Urban Food Systems Program

Seattle is undergoing rapid growth and change, and a denser population coupled with historic racialized systemic challenges places pressures on open space and urban forests, affordable housing, and food security. An essential strategy for reducing these pressures is better utilizing urban land to connect communities and strengthen resiliency. Given its responsibility for managing urban land for food production, the Urban Food Systems Program (UFS) plays a vital role in this effort. 

Since its inception, UFS has worked closely with internal and external partners, community-based organizations (CBOs), and food systems specialists. This broad-scale collaboration has consolidated healthy food, garden, and kitchen activities throughout the Seattle Parks and Recreation system into a comprehensive learning community based on mutual support, equity, cultural relevance, and sustainability. 

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Background 

In 2008, Seattle's Mayor and City Council initiated the Local Food Action Initiative (Resolution 31019) to create a robust and resilient food system within the city. In response to the City's new policy direction, UFS was established as a pilot project reflecting the public and municipal interest in urban agriculture and its associated benefits for community health and wellness, equity, economic development, cultural place-making, environmental sustainability, and education. At its height, the Urban Food Systems Program managed 14 community gardens, 16 public orchards, and two urban farms. Collectively, these properties represented 23 acres of growing area.  

UFS achieved the following milestones during the program’s history. 

Goals and Core Activities 

Local food systems involve all the steps in a network of growing, consuming, and disposing of food. From the seeds, land, and farmers to the processing facilities, markets, kitchens, and urban compost piles—all the people, services, and materials are a part of the complex and interconnected food system. The goals below speak to how UFS will use culturally relevant program tools to maximize the production of available gardens and orchards for the distribution and consumption of healthy, fresh food in communities citywide: 

• Improve the physical and emotional health of residents. 

• Provide access to economic and public land management opportunities.  

• Increase production of nutritional food that can be harvested and distributed by and to residents, specifically those who are food insecure or have less access to fresh food. 

• Develop an environmental workforce training, food-production curriculum, and agricultural business model to support residents. 

• Create meaningful and respectful relationships between SPR and marginalized Seattle communities. 

• Expand food production to more medium to large-scale urban gardens and orchards. 

• Activate culturally relevant programs using urban food systems as an equitable municipal food systems model integrated with a diversity, justice, equity, and inclusion framework. 

Urban Food Systems plans to direct resources to five core activities, listed briefly below and described in more detail in the subsequent sections. These core activities were chosen as high-priority steps to take to strengthen the foundation of the UFS program so that it can expand and grow sustainably with integrity to its purpose and guiding principles: 

1. Garden Establishment & Site Activation: Develop processes and best practices for establishing new gardens at sites and activating those sites through programming and community engagement. 
2. Site Assessment and Accessibility: Conduct an inventory of all the gardens and orchards under UFS purview, including their condition, current productivity and harvest levels, and needs for improved management. 
3. Partnership Opportunities: Create a new process to facilitate partnership opportunities between volunteers and community-based organizations interested in becoming UFS Community Stewards for utilizing, maintaining, and harvesting UFS sites. 
4. Food Productivity & Distribution: Increase the productivity of UFS sites, amount of harvested fruit, and distribution to communities, especially to those experiencing higher rates of food insecurity 
5. Community Programming & Engagement: Implement a series of culturally relevant programs to inform the City on effective ways to engage with BIPOC communities about food access. Urban agriculture resources grounded in equity principles will be developed with partners and shared with the public. 

Purpose 

The Urban Food Systems program provides Seattle residents equitable access to local nutritional food through the stewardship of community-based organizations to manage community gardens and public orchards. UFS sites are located on Seattle Parks and Recreation property and are open to the public for gleaning. Community-based organizations selected to become a UFS Community Partner are supplied the following resources from SPR:  

• Sustainable systems to produce, harvest, and maintain food production services. 

• Free access to communal public land not allotted to an individual. 

• Support for programming at designated UFS site locations. 

UFS sites are dedicated to producing food that reflects the culture of its community partners and focuses on the need for representation from communities of color in the food itself. UFS actively recruits Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) organizations and volunteers to help maintain public food production spaces, grow food that is culturally reflective of their communities, and distribute those foods to their community members. 

Mission and Values 

Urban Food Systems is committed to Equity, Food Sovereignty, and Social Justice to provide equitable food access to Seattle community members. Guided by the policy and recommendations of several City of Seattle initiatives, UFS actively works to dismantle barriers to food access, ultimately fostering a more just and sustainable food system:   

Equity and Environment Initiative (2015 - Present) 

Launched in 2015, Seattle's Equity & Environment Initiative (EEI) is a partnership between the City of Seattle and the community to deepen Seattle's commitment to race and social justice in environmental work. While Seattle has long been recognized as an environmental leader, we face many challenges as the broader U.S. environmental movement: those who shape and benefit from environmental policies and outcomes are primarily white, upper-income communities. Those who do not benefit from progressive policies are overburdened with health, social, and economic impacts, and the EEI seeks to reverse those outcomes. 

Food Action Plan (2024) 

In 2024, the City of Seattle released the updated Food Action Plan as a roadmap for an equitable, sustainable, and resilient local food system supporting healthy, vibrant communities. The Plan outlines action the City of Seattle can take to support our local food system while addressing interrelated topics, including racial and social justice, food security and health, economic development, and environmental sustainability. 

Participatory Budgeting (2024) 

Mayor Bruce Harrell signed the City's 2025-2026 biennial budget to allocate funding for the Urban Farming & Food Equity project awarded through the Office of Civil Rights 2024 Participatory Budgeting process. The project includes activating publicly owned green spaces for new community-led urban agricultural sites, funding for physical site improvements, compensation for community-based organizations that maintain the sites, and training programs that build capacity for small-scale farmers & food producers.