawing (methinks thou dost protest too much), no one but the vice mayor was saying much directly against sales.  When challenged to explain what the hypothetical situation that they were afraid of under Michigan right to farm (which the vice mayor kept talking about), no one responded.  A number of comments were made that seemed to show incredible ignorance of the current gardens in the city and of the way that zoning works (ex: the city manager said that community gardens were never illegal because zoning didn’t specifically prohibit them - technically it didn’t but like most zoning Muskegon’s says that anything not specifically listed as allowed is illegal).

The public comment in support of produce sales was outstanding (thank you to everyone who showed up).

The discussion of what happened in the closed meeting was very generic and with almost no details.  Apparently they need to make some changes in their ordinance on the advice of MDARD but they did not say what any of those changes are so we are just going to have to wait and see.  What we do know is that they saying yes to sales right now but we do not know what the conditions will be or if there will be restrictions affecting private gardens like there appeared to be in their first draft.  (Note: the first draft was not targeted against home gardeners but due to contradictory language it could have been interpreted in a way that affected and severely restricted home gardens, it was targeted to affect those like my family that garden for personal use on a lot other than the one our home is on or those who intend to sell surplus produce even from a home garden).

There was some confusion from my previous post about what the city was directly attacking.  While some of the comments by members of the planning commission and zoning board of appeals indicated that having more gardens of any kind in the city was a problem, the proposed ordinance that was being discussed did not directly address home gardens and would only have affected them if they were selling or if it was interpreted in a certain way.  While the city attorney argued successfully this last year for a legal theory that could potentially make home gardening illegal since it is no longer a common practice in most of the city, there has not yet been any attempt to stop home gardens that are for personal use (although I have been told that at least one resident was told that composting was not allowed).  What the city has taken an official stand against is growing AND selling produce.  The proposed ordinance would have allowed growing AND selling but in exchange put significant restrictions, and the requirement to pay $200 for planning approval before planting, on anyone who was growing (even for personal use) on a lot other than the one their home is on. 

It looks like sales will not be allowed in time for the 2015 growing season either way.  Because of the procedural requirements of the zoning enabling act even if they take an ordinance to the planning commission in January it will be too late to order and start seeds by the time it passes.  However it looks like we might be moving in the right direction.

Thank you to all those who have shown support, please keep the pressure on until they actually get things done.

By Catherine Pinto

AACORN Farm (Adult Agricultural Community Option for Residential Needs) is a nonprofit organization formed by parents and professionals in Kalamazoo, Michigan. We have the dream to own a farm where adults with disabilities can work and live in an environment that offers a quality of life no urban setting ever could. My son Tom is 23 and has autism. He has a desire to work and live in a farm environment and has a special relationship with cows - he is known at the AACORN Farm vocational program as "The Cow Whisperer".  After an afternoon of work caring for animals and growing food crops at AACORN's small rented farm Tom is often rewarded with a visit to a nearby farm to "commune with the cows". AACORN's farm-based vocational program has served 20 people with disabilities in our community and each one of those individuals chose to come to the farm, many of them having failed at every other vocational program. This issue is not just that farms who serve people with disabilities were singled out to lose funding for vocational and residential programs, more importantly this issue is about CHOICE. 

The final regulations were described as “outcome-oriented”, but this guidance is misleading and not based on assessment of quality of life nor current research. In the midst of a dire lack of opportunities, state leaders must be informed that people with disabilities want INCREASED options and DECREASED barriers to housing and employment choices. 

There are parents of children and adults with disabilities all over the US  working hard to create agriculturally based programs and housing in an effort to get ahead of the looming crisis of a lack of appropriate services for adults. In the next decade 500,000 children with autism will be entering the adult mental health system, a system already straining to meet the needs of those they currently serve.  

Several years ago, the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) released a proposed regulation change that defined what settings people with disabilities could use for their Home & Community-Based Service (HCBS) waivers. The proposed policy restricted housing and employment options, and many responded with the demand for less restrictive definitions of “home and community”. CMS released the federal Final Regulations in January 2014 and has charged every state to create new state regulations for what settings HCBS waivers can be used.  
In March 2014, CMS offered further guidance that included a document called, "Guidance on settings that have the effect of isolating individuals receiving HCBS from the broader community" They shared examples of specific settings including: farmsteads, gated / secured “communities” for people with disabilities, residential schools, and multiple use campuses as “having the effect of isolating.” Individuals who live or work in these types of intentional home and communities with their peers are now at risk of losing funding for their supports. Farm-based programs were singled out as "isolating" individuals from their communities. 

Right now, by December 24th, every state is required to create a transition plan for the next 5 years to come into compliance with new guidelines. In it's current form these guidelines  will require thousands of adults all over the US to leave their farm based programs against their will. The new guidelines will effectively doom every agricultural program, including AACORN Farm. 

I have heard that there are advocates who feel that farms are "institutional", I am certain those advocates have not seen the transformative change that happens when people with autism/development disabilities choose to work and live in a farm community .  AACORN Farm has a mission to Expand Options, Build Community. (aacornfarm.org) Please visit our website for more information about our program. 

Visit Coalition for Community Choice  at coalitionforcommunitychoice.org to find out what you can do to help preserve choice. My son Tom has no idea the level of controversy over these new rules and regulations and how his dream will be denied. I intend to work every day to change the misguided notion that farm living is less satisfying than an urban life. I think millions of farmers all over America would agree. 


Catherine Pinto is married to Matthew Pinto and they have 4 sons ages 27 to 21. Their 23 year old son with autism, Tom, has loved horses, cows, chickens and pigs for many years. In 2011 Catherine and other parents of adults with autism/developmental disabilities decided to take action. They started a new non-profit organization, AACORN Farm. AACORN Farm has received generous support from local foundations and community members who believe in their mission to expand choices and build community. 

The public comment period on the 2015 GAAMPs ends Friday, December 12th at 5 pm.  There are three ways to participate:

1. If you want to email, submit written comments to [email protected] by 5 pm on December 12th

1. If you want to write, submit letters postmarked no later than December 12 to:

          MDARD’s Environmental Stewardship Division 
          P.O. Box 30017
          Lansing, Michigan 48909 

    3.  Or, if you want to attend the meeting in Lansing, it begins at 9 am on December 12 at this address:
          Lake Superior Conference Room
          State of Michigan Library and Historical Center
          702 West Kalamazoo Street
          Lansing, Michigan 

Muskegon is a food desert, yet is preparing to pass an ordinance that will refuse to allow city residents to grow and sell vegetables.  

Wayne Whitman from MDARD has agreed to attend a private meeting in Muskegon to discuss the proposed ordinance in the context of the Right to Farm Act at 2:30 pm on December 8th, with city staff and invited guests only.  The public will not be allowed to attend.

Joshua EldenBrady, resident of Muskegon, provides this overview:

Muskegon Hates Veggies Too
Joshua S. EldenBrady

Remember the headlines from Oak Park a few years back threatening a resident with jail for growing a vegetable garden in her yard?  “Oak Park Hates Veggies.”  Thankfully that is not the trend.  In recent years, cities across the state have been working to find a way to integrate urban farming as a new type of much need green space and cities across the country, some as large as San Francisco, are spending significant amount of money on tax credits to encourage property owners to keep some vacant lots as urban farms.

While legal hurdles exist, most cities have been working hard to encourage more green space and local food production.  Detroit is a prime example of a large city struggling with how to work with state law to craft a well formed local food policy.  Detroit spent several years carefully crafting an urban farming ordinance that welcomed local farms and gardens as a regulated use for many of the city’s numerous vacant properties.

It is this backdrop of progress that makes Muskegon Michigan stand in such sharp contrast.  In 2010, a group of citizens pushed for the city to formally allow community gardens (previously illegal) in the city.  This group worked with city staff to write a new ordinance.  The ordinance allowed for any individual or group of individual to grow produce anywhere in the city so long as certain conditions were met.  The version given to the work group encouraged those gardens to sell at the city farmers market.  Somewhere between a stakeholder meeting and the final version, that language was removed.

At the start of 2013, one large non-profit operations (McLaughlin Grows Urban Farm) existed in Muskegon selling produce through CSA shares and through several local venues.  During the year, one new operation (operated by individuals as sole proprietors) and one expanding operation (a community garden with new grant funding to sell door to door in a low income neighborhood) applied to the city for permits for new operations.  Suddenly the city government that had encouraged sales at the work group in 2010 took a very different tone. 

Since the language encouraging sales had been removed from the final version of the community gardening ordinance, the city said that no one was allowed to sell.  The Zoning Board of Appeals stated that they could not allow a farming operation because it might spread to other areas of the city and farming in the city was “unacceptable.”  The city management (staff and previous city manager) and legal counsel stated that the city would not even consider allowing urban farming of any kind because that was not the direction the city wanted to go and Right to Farm made it impossible.  A similar sentient was echoed in 2014 by the Planning Commission as well as by several members of the City Commission.

The truly bizarre part is the nature of the opposition.  Animals in urban farming have been a sticky issue for many cities and have held back progress.  This issue should have been resolved in April 2014 when the state changed Generally Accepted Agricultural Management Practices to make it clear that local governments can allow farming while still excluding animals.  But this isn’t even the issue in Muskegon where livestock was, in fact, allowed under the animal ordinance until it was outlawed (without discussion or any prior publication) in July of 2014.  Rather the issue is a city whose staff views the growing of produce as a blight.  A view shared by many on the Commission and the Planning Commission who have lamented that if they allow gardens to sell, then there might be more gardens and that would destroy residential neighborhoods.

That might be the end of the story, but faced with several powerful local non-profits (including that urban farm that is still selling CSA shares and is a project of the spouse of a member of the city commission), city staff are now willing to try and accommodate the non-profit gardens.  As a result, two version of a new city ordinance for community gardens and urban farms were brought to the Planning Commission (one which allowed sales and one which allowed “donations in exchange for produce” only for non-profits).  The Planning Commission refused to even vote to forward the issue to the City Commission hoping instead to kill the issue and prevent the blight of gardening from spreading.

The issue was brought back to the City Commission, which wanted input on the effect of Michigan’s Right to Farm Act from the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development.  That would have been a positive step forward since the fear of Right To Farm was one of the impediments to the city moving forward.  (The vice mayor insinuated that Right To Farm would have allowed crop dusters and bird shooting ranges anywhere in the city [ignoring the fact that neither operation could possibly comply with the GAAMPs given the city’s population density, FAA jurisdiction, and a specific state law allowing the city to prohibit the discharge of firearms making those two things impossible and, frankly, ludicrous]).

Unfortunately, while Wayne Whitman from MDARD was willing to talk to the city, he has refused to speak at an open meeting instead requiring a closed invite-only meeting.  It is unclear why MDARD would refuse to inform a city government at a public meeting on a law that they are charged with administering, but it would certainly appear that they do not want to own their interpretation and be held accountable for it.

So as of today, Muskegon (which just four years ago was poised to allow urban farming of produce anywhere in the entire city) allows almost nothing.  You can grow, but you had better be able to eat it or gift it all since you cannot sell it, not even at the brand new $4,000,000 city farmers market.  Worse, this is not even something that most of the city government appears to want to change.  Instead, much of the city government views growing plants as a blight, as something that they would do away with entirely if they could, and while they are willing to discuss changes with local non-profits behind closed doors it has been made clear that citizen gardens are not wanted and that growing food is only for the moneyed organizations (especially those with personal connections to the city commission) and not for the the citizens.  It appears at least for now that Muskegon hates veggies too.

Note that an update to this post was published on December 29th, 2014.