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Contributed Content: Agriculturalists Unite to Support Urban Growers
- Bob Benenson
- Aug 25
- 7 min read
Updated: Aug 26
Advocate Bob Heuer Highlights "Let Us Grow Our Own Food" Urban Ag Plan
Bob Heuer, a longtime advocate for thriving regional agriculture economies, is a friend and contributor to Local Food Forum. Bob leads HNA Networks, an Evanston-based firm that is helping Chicago Wilderness Alliance build a coalition to “reimagine Peotone” by replacing a long-stalled and obsolete airport project with a major sustainable farming project.
In a recent article, Bob wrote about the Alliance’s vision for the future use of seven square miles of state-owned farmland near the Will County village of Peotone at the southern fringe of metro Chicago. The site of the controversial airport plan, this site includes some of the best farmland on the planet.
In 2026, the Illinois General Assembly is expected to consider a proposal to turn those seven square miles of property into a cargo airport. The Alliance, in opposition to this initiative, believes that Governor J.B. Pritzker — and the people of Illinois — deserve options for land located 40 miles south of downtown Chicago.
Heuer contends that Illinois policymakers can choose between two futures: one with more suburban sprawl and more urban disinvestment, or one of regeneration. The Alliance is proposing that the site be turned into a Regenerative Agriculture Research and Development Center, and they’re mounting a public information campaign to transform Peotone into a living laboratory where farmers, researchers, and communities design the future of food — resilient, equitable, and sustainable.
In this follow-up article, Bob shines a light on a City of Chicago food farming constituency that could benefit from the repurposed Peotone land. He makes the case for why all levels of government should support the growth and development of local food supply networks that complement the global food chain.
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Agriculturalists Unite: Let-us-grow-our-own-food plan taking shape
By Bob Heuer/HNA Networks
This Thursday (August 28), food growers and advocates will meet to kickstart a City of Chicago “urban agriculture plan.” The event will take place from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at The Quarry Event Center, 2423 East 75th Street in Chicago's South Shore neighborhood.
Everybody’s invited... Click the button below to register.
The event's non-profit organizers — Advocates for Urban Agriculture (AUA) and the Chicago Community Gardeners Association — envision a plan that reflects the varied needs of farmers and growers in all 50 city wards. Initial outreach has identified supporters in 46 wards.
This event is a follow-up to a first listening session on July 9. Nearly four dozen community gardeners, farmers and backyard growers met that evening at Chicago's Whitney Young High School.
Bea Fry AUA's Development Coordinator, said that last month’s gathering was intended “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.”
GOOD FOOD FOR ALL
Growers of all ages participated in the July 9 event. Attendees each joined one of three breakout groups on the topics of land access, educational programming and compost/waste management. A second round of breakouts secured input on the topics of water access, workforce development and soil health/fertility.
This initiative to create an urban agriculture plan springs from the work of the Chicago Food Equity Council. Authorized in February 2022 by then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot, the Council has made an impact on a number of fronts.
For example, Advocates for Urban Agriculture has helped the Council create an ag-specific land access application, enabling growers to take advantage of the city’s vacant lot program. Under this program, designated lots can be purchased for $1 with a commitment to use the land for agricultural purposes for 10 years.
One week after the Whitney Young gathering, 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.
There is enormous potential in better utilizing vacant lots to expand urban agriculture. The City of Chicago owns 8,800 vacant lots and 3,200 more are privately owned. Those factoids are included in 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 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.”
But 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.
Participants in the July 9 event also discussed 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.
One step at a time is how the city’s farmers and growers will succeed. And the place to start is through explicit alignment with the Food Equity Council. The producers themselves are best positioned to advance the Council's 2023 vision “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.”
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.
Reducing diet-related chronic disease is a stated purpose of the Trump 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 manage “work requirement” paperwork for millions of federal aid recipients.
One impact will be to bludgeon the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). The SNAP 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; the IL-EATS program, which paid local farmers to grow crops for food bank programs that fight hunger; 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.
Yet emergency preparedness is the first of many reasons to build local food supply networks capable of complementing the global food chain.
TWO-YEAR PLANNING HORIZON
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.
But the Pritzker administration didn’t strengthen local food systems 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, would incentivize municipal action.
One building block is the existing Illinois Vegetable Garden Protection Act, sponsored by Illinois Rep. Sonya Harper, who Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood and chairs the state House Agriculture and Conservation Committee. 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.)
GROWING FOOD AND SUPPORT
Near West Side community gardener May Toy 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.