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Agriculturalists Unite: Let-Us-Grow-Our-Own-Food Plan Taking Shape
- Bob Benenson
- Nov 12
- 7 min read
Contributor Bob Heuer Provides Update on Local Food Sovereignty Advocacy
Bob Heuer, a longtime advocate for thriving regional agriculture economies, is a friend and contributor to Local Food Forum. Bob leads HNA Networks. The Evanston-based firm is helping the nature conservation coalition Chicago Wilderness Alliance build common ground with both commercial-scale and community-centered agriculture.
In this article, Bob shines a light on a City of Chicago constituency that will be part of the solution to severe federal cutbacks in food assistance programs. One problem to be overcome: local government not doing enough to let growers grow.
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By Bob Heuer/HNA Networks
[NOTE: Links to supplementary materials are colored green]
May Toy, community gardener in Chicago's Near West Side, goes to aldermanic meetings because, well, somebody has to do it.
“I have a ton of volunteers who don’t want to handle the politics," Toy said. "So I do it. It’s important for all of Chicago’s aldermen to understand the value of neighbors being in community with one another to produce good quality food for everyone.”
Toy, a leader of the Chicago Community Gardeners Association (CCHA), was speaking at an October 2 growers’ forum hosted by Breathing Room Space in the Back of the Yards neighborhood on Chicago's South Side.
This was the third in a series of “listening sessions,” presented by CCHA and Advocates for Urban Agriculture (AUA), also a Chicago non-profit. The first took place at Whitney Young High School on July 9, and the second in the South Shore Quarry Event Center on August 28.
The organizers plan to accelerate coalition building in 2026. “The goal should be to allow everyone to grow 24/7/365 days a year,” Toy says. “More people would be starting community gardens or farms if a funding process were in place to help them become self-sustaining. The city’s small business grants could be used to help food growers become part of Chicago’s economic engine.”
Toy made these remarks in a breakout session called “capital funding and building.” AUA’s Jayna McGruder was jotting down notes on large sheets of paper taped to the wall.
I pointed out that state government’s leading local food advocate — state Rep. Sonya Harper — lives nearby in the Englewood neighborhood. Harper chairs the Illinois General Assembly’s House Agriculture and Conservation Committee.
In August, Harper secured a commitment from Compeer Financial, Illinois’ largest farm lender, to help develop a comprehensive local food funding program. In September, a process to design such a program took a step forward as the Harper-led Illinois Agriculture Equity Commission established a local food financing task force.
Action in Springfield could help local communities take care of themselves.
GIVING VOICE TO FOOD GROWERS
All three listening sessions were well attended, AUA Development Coordinator Bea Fry says. The intent is “to create space where people who grow food were the majority, in contrast to Chicago decision-making bodies that view farmers and gardeners as an afterthought."
She continued, "We’ve been blown away by how much knowledge is in the room. We’ve convened an engaged and informed audience which possesses all the skills necessary to move policy forward.”
Nearly 330 City of Chicago food growers have responded thus far to the Urban Ag Plan survey, including 83 community gardens and 19 school gardens. Fry adds that more than 50 responses have come from farmers — the vast majority growing on less than five acres. General information is available on the Chicago Urban Agriculture Mapping Project website.
With the record-setting federal government shutdown highlighting the “glaring inequities in food access,” Fry is hopeful that more city officials will help food growers succeed: “We look forward to bringing the voice of growers into rooms where decisions are made so we can collaboratively create solutions to food access throughout Chicago.”
This is going to be far from easy. On July 9, participants In one breakout session spoke of resistance from City Council members. Many of them appear to be convinced that the best reuse for all vacant lots is to maximize local property tax base.
No wonder that neighborhood food growers say their cost of operations include expensive city permits, plus fees and fines.
That night, the discussion turned to how disconnected grant funding streams produce piecemeal solutions. For example, non-profit agencies secure “workforce development” funding to teach people how to grow food, while trained growers say they struggle to find paying work, let alone a living wage.
CHICAGO FOOD EQUITY COUNCIL
This community planning process grew out of the work of the Chicago Food Equity Council. Authorized in February 2022 by then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot, the Council’s vision is “to reimagine Chicago’s Food System as one where everyone has access to healthy and affordable food and where food is an engine for community wealth building.”
AUA helped the Council create an ag-specific land access application enabling growers to take advantage of the city’s vacant lot program. Designated lots can be purchased for $1 with a commitment to use the land for agricultural purposes for 10 years.
On July 16, the City announced the sale of 11 contiguous West Pullman lots to the NeighborSpace land trust to create a $2.3 million urban ag district.
LOCAL COMMUNITIES ON THEIR OWN
Critics of the highly partisan federal budget legislation enacted in July say it contains extreme cutbacks in Medicaid and food aid programs. These cutbacks will endure even if the federal government reopens and the freeze on current Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits imposed by the Trump administration is lifted.
Reducing diet-related chronic disease is a stated purpose of the administration’s “Make America Healthy Again” initiative. But keeping many Americans unhealthy could be the result of President Trump’s domestic policy program, which sets the stage for new state bureaucracies to impose “work requirement” paperwork for millions of federal aid recipients.
One impact will be to bludgeon SNAP. The program provides financial benefits to more than 700,000 Illinois households (14.1 percent of total households), according to this July 10 Chicago Tribune article. The Northern Illinois Food Bank estimates that 360,000 Illinoisans are at risk of losing SNAP benefits.
Actions already take by the administration have set back efforts to strength local food ecosystems.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture canceled $6.5 million in contracts for Illinois farmers to secure resilient food system infrastructure (e.g. refrigerated trucks.) Also canceled were $43 million for a program enabling the Illinois Public Health Department to contract with local farmers to supply food banks, and the SNAP-ED program that provided information on how people facing food insecurity can affordability incorporate healthier foods into their diets.
These actions may compel local and state governments to finally learn a lesson from the COVID pandemic. In April 2020, workforce illnesses led large food processing and packaging plants to shut down. Farmers had to destroy crops and livestock. The sight of empty produce bins and empty meat counters startled grocery shoppers.
But agri-food industries quickly adjusted and both the general public and elected officials got back to forgetting about food system fragility.
Emergency preparedness is one of many reasons to build local food supply networks capable of complementing the global food chain.
LOCAL SOLUTIONS
Food farmers and community gardeners are part of the solution to a statewide problem that will become evident by Oct. 1, 2027. That’s the first day of the 2028 federal fiscal year, when the massive federal SNAP cuts are to take effect.
Springfield will then be on the hook to fill an annual estimate of $788 million in federal SNAP cuts. Political analyst Rich Miller of CapitolFax.com said, “Gov. J.B. Pritzker frequently touts his administrative prowess, so this gives him a measurable opportunity to prove it,” in this Chicago Sun-Times column.
The Pritzker administration didn’t help in the 2025 legislative session. This Investigate Midwest news report identified “state government resistance” as a key factor undermining “Illinois lawmakers’ efforts to keep food dollars local and support small producers.”
The state’s pathway forward could be this “Illinois food system roadmap" campaign led by Experimental Station. This South Side Chicago non-profit operates the 61st Street Farmers Market as well as the LinkUp Illinois program that provides financial assistance to farmers markets that double the value of SNAP recipients' benefits.
The roadmap, an Illinois Department of Human Services-funded initiative, could incentivize municipal action.
One building block is the existing Illinois Vegetable Garden Protection Act, sponsored by Illinois Rep. Harper. The 2021 law responds to Elmhurst homeowner Nicole Virgil’s fight for the right to grow food in her own backyard. (She tells her story in this WBEZ Curious City podcast. More here from the Institute for Justice.)
The City of Chicago owns 8,800 vacant lots and 3,200 more are privately owned, according to an August 25 Crain’s Chicago Business story package called “State and Local Food Policy Forum."
Neighborhood-scale food farming can be an effective use for some of the many vacant lots in communities burdened by “persistent poverty.” The term refers to places where the poverty rate has exceeded 20 percent for at least three decades.
In this July 12 Chicago Sun Times column, WBEZ data projects editor Alden Loury reports that about “175 of the nearly 235 persistent-poverty Census tracts in Chicago were majority-Black areas on the city’s South and West sides.”
GROWING FOOD AND SUPPORT
May Toy, the community gardener, was a facilitator at the Whitney Young convening. She made the case for individual growers to help create a citywide plan.
“Together we can change perceptions and show how important growing is to the resiliency of our city and our communities,” she says. “Healthy food is the only way to move forward in this environment we all share.”
Toy says she and her neighbors have beaten out speculative developers for vacant lots by showing up at aldermanic community meetings. Her advocacy led Ald. Walter Burnett Jr. to put a “hold” on lots being considered for community gardens.
Ironically, on the same day that Toy shared this tactic with fellow food growers, Block Club Chicago broke this news that Burnett was resigning from the City Council.
Asked about the aldermanic change on October 2, Toy shrugged. She’s confident that she can continue to be an effective advocate for community gardens with the new 27th ward alderman. He is Walter Redmond Burnett, the previous alderman’s son.