Like mushrooms after a spring rain, or squash ready for fall harvest, urban farms have been popping up all over Prince George’s County for the past five years or so.

As the US Department of Agriculture explains, while there is no “single formal definition of urban agriculture,” it usually generates at least $1000 annually and encompasses “backyard, roof-top and balcony gardening, community gardening in vacant lots and parks, [and] roadside urban fringe agriculture.” In Prince George’s, this mostly occurs “inside and just outside the beltway,” explained Kim Rush Lynch, urban agricultural conservation planner for Prince George’s Soil Conservation District. Overall, the county also maintains over 40 thousand acres of traditional farms.

Prince George’s growth in urban agriculture is the result of deliberate cultivation through county government policies beginning in 2015. Encouraging urban farms is an investment in the county’s future since these farms do at least three things to help the people of Prince George’s: provide healthy food, help the environment, and create local jobs.

In 2015, Prince George’s had almost no urban farming, apart from ECO City Farms in Edmonston. In the twentieth century, Prince George’s faced “urbanization and development that paved over [several] of the County’s agricultural lands,” according to the Prince George’s Food Equity Council fact sheet, “Looking Forward, Looking Back.” Some farms remained, but in communities closer to DC, Prince George’s was virtually denuded of farming.

For a county with a population of mostly Black residents, this fits a wider pattern. All across the United States, for over a century, Black owned farms have faced multiple challenges, from racial terror to systemic denial of government loans, leading to the loss of over 13 million acres of farmland. “Food deserts are the result of historic disinvestment in communities of color,” according to Sydney Daigle, director of the Food Equity Council, which “works to help local residents grow, sell, and choose healthy food . “We know that Prince George’s County has a history of displacing folks from their land,” Daigle said.

In urban areas, that began to change in 2015 due to concerted efforts by the Prince George’s Food Equity Council in partnership with the Prince George’s Soil Conservation District and other agencies as well as local urban farmers. A series of bills followed, beginning with the passage of a tax credit, explained Rush Lynch. A 2016 law followed, zoning 70% of residential areas for urban farms. Additional bills in 2018 and 2019 made urban farming even easier.

These policy changes have had a dramatic impact; the number of urban farms working with the Soil Conservation District is now upwards of 40, according to Daigle. This is up from 12 in 2017, the first year that the Soil Conversation District began working with urban farmers, said Rush Lynch. The county currently has over 100 acres of urban farms, she stated.

These farms produce a great variety of fruits and vegetables, lettuce and tomatoes and squash, of course, but also mushrooms and esoteric spices. Other products include flowers, soaps, body care products, and hot sauces, Rush Lynch told me.

The county has also approved diverse methods of urban agriculture, including warehouse farming as well as hydroponic and aeroponic agriculture, allowing more crops to be grown in different spaces more often. This local produce means more money ending up in the hands of Prince George’s residents rather than going to outside businesses.

To get fresh produce to those who need it most, local activists formed the Capital Market in 2018. While other farmers markets long existed, notably in Greenbelt, the Capital Market targets neighborhoods most in need. Formed in response to the closing of the last grocery store in Capitol Heights, the enterprise began marketing weekly near the Capitol Heights Metro Station.

In 2020, the market did $25,000 to $35,000 worth of business in a ten-week period, over a total of 40 hours of business, according to Brittney Drakeford of the Capital Market planning team. The market has since added a new venue in Suitland. Ashley Drakeford, also of the planning team, pointed out that people had long depended on the local Dollar Tree for groceries, where “you’re not going to find any fresh produce, you’re not going to find fresh eggs, you’re going to find foods that are high in cholesterol, high in sodium.”

Fresh fruits and vegetables are critical in a county with notable food deserts and related health problems. The Capitol Heights neighborhood “has been noted as a healthy food priority zone in Maryland,” said Ashley Drakeford, noting that “you see high rates of chronic disease , things like diabetes, higher allergies, health rates of heart and health conditions.” Notably, “In 2013, 71 percent of all Prince Georgian’s were overweight or obese,” according to the Food Equity Council. Access to fresh fruits and vegetables is thus thus critical for improving health.

Market Farms also works hard to make produce available to those who need it most. “In communities where there are not high rates of car ownership, or if there are not safe sidewalks or safe pedestrian paths or bike paths, even if you have a grocery store in that neighborhood, it still becomes inaccessible to the people who live there” said Brittney Drakeford. Both of Market Farms’ locations are transit accessible, and they issue surveys to improve accessibility. In addition, to offset the higher price of local produce, Market Farms accepts SNAP and discounts via the Maryland Market program.

Urban farming improves not just human health but the health of the environment. The Soil Conversation District works with its farmers to come up with a specific plan for replenishing topsoil, from monitoring nitrogen and phosphorus levels to composting to no-till agriculture to water quality, Rush Lynch told me. Urban agriculture also improves air quality and adds green spaces, mitigating the heat island effect. It also means less run-off during storms, Daigle explained, which reduces trash and chemicals that would end up in local waterways and the Chesapeake Bay.

Another crucial mission of urban farming, and farmers’ markets, is education about the food system, said Ashley Drakeford, “helping communities understand, guess what we live in Prince George’s County and bananas or lemons don’t grow here.” Farmers markets teach people that in early spring, “you might not find zucchini and tomatoes, but you will find lots of greens and kale and lettuce, with corn and squash in August and apples in the fall.

Like an apple tree with deep roots, urban farming is starting to become a way of life in Prince George’s.