Apply for the Urban Agriculture Program

What is the Urban Agriculture Program?

The purpose of the MDAR Urban Agriculture Program is to advance Commonwealth goals and objectives, leverage collective resources, and support commercial projects designed to increase the production, processing, and marketing of produce grown and sold in urban centers across the Commonwealth. Expenditures will promote strategies to address food insecurity and to increase access of fresh, local produce in urban neighborhoods with a high concentration of low-moderate income residents.

Who May Apply?

• Municipalities
• Nonprofit Organizations 501(c)(3)
• Public or non-profit educational or public health institutions
• Established urban farmer with more than three (3) years of commercial urban farming experience

What do you need?

-Request for Response (RFR). See “File Attachments:” at COMMBUYS link to download the Request for Response (RFR). This document outlines and explains all details, requirements, and instructions for the Urban Agriculture Program.

The purpose of the MDAR Urban Agriculture Program is to advance Commonwealth goals and objectives, leverage collective resources, and support commercial projects designed to increase the production, processing, and marketing of produce grown and sold in urban centers across the Commonwealth. Expenditures will promote strategies to address food insecurity and to increase access of fresh, local produce in urban neighborhoods with a high concentration of low-moderate income residents.

Urban agriculture encompasses a wide variety of activities related to the growing of plants and the raising of animals for food including but not limited to: production techniques such as land-based outdoor and greenhouse cultivation, rooftop open air and greenhouse production, hydroponics, aquaculture, aquaponics, beekeeping and egg-producing poultry. Each project proposal must represent long-term, capital investments such as infrastructure improvements, building upgrades, purchase of computer software and systems, land procurement, and purchase of farm equipment. Projects will also foster youth development, small business development, and job training directly related to commercial urban farming.

This program does not fund backyard produce or livestock raised for personal consumption.

MDAR’s Urban Agriculture Program seeks proposals that demonstrate strategies for municipalities to increase access to affordable, fresh food for urban residents address the challenges of small scale farming in densely populated centers, and create direct markets in low-moderate income neighborhoods.

Examples of Project Priorities:

• Soil Management: Initiatives that address the issues of soil quality in urban environments with particular emphasis on improving soil fertility in blighted areas;
• Land: Proposals for acquisition of land for food production in urban settings;
• Equipment: Mobile market vehicles, small farm equipment or hand tools;
• Marketing, Distribution, Transportation:  Improve the transportation and distribution of locally grown products from farm to customer such as food hubs sourced from local urban farms or other innovative technologies designed to aid/improve cost-effective distribution of food produced on urban farms to urban residents;
• Green Infrastructure:  Demonstrations of greenhouse, hoop house, cold frame and other technologies to help urban farmers scale up the volume, quality and enable year round production or to manage energy and water usage, or allow for more intensive and efficient food production in urban environments;
• Innovative Growing Technology: Demonstrate practical/economically viable approaches to urban aquaculture/aquaponics and vertical farming and other innovative growing methods to make available local sourced food and products to low-moderate income communities;
• Urban to Rural Bridge: Strengthen the connections between rural and urban agriculture, including but not limited to: innovative market models, technology, job creation and food production benefitting and sited within urban neighborhoods.

Organic farming support: Capital infrastructure to support an urban farm’s transition to a certified organic organization.

Past Awards:

• 2022
• 2021
• 2020
• 2019