Urban agriculture is growing in Dallas, with nonprofits taking the lead on community farming projects and the City supporting more urban farms.
As urban farming becomes increasingly popular, some professionals argue the City must reduce burdensome regulations to allow such farms to flourish in Dallas.
Restorative Farms is an example of one community-based urban farm system in South Dallas that aims to provide fresh, sustainable food to Dallas communities through urban agriculture.
The initiative employs “game-changing” operations such as Grozilla — an indoor growing machine that allows urban farmers to “rapidly scale” their growing capacity, according to Restorative Farms’ website.
“This is just different kinds of farming, and this will be the future of farming,” said Restorative Farms co-founder Brad Boa to D Magazine. “There’s going to be [a] huge need for this kind of technology in the future.”
The City of Dallas indicated its support for urban farming when the council members passed the Comprehensive Urban Agriculture Plan in the spring. This plan outlines goals and recommendations to promote urban farming to provide fresh food options to communities that do not have grocery stores.
While urban agriculture is on the rise in Dallas, it is still behind other large Texas cities. According to the plan, there were 54 community gardens in Dallas in 2021, while Austin and Houston had nearly double that amount relative to their populations.
Consultants hired by the City found that Dallas has between 15 and 16 acres of urban farming projects, mostly run by nonprofits. These projects include community gardens, warehouse farms, and vertical farms.
An environmental engineer at TBG Partners, Mikel Wilkins, said the planning team met with more than a dozen City departments before recommending that rules and regulations blocking potential urban agriculture projects be mitigated.
“As we analyzed some of the roadblocks and barriers to implementation that relate to land development code and things like that, it was great to be able to work with them and let them know what we were seeing as barriers,” Wilkins said, per D Magazine.
Rabekha Siebert, urban agriculture coordinator for the City of Dallas, added, “If we made it easier to have access to these assets, like land and water, people might find it easier to get involved in this space.”
Texas voters passed Proposition 1 in November. This measure amends the Texas Constitution to protect urban farmers within municipal limits from burdensome regulations.
Dallas’ agriculture plan aims to increase land used for urban farms by 75% while raising production at those locations by 75%. Per the plan, the City seeks to ensure that all residents can access healthy food by 2050.