Muskegon Prepares to Vote on Controversial Ordinance that will Ban City Residents from Growing and Selling Vegetables

Muskegon Prepares to Vote on Controversial Ordinance that will Ban City Residents from Growing and Selling Vegetables - Michigan Small Farm Council
Muskegon is a food desert, yet is preparing to pass an ordinance that will refuse to allow city residents to grow and sell vegetables.

Wayne Whitman from MDARD has agreed to attend a private meeting in Muskegon to discuss the proposed ordinance in the context of the Right to Farm Act at 2:30 pm on December 8th, with city staff and invited guests only.

The public will not be allowed to attend.

Joshua EldenBrady, resident of Muskegon, provides this overview:

Muskegon Hates Veggies Too
Joshua S. EldenBrady

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

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

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

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

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

The truly bizarre part is the nature of the opposition.
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