Committee on the Environment, May 8, 2024

COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA COMMITTEE ON THE ENVIRONMENT Room 400, City Hall Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Wednesday, May 8, 2024 10:20 a.m. PRESENT: COUNCILMEMBER JAMIE GAUTHIER, CHAIR COUNCILMEMBER CINDY BASS, VICE-CHAIR COUNCILMEMBER MIKE DRISCOLL COUNCILMEMBER JIM HARRITY COUNCILMEMBER NINA AHMAD COUNCILMEMBER NICOLAS O'ROURKE BILLS 240347 - - - - - CHAIRMEMBER GAUTHIER: Good morning, everyone. I now note the hour has come and this hearing is called to order. This is the public hearing of the city council committee on the environment. The purpose of this public hearing is to hear testimony on resolution number 240347. Ms. Jones, would you please call the role?

Coucilmember Driscoll? CHAIRMEMBER DRISCOLL: Present.

Councilmember O'Rourke? CHAIRMEMBER O'ROURKE: Present.

Vice-Chair Bass? CHAIRMEMBER BASS: Present.

Chair Gauthier? CHAIRMEMBER GAUTHIER: Present. Thank you, Ms. Jones. Joining us today is also minority leader Kendra Brooks, who is the sponsor of the legislation. I note, for the record, that a quorum of this committee is present and this hearing is called to order. Good morning, everyone. I am very excited about this hearing today, last year, the city released its first ever urban agriculture plan. This launch represented the first that the city formally committed to being a partner, rather than a barrier to urban farms and gardens. I'm proud to represent many grassroot green spaces in the Third District and I want to acknowledge and thank everyone here today from West or Southwest Philadelphia based urban farm or community garden. Not only do urban farms provide neighbors the chance to build communities, beautify their blocks, improve air quality and access fresh produce, but they help us to reduce violence as well. Green in vacant lots reduced violent crime by 29 percent in the surrounding areas. A 2018 study conducted by Penn Medicine's, Dr. South, found that greening every vacant lot across Philadelphia could prevent up to 350 shootings each and every year. So, yes, urban farms foster food sovereignty, promotes sustainability and builds community, but they must also be a part of the conversation when we're talking about violence prevention. Historically, the city's policies did not recognize the importance and permanence of urban and community gardens, but I am proud that this body has already taken steps to reverse this trend. A couple years ago, we enacted the Community Land for Community Benefit Legislation, which makes it easier for urban farms to acquire city-owned vacant land in the Third and Fourth Council District. And thanks to Minority Leader Brooks' leadership, the city is finally buying back many of the lots that it sold to US Bank, allowing us to preserve long and established farms and gardens, but we still have a very long way to go until urban farmers and gardeners have the support and resources that they deserve from our city. I look forward to this hearing so that we can examine the progression that we have made since the introduction of the Philadelphia Urban Agriculture Plan and ensure we're moving quickly and collaboratively to achieve the plan's goals. Thank you so much. I'll ask if any of my colleagues have any opening remarks? CHAIRMEMBER BROOKS: Thank you so much, Chair Gauthier, and thank you everyone for coming out. It just warms my heart to see all my gardening friends from around city all in one place. We have met and had these conversations moving up to this point, so welcome. This hearing on urban agriculture means so much to me. For me, gardening has been a way to connect me with nature, to care for myself and my loved ones and to claim the inheritance of my ancestors who lived so close with the land. For me, urban agriculture means creating and caring for vibrant green community spaces in our neighborhood, places where children play and learn, where elders gather and enjoy the shade, where families live and food deserts can access fresh food and healthy food. We have hundreds of these spaces all over the city and 70 percent of them are in high poverty neighborhoods, where the majority of the residents are people of color. Many of these community gardens used to be vacant lots that attracted trash and crime until neighbors came together to transport them into beautiful places for the good of the neighborhood. Now these gardens provide a plethora of benefits for the people who live near them and for the city as a whole. A study by Gina South at the University of Pennsylvania showed that cleaning and greening lots in the highest need neighborhoods, reduces crimes by up to 29 percent. This connection between green space and public safety is at the heart of the safer/greener neighborhoods' pillar of my plan for Philly families.

I have included a one-page summary of the pillar in the materials for each member of this committee and I'm happy to provide copies of the full plan to anyone who is interested. Many of you know that I'm a firm believer of the power of community, so you understand why I'm passionate about these gardens. They are the living, growing embodiment of people coming together to take care of their families, their neighborhoods and our planet. In Dr. South's study, residents of neighbors with clean, greened lots also reported feeling safer and had a 69 percent decrease in depression. In my first term, I worked with community gardens to buy back the liens of over 90 plots of vacant land that have been transformed by community gardeners, but we must do more to protect and expand these vital resources. We must commit $1 million in city funding to the Food Justice Initiative, a partnership between the Department of Public Health and the Reinvestment Fund, which provides grants that have allowed many community-led gardens to flourish over the past few years. We must also increase funding for the Department of Parks and Recs, which created the Urban Agriculture Plan and which supports a variety of urban agriculture initiatives across the city. Finally, we must reform the land banks so that communities can take ownership of their gardens and continue transforming vacant lots in their neighborhoods. In Philadelphia, we have a long history of urban agriculture and community gardens that have nurtured and stabilized working class communities, but rising property values, pressure from developers are threatening the land that has been restored by our community gardeners over generations, as well as land that could become productive community space in the future. In 1996, Philadelphia Ag became the home to over 500 community gardens, but over the past years, we have lost a 15 third of those gardens. Once the land 16 is sold, we never get it back. We lose 17 the opportunity to make Philadelphia a 18 green and more beautiful city for our 19 children. As lawmakers, it is our 20 responsibility to protect these 21 community spaces and to support the 22 people who care for them. 23 Thank you, Councilmember Gauthier, 24 for sharing today's hearing and for her steadfast support of community gardens. I am hoping you all will take advantage of all the information and insight included in the Urban Agriculture Plan, as well as the testimony provided today, and that you will join me in growing the seeds and nourishing the roots of urban agriculture in our city. Thank you so much. CHAIRMEMBER GAUTHIER: Thank you. I want to note for the record that Coucilmember Nina Ahmad is present. CHAIRMEMBER BASS: Number one, I wanted to thank everyone for being here today. I also wanted to make a statement briefly. My apologizes, unfortunately, I have to leave a little bit early, but I did notice in the Commissioner's remarks that one of the priorities of the administration is our priority as well. As the former Chair of the Committee on Parks and Recreation, we have been working very hard to ensure there was green growing space within the public land that exists around recreation centers and parks and I just wanted to say that I'm really pleased and proud that it's a part of Mayor Parker's commitment to the City of Philadelphia. I know you are going to highlight it further in your remarks to come, so I just wanted to say I think this is really an important step forward as we really work to bring and funnel people into our recreation centers and into our parks, that once they are there, they see this is yet another opportunity and activity for the community that benefits the community. I just wanted to thank you for your efforts around that. Thank you. CHAIRMEMBER GAUTHIER: Thank you so much. Councilmember O'Rourke? CHAIRMEMBER O'ROURKE: Thank you, madam Chair. I just want to say good morning to all of our esteem guests who are here.

To my fellow committee members and to our guests on this committee today, lead Minority Leader, Kendra Brooks. I don't want to take up too much time, because we're here to hear from and to learn from all of you all who are here, local experts on urban agriculture. I'm looking forward to hearing more about how green spaces have a positive impact on physical, mental and community health and how that, in turn, fosters a safer block, a safer neighborhood and a safer city, which so many have spoken for a number of years about wanting and desiring. Beyond hearing about urban gardens and farms, I am trying to see more of them. I just want to talk about it. I want to see us put our money where our mouth is. I have been glad to visit Glenwood Green Acres a few weeks ago alongside Councilwomen Nina Ahmad here and we will be at the Woodlands in a few days. I am trying to get a taste of urban agriculture citywide, so some of you will be hearing from our office pretty soon so we can actually materialize that and I hope we'll find some time to get our hands dirty over the coming months. Thank you again for being here today. We're working to help build a city in all the ways that each of you do. Thank you, Madam Chair. CHAIRMEMBER AHMAD: Good morning, everyone. Thank you so much for being here to really underscore what my colleague just said about the role of green spaces. Just connecting with mother nature is critical. I grew up in Bangladesh as a little girl. We had a garden where we -- in the back where we had chickens, we raised vegetables and that has imprinted me forever, the role that played. I was an only child, my brother was much older and he left home, and I would spend a lot of time in that green space and I want our children in this city to understand what that gives you so they -- you know, to grow something, you need your hands, you need to put -- dig up the soil. You need two hands. You can't be on your phone when you are in the -- when you are doing some work like that. Watching your food grow, the patience it takes to see something put down as a seed, the seedling, and how it becomes actual food on your table is something many children don't know. They just think it's in the grocery store, somehow it comes back. The work that has been done by our urban gardeners in Philadelphia is amazing. In spite of so many odds, you have kept at it. Those who have been doing it for many, many years -- the garden my colleague and I visited has been around over 40 years and it's time they were looking for a transition to hand it over to our younger generation and that will only happen if we create welcoming spaces, if we hear what it is they want to see in their gardens and in their green spaces. So I am very grateful to Coucilmember Kendra Brooks for making this a priority and I look forward, as the Chair of Public Health, the role green spaces plays in our overall health. Thank you, Madam Chair. CHAIRMEMBER GAUTHIER: Ms. Jones, will you now read the title of the resolution?

Resolution 240347, authorizing the committee on the environment to hold hearings, to examine the progress made since introduction of the Philadelphia Urban Agriculture Plan, to convene agencies and stakeholders needed to make further progress and to create an implementation strategy to expeditiously meet the goals of the plan. CHAIRMEMBER GAUTHIER: The clerk will please call the first panel of witnesses to testify on the resolution.

Commissioner Susan Slawson of Parks and Recreations; Jennifer Aquilante, Food Policy Coordinator with the Philadelphia Department of Health; and Sara Vernon Sterman, Chief Program Officer of the Reinvestment Fund. CHAIRMEMBER GAUTHIER: Good morning. Please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony.

Susan Slawson, Commissioner of Parks and Recreation. ASH RICHARDS: Ash Richards, Director of Urban Agriculture, Philadelphia Parks and Recreation.

Good morning, Chair Gauthier. My name is Susan Slawson and I serve as the Commissioner of the Philadelphia Parks and Recreation. Thank you for this opportunity to discuss the progress made since the introduction of the Philadelphia Urban Agriculture Plan, Growing from the Root. Here with me today is Ash Richards, urban agriculture director, who has pioneered the work developed in the city's first ever urban agriculture plan. Can we give Ash a round of applause? I'm grateful for all the supporters that are here today as well. I am pleased to appear before you today on behalf of Mayor Parker's administration and the department in support of the urban agriculture's ten-year plan. We recognize the importance of investing in urban agriculture to transform our food system, enrich our environment and stabilize our communities. The plan addresses the system's structures, resources and policies necessary to sustain and grow urban agriculture in Philadelphia and nurture a more just local food system. In 2019, PPR began work on the city-wide urban agriculture plan called Growing from the Root, the first plan of its kind for Philadelphia focuses on values of transparency, racial and economic justice and inclusion. The urban ag plan was publically launched one year ago in April 2023. Growing from the Root of the plan commissioned by the city and grounded in community organizing, PPR worked with community-based partners to co-develop the plan, soil generation of black and brown. It's a black and brown grassroots coalition of Philadelphia growers and advocates, an interfaced studio, a Philadelphia-based city planning firm. PPR lead the plan's development, but its success will rely on collaboration between many city agencies. Grassroots and nonprofit organizations, philanthropic partners, growers and residents across the city. As a project of the City of Philadelphia, with community values at the center, we're working to co-create a culturally competent and an equity based approach to ensure residents most impacted are engaged and represented in the planning. The project team carried out the process according to the values of transparency, racial and economic justice and inclusion. The goals of the plan are to increase land security for growers, access to growing space in all neighborhoods and stewardship of the land. The long-term support for urban agriculture initiative into the city's infrastructure, policies and programs invest in existing in new local systems necessary to support a sustainable, just and equitable food system in Philadelphia, to build long-term support for locally sourced nutritious meals and increase fresh food access into the city's infrastructure policies and programs, to be accountable to existing zero waste communities and create new ones, to recognize the role urban agriculture can play in the lives and livelihoods of people and communities. The purpose is to establish a ten-year framework for investing in urban agriculture and food justice to uplift Philadelphia's rich history of urban farming and gardening, to confront the legacy of structural racism and land-based depression in the city, to outline the resources, policies, processes and programs necessary to sustain urban agriculture as a permanent use in Philadelphia for future generations and to provide recommendations to the City of Philadelphia and its partners on how to best support, work, coordinate and strengthen their work and community work in urban agriculture. PPR has taken significant strides to meet the plans since its release in 2023 of April. I will share a few of urban agriculture's accomplishments. 10 to promote community gardens and farms in the city as cultural resources that should be acknowledged in the telling and preserving of all Philadelphia's history. Also, Farm Philly has successfully spearheaded the establishment of the Eastwick Community Gardens Support Coalition, fostering collaboration between city agencies and community partners.

This effort has significantly strengthened support and resources for one of the city's oldest and most thriving community gardens, highlighting our dedication to strategic collaboration and sustainable urban agriculture initiatives. 13, established a land access program that provides long-term affordable leases on public park land for growers city wind. The land access program provides access for residents who want to start a community garden, farm, orchard or food forest on park land and the interest form, an application, has been translated into six languages ensuring assessability citywide. The program is being shared across our partner networks to raise awareness regarding the opportunity to create urban agriculture projects on park lands. There are two gardens that have established thus far and the program is being shared across our partner networks to raise public awareness. 14, facilitating collaboration between PPR and Rebuild Philadelphia to evaluate potential and the need for garden creation on preservation at Revel [ph] Recreation Center -- so while those projects are going on, we have to make sure this is included. Farm Philly and Revel are actively working or rebuilding and preserving community gardens at Francis Myers and Kingsessing Recreation Center. 12, explore the feasibility of establishing a staff agriculture and horticulture hub in West Fairmount Park as essential infrastructure for food production and environmental stewardship. The Agriculture Resource Center is in development and is expected to open to the public in the winter of 2024. It will serve as an essential public tool library and resource center for the city's gardening, farming, horticulture and environmental stewardship community. Farm Philly has initiated, also implemented support safe fair farmers' market operations. Farm Philly collaborated with the Department Of Public Health, the Food Trust, securing a farmers' market promotion program, a grant of $500,000. A farmers' market advisory group has been established to improve operator and consumer processes, increase government support and raise public awareness. We produced over 4,000 pounds of fresh, organically grown produce. All food was donated to community partner organizations, Parkside Association and Mount Vernon CDC, farm volunteers, PowerCorps' members and local food fridge. Farm Philly held 27 weekly volunteer farm days from June through November, hosted monthly community harvesting and gardening events at the farm with partner organizations, such as Grill Track, We Walk, Healing Through the Land and Tiny Trekkers, as well as two student field trips from local schools and rec centers. We have engaged over 400 volunteers from May through November with over 50 repeat farm volunteers and gave 15 PowerCorps PHL members an urban agriculture workforce development with weekly on-site workdays. Over 500 community members actively garden at 18 garden sites. Over 25,000 pounds of food was grown at the garden for families to eat and share within their communities. Over 3,000 pounds of food was donated to food programs such as Ready, Willing and Able and Get Fresh Daily and other food distributions sites, such as Rodeph Shalom, Waters Memorial African Methodist Episcopal Church and Broad Street Ministry. We worked days with PowerCorps PHL, engaging 12 PowerCorps' members in garden maintenance projects. Hundreds of pounds of food was grown and donated to students and community members at recreation centers, as well as community food programs. We celebrate the major compliments that Parks and Recreation, Farm Philly program have achieved in one year since the launch of the urban agriculture plan while also acknowledging the work that remains to be done. Future initiatives include the urban agriculture task force, more public programming and an expansion of community compost networks.

This plan is not only a vision for the future, but roadmap that is continuously being informed. There are some minor updates that will be incorporated into a future amendment and I will send all members of council a revised copy of when they become available. For all new councilmembers that have not yet received the initial plan, we will make sure we send that as well. I would like to thank you for your support of the urban agriculture plan and Ash and I are extremely happy to answer any questions. Ash will probably be answering most of the questions, honestly. CHAIRMEMBER GAUTHIER: Wonderful. Do we have Jennifer Aquilante? Please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony.

Good morning, Chair Gauthier, Vice Chair Bass and members of the committee on the environment. I'm Jennifer Aquilante, Food Policy Coordinator for the Philadelphia Department Of Public Health in the Division of Chronic Disease and Injury prevention. Thank you for this opportunity to discuss progress related to the urban agriculture plan and opportunities for advancing and supporting recommendations outlined in the plan. The division of chronic disease and injury prevention is dedicated to reducing the burden of chronic disease and injury by creating a healthy, just, safe, livable community for all Philadelphians. A liveable community provides adequate resource to support health, safety and quality of life for all people, regardless of their race, wealth, age, physical ability and other factors. This includes health promoting infrastructure, community assets and services such as housing, green spaces, transportation and healthy and culturally appropriate food. We know the challenges that face us. Poverty and high food cost continue to impact families' ability to afford healthy food and contribute to food insecurity in Philadelphia. Gun violence and crime traumatize communities and limit use of parks and public spaces. Approximately, 40,000 vacant lots exist in the city and contribute to blight and safety concerns. Climate change and extreme heat are a threat to our environment and can exacerbate chronic conditions. Supporting urban agriculture efforts can help address many of these challenges and aligns with Mayor Parker's promise of a safer, cleaner, greener city with access to economic opportunity for all. Urban agriculture is often thought of as just growing food, but it's much more than that. It supports efforts to enhance the local food system, builds community resiliency and promotes food and nutrition security. Many of the active gardens and farms in the city are located in areas that have both high rates of poverty and also have fewer stores that sell fresh produce. Urban agriculture also contributes to safe, healthy and green environments. Turning vacant lots into green spaces can reduce firearm violence. Urban agriculture is connected to physical and psychological health benefits, it also preserves cultural food growing practices and traditions in our city. Our division has a history of supporting urban agriculture in Philadelphia. We work very closely with Parks and Recreation. We funded new farmers' markets in areas of the city that lack access to healthy and affordable food. We implemented the Philly Food Bucks Program, a nutrition incentive for SNAP recipients to increase their purchasing power for fresh fruits and vegetables at farmers' markets. Currently, we support and promote farmers' markets throughout the city by maintaining our farmers' market finder tool and provide ongoing coordination and technical assistance to market operators. With state health funding, we supported Parks and Recreation Farm Philly program by installing raised beds and new signage at community gardens to promote accessibility and awareness and help to fund the soon-to-come Agriculture Resource Center, which will serve as a one-stop shop for community members that want to grow their own food. In 2019, in partnership with Reinvestment Fund, our division launched the Philadelphia Food Justice Initiative. PFJI funds innovative, community-led projects that strengthen Philadelphia's food assets that have historically not benefited from public investments. Our current food landscape contributes to health disparities that disproportionally impact Black and Latino Philadelphians. Past and present structural racism has contributed to systems in which healthy, fresh food is not always accessible and is often unaffordable, while unhealthy options abound and are heavily marketed in lower income neighborhoods. Solutions to food injustice must be community-informed and embody inclusive and equitable processes.

PFJI is one part of our multi-prong effort to invest in community partners, strengthen Philadelphia's food assets and work towards a more just food system. The breath and depth of organizations doing food justice work in this city is amazing. To date, PFJI has awarded nearly $2 million in grants to grantees to advance community-driven solutions to historic food injustice. A few of those grantees are also providing testimony today. PFJI prioritized projects led by Black, indigenous and people of color, immigrants, people with living with disabilities and those with lived experience of health injustice. Of the 27 grantees, are BIPOC-owned 10 or led, and 18 are owned or led by 11 women. 12 Projects fall into three main 13 categories: Food distribution, food 14 business or retail and urban 15 agriculture. Almost half of the funded 16 projects have supported community 17 gardening or farming in some capacity 18 already. Most projects also include 19 some educational, marketing or youth 20 development component. 21 One current grantee I would like to 22 mention is Youth Empowerment for 23 Advancement Hangout, also known as 24 YEAHPhilly, an organization that works to create safe and authentic hangout spaces by providing culturally relevant engagement and implementing team-led interventions to address the root causes of violence. With PFJI funding, they were able to complete the launch of their neighborhood market in October, which provides free groceries and nutrition information to families in West and Southwest Philly. The market is mainly led and staffed by ten young people and the market has served just under 5,000 families so far. Another current grantee is Iglesias Gardens, which aims to preserve a space for the people in rapidly changing Norris Square by providing multi-generational activities for their community, creating harmony and balance with local ecosystems and growing edible fruits, vegetables and plant medicine, they pay tribute to stolen land and develop a network of support for future generations. With PFJI funding, they hosted planning workshops, provided two safety trainings for community members and met with a consultant to support the instillation of a water line to facilitate access to water for growing plants and for cooking in their outdoor kitchen. Just to name a few additional successes, PFJI has increased the number of meals provided and pounds of produced, distributed, provided culinary and gardening workshops to residents and supported the development of gardens, community kitchens, food cooperatives and retail spaces. PFJI would benefit from financial expansion and collaboration with other city departments working to create a just, sustainable equitable food system that supports our communities, economy and environment. 1 million with one-time contributions from the Wells Fargo Open-For-Business Fund and CHOP's Healthier Together Program, we were able to fund just $556,000 of those projects, which is great, but shows there is great need for resources to support this important work. 12 of the urban agriculture plan, which calls for the establishment and subsidence of a food and land justice fund dedicated to advancing equitable access to food and land sources without setting up a duplicative fund. Food Justice Funds, similar to PFJI, are operating across the country and do receive investment from city government. For example, the Pittsburgh Food Justice Fund invests in community-led projects to address food apartheid. Advocates worked with their city council representatives to secure $3,000,000 in funding in Pittsburgh's 2023 city budget, an implementation of the program is now underway. The Division of Chronic Disease and Injury Prevention is committed to addressing the root causes of chronic disease and injury across our city.

We believe that access to healthy, affordable and culturally appropriate food and safe vibrant green spaces are essential to health and wellness for individuals and communities. Thus, we are committed to partnering with Parks and Recreation, farmers, gardeners and food justice advocates to support implementation of Urban Agriculture Plan recommendations to ultimately create a more just local food system in the city. Thank you. CHAIRMEMBER GAUTHIER: Thank you for your testimony and your work. Clearly, we cannot let ourselves be bested by Pittsburgh, so some important work to do today. Erica Mines, are you here?

No. 6 CHAIRMEMBER GAUTHIER: Okay. You are just here in case we need you. Sara Vernon Sterman, please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony.

Sarah Vernon Sterman. Good morning, Chair Gauthier, Vice Chair Bass and members of the committee on the environment. I am Sara Vernon Sterman here from -- I am the Chief Program Officer at Reinvestment Fund. Reinvestment Fund is a mission-based lender, grants administrator and technical assistance provider and a data analysis organization headquartered here in Philadelphia. Thank you for this opportunity to speak about PFJI. We are committed to building a more equitable, sustainable and inclusive food system through our various food access programs. S. Department of Agriculture. Locally, we welcome opportunities to work with partners in our hometown, especially with the Department of Public Health, on the Philadelphia Food Justice Initiative. PFJI is a unique program that has awarded nearly $2 million in grants to 27 grantees to advance community-driven solutions of which are BIPOC-owned or 17 led, and 18 are led by women or owned by 18 women. 1 21 million. In addition to our annual 22 funding through the Department of Public 23 Health, through one-time contributions 24 from Wells Fargo Open-For-Business Fund and CHOP's Healthier Together Program, we were able to fund nine of these programs, totaling $556,000. There is a great need for more resources to support this important work. I would like to offer a few examples from our grantees. Neighborhood Land Power Project, formally known as the Urban Tree Connection, has partnered with residents of West Philadelphia's Haddington neighborhood for the past years to 13 develop and sustain community-driven 14 greening and gardening projects. They 15 have worked with neighbors in West 16 Philly to reclaim and transform vacant 17 lots into beautiful and useful 18 community green spaces. They are a 19 BIPOC-led organization whose purpose is 20 to cultivate progressive community leadership through food sovereignty and land justice practices. Alongside their neighbors, they steward six community gardens and green spaces that promotes sustainable food production, social and ecological wellbeing and building community power. In 2022, the loss of the one of their sites, due to development, ignited the deepening of their community organizing efforts to strengthen their ties to the land, food sovereignty, and multigenerational community empowerment. Their efforts have included leading a community and citywide, state justice, land justice series, to help neighbors and fellow stakeholders learn how to build strong communities that can strategize against displacement. The land -- and now PP stewards -- not only preserves precious green spaces, but provides education and leadership development of youth and local community members to instill resilience for generations to come. Another example from last year's grantees is the West Philadelphia Bunny Hop, whose mission is to provide free food to people through mutual aid programming that centers the dignity and respect of the neighbors in need. Bunny Hop started as a response to an emergency aid during the rise of COVID-19 cases in April 2020. The cofounders, Gina Harris and Katie Briggs, leaning into their network of chefs, farmers and friends to bring access to fresh produce and prepared foods right to their neighbors' doors. Since April of 2020, Bunny Hop has been serving various parts of the city, entirely through volunteer labor, distributing produce and prepared meals via pop-ups in public places, home deliveries and drops at community fridges throughout Philadelphia. They used their PFJI grant award to establish additional community fridges and pantries, incorporate more substantial proteins and meals into their offerings, and develop educational resources on how to establish a distribution site in your own neighborhood. Bunny Hop is just one example of many mutual aid efforts that exist across Philadelphia. Pre and post pandemic, neighbors have served one another and created abundance for a scarcity.

An expansive urban agriculture plan could provide neighbors and organizers with the opportunity to have access to land and to meet food access needs for people across the city. It is possible to address food access in this city, but it can't be just about redistributing food that is about to expire or pouring dollars into purchasing food from distributors. Neighbors need to learn how to grow food and be connected with what the land can provide. Mutual aid requires everyone's participation in order to be successful. An urban agriculture plan that is inclusive of the needs of the city and its residents would be a tremendous step in the right direction. Reinvestment Fund would be eager to partner with Parks and Recreation, farmers, gardeners and food justice advocates to support implementation of an urban agricultural plan recommendation. Ultimately, we can work together, rather than setting up duplicative funds, to create a more just food system with the establishment and the subsidence of a food and land justice fund dedicated to advancing equitable access to food and land resources. Thank you. CHAIRMEMBER GAUTHIER: Thank you for your testimony and for the Reinvestment Fund's investment in this critical work. Before I pass things off to the committee members and the legislation sponsor for questions and comments, I have one question for our city partners, the commissioner, and ask -- you all talked ability -- I am really excited to hear about some of the accomplishments -- particularly the Agriculture Resource Center, that sounds very cool. I'm glad to know that's moving along and will open soon. I was interested in hearing from you both on the barriers. What have the barriers been to implementing the plan in the time since it's been launch? ASH RICHARDS: I would say -- thank you. Also, thank you everyone for hearing us and for also asking these questions. We appreciate you giving us the platform. I would say the barriers we have so far with implementing the plan -- there are a few of them. I think the strongest one is -- I say, often, in this work, that land security is the number one issue for growers in Philadelphia. Right? The reality is, I don't need to educate anyone on that panel in front of me about how to unravel, what I call, the spaghetti bowl of land issues in Philadelphia security, acquisition, disposition, et cetera. It's also not parks and recs' purview to dive into those elements, because we're not -- the land that we are responsible for is deeded plans, so it's supposed to stay open space forever. So we can provide residents of Philadelphia, growers, community stewards, with access to public land, but the key work there is access, that's why our land access program is called land access program. We cannot provide ownership at this moment, right, because that's a deed-restricted piece of land and park land. In order for us to convey that, you would have to go through the courts to do that, right? So we have done our best in due diligence to partner alongside of Be Strategic Partners and Be Strategic Minds with the advocates to unravel, you know, the spaghetti bowl of land acquisition and disposition issues and land security issues, but we do, in fact, believe that urban agriculture is a permanent, viable land use that needs to have a path for preservation into the future. If we don't save them now, we will not have them in the future. Once they are gone, they are gone. There are people in this room 10 today, particularly from Eastwick or from Norris Square neighborhood projects where those projects are 40, 50 years old. Often times, I say to people, when you see these gardens and they are so vibrant and vivacious, they are -- all the benefits you are going to hear from different testimony today about the benefits -- I won't belabor those points -- but if they weren't there 40, 50 years ago, what would be there instead? Think about that.

The second barrier, I would say, is we have to see the work that's being done, not just as -- you know, a thought partner of mine, Ashley Gripper [ph], wrote a wonderful article talking about that this work is not a hobby, it's community stewardship. The people in this room, who I am incredibly proud to work alongside of, have been stewarding these lots for decades, putting in their own money, blood, sweat and tears, raising their children, growing old, dying in these gardens, right, so there is a level of -- there is a financial, spiritual, physical, social level of responsibility that we have to work alongside them to see them as stewards. So what can we do to sort of step up as a city to work with these folks to preserve these spaces? Stewardship, when you go to a garden, they are actually doing the city a really wonderful favor. They are taking lots that have been abandoned, you know, landlords would have abandoned those lots, and they are turning them into beautiful educational spaces, an oasis, safe spaces for people to grow old in and people to play in. Seeing people as a community steward, that has also been a challenge, because we have to realize this is the land -- it's one of the only land uses in the city that's unrecognized. You have an entire agricultural sector here. If you look at the industrial users, they have a sector, they have a land use. If you look at the developers, they have a sector, development, and they have a land use, commercial, residential. What does the urban agriculture? We don't have one. We have to change that. Then I would say the third and last barrier to implementing the plan is going to be resources. So our goal at Parks and Rec, I believe we can embrace our responsibility to promote food sovereignty and self-determination of communities to grow their own food by being a provider of land, resources and education, right? So what have we done? We do a lot of fundraising to build up resources. The goal, for us, is any person, regardless of creed, or social status or class, can come to Parks and Rec and be able to put -- get, from us, free seeds, free tools, free use of education and training, et cetera, compost, mulch and you can build gardens and farms all over the city. The same way that you can borrow a book or go to our swimming pool for free, you can also get resources to grow for free. That's our vision. So how can we embrace, you know, a budget that would say, all right, let's use tax dollars to not just pour into food access work, where we're giving out food, but also pour our tax dollars into resources that will allow people to grow their own food. That's, I think, the third thing I will say, is the barrier where we want to see growth in. City Council, you know, gave us a wonderful budget last year. We were able to bring on two urban green coordinators to build our capacity, so we would love to see that extended to the public services and infrastructure that we're building for Urban Agriculture into the future. CHAIRMEMBER GAUTHIER: Thank you so much for those important points. Commissioner, anything to add?

No. I think she has covered it. I believe stewardship throughout our system is critical to what we do. When you think about the stewardship you have here today, we have friends' groups, we have 140 friends' groups that steward our parks. I have to say, without those friends' groups, we wouldn't be able to manage our parks. So the support we get from community members, from residents that live in the city, it's critical to the work of Parks and Recreation, because there is just no 23 way that we can manage our stewardship. They actually -- speaking of stewardship, it's a small group of people, same as agriculture, Urban Ag, it's a small group of people serving a huge number of volunteers that they work with day in, day out. One person is responsible for 36 park groups. That turns out to be about 2,000 people. So our stewardship -- I want to just thank those of you that are here that are working with us that are providing this here support and making sure that Urban Agriculture is moving forward, but stewardship throughout the City of Philadelphia is priceless. It is our responsibility to ensure that we can provide them with the necessary tools because we need them. We need them to continue to do what they do to support the City of Philadelphia. ASH RICHARDS: Yes, that's correct. Thank you, Commissioner. And I just want to let the record show that I am a nonbinary person, I use they/them pronouns. Thank you, for future reference. CHAIRMEMBER GAUTHIER: Thank you. Thank you so much. I am going to temporarily pass it over to Coucilmember O'Rourke while I step out, so we can continue with questions for the panel. CHAIRMEMBER O'ROURKE: For any other colleagues that may have any questions, I want to first acknowledge councilwoman, Nina Ahmad. CHAIRMEMBER AHMAD: Questions about some of these gardens. I see from data that was that in 2020, there were 299 total gardens and farms, I gather. Of those, how many of those are owned industrial sites and were these remediated and made sure that these were safe to be used as gardens? ASH RICHARDS: So, Councilmember, I'm not sure where you got that data from. It's possible that is attached to someone else's testimony in the room. CHAIRMEMBER AHMAD: It's from Philadelphia Urban Agriculture Plan, Growing from the Root, 2023. ASH RICHARDS: Oh, okay. I'm like, what are you looking at over there? So the amount of gardens that are on industrial uses are actually very little. If you look at the zoning code -- so, in 2012, the council passed, with the city planning commission, a new zoning code that would allow for Urban Agriculture to take place in the majority of each of the codes, which is monumental. There are some cities that do not allow Urban Agriculture to happen in residential areas or commercial areas. We actually allow that, to a certain extent. When you see Urban Agriculture intersecting with the industrial land use codes, you are usually going to see something that is on a greater scale or animal keeping, but we don't have a lot of examples of that; very little in Philadelphia. We do have animal keepers in Philadelphia, of course, but not to the extent of an industrial use. Second to that, when you talk about safety. So, in 2017, the Food Policy Advisory Council, where Erica Mines is stewarding that group in the Office of Sustainability, we produced a soil safety report for the City of Philadelphia and we always go back to that. So any time that the gardeners are establishing new gardens, the nomenclature that we use across the board is to grow into raised beds. If you are going to grow directly into ground, you have to get soil tested. If you are going to grow on park land, we definitely require that, growing aboveground and raised beds, but sometimes, you know, people can start gardens in their backyard. We highly recommend to do that. Philadelphia is a postindustrial city.

It is highly likely there is lots of lead and other chemicals, heavy metals in our soil, so we want to make sure people are not growing in that soil directly. Thankfully, there are a lot of resources in Philadelphia to allow people to have access to topsoil and compost for free or at a low cost, so there really is no 6 reason for folks to grow in ground if they don't have to. CHAIRMEMBER AHMAD: If they did, the composting is done by whom and who bears the cost? ASH RICHARDS: That's a great question. Maybe folks in the room can benefit from this. If you want to get your soil tested, you are typically going to go to your extension office. Our extension office is run by Penn State. You look up Penn State extension office. They run the soil tests. So we're working with them, actually, to start to figure out how we can make those soil tests more approachable, so when you get your diagnostic back, you're not pulling your hair out and saying, oh, my gosh, there is lead in my soil, you kind of have to look at it with a more scientific lens to say, what is acceptable for human consumption, et cetera, so we actually do partner with Penn State to do that work. CHAIRMEMBER AHMAD: And who bears the cost? ASH RICHARDS: The cost is not my favorite, I am just going to put that out there. There are two tests you can do. There is one test that will show you the nutrients, how much potassium do you have in your soil, how much potassium, how much nitrogen, that test is actually somewhat affordable, let's say anywhere from $15 to $25 and they'll give you an entire list of the nutrients in your soil. The problem that I have with the test, which we are working on, is that if you want to test for heavy metals, that's an additional cost, and I think, in the context of Philadelphia, that might be quite unfair, because if I have a backyard, I want to at least test ten spots to get a good overview. If you have a community garden, you are looking at dozens. So think about this, if I have one test and it's, let's call it 6 bucks for the nutrients, plus $30 for 7 the lead and $40 for the other heavy 8 metals, the cost goes up and up and up 9 and that's per board soil test. You 10 would have to pay for that. 11 CHAIRMEMBER AHMAD: So, at the 12 moment, the person using the space is 13 paying for it? 14 ASH RICHARDS: That's correct. 15 CHAIRMEMBER AHMAD: Okay, so that's 16 for the consumer to do that. 17 So maybe this is a place where the 18 Reinvestment Act could invest to lower 19 that cost, because we're asking children 20 to go -- ASH RICHARDS: Yes. CHAIRMEMBER AHMAD: We are asking the children to go on these sites, right? ASH RICHARDS: Correct. CHAIRMEMBER AHMAD: And learn this and pass on all of this, you know, farming, whatever they are doing there, to pass it on to the next generation, we have to make it safe. ASH RICHARDS: I completely agree with you. CHAIRMEMBER AHMAD: It would be great, with whoever we can find, we can just have these certificates for the spaces done once, because we're not going to have industrial contamination anymore, once you have done it once, and when people go to find a piece of land, they can get that certification to be clear, what they are doing their Urban Ag on. ASH RICHARDS: That's absolutely correct. I agree with you. It's good to hear that potentially is a priority for the councilmembers, of course, the soil safety. That definitely is a priority for us. We really try to encourage the public to understand their soil. You should be testing regardless of the heavy metal content. You should be testing to know if you should put more compost in your garden, right? You might be over-nutrienting your plants. The idea for folks to soil test is -- for some, it's like the back of their hand, and for some, they have never done it before. That definitely is a priority for us to reduce the cost of those tests.

Unfortunately, we are not the providers of the test, so we have to partner with them strategically to think about -- CHAIRMEMBER AHMAD: They have a $14 billion surplus, they could put a little bit to Penn State to underwrite this. We have lots of money lying around and I think you have to be creative and ask people to partner with this. If we have a tool kit for someone who wants to start an urban garden, I would love for this to be a part of it, like a certification to say, this is safe land to do this on. Thank you very much. That's wonderful. CHAIRMEMBER O'ROURKE: Thank you, Councilwoman. The chair recognized councilman Jim Harrity. CHAIRMEMBER HARRITY: Good afternoon, everyone. I'm a gardener. I love growing. I do it all the time. I live in Kensington in an area that doesn't see a lot of green spaces. I found, in my own thing, that something as simple as putting flowers out on your street gives the kids a sense of pride, it makes them feel good. I go down the shore in the summertime, and on the way back, I stop at the farms and I buy the flats of flowers and then we get together with the kids and we plant them. I took flower boxes and got them all over the block and it's great. Also, a point of information, there is funding through the state. I worked on it in my past life with Senator Street when I was his Chief of Staff. The funding, I believe the grants are up $50,000, can be used for everything except payroll, so equipment, land, testing, that's all okay, so for a point of reference, for those who know. I would love to see more of this, because I know that food insecurity is real, it's real in neighborhoods like mine. We do the lunch program. I know, if we don't do that lunch program, that most of the kids on my block will not eat that day, which is very sad. My question is, how do we get more farms in the City of Philadelphia so we can feed our own people? That's, for me, what Urban Ag is about. These people don't do it as a business, they do it out of the kindness of their heart to help other people. Feeding people is a big need in the City of Philadelphia, especially fruits and vegetables, which usually go by the wayside when you live in a neighborhood like mine and most people are just going to the corner store and buying sandwiches, you know, tomatoes or anything they get is what is put on the sandwich. Our kids eating healthier has got to be the goal. I know that something as simple as that will also help drop the crime. When people aren't hungry, crime goes down. When people have food, the crime goes down. It's not rocket science. My only question is, what's it going to cost for us to expand this to every neighborhood in the City of Philadelphia, because we can be feeding our own people. I believe that's the kind of stuff that the city should be doing, that's the stuff we should be funding. How can we help?

That's the question and it's always funding, but that would be an answer we would have to get back to you on, because we don't have the numbers of what it would look like to do this throughout the City of Philadelphia. We can come up with what we believe a possible plan is and we would be willing to get that back to you. CHAIRMEMBER HARRITY: Yeah, I would be curious to see that.

I don't have what that looks like -- CHAIRMEMBER HARRITY: Oh, I'm sure. There are a lot of different things that go into it, as you have already stated. Land, of course, is probably -- ASH RICHARDS: It's the policy. It's legal access to land. CHAIRMEMBER HARRITY: We have plenty of city-owned land that we could be using. The only other questions I have is, are there programs for people who want raised beds at their house, say? Is there any program that will supply the raised beds so we can actually do this at our backyards? ASH RICHARDS: Absolutely. CHAIRMEMBER HARRITY: Some of us who live in different areas have concrete and not grass, so -- ASH RICHARDS: I'll start with answering that question, which is, there is a group, Bartram Garden and Sankofa Community Farms -- CHAIRMEMBER HARRITY: I'm from southwest. I terrorized Bartram Garden for years. ASH RICHARDS: They do that work. CHAIRMEMBER HARRITY: So they supply raised beds for the neighborhood?

They do that work. There is a brilliant person, Hasha Glover, Sankofa Community farm, that's run by Ty Holmberg and Chris Bolden-Newsome, who also does that work, and so that's being done -- so not on the city side, that's on the private side or the nonprofit side or the business side. Those groups are doing that work in Southwest. CHAIRMEMBER HARRITY: Southwest has been an Urban Ag case for years since I was a kid. ASH RICHARDS: Then, on the city side, we just started to pilot this type of work -- we just wrapped up our pilot, which is to do deliveries -- projects that are not on park land, can we deliver compost, mulch and resources to those -- CHAIRMEMBER HARRITY: Exactly. ASH RICHARDS: So we ran the pilot. We put in a little bit of infusion. We rented some trucks, used some of our staff time, and the result is, we were so highly received, that at this point, the next step is, okay, well, how do we institute something like this so that we can do in perpetuity? Right now, we're just at the pilot stage of how we do that. On the city side, we're really looking at public spaces and publicly accessible spaces, so we have to be careful about getting into the residential business, because those are private space, they are not public spaces or public park lands. I think we're going to have to think about this internally of how we do that and make sure it's equitable and fair. CHAIRMEMBER HARRITY: Absolutely. I thank you for your service and I thank everyone here for what you are doing for your community. I fully believe in this. I believe that we should be growing our own food to feed our people. In a country like the United States, nobody should be hungry. The harsh reality is I see it every day on the faces of the kids on my block. I appreciate you guys. I'm in for whatever. I'll tell you what, I'll be planting this weekend. My wife won't let me put any more plants in the house, that's why I started putting them outside on the block. ASH RICHARDS: And just one more factoid is that 70 percent of all of our gardens fall in neighborhoods that are making less than $25,000 for the annual median income. So we know that the gardens, 60 to 70 percent of them, are falling in poor, working class, Black and brown neighborhoods. That is just to tell you, on the flip side, the impact that gardens are having. If we want to increase that, there is going to be more of a positive impact. CHAIRMEMBER HARRITY: The fact that you guys are giving out the soil and the mulch and all, like I said, I garden, dirt, mulch, it's expensive. You know, to fill a bed that's only, let's say, six foot or something, you are talking about six large bags of dirt, which is about 60 something dollars of a budget, but if you weigh it out on how much food and how much money you are going to save -- all summer long, I don't pay for a tomato. I can go right outside, pick cherry tomatoes and take it right back in the house and I'm good to go. You guys know, vegetables are not cheap. Thank you. CHAIRMEMBER O'ROURKE: Thank you, Councilman Harrity. I just wanted to emphasize I am struck by the factoid you just gave about 70 percent of active gardens and farms have been located in high poverty areas. Obviously, this being a very Black town, that's a lot of Black babies that ain't eating, so thank you again for lifting that point. It certainly resonates. The chair recognizes leader, Kendra Brooks. CHAIRMEMBER BROOKS: Thank you so much. I just want to do this thing. How many people in this room are actually gardeners and farmers? I just want you to stand up. Before I start asking my questions, I had to do that, because a lot of times when the rooms are filled, they think it's government folks, folks here to speak, folks from organizations, but I know in Philly, we grow, that's what we do, right? We don't talk about it. It's part of our life. It's what we do. I just wanted to recognize all of you guys that are here.

The farm I have not been to, I'm going to put on my list, because I have been amazed by what I have seen from Roxborough to South Philly, from North Philadelphia to Southwest. I have seen some amazing gardens some amazing farms, cows and chickens and goats and stuff. I didn't even know we had those in corners in Philly. Thank you for all the work that you do. Commissioner Slawson, I really do appreciate you taking time to be here today to see my second passion. We have connected on my first love, because your know I love music. This is my second love. Thank you so much for taking the time to be a part of this. I know you are kind of new to this part, you know, Parks and Rec, so thank you. I really do appreciate you and the time to come to be a part of this hearing.

Thank you. I actually grew up on a farm. My grandparents were sharecroppers. I worked in tobacco fields until I was 15. I went outside and picked everything I ate, so this is not -- this, in Philadelphia, is new to me, but this is my life. We still have our farm. We still grow food. I am very familiar with the process. CHAIRMEMBER BROOKS: So I have some questions for you. Ash, thank you. We have been doing this work for three years trying to get to this point and we're finally here. The hearing is here and we're moving this forward. Thank you for all the information that you've been gathering and building during building this Urban Ag plan. My question is -- I know you guys have done so much over this last year, but I want you to talk about what is the work of the Urban Ag plan and Parks and Recs and what you guys will be focusing on for the next year? ASH RICHARDS: That's a great question. Thank you. What we're going to be focusing on in the next year is that -- the plan was done within COVID. I just want to acknowledge that, because some folks didn't make it out of COVID. COVID, I think, showed our department how critical and vital having a localized local food supply is. Also, more importantly, there was so much mutual aid work that was coming out of the COVID pandemic. What we recognize, I think, is that communities in Philadelphia and beyond have been doing mutual aid work for decades, they just didn't call it that. There is a level of sharing and peer-to-peer knowledge that we just want the support. Parks and Rec, we're not here to extract or exploit the workers, the folks who are doing the work. We are here to support them doing what they need to do in order to have some success in agriculture. So over this next year, our focus, we're going to focus on getting everybody back in the room to talk through a task force -- we might call a task force or something else akin to that -- but, virtually, when we were doing the Urban Agriculture plan, we split the room up. The steering committee was very packed into equal parts, city council, city people, so city administration, city council. Then we had nonprofits and institutions and then we actually have the people who are doing the work, the gardeners and the farmers. We want to put all these people back in the room -- because there is a ten-year plan -- and come up with a prioritization listing for the next several years, especially in this administration, what do we want to achieve, what do we want to get done, what do we want to fundraise for. Parks and Rec, we don't want to make those decisions in isolation, we want to make those decisions on a community scale, community level. A lot of the initiatives in the Urban Ag plan are going to be community-led, so how do we support them financially or socially to get those done. The task force is definitely one of them. The second is to roll out the Agriculture Resource Center into a library. That is going to allow residents to borrow tools from Parks and Rec to do community stewardship projects or whether you are working on fruit orchards, gardens and farms, you'll be able to borrow a slew of tools, community engagement tools, grills, you know, barbecues, projectors, augers, shovels, brooms, whatever you need to get your job done, your stewardship done, we will be able to borrow that. That project will hopefully get released in the fall or the wintertime of this year. The hope is that we would have a year's worth of public programming after that. So teaching people how to can food, harvest food, how do you do tool maintenance and all these different things that people need to understand so they could do this work safely. That's another project that we will be working on. We'll also hopefully be working on relocating our municipal farms. We do have a farm, we do produce food on the city level and that's fascinating and exciting because there are not many cities doing this. So we are at one acre right now.

Our hope is to expand the farm and relocate the farm in West Fairmount Park and reestablish it as an education and public production farm. So building out a farm school for our young people to come to and train with us and work with us. We have already started working with PowerCorp PHL, so we would hope we can open it up to PYN, the school district, and other partners to do that work as well. Then, I think, again, are hope is that we can build out a seed library. I mentioned the COVID pandemic, because when COVID happened, it wasn't just the food that was flying off the shelves, when we went to the hardware store, all the seeds were gone, too. We don't have a local seed supply. There are amazing seed exchanges happening in Philadelphia, but wouldn't it be fantastic if someone can go to the library, for example, and be able to borrow seeds from the library and return those seeds. So working with partners at the free library to start thinking about collection for agriculture is something that we are exploring now as well. CHAIRMEMBER BROOKS: Thank you for that. Can you also speak about what makes Philadelphia's Urban Agriculture and garden ecosystem unique? I have heard that our city's Urban Agriculture scene is an international model, so tell me a little but more about that. ASH RICHARDS: Absolutely. I also honestly feel like you are going to hear a lot of that today from other testimony, so I'll keep it brief and say that Philadelphia is certainly unique. It is looked at as an international model. Of course, we're here to sustain this work. In Philly, you can go to a garden and you will have people -- for example, one of our gardens in Cobbs Creek, you have southern African American people who are working with non-English speaking Korean community members and somehow they are able to communicate and work together and farm together. The gardens are one of the only places, really, if you look at our city, our different space in the city, one of the only places that are free, where you will see, regardless of ethnicity, class, gender, age, people working together and coalescing; in planning, what we call the third spaces. This is the third space where, outside of your home and outside of your job or school, this is a place where people can come to for free. That is what is unique about Philadelphia, the amount of cultures. There are dozens -- you know, French-speaking West African people, Korean-speaking people, who are refugees, sadly, from their home coming here and able to acclimate in Philadelphia through a garden. I am talking about Growing Home Garden, if you've never been there. Philly also has Saul High School, Lankenau, the U School, these amazing young people who are producing products that, you know, you may or may not get a chance to eat or taste -- I highly recommend it -- but they are making cheese as Saul High School. They are making hot sauce at Sankofa Community Farm at Bartram's Garden. There is this beautiful way that we're tackling waste, we're tackling workforce development, we're tackling youth engagement all in one space. That's what makes Philadelphia unique. It's very autonomous and it's really community-led. It's very much so that the gardeners are the ones who are leading their spaces and they are also the ones who are advocating on their own behalf. In this room, you'll see advocates here that are actually gardeners, whereas in other cities the advocates are nonprofit folks or city folks or what have you, folks are showing up and doing the work and they have been doing that for decades now, hence why we even have an Urban Ag plan, because we had a strong advocacy in Philadelphia. Thank you for that question. CHAIRMEMBER BROOKS: Looking at the map of the Urban Agriculture locations in the Urban Ag plan, it's amazing how community gardens and Urban Agriculture sites are spread across the entire city.

What did your department learn about the best endeavors of the Urban Agriculture in Philadelphia when putting together this particular plan? For me, I was really surprised. When I was campaigning, when we did the work around the US Bank liens, every part of the city I was in was affected by the US Bank liens. I was, like, Roxborough, Manayunk, people were like, thank you for saving, you know, this plot of land we were working on during COVID. I was really surprised. When I looked initially, I saw only the addresses in, like, North Philly, West Philly, but to see the entire city impacted, I would love for you to talk a little more about that. How did you put all of that together? What are we doing to maintain that? ASH RICHARDS: I think one of the biggest things that I reflect on during the Urban Agriculture planning process is how determined the growers are in Philadelphia. When we had our first meeting for the Urban Agriculture plan, it was December 3rd. It was cold. It was in Center City at the free library and over 300 people showed up. I can't brag about that, because there were people standing, not able to sit down, which is not my hope for a public meeting, but it just showed us that this is a strong constituency. Again, this is a sector that has been really largely ignored over the years. Right? So we learned that and said, okay, how can we be a leader in this space and how can we encourage our sister agencies to do the same. I think one of the things we have also learned along the way -- just a really quick anecdote -- I was stopped out of nowhere by someone who works at DHS. She said to me, as a Black woman, who said Ash, I went to Saul High School and I wanted to become a farmer, I wanted to keep working in the space, but there was no opportunities for me after I graduated. So that got me thinking, there is absolutely a disconnection for our young people graduating from beautiful schools like Saul High School or Lankenau High School, where there is nowhere to go after that. When you have HVCUs and all of these amazing institutions, Cheyney University, who have beautiful agriculture programs, but the connection from our city to those universities is very weak or nonexistent, so who is working on that? In each of the categories -- waste, what do we learn about waste? Philly loves to compost. Let's leverage that. Let's leverage that. People want to do this work. People are paying to get their food composted, so how do we leverage that and how do we make sure we can reduce the waste. Philly has an amazing issue with short dumping. How do you link those two things together, environmental justice, short dumping and composting. CHAIRMEMBER BROOKS: Right. ASH RICHARDS: So all throughout the sectors of the plan. The people part. There is a people chapter in the plan because the people are the ones who hold this together. There is a land chapter because land is the central focus. If we don't have the land, then all of our efforts are moot. In 16 years if none of this exists, then 17 everything we have been working on today 18 will be moot. We have to focus on the 19 land. Those are a lot of the takeaways 20 that I personally have gotten out of the 21 planning process. 22 Clearly, the people are still 23 determined. They are still showing up. 24 It means this plan is not going to collect dust. I truly believe the people in this room are going to help us advance this plan into completion. CHAIRMEMBER BROOKS: Thanks again for all of your work. I look forward to this partnership with the commissioner and you and how we can move this forward. I am always so thrilled when I see all the folks coming together around this. I always say, when I sit here, I feel bad, because this job prevents me from tending to my land the way I should. It encourages me to go home to get it together. Thank you. ASH RICHARDS: Thank you so much. CHAIRMEMBER BROOKS: I have questions for Jennifer Aquilante.

I want to thank you for all your amazing work and administering the Philadelphia Food Justice Initiative. My office has heard great -- heard about great gardens and community members, how these grants have helped their gardens and their farms or their neighborhoods. What impact have you seen the grants have on those who have received them?

I think we have seen great impact. Some of the things that I mentioned in my testimony, in terms of meals being produced, produce being grown and distributed in the community, I think it's having a community-wide impact, but also helping grow and support the gardens and farms that are already -- that have already been created. Part of PFJI was -- the reason we created it was to support -- similar to what Ash was saying -- to just lift up and support community work that's already happening in the city versus us reinventing the wheel, but it's providing resources and support and funds to support gardens to grow if they need additional resources, staff, equipment to help them to be able to expand their services and resources, grow more food, expand who they are supporting. We have seen, like I have said, more produce being grown and distributed, more youth development components, so adults and youth being educated as part of garden workshops, so education happening. PFJI also supports other projects that aren't just Urban Ag related, but I think we can share some more of our findings. We're actually working on an assessment right now to evaluate all the projects as part of the PFJI program. We're trying to break down the project and show specific impacts from all the projects so we can share that with you when that's complete. CHAIRMEMBER BROOKS: If you can share that with us, that would be great. The Philadelphia Food Justice Initiative is a rare city program that connects regular community members with grants they need to expand their on-the-ground work. Why is it so important that we make sure that community gardens and farms have the resources from the city?

I think I would just repeat what a lot of people -- what Ash has already said. It's important that the city supports this work. We know a lot of the partners that are doing this and the barriers that come into play with some of it. Like I said, we received 79 applications just this past round. People are allowed to request up to $100,000 in grants, so that was $6 million worth of funding that was requested, so we know the need is there. They don't always have the resources to support and promote this work or there might be small barriers, like paying for the soil testing, you know, buying equipment to do work in their garden. How can we -- even if they are small investments, help support that work and keep those opportunities open and help expand and encourage more gardening and farming in the city? I think it's very important that it's city-funded. CHAIRMEMBER BROOKS: Some of the work that you do, what is some of the details, like positives you see, results you see when the city acknowledges and recognizes the work of community members through grants; does it enhance the neighboring community? Do you see -- I know you said you are working on assessments now. Does it expand the amount of volunteerism that comes up around a particular initiative that you funded? Do you have any analysis of that?

I'm sorry, can you repeat the -- CHAIRMEMBER BROOKS: When the city acknowledges or supports the work that it is funding, have you noticed an expansion of support from community members or report back from any grantees that more -- their initiatives were enhanced because of the additional funding that the city was able to offer?

Yes, definitely. We have project reports that the grantees submit at the end. There are actually quarterly updates that they provide, but they also provide final grantee reports that summarize the work that they have done throughout the year. Most of them report, you know, appreciating the fund, how helpful it was to help expand their programs, how great it would be if there was more available, how it helps build the partnerships in the community. We have also tried to do more networking within the initiative to connect grantees. We had a partner convening a couple weeks ago, that was with just our nutrition and physical activity program, and some of the grantees came out for that and connected and networked with each other. I think we're always trying to make connections to our other internal programs with other departments, like Parks and Recreation I guess, sort of connected with groups and partners and in those spaces. I think we definitely are seeing benefits in impact and hearing positive feedback from the grantees that we have been able to work with. As I mentioned, a few of them will be providing testimony as well today. CHAIRMEMBER BROOKS: Thank you so much for your time and all the work you do for our gardens and farms in the city.

Thank you. CHAIRMEMBER BROOKS: I have questions for Sara Vernon Sterman. Good morning. I want to begin by thanking you so much for the Philadelphia Food Justice Initiative. We are very grateful for your work and the impact it has on our neighborhoods. My question is, are there unmet needs that the Food Justice Initiative would be able to address with more funding?

There definitely are. I think that the statistic you've heard a couple times now about having received $6 million of requests in the past round and only being able to fund $559,000 towards that amount speaks to how much need and how much of a gap exists. We would be happy to administer much more to qualified applicants if more resources were made available. CHAIRMEMBER BROOKS: So for a $6 million request, how many applications around about, if you know?

I believe that was 79 applications. CHAIRMEMBER BROOKS: And how many applications were you able to fill?

We were able to fill nine of them. CHAIRMEMBER BROOKS: Thank you so much.

And that was -- I'll just add that that was with a one-time supplement, a private supplement coming from Wells Fargo Open-For-Business and CHOP's Healthier Together Program, so it was an extra amount of resources that wouldn't necessarily be available on an ongoing basis. CHAIRMEMBER GAUTHIER: You know, thank you so much for sharing that with us.

Sure. Thank you. CHAIRMEMBER O'ROURKE: Thank you, Madam Chair. I know this has kind of already been broached by Councilwoman Ahmad, but I just want to state it again and have you respond to it specifically. As I understand, the Reinvestment Fund is what administers the Philadelphia Food Justice Initiative. Can you speak to how the initiative could be expanded and what more impact you can have with the expanded budget for that program?

Sure. If more resources were made available, we would be able to serve more grantees. Depending on the capacity of the grantee, some of those grants are smaller, some of them are larger, so it would depend how much more money was made available on an annual basis. Part of what's important is the ongoing basis for funding. So, in addition to certainly being interested in more money in a single year, the ongoing availability so that organizations can be thinking, oh, you know, this is something we can reach for in future years, we're not ready for it now, but it's something that we aspire to. Knowing that availability is actually a really big deal in the work that we do. That's something that I would also point to in this. CHAIRMEMBER O'ROURKE: Thank you very, very much. Are there any other questions or comments from members of committee for this panel? We want to thank you all for your presentations this morning and retire you from this moment so we can have our second panel. The clerk will please call the next panel of witnesses to testify on the resolution.

Iris Brown, Norris Square Neighborhood Project. Martha Griffin, Executive Director, Mill Creek Urban Farm and Justin Trezza, Senior Director of Healthy Neighbors PHS. CHAIRMEMBER GAUTHIER: Good morning. Ms. Brown, please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony.

My name is Iris Brown. CHAIRMEMBER GAUTHIER: Thank you. Please proceed with your testimony.

Good morning. My name is Iris Brown. I am a resident of the Norris Square neighborhood in Kensington where I have been living for 40 years. I am here to speak to you about the work of the women of Grupo Motivos and the Norris Square Neighborhood Project. I'm the founder of Grupo Motivos and [Spanish translation] for 30 something years and now, believe it or not, I'm a consultant for Norris Square and the group projects, but I have something that I need to say. Three minutes is absolutely unfair for me to tell you 30 years of gardening -- CHAIRMEMBER GAUTHIER: Ms. Brown, you take your time today.

Beginning in the 1980s, Norris Square neighborhood collaborated with community residents to advance the neighborhood through the transformation of vacant spaces. Beginning in 1983 and thanks to the efforts of the women of Grupo Motivos. Grupo Motivos is a collective of Puerto Rican women that we went to the streets to fight against drugs and also to clean empty lots, not knowing what to do in the empty lots, but we knew we wanted them to be clean. We established our first urban garden that is named [Spanish translation], which means roots, which quickly grew into five additional gardens over the years, Las Parcelas, [Spanish translation], which is our African garden. Each of these gardens is fundamental to the community, providing cultural and affordable produce to the community, sharing the story and history of the neighborhood, and most importantly, preserving the Puerto Rican culture. I want to share with you some of the benefits of the gardens. Of course it was a source of fresh food. Of course, sense of belonging. In our community, belonging is extremely important. Puerto Ricans, we have been in Philadelphia for many, many years and we have been displaced, you know, in our area, that's happening right now. More than ever, it's extremely important for us to have our gardens for the many reasons that I'm going to keep on mentioning and also so we can be proud, because we don't only garden, we only learn and teach our culture and we display the gardens. The celebration of Puerto Rican culture is another benefit, laughter and tears. We have one of the gardens, the African one, which has a storytelling room, where we tell our stories, our history, by us. It's not written by anybody else that doesn't understand our culture and our history. We create a beneficial habitat for birds and insects. It's a place -- there are places to cool down in the hot summer months and invite the people from the community -- at 3:00, they know it is time to go there and drink tea. We have many, many, many [inaudible]. We have [inaudible] gardens in two of the gardens, which people go there to get them for medicinal purposes. They also bring their own. We share them. Sometimes, it's 9:00 and they are knocking on my door because someone has an earache and I need to go to the garden to get them what we call [Spanish translation]. It's very good. Our 50 year anniversary last year brought together neighbors and support for a wonderful day of food, friendship and meals. We have cooking classes. Last week, we had one. We had eight people. These cooking classes are extremely important to me. My grandmother, she was a descendent of African descent, and she cooked for the people that came, her mother learned from her -- I learned from her, from my mother, and now my granddaughter, one of my daughters, they are doing, they are cooking. For me, the 50th anniversary meant something else than to many people. I have been part of Norris Square for 50 years already. To see -- we invited the -- I call them old men and old women, they are in their 50s -- sorry -- but when they went to Norris Square in their youth, they were taught about gardening and about their culture. We gathered them one night to see how this group was doing. We needed to know if our efforts and sweat and tears, if they helped or not. That was the night where I cried and cried, because the -- we have more than 50 of them together and they were telling us how important Norris Square Neighborhood Project is in the life and the gardens. We are often congratulated on how beautiful our gardens are. What is the secret of our success? Well, first, we have an amazing group of dedicated women and neighbors who work very hard for many years, like me. [Spanish translation] took almost ten years, 1985 to 1993, to complete. Second, we're extremely fortunate to own most of the properties that we garden, thanks to the City of Philadelphia. We saw our success. We are not done yet. We have many more projects.

Every day, I have ideas of how to combine the horti with the culture. I am going the make somebody very happy. She's my coworker. She said that I take off my glasses when I'm talking about how I divided the word horti and culture. It's too big for me. I don't know how I'm doing this, my English, but many, many years ago, I couldn't pronounce that word. So what I did, I divided it in two. I put the horti on my back and I focused on culture, because we could have all the money and all of the equipment and we could have everything that we need to do the horticulture, but if we don't have -- if we don't know who we are and why we want to do all of this project, our culture is the person -- that is one the secrets -- it will not work. We have more and more support from the community and people interested in Urban Agriculture and our gardens. Last year, for example, we had over 1,400 visitors who enjoyed tours, classes, even cooking classes that I thought. However, Norris Square does not own all of the properties and this is why we're here. Including gardens that we have maintained for 40 years and we still have gone over them. Our neighborhood has changed so much in the past few years with lots of new housing, some streets are hardly recognizable. It is very important that we be preserve our gardens for the neighbors and visitors who continue to enjoy them. I am here today to respectfully ask your continuing support for Urban Agriculture culture in Philadelphia and to facilitate a process for obtaining ownership to gardens that we and our friends in all the gardens they apply for. Finally, I would like to share with you some peppers and some hot sauce. It's a recipe of one of our gardeners. His name is [inaudible]. He's 76 years old. He taught the youth of the summer program and after-school program how to make their peppers, so they are homemade. We have some seeds that represent our work. They were grown here in Philadelphia. They are typically found in Puerto Rican cooking and they have my name on the packaging. I just want to mention how proud we are. We know that the City of Philadelphia is going to come again in our help. We are making -- this day, we are making 100 butterflies. They are made of plywood. What we do is we cut the shape of it and we have them -- the visitors, when they come, like in the next two weeks, we are going to have visitors on the 16th and the 17th and they are going to helping us design them, color them. Why we have all this, because we just celebrated the 50th anniversary of Norris Square in gardening and we are sure that we are going to be -- that we are going to continue gardening and celebrating gardening and culture, so that's why we're making 50 extra butterflies, because we know that those 50 years are going to be guaranteed with your help from Norris Square, for us to continue doing what we do. Thank you. CHAIRMEMBER GAUTHIER: Thank you. Did you say you were responsible for the pepper sauce; is this what came from the garden?

Yes. CHAIRMEMBER GAUTHIER: Thank you. First of all, my mama is from the Caribbean, from St. Vincent, so I will try anything spicy. Thank you so much. Congratulations on the garden reaching 50 years and thank you so much for your testimony today and for all the work you've been doing to nurture your community and sustain your culture through horticulture and to also make the community much safer. We appreciate you.

Thank you. CHAIRMEMBER GAUTHIER: Martha Griffin, please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony?

I am Martha Griffin. I wanted to thank all of you city council members for the opportunity to speak today about the importance of Urban Agriculture to myself and Philadelphia. I am Martha Griffin and I am speaking today on behalf of Mill Creek Urban Farm, who I have had the pleasure of working with for four years currently as the executive director. During my four years at Mill Creek Urban Farm, I have come to realize and appreciate the importance that we hold to the Mill Creek community and to the Urban Agriculture community and Philadelphia. Mill Creek Urban Farm is a sacred trust, which not only food is grown, but culture has traditionally been shared among community members. Mill Creek Urban Farm is a place where children have come to learn about farming, run around the farm, and spend time surrounded by nature. It's a space where community members are educated. In 2023, we were able to host an elderberry syrup workshop. These types of educational classes are not only designed to teach people how foods can nourish their bodies, but also to heal sickness and ailments by using locally grown fruits and herbs. Founded in 2005 out of the rubble of falling buildings, the Mill Creek neighborhood is symbolic of the government disinvestment that has greatly impacted far too many communities of color in the United States. Sitting above a creek of rushing, powerful flowing water that was not properly maintained by city officials, the mechanisms that were established to control the flow of the rushing waters deteriorated, causing instability underground, and eventually causing the houses aboveground to collapse. Unfortunately, when the houses collapsed, several people lost their lives and the community as a whole was forever changed. Vacant lots were visible where homes once stood and where families once lived. Out of this rubble, community members began to use these vacant lots to build gardens, to feed themselves and their neighborhoods. Mill Creek Urban Farm was born out of this rubble in order to grow fresh fruits and vegetables to feed the Mill Creek community as a whole, because no 3 supermarkets remained in the neighborhood. Mill Creek Urban Farms filled the void and provided access to fresh, healthy chemical free produce for our community members. In 2021, our Welcome to Wellness was held to offer healing to individuals and to the land that feeds us into the healing techniques or Reiki and yoga. It was a beautiful day and time for community members to come together. We plan to continue to have these types of events that promote overall health, mental and physical, to the community. Like many farms and gardens in Philadelphia, ownership of the land is a cause of concern. With the deeds being under the name of public entities or private owners, Mill Creek Urban Farm is also in this position, as we're working to secure legal ownership on the land that we farm on. As I mentioned, Mill Creek Farm has been active for nearly years. Many farms and gardens in Philadelphia have been active for a much longer period of time. The Mill Creek community gardeners have actually been growing on the lot that is adjacent to the farm for more than 30 years. The gardeners, along with the farm, needs to feel secure and know we will be able to continue to grow food for ourselves and the community. I ask each member of city council to recognize the value and importance of these sacred trusts and to implement legislation that will secure our land for the present and for future generations that will benefit from the agriculture education and the foods that we produce for our community. Coucilmember Harrity, you asked earlier about the raised gardens being installed. Mill Creek Farms does also install the raised gardens beds in Mill Creek and surrounding neighborhoods as a result of a grant from the Reinvestment Authority and the PFJI grant, so that is very important. We thank them for that as well.

Since the implementation of our backyard growers program, for the last few years, we have been able to install more than 30 raised gardens in people's home. We would like to be able to reduce that amount, to do 30 installations in a 12-month time frame with the proper support. I thank you for allowing me the time to share this information with you and I look forward to having further discussions about this vital issue that's affecting too many gardens, farms and green spaces in Philadelphia. Thank you. CHAIRMEMBER GAUTHIER: Thank you so much for your testimony and for the work of everyone currently involved with Mill Creek Farm and everybody historically involved in creating something so beautiful and beneficial for our community out of that government disinvestment. I want you to know -- you know, you are in my district. I want you to know I'm personally committed to creating permanence and helping you guys to get ownership. We'll be working with the councilmembers to get there. Thank you. Justin Trezza, please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony.

Justin Trezza. Good morning, city council members. Thank you for the opportunity to submit testimony and share the vital importance of community gardens and Urban Agriculture here in the City of Philadelphia, a city whose history is synonymous with greening. Again, my name is Justin Trezza and I'm the Senior Director for Healthy Neighborhoods for the Pennsylvania Horticulture Society. PHS's purpose is to use horticulture to advance the health and wellbeing of individuals and communities throughout the Philadelphia region. We strongly believe in the power of horticulture to make positive social and environmental change and Urban Agriculture and community gardens are facets of this. Everyone in this room is acutely aware of the challenges facing our beloved city and that these challenges disproportionately impact neighborhoods that have experienced decades of disinvestment, redlining, food apartheid and more. However, I am here today to speak about the opportunities that exist and are afforded to investing in Urban Agriculture, as well as PHS's long history in investing in community-managed green spaces like community gardens. For over 50 years, PHS has worked alongside urban growers and gardeners in Philadelphia to help them create healthier, more close knit and resilient communities. At PHS, we believe Urban Agriculture, particularly community gardens, are essential to our cities infrastructure and play a prominent role in addressing multiple individual and community social determinants of health, from food sovereignty to building meaningful social connections. For decades, these community steward spaces have done more than just cultivate fresh produce for their communities. They unite neighbors, preserve cultures and function as a respite from the surrounding concrete. 3 million in our community gardens and Urban Agriculture program to support a thriving network of about 160 community gardens and grow sites in Philadelphia. This year alone, we're expecting to onboard about additional community gardens and grower sites and that's just a fraction of the total number here in the Philadelphia, which is estimated to be 300 or more. Our investment is a significant citywide investment to ensure the vitality and success of these spaces. From providing growing materials like soil and seedlings -- some of the seedlings here are ones we produced -- each year, we produce over 250,000 seedling that we distribute to growers across the city -- to offering technical assistant and capital improvements. Since 2020, PHS has invested over $600,000 in capital improvements in gardens, as well as provided over $42,000 in mini grants through the PA Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. We also opened a tool library for Urban Agriculture where over 500 tools and other supplies are available to growers in our program and so much more. The money comes from funds PHS raises for this purpose, from our members, proceeds from the Philadelphia Flower Show, corporate sponsors, state and federal government, as well as limited city and support. Of the sites we work with, over 125 of them are committed to growing food for donation. These sites receive, as I mentioned, over 250,000 organically grown vegetable seedlings a year, which results in tens of thousands of produce that is distributed to food cupboards and pantries, community fridges, places of worship and communities experiencing food apartheid. The need for this support has been put into high gear by the pandemic and inflation. As we saw the injustices of a broken food system and historic redlining only worsened as corner stores closed or families experienced loss of income over the last few years. According to a 2020 report by the Institute for Policy Research, during the COVID-19 crisis, the rate of food insecurity among Black and brown households with children was nearly twice as high as those among white households with children.

The lack of access to healthy food or food apartheid is a massive social injustice happening in our city and across out country that is not only impacting our individuals and individual's nutrition, but also their mental health and overall quality of life. Gardens like Strawberry Mansion Community Garden on Ridge Avenue, Five Loaves, Two Fish in West Philadelphia and Tioga Hope Garden in the Nicetown/Tioga neighborhood are examples of community-led sites that seek food justice solutions and according to Baltimore-based pediatrician, Dr. Alicia Morgan-Cooper, provide community-based solutions to accessing and controlling food that are humanizing, fair, healthy, accessible, racially equitable, environmentally sound and just. The benefits of Urban Agriculture extend well beyond our local food system. In fact, creating and protecting community gardens and clean spaces are also proven ways to improve public safety and reduce gun violence. Earlier, you all referenced some academic paper, especially those by Dr. Gina South of the Urban Health Lab -- I'm not going to go ahead and repeat some of those numbers, but we are all aware of the improvements that greening does in terms of reducing gun violence as well as mental health. Though we have seen advancements in the support of Urban Agriculture in the last few years with the creation of Philadelphia's first Urban Agriculture director position and the publication of Philadelphia Agriculture Plan, Growing from the Root, Urban Agriculture, including community gardens, remains severely underfunded and threatened by factors like land insecurity. We urgently need the city to recognize the importance of Urban Agriculture, whether as a means to preserve one's way of life and culture, address food apartheid, or to enhance greening in our city and invest in the future. Residents of every council district and of all walks of life invest their sweat equity to turn vacant lands into community gardens that builds community, produce food and reduce crime, support services that these gardens require are few and threats to their survival everywhere. Organizations like PHS, Neighborhood Gardens Trust, Urban Creators, POP, and so many more you'll hear from today, as well as some you may not hear from, are working hard to preserve land and support Urban Agriculture and community gardens and the people that maintain them. We need your help to maintain this work. A simple suggestion, to start, would be to make the permanent preservation for established community gardens in green spaces a priority and to invest more heavily in great programs like the Food Justice Initiative. We should support these spaces and the people who store them and continue to make Philadelphia a healthier, greener and more united city. Thank you very much. CHAIRMEMBER GAUTHIER: Thank you so much for your testimony and your work. We love PHS. Coucilmember O'Rourke, do you have questions or comments? CHAIRMEMBER O'ROURKE: Really, this is kind of a question for those who have already spoken as well as yourself and anyone else that who can maybe answer it. Do we see any opportunities for developing guaranteed job programs at community gardens and urban farms? Is that a goal of this plan? Can anyone speak to that, perhaps? The question is, do we seek any opportunities for developing guaranteed job programs? We have spoken quite a bit about how this can help reduce crime, et cetera, et cetera. As it relates to maintaining sustainable employment for young folks, perhaps returning citizens, what have you, do we see any of that coming out of this effort? ASH RICHARDS: Personally, I would say, at the city level, we are seeing -- so, at Farm Philly, which is what I manage, so Parks and Rec's Urban Agriculture plan is Farm Philly. In Farm Philly, we do workforce development with PowerCorp PHL, so we're developing youngsters and young people in Urban Agriculture.

The hope is, that when they graduate from the PowerCorp PHL, they get a job within PowerCorp or they are able to come over to the city. So that's our hope, that we do that. We also partner with Sankofa Community Farm, where we have two positions there that are allotted to working on their farm. We call those seasonal positions. You all know -- I think you are familiar with recreational seasonal workers, where they are only working nine months out of the year. Our hope is that we can get folks out of that regime, because it's not a long-term pathway for someone to have a living wage, plus health care benefits, et cetera. We are trying to figure out ways where we can get our young people into introductory jobs and be able to build from there. So that's what we are doing on the city side. We are partnering with PowerCorp PHL, we are partnering with Bartram Sankofa Community Farms to try to build out having more allotments in positions where we're shared between our two agencies. Then there are folks here who will also speak to that, if you will allow them to come and testify. CHAIRMEMBER O'ROURKE: Absolutely. Sure. If that's permissible? CHAIRMEMBER GAUTHIER: Wait a minute. I want to be clear. What organization are you all representing? Please state your name for the record and let me know who you are representing.

Good afternoon, Honorable Councilmembers. I'm Chris Bolden-Newsome and I am -- CHAIRMEMBER GAUTHIER: I'm so sorry. Please, share with us.

Well, I'm going a little earlier than I expected -- CHAIRMEMBER GAUTHIER: Are you here for --

Indeed, I am. I'm the first to speak after the panel list. CHAIRMEMBER GAUTHIER: This is a very long hearing, so I am going to ask that we kind of stick to the agenda. We look forward to hearing from you later. Maybe if we can reserve questions for the panel that's up and then we look forward to hearing from you always and later. CHAIRMEMBER O'ROURKE: So I stand down on the question. I will say, as we move along, that our office is particularly interested in those who are trying to develop our those who are trying to develop are guaranteed jobs program -- as obviously a partner in all of this, but particularly around that -- so I am looking forward to what you will share about it later, but let's follow the lead of the Chair. Thank you so much. CHAIRMEMBER GAUTHIER: Can our panel come back? I just want to make sure we get questions and comments for this panel. CHAIRMEMBER BROOKS: Can you talk more about the impact that your garden has had on the surrounding neighborhoods and do you think Urban Agriculture and gardens pay a role in public safety and community building? I think you talked about that a little bit earlier. Both of you have, but I remember distinctly you talking about that.

I absolutely do think that urban gardens plays an important role in community building and reduction of crime. The neighborhood where we are located, Mill Creek, unfortunately, there is high incidence of unemployment, like I said, disinvestment and crime that does take place. We're working not only to beautify the space, but to provide job opportunities. You asked about jobs. We did implement an apprenticeship program last year in order to provide education and training for individuals so that they would be able to go out and become employed during Urban Agricultural work, yes. CHAIRMEMBER BROOKS: My next question. Can someone talk about the youth programs that your organizations have and do you think these programs impact young people that work with you?

If I may. Teresa Elliott. I'm the executive director of Norris Square Neighborhood Project and I believe I can answer that for Iris. We have two parallel youth programs. The one you are most interested in is called [Spanish translation] and these are eight youth garden apprenticeships. They learn to -- CHAIRMEMBER BROOKS: Can you say that number again? How many?

Currently, we have eight. It's pretty much a year-round program. They work in the basement during the winter and they study plants. Then they grow seeds with grow lights and eventually move them. We have one garden that is specifically reserved for them to grow their produce. They recently just started planting tomatoes and onions. Then they run a farm stand in another one of our gardens. We are realistic. Their favorite part of running the farm stand is counting the money, but they also are learning to have customer service skills. At the beginning, you see them, when someone comes up to them, they all kind of move back and hope someone else will talk to the customer. They slowly learn and gain confidence. You can point to an eggplant and say, what do you do with this, and they are learning. They are completely being exposed to foods that they are not normally aware of. CHAIRMEMBER BROOKS: My last question for this panel is -- did you have something to add?

Yes. I would like to go a little bit back. The question you asked before, if I'm not mistaken, was about how -- why the gardens are safe or what do we do. Well, the reason why we have gardens in North Philly is because our neighborhood was totally infected by drugs. You know, now, we have Kensington and Allegheny, we have all those barriers, but ours was -- it was devastating. It was a complete nightmare 40 years ago. There was a group of women, the women I was mentioning to the group before, that the director at the time was Sister Carol Heg [ph] and she, one by one, she was able to convince Puerto Rican women to leave the safety of home to be on the street, chanting to the people that came to our neighborhood to buy drugs to go back home. That was the way. They were doing that every single weekend, putting their lives right there in front to combat the drug trafficking in North Philly. Those are the women that I had the immense honor and pleasure to form a group that I have called Grupo Motivos. They started doing this chanting every single weekend and the drug trafficking went from the park, Norris Square Park, and it was then on the 2100 block of [inaudible], the drug trafficking in North Philly, and they were kept on going north and going north and going north. So that's why we had all these empty lots, because houses were burnt, houses were destroyed. Then we had this empty lot that was filled with trash. I asked my director, can I go on the street, meaning, to help clean and then started the culture and then came to the Pennsylvania Horticulture Society. We became the only -- and the last -- green country town. The only Latino green country town and the last in the program. Still, we're benefiting from the efforts of PHS in the farms -- like, last year, they came and they pulled all of the trees that PHS planted many years ago and they just decide, these are just gorgeous, beautiful trees that the community is enjoying. Safety is -- we were gardening at that time. Now we are enjoying the safety, the beauty and everything else. CHAIRMEMBER BROOKS: Thank you so much for that, Ms. Brown.

Regarding the employment question and also Cheyney University, we have been in contact with a professor from Cheyney University to actually bring more young people into the university itself through farming and even expanding the scope of the farming to join some hydroponic and aquaponic drawing, which is going to expand the employment opportunities for young people. So there does need to be more of a connection between the farms in Philadelphia and the universities that can provide that education and expand the opportunities for economic growth as well. CHAIRMEMBER O'ROURKE: Real quick. I am encouraged to hear this. As one who articulated through an HBCU, a number of our HBCUs were started at schools for agriculture. To miss that opportunity to create -- Ash mentioned, there isn't a tight tie between the city and Cheyney and what have you. There is a wonderful opportunity here to create that pipeline for students of color, young folks coming out and being able to get the education they need to be able to do that. Anyways, thank you for mentioning that. CHAIRMEMBER HARRITY: I was at Cheyney. It's an amazing facility that they have. I haven't been there probably in the last year and a half to see what they expanded it to, but they had the fish feeding from the roots and the plants growing on top and it was all -- so they had fish that would be there and they fed on the roots of the plants. The plants grew bigger. It's really an amazing thing that they have there. If you get a chance, you should go tour it. It is really great. CHAIRMEMBER GAUTHIER: Really great work. Thank you. Thank you to everyone for their testimony. We are going to move on to our third panel, but I just want to say, that after we get testimony from the third panel and any questions and comments from the members of the committee and the legislation sponsor, we're going to be kind to our

Kim Jordan, Co-Executive Director, Philadelphia Orchard Project and Professor Domenic Vitiello, University of Pennsylvania.

Good morning. I was going to say good morning, but I think it's the afternoon. CHAIRMEMBER GAUTHIER: Please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony.

Kim Jordan and I'm Co-Executive Director of the Philadelphia Orchard Project. Thank you, Chair Gauthier, members of the council of the environment. Our organization, POP, we're based -- our home base is at the Woodlands in the Third Council District, where we have the POP learning orchard and a plant nursery and our base of operations. I also serve as a member of the Board of Directors of the Norris Square Neighborhood Project. You just heard from Ms. Brown. I want to acknowledge a couple of members of council who aren't here, because even though this is a hearing on -- for the committee of the environment, I think others have already provided testimony that speak to this. This could be a hearing on public safety. It could be a hearing on education. It could be a hearing on children in youth parks. This is really an issue that touches a lot of different areas, so I'm grateful you are here. I wish all members of council could be here to hear this testimony. I just want to acknowledge, Council Majority Leader, Katherine Gilmore Richardson, who advocated for our organization through last year's city budget process in funding a group of organizations that work on environmental justice and for recognizing the ways environmental justice and Urban Agriculture are intertwined. I also want to recognize Council President Johnson, who, again, recognizes the importance of trees. I just hard about his recognition about Point Breeze, especially. There are a lot of areas in the city that have a low tree, so thinking about those ways that overlap as well. So our nonprofit organization, POP currently partners with 68 different urban orchards and food forests and there are a number of groups here that are current community partners, Norris Square Neighborhood Projects, Urban Creators, Mill Creek Urban Farm, Sankofa Farm at Bartram and many, many others. We work with these groups and community members to plant orchards that contain fruit and nut trees, berry bushes and vines, pollinator plants and edible and medicinal ground covers and herbs. We have already, again, talked about the many different benefits that community gardens and urban farms [microphone glitch]. One important distinction, a lot of the things we plant are perennial. For us, that issue of long-term land access and land security is really important because a fruit tree might not produce for five or ten years. So I don't need to go into all the reasons why these things are important, but I want to point out one sort of additional -- you just mentioned, Coucilmember O'Rourke, jobs and economic opportunity. One of the items we brought in today was some honey that was produced from our beehives last year. This one honey, one jar of honey, is one from -- it was 216 pounds from our hives that were tended to in partnership with the bee guild's who work with many other community gardens and farms around the city. We have given these as gifts as gratitude to our volunteers, our partners. We have sold them at POP events ourselves. We have worked with a local business in West Philly who has sold it and used it as part of her business and we have also donated honey to a mutual aid group that made medicine. There are so many different benefits to supporting Urban Agriculture that reach in all these different areas. I want to point out that there are POP-supported orchards in different 6 ZIP codes, at least one in each city 7 council district, and as many others 8 have already pointed out, a lot of these 9 orchards and gardens are located in 10 places where residents have limited 11 access to fresh food and clean air and 12 green spaces. 13 We talked a little bit about, well, 14 what is the actual cost of these things. 15 A single orchard might initially cost 16 between three to $10,000 to install, if 17 you are thinking of plant materials, but 18 the really important ongoing cost is the 19 people, making sure that people are paid 20 for their time be able to maintain these 21 spaces.

All the orchards that we work 22 with, they grow the food, POP provides 23 training and education, the residents, 24 they are harvesting and distributing all that fruit to the community. I just wanted to mention some of our other partners, Union Baptist Church in the Second District, Aubrey Evtretum [ph] in the Eighth District. There's really all different types of places where food is being grown in different areas of the city. There are also many that are on city-owned properties, as we have also talked about, recreation centers, parks, historic centers and schools. There is really a lot of opportunity for the city to support the work that's going on in these spaces, whether it is done directly by city staff, which is through Farm Philly, or with the nonprofit organizations that are partnering with the city to run these programs. In the Urban Agriculture Plan, you know, it is this really ambitious and thorough road map to a more just food system. It is really good we're having this hearing today to talk about it. I think just, again, emphasizing that Urban Agriculture is a way that we can become the safest, cleanest and greenest big city, something Mayor Parker and her administration should be thrilled to support and with the support of council can really positively impact our city. At least two specific areas of the Urban Ag talk about orchards and food forests and names, how our organization, Philadelphia Orchard Project, can support these goals. 4 is support urban orchard planting and tree care, so that's through year-round training on how to deal with pest and disease problems, how to prune, how to use the harvest, printed materials, videos, all sorts of resources that we're currently providing to our partners and to the public. 12, developing opportunities for new city-run and community-led food forests on public land. As I mentioned, around half of our 68 partners are currently on city-owned property and we really see that there is an opportunity to develop more of these spaces with the land that the city owns and could devote towards growing more fun food. 3. This is around building relationships within the communities to permit indigenous food sovereignty and traditional food ways. We're all growing and living and tending to [Spanish translation] and indigenous land and are trying to see how POP can do that, but I think it's important for the city as well to think about promoting indigenous food sovereignty and traditional food ways. POP was a grantee of the Food Justice Initiative and receiving funding in 2021 and 2022, and now hearing those numbers, I feel even more fortunate that we were able to receive that. It funded our lead orchard volunteer program. Last year, we had 28 volunteers in this program who have received seasonal stipends, training in orchard care and opportunities to meet and connect with others caring for the land. CHOP's Healthier Together Program also directly provided funding to POP for that program and we continued it today with support from the William Penn Foundation and the City of Philadelphia. As we heard, the Food Justice Initiative could fund a lot more of this good work, so I think it would be wonderful to see even beyond that $1 million ask, have it funded even more robustly so that many more groups than a couple dozen so far have received funding, can receive this type of support. I want to end by saying, you know, food is a powerful connector. We all have to eat. Gaining the experience, actually being in a state that grows food and seeing for yourself how just a tiny seed or plantling needs soil, sunlight, water and time and you can actually get something that is delicious at the end of it is so transformative and that really starts with prioritizing land for long-term use, for growing and making sure we have the resources to connect with each other, to share knowledge today and into the future. Thank you.

CHAIRMEMBER GAUTHIER: Thank you for your testimony and for everything that POP is doing to spread healthy food access to our communities. We look forward to celebrating you on Friday. Professor, please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony.

My name is Domenic Vitiello. I'm a Professor for City Planning and Urban Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. I am proud to call you an alum, Councilmember Gauthier. I'm also, today, especially proud to tell Ash Richards is a former student of mine. One of the major lines of my own research for the last years has been 5 to study the social and economic impacts 6 of community gardens in United States 7 cities and more recently around the 8 world. 9 Coucilmember O'Rourke, you asked a 10 question that is actually -- I have 11 written a fair bit about. I'll send you 12 that or I'll send my former students on 13 your staff a bit of that. I won't go on 14 too long about. S. 17 cities and Urban Agriculture support 18 organizations on food and agriculture 19 policy. A garden as Manatawna Farm for 20 the last 25 years -- that's in Coucilmember Jones' district in a five or six acre community garden that is on a 76-acre farm, that's one of the three large farms that Fairmount Park owns -and I say all that detail just to stress that really I think our largest agriculture assets are in our park system and that's where they belong. I will say a little bit about the impacts of Urban Agriculture in Philadelphia and a little bit about what I and other people who study Urban Agriculture around the United States and other wealthy countries, you know, we think. This is not just my view, right, but what we think makes for healthy, equitable, accessible Urban Agriculture sectors in cities like Philadelphia, because I think we have really had a pretty uneven history of that. The first thing I want to stress is something that was addressed as well. I think Urban Agriculture -- I think it's really appropriate that the two city departments that we have been talking about today, Parks and Rec and health. When earlier administrations in Philadelphia have tried to place Urban Agriculture more in a context of serving urban redevelopment goals or urban economic development, as in work the commerce department is doing, or sometimes other goals, Urban Ag is not that great at realizing some of those. It has not always succeeded very well. When we have treated it more as really important social, and in a sense, socioeconomic policy, in poor communities, right, in the United States and other parts of the world, Urban Agriculture is a really important part of coping with poverty in a wide variety of ways. You all started very, you know, I think effectively and others that filled in on more details of the wide variety of impacts of Urban Agriculture. I just caution you and other legislators against trying to hold up Urban Agriculture, you know, in one of those sort of areas of impact alone, especially compared to other land uses. Take it all together. I think that's what your hands were doing, Councilmember O'Rourke. Understand the powerful impacts, the power of the impacts of Urban Agriculture. We have to understand all these things that people are saying together, cumulatively. Again, I think health and Parks and Rec are very appropriate offices in which to advance this work. I will say a little bit more on that. On impacts, my own work has done work to really quantify the production and distribution of food out of especially community gardens, which I should stress are the largest farm of Urban Agriculture, particularly food production by far in the public environment. This largest form of urban food production is in individuals' backyards. That's one thing I love about the Farm Philly support programs, is that part of what they are able to do is support backyard gardeners in the ways that the councilmember has been pushing. That's really important, right, to reach people extensively in every corner of the city.

In community gardens, I have done this in a number of cities and people replicated in elsewhere, but in 2008, we countered -- literally, not just sort of remotely, but counted -- and some of the gardeners here today helped us weigh their produce by crop. I can tell you, in 2008, a while ago, community gardens in Philadelphia in the summer -- which is not the whole growing season -- produced over 2 million pounds of food, which at that point, was worth about $4 million. Today, it would be worth well over $7,000,000 in 2024. That amounted about to a little over 9 million servings of food that community gardens distribute directly to family, neighbors, friends and so. Cumulatively, that's the largest form of local direct food distribution. That way sort of out produced and distributed all the city's urban farms and all the city's farmers' markets that year, so really big impact in a variety of ways. I would echo Ash in response to your question, Coucilmember O'Rourke about jobs. I think -- no, I know. Not I think, I know. I have done this research across the Northeast and Midwest and Mid-Atlantic on Urban Agriculture as economic development and it doesn't tend to deliver what the commerce department is looking for, which are private sector jobs that are hopefully family-sustaining jobs with decent benefits and companies that are going to pay a lot of taxes. However, Urban Ag programs are really important economically for attaching people to the workforce, young people, immigrants and refugees, people who have been incarcerated, people who have been homeless. All of these groups have had relatively little success in traditional workforce development programs compared to Urban Ag workforce development programs. The key here, the important limit to recognize, is that those job pathways don't lead to work in agriculture most of the time. Sometimes in agricultural science or food science or food service or landscaping or tree work, which is a little bit better paid than landscaping, right, and all sorts of really good jobs. You heard my colleague today from Norris Square say young people learn customer service skills, young people learn about money management, things that are super transferable knowledge. Everybody behind me cultivates a wide range of literacies in the people with whom they work, young people, old people, people like me that like to think we're somewhere in the middle, right? Ecological literacies, culinary literacies, economic literacies, social interaction, culture literacies, et cetera, I can go on. Those literacies are generally really important for people's employment pathways. As Ash said earlier, farming in the United States is not a great job. The majority of farmers in this country have more than one job, which tells us they can't survive on that one farming job. I'll send you more stuff later and I am glad to continue that conversation. I want to say something hopefully quickly about the history of community gardening and urban farming in Philadelphia, which in some ways contradicts some things that Coucilmember Brooks, you said, and Ash said in response to you. I think Philadelphia has a really vibrant, world leading in some ways, on par with other cities, not necessarily beyond -- sorry if I'm insulting people -- we have a super vibrant and wonderful Urban Agriculture sector despite the fact that we have had a very weak, inconsistent sort of public and philanthropic investment and a very up and down history, both in our city government and in our Urban Agriculture support organizations' abilities to serve gardens. Back in 2008, when I was starting Garden City Ride with colleagues and we were doing it in collaboration with the Horticulture Society, Ag Extension and many others, nobody knew where community guards were in Philadelphia, because we had disinvested in Urban Ag support system. You read some very helpful numbers -- I hope you have my handout.

If not, I'll send it to you -- with a table, right, that shows, in 1996, when the city government, through the Water Department, Fairmount Park, Recreational Department, Managing Director's office, were all investing in gardens largely through Ag Extension and PHS, we had a really big and vibrant Urban Agriculture scene, wonderfully supported support systems that fell off a cliff over the next ten years. As you can see, we lost more than half of our gardens in the next years. We have regrown that. 7 Partly because of the land security, the 8 lack thereof, but also because we have 9 been very inconsistent with keeping up 10 our Urban Agriculture support systems. 11 We had a very up-and-down history. 12 Really, until recently, Philadelphia city government lacked detailed Urban Agriculture policies, plans and programs to coherently and equitably support gardeners, farmers and communities around the city and we really have been lagging other cities in that work, I think. Really, fortunately, this is changing, and I'm happy to be able to testify today because it is changing thanks to the work that you are doing, the colleagues at Parks and Recs are doing and the people around the city are organized to promote. In recent years, city leaders, including you, have invested in the Growing from the Root Plan, the Farm Philly Program and the Philadelphia Food Justice Initiative and together, to my mind, these investments give the city, first, a clear road map to build a strong city support system for Urban Agriculture. Second, the institutional, as well as physical infrastructure in Farm Philly to provide growers around the city access to the material resources, the programming and information and other things they need. And, finally, through the Food Justice Initiative, a funding to assist our city's really vibrant agriculture sector. I'll close by saying, you know, not just me, but like me who study Urban Agriculture around the United States, around the world, we tend to think in some ways similar, that in cities with healthy, accessible, equitable Urban Agriculture sectors tend to have significant public sector involvement and control. Really, it's where the public sector -- as in Seattle, in its P-PAP [ph] system, which is a city-created system and the Neighbor Space Community Land Trust, which you might say this as an antonymous word, but this organization was created by the City of Chicago to do the work of the City of Chicago with the mission to promote a more equitable distribution of community-managed open space. That's how Chicago described community gardens, community managed open space in the city that has very inequitable distribution of parks, Chicago. The public sector is really key for making things more accessible and equitable to everybody, because you work, right, for the city at large -- I know, you have a district -- but you work for the city at large for presumably everybody in the public. The second thing is, we tend to look at cities that have stabilized land tenure and therefore make it possible for all of us, who are growers, to invest over the long term in building relationships with one another and with our neighbors, right, of those sites, investing in growing healthy soil and growing median and many other things. Those are the invisible things that oftentimes we don't -- you know, people on the outside don't imagine us really investing in. So I'm really largely here to thank you for supporting this work and for owning it and city government and what is really, again, a wonderfully vibrant sector that, I think, with continued support from you all, has only good things in its future. All of these folks will tell you all the details of that. I'm also really proud to have worked with many of the people behind me. Thank you again. I'll shut up. CHAIRMEMBER GAUTHIER: Thank you, Professor. Thank you for your testimony and for your work and for providing us with this critical information. Yay for urban planter.

I love to hear about how expansive our work can be. Are there any questions or comments from members of the committee? CHAIRMEMBER HARRITY: Again, thank you. I love to see some information on what's going on in Chicago. Again, I would be happy if we could start building these raised beds for all neighborhoods to have. I have always lived in low income areas from the time I was a child, bringing brought up in the City of Philadelphia, and I always remember about growing up in Southwest Philly is how the people took care of their gardens and how just the presence of flowers and grass and stuff like that, for a kid, does something to us. It kind of let's us to transcend some of the predicaments we're in just by the environment we're around. You think I'm joking. I'm going to be planting this weekend. I already started. I put my tomato plants in in the rain last week, so we'll do that and shortly I'll be bringing the flowers up so the kids can plant them on the block. It's just amazing how kids respond to things like that. We need to be thinking outside the box on all of our things that are going on here, especially with violence and violence in kids and stuff like that. Having them work with their hands and planting it and them getting to see it grow and know that they did that, it's a lot better than some of the other stuff that they will be seeing. I look forward to my colleagues puttings things up for this and trying to grab some funding for this. We need to do more and I would love to see it more in Kensington, where there is a definite need for fresh vegetables and fruit. I'm all in. This is something I was brought up on. I have been in this business for quite a long time as the guy behind the scenes. I have worked for just about everybody. Mayor Street was -- he is still gardening. that was his thing. In the 90s, when he was on council and we started all that stuff with the Urban Ag and then when he took over as mayor in '99, we started giving community groups the lots. You want to take care of the lot and you want to do a garden, okay, it's your lot now. You are in charge of it. We don't want to have to come back and clean it again. As long as you keep it the way it's supposed to be, we don't have a problem with you being there. That's kind of the stuff we need to do. You know, I can't say enough, that we, as a city, we can feed our kids. We can end these food insecurities if we all just come together and work on the stuff that we agree on and get back to the stuff we don't. Thank you. CHAIRMEMBER BROOKS: Thank you so much for your testimony. I'm getting to the point of the day where I'm having a lot of reflection. I think about Commissioner Slawson talking about her family's farm growing up and I think about my family, too. No one in my family was encouraged to do that. No 11 one in my family -- my family still owns the land. I have been there three times in my life, never in my adult life, so the disconnect between something that comes natural in our communities to the push towards something else, you know, whatever it is, it's kind of resonated on me in this space, because I'm like, wow. We talk about the next generation, who is going to continue this work. One thing I haven't heard -- I heard programming, not enough programming for young people. I'm not talking about high school, I'm talking about elementary school. I know I partner with Logan Elementary that have a small community garden over there. I connected them to Jefferson so they can get one of those hydroponic systems so the children can work on it indoors and take it outdoors. That's one school out of all the schools in this city that I know are doing it and we don't talk about it. It's like a hidden science, this happening. How can we connect our babies as young as kindergarten through eighth grade to this science, to make it a part of living.

You know, I think about my dad used to say, you know, you bring a man fish, he eats for the day; you teach a man to fish, he has something to eat for the rest of his life. Why aren't we instilling this in young people as part of life skills and sciences as early as elementary. I get it towards the social development for teenagers, but I remember when I used to work in my family's garden, I was a kid. They probably sent me down there to do all the weeds and stuff. They told me what to pick, what not to pick, plant the seeds. My fingers were smaller. Hindsight is to 20/20, right? What are we going to continue this work? You said about the gap that happened. I know, in some of your documents, you talk about, what's the impact of our community and our city if this pattern of reducing community space and even reducing backyard gardens, how will that impact our city in the long run? What have your studies said about that? After my reflection --

I think you made a really important -- let me ask. Is anyone here from the school district? I would say the school district is the other, in a sense, you know, not city agency, but public institution that we haven't been talking about yet so much. You've heard from some of the wonderful youth programs. We'll hear from more. I think recent developments, trends of growth in our school system, our school district, have been very positive. Fox Chase Farms, the city's largest farm, owned by Fairmount Park, has a principal -- as in a school principal -- you know this stuff -- again, these are, to me, our greatest agriculture assets. Fox Chase and the hundreds, maybe thousands of public school students from Philadelphia it's bringing in on a pretty regular basis, that's all been expanding. You know, Saul. In some senses, Lankenau became a more serious agriculture school in recent years. This is on the upswing, but we have also seen ups and downs very much in youth programs in Urban Agriculture. Even in just my time working in the last 20 years or so intensively in Urban Ag in the city, so another thing that has been very up and down.

If I can add on to that? POP has developed a school-based curriculum for children from age kindergarten through 12th grade. We used to do programming directly in school, so we have about a dozen school orchards, but just the combination of the difficulty of actually getting classroom time available and COVID, so the resources are there. Many other groups have created wonderful resources, but I think it's the difficulty of integrating that time into what is prescribed by school district requirements and state requirements and such. I think there is really a lot of opportunity, again, thinking of the amount of land that the school district owns and has access to of converting Blacktop, which will also help with heat island effect in a lot of different neighborhoods and turning some of those spaces into outdoor classrooms where people can learn about the environment and can learn some of those science-based learning activities in those spaces that are right where they are going to school, whether it's in the classroom or outside of that through after-school programs or other partnerships. CHAIRMEMBER BROOKS: Would it be helpful to you to -- like, if we can continue to figure out how we can break down the barriers? As we're talking about this, I can think of various school district buildings that have vacant land that someone has to come take care of, probably someone is getting paid to do it. Why can't we change that into community garden space that can be a shared responsibility from multiple departments and community, you know, to grow food, like we're talking about, food sovereignty, why can't we make sure the young people are part of investing in community --

I think, at least some of the community schools, have tried to make more spaces available like that to community members but I am sure there are security concerns, like who is accessing the grounds at certain times, that there needs to be some level of up care towards that. I think, especially for the community schools, I think, are a good model. I know the school district is working on, you know, how can they provide more greening and what are the different city departments they can work with -- like the water department -- sustainability, to make some of those spaces available at more sites. CHAIRMEMBER BROOKS: I would love to be a part of un-siloed conversation around making that happen. We talk about how we can save money. This is a money saving strategy, a community building strategy, a youth developmental strategy, inter-generational running strategy, health benefit strategy. There are so many things that we can pull together just by solving a small issue like how can you -- is the land going to be open for people to water on Saturday, that seems like a very small issue that we can resolve as a city. My last question, what are some of the largest threats facing community gardens and urban farms?

Broken record here. Land security. The very uneven, over time, ups and undoes of public and philanthropic brought our attention and support to this to the extent we can build, you know, efficient -- and I think Farm Philly is a very efficient system -- to the extent we can build out programs we can sustain, that everybody can access, we can avoid those sorts of ups and downs. If we can stabilize more land, including in some of the biggest gardens -- you know, the airports/Eastwick/common ground, it has other names, too, largest garden in the city. CHAIRMEMBER BROOKS: We're working on it. Someone mentioned about every entity that deals with land has their friend, they said developers. Can --

What Ash was saying -- I think what you are referring to was Ash's statement that on -- there is no city land use category in city databases for Urban Agriculture, whether that's community garden, urban farm, orchard, whatever you want to call it. I have looked at this. The majority of community garden sites in Philadelphia are classified as vacant land. That's a problem. CHAIRMEMBER BROOKS: Thank you for that.

We have also talked about how it is not necessarily a good career path for young people. So there is the danger, as well as a -- there is a lot of older generation that are really interested in growing and farming, passing on that knowledge and making sure there are enough young people and that there are job pathways that people can have, a career that sustains them, that pays year-around, that isn't a nine-month seasonal position. As the director of a small nonprofit, it is very hard to find the resources to be able to pay people, but we need to be able to pay them and to provide the benefits that we want to be able to provide. We're not there yet and a lot of other groups aren't there yet. I think it's also securing the land and caring for the people that are tending to that land. CHAIRMEMBER GAUTHIER: Thank you. Thank you, Minority Leader Brooks. Thank you both for your testimony. It is 1:06. We're going to take a 15-minute break. That means we are going to reconvene and start again at 1:21. (At this time, a short break was taken.) CHAIRMEMBER GAUTHIER: I gave you guys a longer break that I originally said. Thanks everybody for coming back. Will the clerk please call the next panel of witnesses to testify on the resolution.

Jenny Greenberg, Executive Director, Neighborhood Gardens Trust and Ryan Gittler-Muniz, Environmental Justice Organization, the Public Interest Law Center. CHAIRMEMBER GAUTHIER: Please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony.

Jenny Greenberg, Neighborhood Gardens Trust. Good afternoon, Chairperson Gauthier and members of the committee on the environment. Thank you for the opportunity to testify. My name is Jenny Greenberg and I serve as the Executive Director of the Neighborhood Gardens Trust, which is Philadelphia's land trust for the preservation of community gardens and shared green spaces. NGT holds ownership for over 50 gardens across Philadelphia and is working with 30 threatened gardens to find land security. I am going to cut my comments a little bit -- we have heard a lot today already about the history and impact of gardens -- and kind of jump to the crux of the matter. Despite the many social, health and environmental benefits the gardens offer, upwards of 200 green spaces face an existential threat because the people maintaining and cultivating them do not have legal land tenure. Philadelphia's at a crucial moment. Gardens are being threatened by speculation and development with growing frequency. In the past six months, NGT has spent $100,000 to purchase land, two longstanding vibrant gardens, from developers who were planning to build on them. Once a garden is gone, it's gone, along with all the community benefits it provided. Urban green spaces should not be viewed as an interim land use until development comes. New housing and gardens are not an either/or, Philadelphia has enough land for both, and together with affordable housing, gardens are an essential piece of the puzzle for an humane, livable and equitable city. Often the footprint of a garden includes multiple lots, with a mix of public and private owners. It's vital that the Philadelphia Land Bank Redevelopment Authority and Department of Public Properties, work in partnership with NGT and other Urban Ag organizations to untangle these complicated titled issues, which Ash correctly described as a bowl of spaghetti. It's also important that we secure funding to purchase gardens from developers that acquire garden land when there is no other pathway to save them. Since Philadelphia created the land bank a decade ago, we heard over and over from the public that community green space is a priority. As a result of this advocacy, the city's policies allow a phenomenal free disposition of city-held gardens to nonprofits. This is so important and I commend the city for adopting this policy. But the devil is in the details and in the execution. There are serious challenges with the way the disposition policy has been interpreted and implemented by PHDC, which has had a crippling effect on our work and many other groups. The numbers speak for themselves. Between 2015 and '19, NGT acquired 44 parcels at 13 gardens from city agencies. Since 2020, we haven't been able to acquire a single lot. Ironically, we're having an easier time negotiating and buying land at market rate from developers. The impact with land disposition is hurting gardeners. These volunteers work selflessly to keep their neighborhoods clean, beautiful and strong, often for decades, but they live in uncertainly and fear that one day they will go out and there will be bulldozers in the garden. 2023 was such an important year for Philadelphia's Urban Agriculture community. Parks and Recreation unveiled the city's first Urban Agriculture Plan, the city acquired US Bank liens for close to 90 garden properties, preventing their loss at sheriff sales. We need to keep this momentum going. These are promising steps, but to truly realize the vision of the Urban Ag plan and to fully support, protect and amplify all the good that gardens and farms do, we need productive working partnerships between the community and all of the various city agencies to streamline fair and transparent pathways to garden preservation and to provide gardens and farms the resources and support they need. Thank you. I look forward to continuing to work with you on this important issue. CHAIRMEMBER GAUTHIER: Thank you.

We greatly appreciate the work you are doing in our communities and you know we stand with you around making this land disposition process more favorable to our urban gardens and farm and congratulations on your recent nomination to the land bank board, which we hope to be voted on positively tomorrow. This is a very crucial perspective that has to be present in our conversations around the land disposition policy moving forward. Thanks so much. Ryan, please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony.

Ryan Gittler-Muniz. Thank you, Chairmember Gauthier and all the members of the committee. My name is Ryan Gittler-Muniz and I'm here as an environmental justice organizer on behalf of the Public Interest Law Center. I'm also a volunteer with Iglesias Gardens in Kensington and a solitary member of the Food Policy Advisory Council. The Law Center is the only organization in Philadelphia that offers pro bono legal representation and community organizing to urban farmers and gardeners. Through our garden justice legal initiative, we have provided legal assistant, referrals and advice to over 70 gardens since 2011. We use both law and advocacy to preserve Philadelphia green space, which is being lost due to development pressure. Today is an exciting day to reaffirm our commitments to Philadelphians past, present and future who attend urban green spaces and make our city better as a result. Agriculture has been practiced here for thousands of years. First, by the [Spanish translation] or original people of the Delaware Valley and later by European settlers and descendents of enslaved Africans who bought their own ancestorial growing practices. Today, Urban Agriculture can be found in every neighborhood of the city and is deeply rooted in our Black, Latin and AAPI communities. Philadelphia gardens and farms are places where people come together, express themselves freely, grow food for their families, revive connection with the land, practice culture, combat land-based depression and heal from gun violence. The list goes on and on. These valuable spaces reflect the work of community workers who transformed neglected land around them, using their own labor and resources, to make something beautiful for their neighborhood to enjoy. They deserve our admiration and our support. From the city's Urban Agriculture plan, we know that Philadelphia has roughly 450 growing spaces and two-thirds are located in racially-concentrated areas of poverty, meaning over 50 percent of residents are people of color and over percent live 17 below the poverty line. 18 The public health benefits of 19 maintaining green space in these 20 communities are well documented and compelling. Urban Agriculture has much to offer Philadelphia, yet we are at risk of losing many growing spaces throughout the city. According to the Philadelphia Garden Data Collaborative, we have lost as least 140 known gardens and farms since 2008 and more than half of the city's garden land is insecure, meaning it is not owned by the garden or a trusted third-party, like a community land trust. At the Law Center, we help gardens secure their land, ideally by gaining legal title, but sometimes through long-term leases. That process is complicated, because gardens often steward multiple parcels each owned by different public or private entities. Sometimes gardens parcels are privately owned by speculators or owners who may be deceased, even when residents have tended to them for many years. This makes the land vulnerable to development or, if it is tax delinquent, to sheriff's sale. The majority of insecure garden parcels, almost three quarters, according to the Urban Ag plan, is owned by the City of Philadelphia. These parcels may have pathways to land security, but community gardeners, farmers and advocates to urge the city to improve its approach to green space preservation for more then a decade. Growers still face persistent roadblocks from city land holding agencies like the Philadelphia Land Bank, including multi-year wait times and applications and a lack of staff dedicated to garden and green space preservation. We are grateful to the committee for giving Urban Agriculture, practitioners and supporters a platform today and we reiterate the need highlighting other testimonies for increased material support.

We and the city council consider additional funding for the Philadelphia Food Justice Initiative, which provides grants to gardens combating food apartheid and agencies like Parks and Recs, whose Farm Philly Program was integral in producing the 2023 Urban Ag Plan. In addition, we want to stress the importance of ensuring city resources for Urban Agriculture are invested in land that is secure, meaning it is owned by growers or an entity that will preserve the land over time. We urge city council to do more to facilitate land security for community green spaces by expanding land bank acquisitions for eligible gardens and farms on privately-owned tax delinquent parcels. In holding the majority of threatened garden land, the city has the potential to champion the long-term success of Urban Agriculture in Philadelphia. Thank you for the opportunity to testify and I look forward to answering any questions. CHAIRMEMBER GAUTHIER: Thank you for your testimony and for your vital work and for being such a great partner to our gardens and farms. Minority Leader Brooks, do you have questions? CHAIRMEMBER BROOKS: Yes, I have a few questions for the panel. Jenny, you said that NGT was unable to -- was able to acquire 44 parcels from the city between 2015 and 2019, but has not been able to apply a single lot in the last four years. It's a clear indication that our system is broken, right, for gardens and agriculture. How can the city and the land bank fix this problem?

So we have applications into the city at ten gardens. Some of them, the disposition to NGT was approved by council before 2020 and they just never went to settlement. So they are stuck somewhere in what is a long and complicated process of approvals. We have probably five additional applications to put in because things aren't moving. One of the major obstacles has been -- the city introduced, in the 2019 disposition policy, a new concept of doing a 30-year self-amortizing mortgage on gardens. Before then, when nonprofits acquired gardens, like the 44 parcels, when we acquired those, they were deed restricted for open space and there was language, it ceased to be a garden, and in the future, the land would go back to the city and that seemed like a reasonable approach. This additional requirement, it's not really required by the disposition policy, it's laid out as a tool that can be used, but PHDC across the board, while the land holding agencies has been treating it as a requirement. There were a lot of really problematic terms in that 30-year mortgage. We were finally through a lot of advocacy and many stakeholders coming to the land bank and raising concerns about this. We have been working with all three -- like the Land Bank Redevelopment Authority, Public Properties, to negotiate the terms of that mortgage. They have been unwilling to drop the requirement. We still hope, in the future, it might be dropped, but at least the things that would have done harm to the nonprofits, we feel the language has been improved upon. We still -- we agreed to maybe move six weeks ago now and still none of the pending dispositions seem to be moving. CHAIRMEMBER BROOKS: Thank you for that. My next question is, what impact do these policies have on the security of gardens in Philadelphia as a whole?

I think it's very stressful for the gardeners. They don't know the future. It's preventing us from being again -- you know, once again, sort of NGT's preservations pipeline, we start to work in partnership with the gardeners, the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society and others to search the channels, support and resources so they are continuing to grow and build capacity while we're pursuing preservation. Until we hold the land, we can't invest in nature capital improvements. For example, Elizabeth is still here from the Holly Street Garden. We have been working with Holly Street for years trying to preserve it. They really need a water line. We can't put in a water line because we don't hold the land. It's holding the gardens back. Another garden in West Philadelphia, Viola Street, you know, you had gardeners in their 70s and 80s hauling water from a hydrant down the street because the city wouldn't allow us to put a line in even though we had raised the money to do it, because we didn't own the land yet. It's holding up progress and causing a lot of stress for people. CHAIRMEMBER BROOKS: Thank you so much. I really do appreciate all the work you guys do around the city, around gardens. And congratulations on the appointment. I look forward to our continued working together moving forward. CHAIRMEMBER GAUTHIER: Thank you. We will now move on to the public comment list. Due to the high number of testifiers here today, we're going to ask all commenters limit their testimony to three minutes. Ms. Jones, can you please call the names of the first three commenters?

Chris Bolden-Newsome, Jamie Green, Dr. Ashley Gripper and Demca Bragwell. CHAIRMEMBER GAUTHIER: Sorry for the false start earlier, Chris. Can you please state your name for the record and proceed with your comment?

My name is Christopher Bolden-Newsome. First, again, I want to thank you all, Honorable Councilmembers, for having us here today. I will try as much as I can get to keep the three minutes, but I will make no promises. I want to start first by inviting all of you, as much as you are able, to recall who in your family or in your childhood were the farmers, the gardeners or the natural healers, these could be people in your family line or in your community that you grew up in. I want you to hold an image of them in your mind right now, who were the farmers, who were the gardeners, who were the natural healers. We dedicate this time and I give my testimony to honor them, your family members and my farming ancestors, too, and I thank God for you and our roots, knowing that all of our roots hold up a tree of our lives. Again, good afternoon. As I said earlier, I'm Chris Bolden-Newsome, and I'm here representing primarily Sankofa Community Farms, which is located at Bartram's Garden in sunny Southwest Philadelphia. I'm glad for all the love to Southwest that we have been hearing today. Councilmember Harrity, I'm sad he left, because he was really big up in Southwest. CHAIRMEMBER GAUTHIER: He used to live at Bartram.

Hopefully, at some point, he can hear us. I'm also representing True Love Seeds, which is a seed company. I was happy to see some of you had True Love Seeds alongside the Sister Seeds, both excellent organizations that we have been deeply connected to. It's a network that's like a family out here, folks who are growing food in Philadelphia. I'm originally from Mississippi, the Mississippi Delta. That's where my people have farmed for themselves since emancipation, so since around 1865 or so. I have been in Philadelphia now since about 2009, 2008 or 2009. I was attracted to Philly because of it's long history or urban gardens and farms and also because of the little islands of Black southern culture that are tucked away in its neighborhoods. I am, as I stated earlier, representing Sankofa Community Farm. I'm a Co-director and the head farmer there, alongside Ty Holmberg, who is also a farm Co-director and the programs manager. We do the work of cultivating not just healthy habits, but culture into the community that we work in. As I am, I'm a Mississippian, an unabashed southerner and I come from a long tradition just like many, if not most of you, actually, of growing food and of what it means to pass that on. At Sankofa Community Farm, we're an African diaspora-based farm, so we are much like [Spanish translation], an operation -- a culture base, a culture-rooted farm. We do this right next to Bartram's Village Apartments. We are situated in the historic Bartram's Garden and we have been a part of Bartram's Garden now for about 10 years now. I think it's an excellent 11 example of how you can do land tenure in 12 this work. We have been able to be the 13 beneficiary and the benefactors, you 14 know, of so much good in terms of 15 resources and the such. So we grow chemical-free food all year long. We have multiple programs that address the needs of our community. Many of these programs were born out of, you know, requests from our community itself. We'll get to that here in one second. We run a youth program, a year-around youth program. I think a lot of folks alluded to also having youth services. Ours is a year-around youth program. We are working with young people mostly from Bartram High School, so right in the neighborhood. They learn the basic skills of growing food. They learn the connection of this food to their culture, so their historic cultures. You have to have stuff in context for it to make any sense, right, for it to be something that actually you engage in, something that's not just checking a box or getting a check. They are learning to cook this food. We have a full culinary program in which they learn the significance of the food, how to prepare it in healthy ways and how to prepare it in ways that teach them about the cultures that they came from. This is vitally important. We have a community garden, where over 65 families from the neighborhood, in Southwest and beyond, get to grow food and get to rub shoulders with each other and get to talk to folks that they never would have spoken to before. So we have wonderful programs like that. I wanted to speak to what was bought up earlier. Again, I think the Councilmen Harrity asked about this. Indeed, there is a thriving home garden bed program under the leadership of Todd Holmberg and Hasha Glover [ph], who is here, I think. Pay attention to this young lady, you'll be seeing her around town doing this work. Because the community requested this. Eventually, we started this work, right? We have a crop field, a three-acre crop field where we are growing food. We have two weekly markets where we're disseminating this food into the community at prices that our neighbors can get at. We have a thriving volunteer program where folks can come from the neighborhood and learn how to grow food or relearn, be introduced or be re-introduced again to growing food.

Then the community starting saying, well, you know, wait a minute, I can't make it to the community garden to get a bed, right, or I got so excited because I came in contact with some of this stuff at Sankofa, that I want to do this at my house. I want to do this on my block. Again, we live in a city -- particularly in Southwest's -- where, unfortunately, we don't have a large backyard in Southwest Philadelphia, right? We have front yards. People that have houses have front yards oftentimes. So contrary to all -- I think a typical or traditional American aesthetic, we came and built the beds right in their front yards. They are growing food in their front yards and they are doing it by the hundreds. We will come and provide food and we specially -- Hasha and Ty -- we will come in and provide the boxes, we'll provide the soil, we'll provide seedlings and we'll get people started and give them access to regular classes so that they can stay in touch with the thriving community of farming. So I work on the land, like I said, it's an example of what it can look like to resource urban growing initiative in this city. We do all of this work and so much more that we don't really have time to mention here with relatively few resources. Few, I say, up against the work that's needed and that's being asked for, but we're not alone. All of these organizations that you see that's been represented here, many of them, as well as a growing group of Urban Ag organizations that came together in Southwest Philadelphia, now about a decade ago, to create what we call SWWAG, Southwest and West Agricultural Group. These are some organizations like the Neighborhood Land Power Project, formally known at Urban Tree Connection, the Children's Hospital Garden, Building Your Home Apothecary, all of these organizations, the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, who has been represented here, Get Fresh Daily, the Philly Orchard Project, so many other organizations. We decided, that in the absence of the resources, that we feel that we should be getting from the city -- and I want to acknowledge how things that have changed since I have been here since 2009, I'm not coming in here as a naysayer just to tear down -- I want to acknowledge that there have been changes, but as Dr. Vitiello said, it's been up and down. We'll be riding high and getting this movement going. This is growing food. When you are growing food, you are not just growing units of calorie, you are growing community. It can't be up and down, it has to be consistent, because it's a relationship. It's a relationship we have with the soil and that relationship with the soil forms relationships with human beings. It brings communities together. I won't belabor the points that have been made before around all of the many things that urban growing, that city can do. Ya'll know about it. Councilwoman Brooks stole all the fire out of my speech by starting off how violence is reduced. Violent crime is reduced. Poor healthcare outcomes are reduced. It's hard to measure what doesn't happen, right, but we can tell what it looked like before and what it looked like after we had these entities, you know, but there has been some change and we know it. We know it in our bones, that when you start doing this work, right, when you start getting in contact with the soil, when you start doing it in community with people, that changes happen. They aren't all so quantifiable. I want to think about this and I want you, to invite you all as well, too, as our city mothers and city fathers to think about what can the city be doing to respond. The community is already doing it. The communities are already coming up. A lot of these folks that you all see, these are organizations. We have come in with our titles and such. We have come bearing gifts to get your attention and to keep it. A lot of what goes on doesn't have the name of an organization. A lot of this is Ms. Susie, Ms.

Jones, these different folks who have been doing this forever. They came up, like me, from the deep south or from the Caribbean or from East and West Africa, from Southeast Asia, they came up with these places with this already in them and they did it where they could until the pressures of life have made it more and more difficult to do that. The story I am told, is when so many Black folks came up here from South and North Carolina, particularly, and in Georgia -- because it's not always asked, the question, well, why is it when I go to certain neighborhoods I don't see the gardens. They have them, but the pressure of being able to maintain a home, of being able to keep a home, the crack epidemic, all of these things that came and wiped it out, wiped out, also, culture, wiped out culture, sort of halted the passing on, the traditional things human being doing, right, when they are left alone, which is to life giving traditions and life nurturing traditions to their young. All of that was cut. I want to invite you all, as I said, as city mothers and city fathers to remember that the folks are already doing it. You know they call it ecological services where bees and the birds can provide, that sort of stuff. Nobody pays the bees for her pollinating the flowers that then become your food. CHAIRMEMBER GAUTHIER: Again, I just ask -- we have people to go after you --

I understand. 4 Like I said, I'll go ahead and wrap it 5 up. I want us to think about the ways, 6 just like the ecological services that 7 we don't consider, that we don't pay 8 for. The way that you pay for those 9 services, right, is by not hindering 10 them. The way support, we can actually 11 support, as a city, the organizations 12 and the individuals who are doing this 13 work -- and I'm coming to my close -- 14 but the organizations doing this work 15 and the people who are doing this work 16 is to assist them with programs. Folks 17 have talked about having stabilized land 18 tenure. That is vitally important. We 19 are blessed at Bartram's Garden to be in 20 a situation where we have that right 21 now. It has made all of the difference. 22 It's made all of the difference of young 23 people, for at least a generation of 24 young people. Almost all of our kids -and I want this to be on the record -- go on to secondary education or to some trade, almost all of them universally, and they come back and show us what they have done. I have trouble keeping staff, because, again, what we get from the system that is set up currently are seasonal workers and -- seasonal workers only. I can't keep people who are trying to make this their life work, if that's what we have. I think we, as a city, can do better. I want to invite you all, like I said, to just sort of remember that these are your folks. These are your communities. They are calling out and crying out and already doing the work. How can you help? How can you help them keep that land where they are doing the work? How can you help them with resources? How can you help them, for instance, when they are going to try to set up a garden in a lot, right, that they have to pay 12 to $20,000 for a Black backflow preventer in order to tap into city water. What can you do to help them? Then they have to go guerrilla garden somewhere or they just put that dream on the shelf and people suffer. I'll end with this, ya'll. The first line of defense for any national security or any people's security is a healthy populous, a healthy and resilient populous. I want to invite the city to help make Philadelphia that healthy and resilient populous again. Thank you. CHAIRMEMBER GAUTHIER: Thank you so much. We appreciate you and we appreciate what you are doing for people in our community. CHAIRMEMBER BROOKS: It was really amazing to see people out here to support you and out here just to show what Sankofa Garden is doing, Bartram Gardens. I want to appreciate -- we appreciate you for being one of those folks passing on traditions to young people. A lot of times -- I don't want to be a part of this skipped generation. I want to be a part of the generation that is in part into the next generation. I want to highlight and say thank you for being a part of that as well. CHAIRMEMBER GAUTHIER: Hi, Dr. James. Please state your name for the record and proceed with your testimony.

My name is Dr. Jamie Green and I am delighted to be a part of this hearing. I represent the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture as the newest director of the eastern region, representing Secretary Russel Reading, so I am speaking on behalf of the secretary's office to share our excitement and exuberance. I'm also an Urban Agriculturist. My family owns Think and Grow Farms, which is based in Vaux High School in North Philadelphia. We started out in Urban Agriculture with a shipping container farm in West Philadelphia. I am an eighth generation farmer. I would like my 9th generation to stand up. Is my daughter, Niya here? Niya had the capacity to build an indoor farm, fully operational, from the ground up. The reason I wanted to speak to you both is my policy advocacy role and as a practitioner is to say that I was honored to participate in the initial hearing planning committees for the Urban Agriculture strategic plan. I can speak from being one of the people who was sitting on the floor in the library when we were doing that strategic plan during COVID. I speak to you as someone who can say that secretary fully supports the City of Philadelphia endorsing this Urban Agriculture plan, setting up a line item to support this going forward and we will continue to invest in Urban Agriculture as we have over the last three years, Philadelphia being the most active component in the state for Urban Agriculture grants out of the Pennsylvania Department of Agricultural. So we are excited to say that. I want to also highlight that my extraordinary colleague, Doug Wolfgang, will be speaking to you a little later. He's the Executive Secretary of the State Conservation Commission, which we're going to publicly ask you to do is to host a hearing on a conservation district and the resources it brings to the city as the envelope that surrounds Urban Agriculture. There are 67 counties in Pennsylvania, 66 have a conservation district. Guess which one does not? We need to correct that. So there are three points I wanted to share with you, in addition to my role as the head of Urban Agriculture development, policy development for the Commonwealth. Your focus on economic development cannot be said strongly enough. As a practitioner, as a farmer, I understand, for me to generate revenue, food is what I grow to feed the community. We were doing that during COVID, giving food away in West Philly. Horticultural plants drive more revenue. Our folks need to understand where the revenue is for the community and where the revenue is to sustain themselves. We did a survey of all Urban Agricultural's grantees, just finished two weeks ago. The vast majority earned less then $25,000. It cannot hire a single person to sustain the operation. These young people, including my own, deserve an understanding that Urban Agriculture is a subsector of one of the most powerful industries in the Commonwealth. It's a subsector of an industry that is receiving public, private investment, so if the city does, the state wants to support this effort. I will cut my comments there out of respect, but thank you for hosting this hearing. Please consider hosting a hearing for the conservation district that Doug is going to talk about a little bit later. We need that in Philadelphia. Thank you. CHAIRMEMBER GAUTHIER: Thank you. Please state your name for the record and proceed with your comment.

Good afternoon. My name is Ashley Gripper. Good afternoon to city council members and blessings to my grower family here. Thank you to all the council people who organized this hearing. I was born and raised in Philly. My family has called 27 Diamond home for five generations. I am also a professor, research and faculty member at Dornsife Center, which is part of the School of Public Health of Drexel University. I was a member of the planning team for the Urban Ag plan, Growing to the Root, along with Ash Richards, Soil Generation and Interface Studio and I am currently on the membership and governance committee of the food policy advisory council. With the guidance of my ancestors drawing on the lived experiences of my parents and community, I also found an organization called Land Based Jawns. Our work is about helping Black folks in Philly remember our spiritual, organizing and land-based living traditions and is guided by many of the themes and lessons of Octavia Butler's parables. Land Based Jawns was also funded by the Philadelphia Food Justice Initiative. I was asked to testify today because my activism, advocacy and economic work are all focused on Philly's Urban Ag movement and the environmental and spiritual health impacts of growing food. Today we have heard a lot about why agriculture is important to individuals, neighborhoods and communities. We have heard about -- we know people's lived experiences and expertise should be enough to help you understand the magnitude and power of agriculture in the city. In case it's not, I am here and was asked to share some of the data and documented history about agriculture specifically in Philadelphia. There are three points I want to highlight that I think were touched on or not touched on at all. First, the story is always about land. Land is always at the center. We're all part of nature. It is our responsibility to care for the plan. There are ways that you all and your fellow council members can help support us doing that work. First, as we talk about Philadelphia Food Justice Initiative, a lot of people have been impacted by the work and the programs that came out of that work, that's because the Philadelphia Food Justice Initiative does not limit its funding to nonprofits. A lot of the people here in this room operate businesses, they operate projects that are outside of nonprofits. This is important to moving the work forward, because some of us need to operate outside of that traditional structure in order to do the work in a way that is meaningful to the people that we care about. The second point is around increasing consistent funding and support despite the pressures of development and gentrification. A little bit about the history of Philadelphia. Vacant lot -- our history is rich and long. City lot, vacant lot greening was encouraged and first recorded in 1987. It continued during and after World War II in the form of victory gardens. During these time periods, the city offered infrastructural support to community members who wanted to practice self-reliance and grow their own foods on abandoned and unused land, but the era of the industrialization of Philadelphia that started in 1800s continued well into the 1970s and 80s, and after hosting automobile and electric industries, like Ford and GE, Philly found itself with fewer companies leaving fewer jobs for its residents. After World War II, the population decreased from two million to 400,000. So between the 1950s and 1990, several things happen. There were waves of migration to Philadelphia by Puerto Rican immigrants and Black people from the south. Also, many white homeowners and landowners left the city and moved to Suburban areas during this time. So the sharp decrease in population and loss of industry left thousands of vacant lots and abandoned homes.

During the 1990s, the city began to increase its infrastructural and programmatic support for community-led ag, even though Philly still had 31,000 vacant lots and 26,000 abandoned homes on record, but this trend is not new. What we have seen throughout Philly's history is witnessing a patterning of when the city supports agriculture and when it decreases that support. Historically, a decrease in economic and infrastructural support of the city's growers often coincides with waves of gentrification and development, so you draw your own conclusions. We see, as people come into this city, agriculture becomes less supported. This decrease does not stop us from reclaiming these lots for what we need it for. My second point was to have that funding be consistent. Land security. Jenny talked about production and infrastructure support for gardeners without land security. How are we supposed to get water? How are we supposed to get the structures that we need if we don't even own the land? There is no funding that we can get when we don't own the land. My last point is that this work is spiritual. I didn't hear a whole lot of people talk about the spiritual nature of the work that we do. I heard people talk about violence. I heard people take about crime. For me, I'll speak about Black people, because I'm Black, but disconnecting Black people from land, nature and agriculture is violent. Our spirituality is connected to the land. It's rooted in the land. When you take us away from that, there are ills that come, there is a spiritual sickness that comes. If we want to talk about violence, we want to talk about crime, we want to talk about being well and being healthy, it needs to start with allowing us to be on the land in the ways that we were meant to be. CHAIRMEMBER GAUTHIER: Thank you so much. CHAIRMEMBER O'ROURKE: I'll just say that that was heard loud and clear. I think I'll just note, for the record, that it's really encouraging to hear folks talk about that who are not -- and I am making an assumption here, and I apologize if it's wrong -- who are necessarily a part of the institutional church, for example. I'm a minister. Recently, there is a brother from Baltimore named Dr. Heba Brown who is head of the Black church food security network. I know you just did your testimony. Have you all interacted? Is there any collaboration going on? Very good to hear. Thank you for your testimony. CHAIRMEMBER GAUTHIER: Please state your name for the record and proceed with your comments.

My name is Demca Bragwell. I am the operator of RMB Farms -- it's an integrated farm -- with my partner, Bryce Rowe. I am also the Chair for Philadelphia County, Co-chair Pittsburgh, National Resource Conversation Agency. I am also one of the representatives, local representatives from USDA and Farm Services and I'm a grower. I have lived in Philadelphia since 1996. My background is more emergency healthcare, UPenn Hospital, that sort of thing. In 2018, my partner and I attempted to purchase land from the land bank. We were unsuccessful and unfortunately failed from purchasing land, because at the time, the land bank, as well as certain city agencies are not able to accept state or federal funding for agriculture or growing. It seems, in 2016, someone in your -- either PIDC or Philadelphia Housing Group had revoked our county's insurance for protection for Urban Agriculture or environmental products, meaning all of us are farming at a deficit because we have to purchase our own insurance. As one of the few grower/producers that have gone through this particular training, something that we have all developed in committees. This is a grower/producer training given by the FDA. This very large notebook here has information for us to soil test, water test, where we can go get information for animal care, hatchery service, goats, ducks, whatever. These kinds of trainings, a lot of us grower/producers have and usually have to go outside of the county. When we failed to purchase our land, we wound up having to go to Poughkeepsie and Coatesville for representation for urban growers. There was none in 2011. Between myself, the Food Advisory Council, the Food Trust, Parks and Rec and all these other organizations here, we developed an actual committee chair with state and federal government in Urban Agriculture, environmental and construction for growers and producers that would be interested in taking state and federal money to bring jobs to Philadelphia, but also bring larger agriculture interest to Philadelphia. I know some folks are very interested in the hemp processing plant that went to Somerset County. In 2016 and 2017, myself and others did present that information to city council. Unfortunately, they rejected it, so the plant had gone over to Somerset County. We have done a lot of work and I am very grateful for everyone to talk about the spiritual connections of it all. I, unfortunately, handle all the dry information of policy, funding and technical assistant. A lot of the programs that these folks are talking about that are part of the USDA, we've all had access to. My particular issue is, the city needs to, A, listen to the people who are growing here, also listen to us representatives, because we consistently change a lot of information for Urban Agriculture. We no longer use the term community gardens for Philadelphia or Pittsburgh. We use micro farms, because most of us are farming on 800 square feet or more, and because of that, we weren't able, as a state or federal group, to give these folks training or education, funding or what have you, but because we decided to change the standards because Philadelphia is the center of the farm bill since 2012, we decided to listen to them and advocate with them to change the state and federal funding. That's why you'll see a lot of other groups and organizations within the State of Pennsylvania advancing a lot of things, that's because of the hard work that everyone behind me has done over the decades. I deal with only dry information. My position as a chair is to speak directly to city council members, the Mayor's Office, L&I and other city agencies to explain to them what this new information is, how the standards go and where the funding is coming from, as well as where the funding goes.

Myself and my partner, we have made the decision to not force the issue of purchasing land through the land bank to focus solely on the policy issues to ensure that other people can be successful in reaching this agriculture money. I am, once again, open to ya'll, city council, for any questions or information or anything that is specific to your district when it comes to Urban Agriculture funding, technical assistance or whatever have you. I understand that I am not the most liked person in this room sometimes, because I deal only with the facts and data, so I am grateful for a lot of the folks in this room that actually pick up where I can leave off, as far as the hard data and the facts. As usual, I sit with the officer's sustainability within the Food Advisory Council. I report every quarter to state and federal agencies, like Secretary Reading, as well as Valsec [ph], who is one of the secretaries of Urban Ag at a federal level. I always offer myself to ya'll. For any information, please contact Food Advisory Council. You can meet with me on the phone, Zoom, whatever. I have already met with a majority of the growers, they have this information. There is still money available for technical assistance and training. This is what we're trying to bring to Philadelphia so every grower here in Philly has the same access to information and opportunity to grow with their communities, fund their communities and keep their food and communities safer. What I was showing around, that little box there, that's part of the PA preferred program. Most of the growers in Pennsylvania are on that program and that keeps our food prices low. 49 even at the height of the pandemic in 2020, but a lot of people don't know or understand that this particular program keeps us safe -- I'm using air quotes here -- from inflation because the products at that program is strictly for Pennsylvania folks. A lot of these growers would like to be able to get on to that PA preferred program to expand their reach, but once we have some policy issues taken care of, it's my hope that these growers will go on to expand themselves and save their communities. CHAIRMEMBER GAUTHIER: Thank you for your testimony and your work. We look forward to working with you. I am going to hand off the chairship over to Councilmember O'Rourke to take care of some other council business, but before I leave, I just wanted to thank Minority Leader Brooks and Councilmember O'Rourke for the wonderful hearing and thank everybody who participated today while I was here. It truly has been amazing and insightful. CHAIRMEMBER O'ROURKE: Thank you, Memberchair. Thank you for all who testified. Can the clerk please call the next group of commenters at this time?

Omar Tate, Jethro Heiko, Douglas Wolfgang, Alexis Wiley. CHAIRMEMBER O'ROURKE: If you can state your name for the record and begin your testimony.

Sure. My name is Jethro Heiko. Thanks for having me. Good afternoon. Unlike the school district where I waited six hours to testify two weeks ago, at least here I'm actually getting educated. Thank you all. Thanks for this opportunity to share my experience with and passion for Philadelphia's agriculture sector. Again, my name is Jethro Heiko. I'm here testifying in my role as the reparation common design lead for reparationWorks. For 30 years, I have been working to repair the world through community building, including many audacious projects and initiatives. I live in East Oak Lane with my wife and two teenagers. I'm dedicating my testimony for a friend and farmer, Nala Bloom, who died way to young six months ago. I cannot match her light or brilliance, but I hope to share a bit of the passion she had for 3D farming, which she shared with me and so many others. Four years ago, my children and I tapped our maple tree in East Oak Lane and made maple syrup; it was a very challenging and sweet experience. The next year we went door to door to recruit more families in East Oak Lane and identify trees and eventually created Oak Lane Maple, which led to a university partnership, which was awarded a $500,000 USDA grant to create similar maple programs in the region. In 2022, with Wyncote Academy, we brought maple sugar into Philly high schools and students and families in our city. We made a lot of maple syrup and led many workshops with groups that are here today. Tapping maple trees connected me to a vibrant, creative and essential sector in our city, the agriculture sector. Across living neighborhoods, there are thousands of creators, founders, tenders, tapping, foraging, pruning, growing food from land with support of our neighbors. We are farming land, forging and harvesting food, leading workshops, gathering our neighbors and creating healthy communities for the resilience in the face of gun violence, climate and mental health crisis and high levels of poverty. As a reparation common design lead for reparationWorks I want to share our support and committee to the Urban Ag plan and encourage the city council to use all of its power to implement this road map, the Urban Ag plan, for the growth of the agriculture sector in our city. At reparationWorks, we are creating a less -- or co-creating with all of you -- a lush and thriving Philadelphia through the sacred power of reparations. We do this to return on divestments from settler colonialism and travel slavery. By centering repair and healing with these organizations and other institutions and individuals, we are unbinding money and, hopefully soon, land of the free spirit and forging relationships in support of communities that have been harmed by historic and current systems of violence, land theft and oppression. We know the city can play a more significant role in the healing and repair of city. To me, that's what the Urban Ag plan represents, a road map towards a lush and thriving Philadelphia where everyone participates, as my family has had the opportunity to do, to engage with the land and the natural resources that sustain our lives and help us thrive. Today, I urge you to listen and support Director Richards and their urgent call to protect gardens and farms that are threatened, to support this legislation and fully fund and support the Urban Ag plan, where there is a clear set of funding and policy priorities developed through a robust multiyear public process, to work with us to identify and secure public and private land, including land owned by state institutions and others to divest of under-utilized land which should be used for permanently protected agriculture and other community assets. Thank you so much for your time and attention to these critical needs and this tremendous opportunity for our city. I'm happy to answer questions and to meet with you or any member of the public here today who is interested in co-creating a lush and thriving Philadelphia.

Lastly, an invite. It's mushroom season. A lot of creeks. Am I the only person that knows that? It smells and tastes exactly like watermelon rinds. I am here today, because yesterday I dropped off 30 pounds, which is I foraged in under an hour and a half on Monday morning after I dropped my kid off at the train. He's going to make chow chow out of it, I think. It's amazing. If you would ever like to join me and my son as we forage and harvest [inaudible] for honeysuckle provision in West Philly, please come and talk with me. Thank you. CHAIRMEMBER O'ROURKE: Thank you for your testimony. Douglas?

Yes. Thank you, everyone. My name is Doug Wolfgang. I'm the Executive Secretary of the State Conservation Commission. I'll piggyback on Dr. Green. We are so fortunate to have her in the Department of Agriculture and the leadership she's provided in Urban Agriculture in Harrisburg and in particular in my line of work, just really coordinating the efforts to form a county conservation district here in Philadelphia. What is a State Conservation Commission? We operate under joint authorities of the State Departments of Agriculture and Environmental Protection and try to find that equilibrium or that balance between the two, but we address some of the biggest issues of our time, including land use, water quality, food security, climate change. These are all national issues, as we know, and they affect us regardless of where we live. They disproportionately affect disadvantaged populations, that's something we have always known. I think this is a real opportunity here, looking at this through the lens or conservation to provide funding and opportunities for Philadelphia that will align with all of this amazing momentum with Urban Agriculture. I think the timing is so critical right now to form a conservation district. We oversee funding and resources for 66 county conservation districts across the state, as Dr. Green mentioned 66 and there are 67 counties in Pennsylvania, so the need is there. We feel that working locally, conservations happens at the local level and the mission -- we have over $200 million in a commission that we have record funding right now that is trickled down through country conservation districts that make their way to the ground for agriculture conservation, environmental and natural resource related projects. So we want to make sure that Philadelphia is positioning itself to realize some of those funds. Conservation districts are a quasi state -- form of quasi state and local government, and as I mentioned, we administer grants and funding for voluntary conservation at the grassroots level. If you look at the staff and the directors across the state, it's 1,000 individuals strong. We do amazing work. Board of directors are appointed by the county governing body and nominating organizations represent diverse interests within the community. History of conservation is long. It goes all the way back to the dust bowl era when a huge cloud of windblown dust came from the Midwest because of tillage practices and Blackened the skies here in the east back in 1937. Pennsylvania's Conservation District Law was formed 1945 and the first district was formed in Potter County back at that time. It's really amazing to be here having a discussion, you know, in 2024, about forming a conservation district with you all, along with this amazing effort that's going on with Urban Agriculture. There has never been more momentum for Urban Ag and the recognition of ag's importance from food security perspective and for its economic value -- and Dr. Green and I talk about this as well, for its conservation value -- we have heard the themes of stewardships today and that connection to the land and sustainability. Producers, whether it's a farm in the middle of rural Pennsylvania or an urban farm that's in Center City Philadelphia, it's that sense of pride and that stewardship and that noble task of producing food for people who -- we all need to eat. We're in areas that just have such a shortage of availability of fresh food, so we feel that districts can provide some of that technical assistance and financial assistance to help link some of these programs and efforts together. Agriculture and the definition of agriculture is diverse and evolving and so, too, is conservation, very specifically, so I'll wrap this up.

Practices we can fund through programs that would benefit Philadelphia Urban Ag, irrigation systems, compost facilities, agroforestry, soil health practices like cover crops, hoop houses to enclose areas that have a more controlled environment for growing, soil testing potentiality, enviromental education, tree plantings, water shed restoration, practices that mitigate the effects of climate change and help to build adaptation and resiliency and also help to ensure the latest technologies from wherever we get research funding from make its way to the work Urban Ag is doing here in Philadelphia as well. This all gets done through partnerships with many organizations, I think, also forming a district would open up new partnerships with environmental and agricultural organizations for the city. Again, just really what we wanted to say today is the commission fully supports a hearing to determine the public's interest in forming a conservation district per section five of the conservation district law and we also fully support consideration of this Urban Ag plan as reinforcement of the public's interest in forming this district as well. Thank you very much for your time. CHAIRMEMBER O'ROURKE: Thank you very much for your testimony. As I am witnessing and I am looking -- and I know Alexis is coming up -- and I think we're getting late in the hour. What you may hear as you are testifying is a buzzer going off because I'm setting it at three minutes. Obviously, most of us have not been held to that, so don't feel rushed, but know that's what that is. If you are so inclined to be more concise with your statement, do so. Please state your name for the record.

My name is Alexis Wiley. CHAIRMEMBER O'ROURKE: Please begin your testimony.

Good afternoon, Councilmembers and my beloved growing community. As I previously stated, my name is Alexis Wiley, although many of you know me as Lex. I'm an ecologist, a culture geographer and a community farm educator at Sankofa Community at Bartram's Garden and I have been farming for about four years now. I am a native Philadelphian with familiar roots in the Carolinas and my family and ancestors were free farmers, sharecroppers and enslaved agricultural workers and indigenous African farmers. I'm the first in my family to return to growing since my great grandparents' generation through sharecrops and my grandparents were the generation that fled the south, but still found themselves growing food in their backyards and in side lots in Newark, New Jersey and in Philadelphia. My paternal grandmother was actually part of the Airport Community Garden in Southwest. I began farming as a way to understand the experiences of my ancestors and my community. As a Black American, my experiences outside the natural world -- excuse me, within that natural world -- were marred by histories of displacement, violence and exploitation. However, through working the land in a culturally rooted effort, I understand that my legacy of land-based work in the African BASPA is larger than our trauma. This is knowledge that I have come to know and embody, not just at Sankofa, but in many of the garden spaces in our city that engage with our ancestorial and cultural roots. You see, community farms and gardens in our city are more than physical sites of growing food, they are sites of cultural remediation where we, from our respective traditions, cultivate senses of place, of home, of health, of livelihood and dignity. Many of us organizations and farming individuals in this room share resources and connections. We're actively building communities to support out efforts to combat food apartheid in our city by collaborating together. For example, as Chris mentioned in his testimony, through education and workshop in the Southwest West Agriculture Group, also known as SWWAG. Our presence and active engagement of our neighbors in the aforementioned that the city support the food sovereignty and liberation by offering them opportunities to learn and participate in a food system that has not and does not honor their voice or agency. It offers an outlet for building community cohesion, supporting our safety and harm reduction efforts in our neighborhood. Moreover, it increases their physical access to green spaces, affording them opportunities to support the sustainability goals of our city and enact lasting positive changes to our city's ecology, including supporting local biodiversity and managing floods. Imagine that we, the farmers and the neighbors we serve, were secure on the land that we live on and cultivate. With guaranteed roots, lots would not only be converted into affordable housing, but also accompanying green space that supports us by reducing heat island effect, feeding the block and providing communal gathering spaces, to name a few examples. The knowledge, community building, power and people to expand the impact of this work are already here, right here in our city. The farmers in this room 5 do not grow food as a hobby. It's not recreation. It's our livelihood which we do to feed our communities the most affordable, healthy and sustainable food we know how. The people power is already here. I'm asking for city council's help in supporting what we already do. I'm echoing many of the causes that have already been stated. I'm asking you to remove the barriers to land access and tenure, to dissolve the convoluted mechanism to landownership or occupation, especially for growers, so that more folks can get access to the land to grow and commune. This is critically important because many of the growers in our city come from farming cultures and have been historically displaced and dispossessed abroad and in Philadelphia.

Secondly, I'm asking you to pay us, to fund and resource our work robustly. Agriculture work is severely undervalued across the world despite the fact that we are feeding the people. Our work is valuable. We go beyond the food aspect. We also simultaneously cultivate community. We deserve funding and wages that directly support workers, as I mentioned, because this is our livelihood. This is our job. The city is uniquely positioned to set a precedent for dignified, valued, community-operated and organized Urban Agriculture movement. On behalf of the farmers at Sankofa and our larger growing community, I ask city council in actually supporting our goals. Thank you. CHAIRMEMBER O'ROURKE: Thank you, Alexis. As we're getting ready to call the next witness, this is a very beautiful thing to be a part of today. For all of you that have come out here to provide your testimony and to speak on these things and to see so many people speaking to this is really encouraging my soul. Thank you for all of your testimony, all of the work that you do to do that. Can the clerk please call the next group of commenters?

Judith Robinson, Wadia Gardiner and Meg DeBrito. CHAIRMEMBER O'ROURKE: Good afternoon. As I mentioned earlier, you'll hear a buzzer go off. That is because I set the timer at three minutes. If you are so compelled to be more concise, we would appreciate it, but please don't feel pressured. We are grateful for your testimony today. Please state your name for the record.

Thank you very much. Good afternoon. My name is Wadia Gardiner. It's wonderful to be present with the city council. I thank you kindly for this opportunity. I'm representing Hunting Park Community Garden. A 260-page document ten years in the making, three years of community engagement, one year and days since 10 the launch of the Urban Ag plan and 11 where are we now? 12 As a native Philadelphian and 13 lifelong resident of Hunting Park -- 14 that's 19140, the poorest neighborhood in the City of Philadelphia, the poorest of the top ten cities of the United States of America and an original member of the Hunting Park Community Garden since 2011 -- I can tell you that the implementation of the Urban Ag plan is what's needed to regulate, systemize and stimulate the already-existing ag activity, economic and ingenuity thanks to the past, present and current hands of Philadelphia residents like myself. Let me see your hands. These are the hands of Urban Agriculture in Philadelphia, these hands. It starts with the land. She who owns the land controls it all, your very existence, from resources like food and water to labor to housing. Until the gentrification under the guise of affordable housing stops being pitted against community gardens, micro gardens, Urban Ag will be considered nothing more than a nice project, a boutique activity for the retired and the well fed and some science teachers. Urban Ag is more than food production, it's workforce development. It's investing in industry and production, like solar, like hemp products. There is millions is cannabis, there is billions in hemp. We should have had two hemp manufacturing entities in this city back in 2017, one for North Philly, one for South Philly. Philadelphia would be working right now. The city wouldn't be desperate looking for two, three, 4,000 people to participate as workers in the city. It's health and well being. It promotes dietary and nutrition access, a community participation through cost generational activity, a healthy and natural method for interacting and engaging within our environment. More importantly, it's about the control of our food system, our country, our community, our county, our neighborhoods. We can all recall and look back on how long it took the city to respond during the pandemic and OEM's idea of keeping us safe was to keep us out of our community gardens, away from the very food that we didn't have access to during the pandemic. Yes, we have pantries and farmers' markets, but charity is not sustainable. It keeps people dependent, wanting, insecure and unsure. Charity should not be the norm. It simply should not be the norm. Farmers' markets are great unless they have a plan that includes training communities to ultimately run their own farmers' markets and establish relationships with local farmers, then they, too, are nothing more than a charitable entity. If that charitable entity like a farmers' market for which Hunting Park had a 15-year relationship decides to go away, then we are back to wanting with our hands out looking for charity. Philadelphia, a world class city, a world heritage city, and yet we're not on par with our international brothers and sisters when it comes to Urban Agriculture we're the only county in the State of Pennsylvania who has yet to have a conservation district. Pretty sad. So let's not let our ignorance propel us forward. Let's let the assurance of this 260-page document provide economy, a robust workforce, land ownership, revenue, income, commerce for the City of Philadelphia. The USDA is here. It's on Broad Street. The first time in the history of Philadelphia, we have this kind of federal representation in Urban Agriculture and I, like many other average citizens, was in the room to make that happen. PSA is here, Pennsylvania Sustainable Agriculture, one of our largest state representatives -- excuse me, nonprofits when it comes to participating in Urban Ag.

Again, I was in the room, like many Philadelphia citizens to make sure that that happened. Every element, entity and resources here waiting for Philadelphia to participate. There is no more time. There is no more excuses for this level of inactivity. Workforce development, economy, community engagement. You want people to work. You want the violence to stop. You want Philadelphians to be engaged. Give them a reason to be invested in their own communities. This is the time and this is the opportunity to do it. City council, the ball is in your court. I thank you very much. CHAIRMEMBER O'ROURKE: Thank you very much. Please state your name and begin your testimony.

Yes. Hello. My name is Meg DeBrito. I have been a Philadelphia resident for years. I 14 have come from a Cape Verdeans 15 background and Irish background. My 16 family is midwestern farmers and growers 17 and I have family from an island culture 18 that did not have soil they could grow 19 in, so I come from across the spectrum 20 in understanding where urban farming and 21 our national farming need to move 22 forward. I have worked at Penn State 23 College of Ag. I have worked for Greens Grow as the Executive Director. I have worked for PSA as a Development Director and I now work for Impact PHL, which is working with high net individuals, philanthropic and family offices to get them to take their money out of the global market and put it into local markets. I'm looking to have these people see what they can invest in in Philadelphia around Urban Agriculture. When I speak to these people, they understand that Urban Agriculture is here as one sense of impact, but they cannot see a profitability impact. I know, having worked on the ground with these communities, that there is profitable impact there in terms of workforce development, in terms of product in the larger regional capacity and developing tools and resources for farmers to grow their business sense here, while we have the FSA here, as well as other statewide and national organizations move into the city. The city does need to get behind this in terms of investing in where this can grow as a workforce and as a public resource. In saying all of that, I do say, also, well being is something that some of those top dollars are starting to fall behind, in terms of arts, in terms of physical space that brings well being through flowers, medicinal herbs, things that are outside that we're looking at in terms of our vegetable market. So where do we also support those growing areas? Within the feel of Urban Agriculture. As we are moving this forward, there are real estate investors onlooking at how do I keep urban farms in my community even though I'm investing in real estate. How do we get larger scale impact investors to put their money behind that along with the city? As the city develops this and pushes this Urban Ag process forward, we will see that impact investors can step behind the city in terms of lifting these resources to people in this community. That's all I have to share. Thank you. CHAIRMEMBER O'ROURKE: Thank you for your testimony. Will the clerk please call the next group of commenters at this time?

Lisa Bonitatibus, Eloise Young, Princess Rahman and Joshua Warner. CHAIRMEMBER O'ROURKE: Blessings and good afternoon. Please state your name and begin your testimony.

Lisa Bonitatibus. Good afternoon, members of the environment committee. My name is Lisa Bonitatibus. I represent Toxic Free Philly and our coalition of over 30 national and local enviromental, health, labor and enviromental justice organizations. We're grateful to Councilmember Cindy Bass for her leadership in sponsoring the healthy outdoor public spaces or HOPS ordinance, bill number 40025, that was enacted in January of 2021. This law was passed by city council with a unanimous vote. For those of you who were not yet serving in council, the law eliminates the use of toxic, synthetic pesticides, such as glyphosine and 2,4-D on city-owned or leased grounds, except in the case of an emergency or with an approved waiver. The law also establishes reporting and signage requirements for all pesticide applied to city grounds. The HOPS ordinance 16 will no doubt prevent many cases or cancer, childhood asthma and numerous other diseases associated with pesticide exposure. It promotes organic, nontoxic land management. You may have heard about these chemicals in the many lawsuits in the news. We're taught they are safe, but as it turns out, they are really dangerous, just as we were told cigarettes were safe. Now we are happy to have a law to help keep people, pets and wildlife safe. I urge you to remember the healthy outdoor public spaces ordinance -- HOPS -- that you so wisely and courageously passed when you implemented the Philadelphia Urban Agriculture Plan. These two efforts are aligned in creating a cleaner and greener Philadelphia for everyone. The six key goals of the Urban Agriculture plan align with eliminating toxic herbicides. Organic food free from toxic herbicides is safer, healthier and more nutritious and isn't that our goal here, to let people have access to nutritious food? I brought this beet to show you. I didn't grow this one. My daughter has a small pot on the roof with some seedlings that she started herself. If the squirrels don't rearrange them all, she may get the beet the size of an acorn at the end of the summer, but she will be very proud of that and we will celebrate. Everyone need to grow nutritious food, but if you spray [buzzer went off, blocking testimony]. Lastly, I invite you to go to our website, toxictreePhilly.org, where we have loads of information. Feel free to email us, call us and we're happy to answer any questions you might have. Thank you for your service to our great city and for your attention today. CHAIRMEMBER O'ROURKE: Thank you for your testimony. Good afternoon.

Good afternoon. CHAIRMEMBER O'ROURKE: Please state your name for the record.

My name is Eloise Young. I'm a lifelong West Philadelphia resident and I am also on the board of the Mill Creek Urban Farm. I promise, this won't take three minutes. On May 1st, Mill Creek Urban Farm formally applied to own the land it has lovingly maintained since 2005. We filed that application with the help and support of Andrew Goodman from Councilmember Gauthier's office. Shout out to Andrew. He warned us that the process would take a long time, but why is it acceptable to take a long time to sign over land to its caregivers of almost two decades? I urge you to increase funding for the Food Justice Initiative and the to champion legislation that supports Urban Agriculture, legislation that will make it easier for growers to create, maintain and own these victual spaces. Don't accept the unacceptable. With your help, we can all eat fresh, healthy and affordable food, not just today, but for generations to come. Thank you.

Thank you very much for your testimony. CHAIRMEMBER O'ROURKE: Can you state for us your name?

My name is Princess Rahman. First and foremost, thank you, city council members, and everybody who is presented to with us, especially the producers and the farmers. It is my hope, that in the future, opportunities like this to discuss and hear our voices happen. December or January is a very busy time for us, just putting that out there. I am a farmer and a land steward of Lenape Lands traditionally and I'm etching into the majority of life that I have been doing this work. I'm currently a farmer for Bethel Community Garden, which is part of the health initiative of Bethel AMA Church of Ardmore, whose pastor and executive program director of our efforts is Pastor Carolyn Cavaness, who sits on the board of the Philly Urban Ag Committee for the US Department of Agriculture, which just opened up a branch here in Philly. Even though we principally operate out of Ardmore, we have a lot of community gardens in Philly that we help to support, whether it be on site horticultural logistical support and things of that nature. While our community is Ardmore, we do consider to have roots in communities that we serve in Philadelphia. I'm here today to represent. In the time that I have been doing this work and in my current position, I find that the areas in which we would need your support on the city level has evolved, rather the community addressed our areas where we needed support or we received help, we have transitioned to other areas where we think a city-wide effort and attention from you all would be most beneficial. It's my understanding and experience that, when you have an impact on culture, you create an opportunity where you are going to influence future generations, which is why there is an extreme disconnect -- even though Philadelphia is a Black city -- why we have a disconnect from our ancestorial ties to farming land and a bunch of negative connotations and it's also why I am annotated with this need from the community or this expressed concern that we should be reinventing the wheel because of the lack of resources and the lack of cohesion that there is with streamlining those resources to people to know what and where they are. That being said. I have got three points where I feel like -- financial support from the city, as well as some city incentives could be of use and could do some good. Point one, I would love for there to be funding to support transportation for our seniors. We have the programs. As the producers, we have the programs, we have the space and we have the resources. I'm typically on the line communicating with the elders in my community. The primary barrier is that they can't get to me. It's disheartening, because in this space, in this line of work, our seniors, our elders should be introduced on this platform in positions of power that they earned, that they deserve, that they need to be respected in, because if anybody has the wisdom and the knowledge to embark on how to grow food and feed people, it is our elders. So if you are having a bureaucratic issues, let us get the money, let us, as producers, allocate a budget for the funds that you all provide to hire someone, hire a company, a contractor to go and get seniors and elders interested in produce in our programs. Point two, I'm from Philly. I'm a Philly native. I am definitely -- I definitely frequent poppy stores, which is a colloquial term for corner stores that are in our neighborhoods. Poppy stores, they are an abundant resource in Philadelphia. They are all throughout. I do enjoy small businesses, I'm not knocking them, especially during the pandemic, they were a resource, but I want to say, due to their quantity and the reliance of our Black communities on them, we should be investing more in the quality that they provide and to offer or promote incentive to have relationships with local producers, local farms.

If anything this meeting of us together has shown, is that we have producers and we have the Urban Ag centers who are creating, culturally relevant food and feeding our people. There is a citywide effort to incentivize poppy stores -- again, a colloquial term, small business owners, I want to respect the effort, you know what I'm saying? If there is way that we can increase the partnership and the bridge between the poppy stores, because they are traditionally Latino-run businesses, so if there can be a partnership where we can engage the communities in which they serve and also connect them to local producers, so what's being grown around them, the quality of that produce can be reflected where we shop. Point three. Almost done here. Philadelphia, I love this city. In my current role as a farmer within the framework of a religious institution, I cannot help but recognize the religious vitality of the area, specifically Philadelphia. I hear a great deal of there needing to be -- and I understand -- there needing to be access to all of these resources, independent of creed, but I think -- and I know and I am a witness -- to the power this work has when we acknowledge the creed. That being said, there should be efforts to address religious spaces who are interested in feeding their communities. I think there needs to be a specific resource dedicated to helping religious spaces who serve this community, the infrastructure is already there, the cultural relevance is already there, specific funding and resources to help religious-based spaces get in this conversation. Thank you. CHAIRMEMBER O'ROURKE: Thank you so much for your testimony. Please state your name for the record.

Welcome. Thanks for having me. My name is Joshua Warner, citizen of Philadelphia for years, 18 former Co-Director or Urban Creators, 19 consultant for Norris Square 20 Neighborhood Project, member of FPAC, 21 general city do-gooder. I can't really repeat what's been said, there has been tons of powerful testimony here and shared data, shared feelings, shared stories. What I want to do is take a few moments to kind of synthesize a little bit and pass on some observations and some encouragement for this city council and this hearing and what goes forward from here. I always imagined my first time in Philadelphia city council chambers would be something, like, huge and contentious, full of yelling and the sign, but I am witnessing here today is largely city council that wants to support and a whole bunch of advocates that have been supporting, have been doing the work and it looks like we are seeing eye-to-eye, that is very promising just right there. That is worth some celebration, I think. Secondly, I want to touch on a couple points that Ash Richards mentioned. They mentioned shared spaces, that these gardens and farms often exist as the third space, not home, not work, the third space. I, too, have an urban planning background. I was fascinated by the third space when I was young and coming up and I knew I wanted to work in the city in making places like that. Gardens, farms and I'll say even beloved community side yards, I kind of want to lump those in, too. Even though they are side yards, they have community functions, they are treasured and beloved by neighbors. These are the ultimate third space. Not only are they a third space where people can gather, but they are regenerative. Every story you heard had to do regeneration, the Black DIASPORA, our cultural roots, regenerated, an elder, Dawn Anheld [ph] from NSNB teaching the PK receipt to Norris Square Neighborhood youth, that's regeneration. We are growing on the land. We are generating compost. This is a cycle that kind of continues to further our spirit, further the city's needs and that regenerative aspect of the third spaces makes them super critical for the future of the city, I believe. Also, through every single testimony that we heard, I have picked up on shared connections, shared connections in the grower and the learner, shared connections between land and community, between children and families being fed and between producers. There is a connection between these things, a shared connection. These regenerative third spaces are the best place for the nexus of all the things that are great and powerful about Philadelphia. I hear Philadelphia history in this room today. Everybody told stories of their past. Every member of council had a story about their backyard, their childhood, what they are growing. There is such a nexus in what we are doing here in this sector and it is multifaceted. We talked about commercial corridors. We talked about safety. We talked about gun violence. We talked about youth and education. These are sites of power. They are regenerative in nature. Every one of them has dozens of connections to people, community needs, elements of the city is looking to improve. There is a nexus of these things on these sites. The shared connections and that regenerative thing together in one place, I can't think of a better investment. About $1,000 on our own, $100 on our own and I put that there, I am going to improve kids' lives, improve seniors' lives, I'm going to put food in people's bellies, I'm going to make promising programs between the school over there and the garden here and the senior center over there. There is no 20 better investment in the City of Philadelphia today. I just want to leave that with you today. Also, there has been a lot of eye-to-eye, but there hasn't been a lot of details. I have heard Philadelphia Food Justice Initiative raising $1 million.

I also heard Jennifer Aquilante speak to $6 millions of requests and needs and only 590,000 they had to give out in the last round. Let's most definitely up that and let's start pegging all the other pieces of council's business, the new administration's business, let's peg those goals to Urban Agriculture. These are sites that are regenerative, they are powerful and there is a nexus and a connection to many other elements. Taking care of business on commercial corridors, there are tons of commercial corridors near gardens and farms. Where is the nexus between those? Councilmembers mentioned jobs, school groups, entrepreneurship, there are natural nexuses there. All of our policies, all of our plans must actually include Urban Agriculture, but the community used the farms and the cherished, beloved open spaces, the side yards, in those efforts. I have read some articles recently about 30,000 homes, 30,000 affordable housing units, 30,000 new built units maybe in the 30,000, there are some homes that already exist and we are just improving things. Where is that metric for farms, gardens and beloved side yards? Can we peg the metric of 30,000 in homes for this administration with some number of gardens? What if that ratio was 30 to one, for every 30 new units of house, there is one garden created, saved, owned and operated by a community. That would yield 1,000 gardens. 1,000 gardens for the City of Philadelphia across four years. That sounds doable to me if we're doing 30,000 housing units. One last piece that I'll mention is, there are metrics -- there was data thrown around about the numbers of gardens, you know, 2019, the Urban Agriculture plan happened, there were 450 gardens. We have heard stories over the decades that there were more, they have fallen, they have come back. We need a count. If we're going to build 1,000 or improve 1,000 gardens over the next four years, like, we need to know who is there and what's there right now. I really believe that the land bank review that is coming is going to be a pivotal movement for this crowd and for city council. We can start pegging some of those very needed city efforts to Urban Agriculture. Yeah, that 1,000 new gardens sounds wonderful to me. It sounds like something regenerative that has tons of spillover benefits for the rest of this city, this great city. Thank you for your time. CHAIRMEMBER O'ROURKE: Thank you. Thank you for your testimony. Will the clerk call the next group of commenters?

Jeffrey Carpineta, Oronica Fields, Solomon Bay and Elizabeth O'Cara [ph], if she's still here. CHAIRMEMBER O'ROURKE: Can you tell me your name for the record? Then you can begin your testimony.

Oronica Fields. I would like to -- I came to represent More to Love Garden. The purpose of my attending or coming is to get land security. We need the land security so we can be able to own the land, so we can get the grants we have written and won and couldn't obtain them because we don't own the land. That's basically what my purpose of being here is, because we have the garden since 2019, but my father maintained the land prior to that since 1963. He maintained the garden behind where we currently are. CHAIRMEMBER BROOKS: If you can get the information to my team, they can work with you one on one to see if it was a name that came up before. We have been going through a list of side yards and community gardens, so someone on my team can connect with you and figure out a way to see what -- we found various situations moving through. If you can talk to my team, we can figure out what is happening with you. CHAIRMEMBER O'ROURKE: Thank you for your testimony. Please state your name for the record.

My name is Jeffrey Carpineta, resident of Philadelphia up in the East Kensington section. I'm a prior president, founding member of the East Kensington Neighbors Association, but more of my community work is focused around green space preservation. I do real estate as my full-time work and so I wound up carving a sort of different life path of doing a lot of my real estate to serve gardeners, garden preservations and different nonprofit projects around the city. In addition to putting together a space preservation plan for East Kensington, that section of Kensington next to Fishtown, but just east of Norris Square, I have helped gardens in West Philly, St. Bernard Garden, sometimes the folks at Iglesias Garden will reach out or Norris Square. It's been a great blessing to merge the real estate work with this preservation. What I wanted to share with you today is really echoing on some points that Jenny Greenberg made from NGT and some other folks who wanted to talk about that land security issue. There is some negative things to discuss there, some realties, and I don't want that to overshadow what was shared today, so much beautiful work, so many great snapshots of the gorgeous work happening across the city, which needs funding, increased support, needs to be understood and appreciated. Just the fact that you here today, are taking this kind of interest in this is giving me and this family that was assembled here today so much hope. There are moments in the journey where we really feel like, we know the city has so many challenges in front of it, and we feel like, man, this stuff that we're doing, it's just not a priority, especially when it comes to that hard preservation piece. I thought, well, out of what everybody shared, what are the few things I would want to make sure that you and your colleagues are aware of by the end of today or as we get into the next few months of work. One is this, that the land bank review that's ongoing and the hearing that's going to happen, that is really of key importance. We're sort of really pleading with you from our heart that you can work with colleagues to get more granular with us and hear the stories about just what the state of the union is when it comes to the land disposition. And I'm so grateful for Jenny from NGT, because she really just nailed it about the dysfunction there. To give you a few bullet points on that, it's like -- it really has never been worse. Part of what I thought I could share with you today is that I was part of the original crew of advocates, six, seven, eight, nine years ago who wound up rallying for the birth of the land bank, because the argument was, wow, like nothing is moving, people are showing their hearts and giving their dollars out in the neighborhoods and there is no land security and the council persons don't seem to have their right priorities and there is a lot of funny game playing with the land developers and land dispositions. So it was held up as what was going to be, like, finally the moment of fairness for the garden open space community. Interestingly, most of the meetings for that, WCRP were convening, were down at Liberty Resources, so it was not just a moment of supposed justice for the garden folks and open space folks, but also for affordable housing, for accessibility, for visitability. So when the land bank was finally born, it was a tremendous victory. Then there began some years, well, there is a lot to do, it's very dense. It's very complex. On good faith, I think what the garden community did is we went back to being very busy in our gardens and assuming that that sort of final moment of fairness had come and all would be well after some months or years, but what we have learned is actually the rules, the process has gotten harder, the rules -- the whole thing has gotten more difficult.

What has been heartbreaking to discover in the last year and a half is that what we didn't just need to do is endure, with time and patience to get through the administrative hoopla, what I think was discovered, was underneath of it, in the land bank and some of the agencies and -- there are some administrative levels that form that and are beyond that, various, you know, kind of attorney aspects of city government. What we have really, is discovered underneath of it, there is really not much heart for the green space thing, quite frankly, and there is really not a desire to convey the land. There is really not a trust that good things will be done with the land and there is not much of an honor being paid for the people who stayed in the neighborhoods during the worst years, and not only did they not leave the city, but they didn't just stay in their houses, they continued to be out and present in the community to build something beautiful in a gorgeous act of resistance and defiance like what Norris Square shared today. I hope it's clear to this family here and that you can share it with your colleagues. It's just -- honestly, it's kind of unbelievable and disgraceful that Norris Square -- which I would hold up as a gem -- as beautiful as, hey, let's go visit Longwood or some of these other fine things in our region, Norris Square is a gem. It's so well done. The fact they have multiple pieces of land and there is no end in sight, it's like -- there is no -- like, hey, just wait a little bit more, you know, now it's this, there is this rule and this rule and let's attach a 30-year mortgage, but the value that that mortgage would be, would be valued on fair market value as if it were developable land in the millions. We know there are deed restricts, which basically strips the land of its value. This is the kind of insult and injury and dysfunction that's going on with this land disposition process. I'm sorry to bring this kind of negative stuff on the table today, but you holding this is giving us hope that we could dig into the details -- as Jenny said, there are a lot of devils in these details -- and that we can work together. We want you to know -- a couple last points I'll make -- there is no 10 feeling out there like, oh, there we go, the garden activist people hate development. It's not true. In my neighborhood, 737 pieces of vacant land. When I started doing the mapping for green space preservation, we want to Mark Squilla [ph], he helped us preserve a necklace of them, tons of development in my neighborhood. I think that you would discover that the gardeners are well focused. We do what we do very well, most of us. We're not antidevelopment. We want to work to earn your esteem as a strong constituency that deserves to be at the table, just as much as the builders and BIA. We don't have an organization like that yet, maybe with this much paralysis, but we have been meeting. There is like a contingence and alliance of 30 gardeners. We have been meeting for a year and a half to try to dig into this disposition stuff and our hope is that if we can figure this out and finally get this fixed, imagine what we could have done 15, 20, bright garden 12 organizers in the city. We now have 13 had dozens of meetings about fighting 14 and wrangling with the system. We would 15 have rather been serving you as allies 16 to go out and do more community 17 organizing, to build more beautiful 18 things in the neighborhood and take the 19 city up a notch.

20 I ask you, from my heart, please 21 consider, in your journey as council 22 persons, among all the other battles 23 that you have to fight to lift the city 24 up and solve problems, consider really making this part of your legacy, that years from now -- you -- decades from now -- could go and visit some of those places and say, you know, it was uncomfortable and I had some tough fights with some other people and I maybe took some hits on it, maybe I lost some points, but I stood with those gardens to finally fix this. I ask you to write that story with us and we'll stand with you for the things that you need. Thank you very much. CHAIRMEMBER O'ROURKE: Thank you for your testimony. I very much appreciate it. CHAIRMEMBER BROOKS: This is my project. This is the longest standing project I have worked on since I have been elected. When we said we were going to take on community gardens, we thought it would be -- you know, we issued something and it moved forward. We're in five years, I'm in my second term, and we still have not finalized the problem with Norris Square. I don't believe in leaving things undone, that's why we're having this hearing. Ash and I have been working together with my team through COVID to get to this hearing. Some of the growers said this is bad timing. We have been struggling to get here, so this is time we had available. I want to thank you guys for taking the time to come out and do this. We did not want to be of convenience, but trying to finagle time when everyone can make this happen, the time is now, we can't continue to put this off. There is a sense of urgency. We have to finish out what we started. The only way we can do that is together. You guys have brought up some really good points for us to follow up on, for us to figure out some next steps. So while this is still churning towards the end, someone else can be gearing up towards next step. One that I think I realized transitioning from activism to legislation, it is slow. Like I said, this was a project we thought we were going to be done in a year or two, here it is, year five, for something with a bunch of bureaucratic processes that actually I found out the people before me had been working at hate. We'll get through this together. We will shift the culture. I hear you. I know Councilmember O'Rourke and some of my other colleagues that I didn't know were so supportive on this issue, I think we should be able to move forward. Hopefully, it will be stable, not the ebbs and flows like I heard in other testimony, how we can find a way to stabilize what it means to have an urban garden culture as part of who Philadelphia is and make our footprint in that. We're partners. We're in this together. I look forward to connecting. I am definitely connecting over here to Hunting Park, because I live in Nicetown. I haven't been over there yet. Let's figure out how we can get together. Thank you guys for spending this time with us and all the lovely gifts. I'm looking forward to seeing what's over there. CHAIRMEMBER O'ROURKE: Is there anyone else that wishes to testify on this resolution?

Good afternoon. My name is Jonathan Hoffmeier. I'm from Lankenau Environmental. We're one of the schools that has a -- we're part of the Philadelphia Junior MANRRS Coalition. The coalition, myself and Dr. T from WB Saul, earlier this year, we brought kids out to Chicago for a 21 national conference. One of our students actually won the impromptu speaking on Urban Agriculture out there. Unfortunately, she was taking her AP English test today. What I wanted to speak on is -- earlier, there were a lot of questions about the education and bringing forward and what are we doing for our students. At Lankenau, we have partnerships with around different organizations, 8 Harrisburg University, Penn State 9 University, building that up. 10 One thing I have seen is these 11 green spaces, these micro farms, in the 12 community are pivotal for our students' 13 success. Their internships are out 14 there. A lot of times, they are being 15 introduced to this world of agriculture 16 where they have never, ever seen it 17 before. We're graduating a class of 18 students who started the Junior MANRRS 19 Coalition with students from Saul. That 20 class is graduating, class of 2024. 21 Their introduction to the world of ag, 22 their persistence and passion to develop 23 not only nationally, but also develop in their own City of Philadelphia, ideas that they have has been expressed through different competitions like the FMC ag conservation challenge, which our students were invited down with WB Saul as well. A lot of my students, they did have to go -- some of them had work. We do have one student here, Jordan, who is one of our members, Jordan Riddick, who wants to give a statement on what Urban Ag in Philadelphia has meant to him.

Good afternoon. My name is Jordan Riddick. I'm a senior at Lankenau Environmental Science Magnet High School and what Urban Ag is like -- basically, how I feel about it, is I believe it's very important. For example, I know at school, we do a lot of things in regards to aquaponics and hydroponics and I believe that a lot of spaces should actually implement these things into their curriculums, mainly because -- not only are they good sources of food, but it can also teach people, not only people my age, but younger kids as well, how you can grow plants. For an example, with aquaponics, you can use tilapia and the overall nutrition being provided to the plants from the waste from the fish and how you can basically produce a lot of food and it could really help, especially in areas where you have food deserts. I know there was a lady speaking earlier about the poppy stores and stuff like that and how there are many areas, especially areas in Black communities, where there is not that many healthy foods or maybe there are not that many Whole Foods stores in the area, so being able to teach something simple, like maybe an aquaponics system maybe, you can even do it at home, will be able to help people produce more higher quality foods. Anything else you want to say about it?

No. I think Jordan summed it up. Also, on how do we reach younger -- crew is one of the things our junior manors mission, as we have been in establishment for about two years now with a partnership with Saul and the youth school. One of the big missions we're working on for the 2024/2025 school year is partnering with some of the local neighborhood schools in the Roxborough area, such as Mifflin, Shawarma [ph], a lot of them have gardening clubs, but having our older students going there, mentoring with those students. Also, introducing those middle school students to the micro gardens throughout the city. We have chosen all throughout the city at Lankenau, they all take the yellow bus in, so from West Philly to uptown, we got them all over. They are going to be spreading the information that they learned, the knowledge that they learned, not only throughout their neighborhoods -- but Jordan, you'll be at Temple next year -- we are shooting them from Temple to Alaska all the way down to -- we have one of the junior manors member running track at the University of Houston next year as well, studying environmental science.

Also, to speak on the green spaces, actually, at school, we're actually doing a job project on mussels and how they could be basically cleansing agents for polluted bodies of water. We have been doing experiments on them, basically testing their performance inside warm temperatures of water and colder temperatures of water as well, basically to see how their performance would be, especially, let's say, ten, twenty years down the line with things like climate change affecting the globe. We, our experiments, we realize, in higher temperatures, they were actually much more productive, they were eating much more of the food. We had algae inside of their tanks and we realized they were cleaning the tanks much more efficiently compared to the colder temperatures, they really were more sluggish, but they were actually dying a lot faster inside of the warmer temperatures. We were basically partnered with the Philadelphia Water Department and our mortality rate was only three percent, when theirs, I believe, was 47, I believe. We think the egg could also be a very good thing and an investment for, you know, future -- I can't think of the word -- future plans. Thank you. CHAIRMEMBER O'ROURKE: Thank you both. Good afternoon.

Good afternoon. My name is Erika Johnson. I am representing Master Gardeners of Philadelphia County, Pleasant Playground Community Garden and Pennsylvania Farm Union and an appointed member of the wonderful Food Policy Advisory Council of Philadelphia. We are -- I am Black implanted. I teach the community to serve, grow, eat and create from the garden. We're creating culinary, as well as skin care products, as well as education and teaching the community. Just to give you a little overview of what our small farm or our micro farm is doing, we have a farm, Illadove [ph] Gardens, and we're the only Black-owned farm in Philadelphia. We produce the jubilee jungle plant experience, which is a Black-owned production that will honor and celebrate for the last four years Black-owned and brown-owned farms, plant shops and flower shops held at the Wick House on August 24th of this year. We have had it for the last four years, so we always ask for community support in that. I also produce the jubilee farmers' market, which was held in Mount Airy. We had over 2,000 people last year, which was a monthly farmers' market. I asked you how many Black-owned farmers' markets do you know of in the city? How many Black women-owned farmers' markets do you know of in the city? Last year, we had three Black female-owned farmers' market in a one mile radius in Germantown, this year there will be none. I am currently also looking for another space to host my farmers' market at this time, while the other two have gone into other places and other sectors of Urban Agriculture. Our initiative, go green, you talk about growing in schools. We're growing with our daycares, as well as our young children in schools, teaching them how to grow herb as well as micro greens. We are redefining what victory gardens are, as far as our churches are concerned and our organizations, we're teaching our religious organizations and community organizations how to grow gardens again. It makes no sense that we have basketball fields and football fields and do not have gardens to grow on. That's where the victory garden initiative comes into place. We're working with our churches, as well as the Black Church Food Security Network as well. We have started, within the last two months, the Black Implanted Seed Library with donations from organizations all over the United States. They are coming to me in Philadelphia and I am able to get them out, only to Philadelphia, but in the last two months we have sent them to Atlanta, Jersey, Texas, Florida, California, so it's a biggish initiative that we're doing. Another initiative that we're working on is we always see book libraries around the city. My initiative is to bring seed libraries around the city in front of our farms and/or on the streets so people be access seeds so they can continue to grow freely. Seed, Sow, Swap is my educational series and we have some other things that we're working on. As far as '25, we want to do the jubilee jungle ball. This will be an after-five affair. A lot of times you will see those in soil and dirt and scruffy stuff all the time. We want them to dress up, but the initiative is to raise funds for farmers, raise funds for our plant shops and flower shops when they are in emergency situations and they do not have funding maybe to continue on. Maybe this fund will help them in those situation. In farming and agriculture, we want food sovereignty. We want to be able to give food access to everyone. We want environmental sustainability, education and skill building, community building. We are adamant about green space acquisition and getting land, as well as equity. We are looking for cultural preservation as well, because Illadove Gardens practices afro ecology, as well as ecospirituality. As far as policy advocacy is concerned, we ask for your support in land acquisition and funding as well as policies. That is all I have to say today. I hope you will continue to put forth the effort.

The time is now. It's definitely time to stop wasting time. The time is now to put these policies in place. You have more than enough organizations that were here today, enough workers, enough people on so many different levels who are working together and that's what we desire and that's what we would like to work forward to with this new administration. Thank you so much for the floor today. I appreciate you. CHAIRMEMBER O'ROURKE: Thank you so much for your testimony. Please state your name.

Good afternoon. I am Elizabeth Wearing. I had intended to speak, but since we were here so long, I have been freezing, I have to warm up. Anyway, I agree with just about everything that's been said already, so I won't be redundant. I am going to say that the garden was my rescue during COVID. I did not quarantine. I was in the garden, had other gardeners in there who wore masks and whatever. I thanked them, but that was good. To piggyback, I wanted to compliment the young man that just left. We have young gardeners who started out young, my children, my grandchildren, they went away, but they are back because they see the need to grow healthy food. I didn't think I would be -- and I hope I don't -- see the soiling green generation, but I see that coming into effect. I don't know if you know what that is, but back in the day -- it's been at least 50 years or more since that movie was out, but there is one movie where we relied on the government for our food, which was just a waiver, so there weren't no 5 gardens. We need to preserve as much as we can and teach the young people, because they don't always grow into this. We have to bring them in. That's what we're working with at the Holly Street Garden and I'm sure some more gardens. They have to understand what is really important about the food. That FDA, I make it, the food, the drug and agriculture, the drug companies are controlling the food industry. If we don't know that, they are. It's creating a whole lot of our illnesses that we can fix controlling our green stuff. So that's it. Short for the day. I'm out. CHAIRMEMBER O'ROURKE: Thank you for your testimony. Thank you for your patience. Are there any other persons wishing to testify on this resolution? Going once. Two times. Seeing no one else here to testify on the resolution, this does conclude the business of the committee on the environment today. The public hearing on resolution number 240347 is now recessed to the call of the chair. Thank you all so, so very much for spending your day here in Philadelphia city council chambers. Hopefully, we have expressed our interest to work with you all and more power to the people. Blessings. God bless you. Have a good day. - - - - - (Hearing concluded at 3:40 p.m.) - - - - C E R T I F I C A T I O N I hereby certify that the proceedings and evidence noted are contained fully and accurately in the stenographic notes taken by me in the foregoing matter, and that this is a correct transcript of the same. ___________________________