County proposal would convert unused public land to agriculture

Public property across Salt Lake County that currently produces little more than a healthy weed crop every year could start bearing organic produce and biofuel material under a proposal approved unanimously Tuesday by the Salt Lake County Council.

Councilman Jim Bradley's urban farming plan calls for an inventory of unused county land to identify plots suitable for agricultural uses, including community gardens, small-scale commercial agriculture production and growing crops like switch grass or safflower for use in distilling biodiesel.

Bradley said the idea was inspired, in part, by an article by Michael Pollan, an award-winning author who specializes in investigating where food comes from and how the process of getting that food from farm to table is changing lives.

"The article opened my eyes to the demise of the family farm and what implications that has to our food products," Bradley said. "The county and Salt Lake City have a ton of property that's just sitting there … that could be used for growing produce, biofuel … and making a difference."

That difference, Bradley said, would include the creation of new jobs, economic opportunities for small businesses, a new source of agricultural products grown in the Salt Lake Valley and a far-reaching, positive environmental impact.

"This would go toward reducing the carbon footprint of transporting the food we eat, bringing fresh local produce to market … and, at the same time, creating a new source of biofuel, produced right here, that could be powering municipal vehicles," Bradley said.

Salt Lake City is on board with Bradley's plan and has already identified a vacant 200-acre plot near the airport that has the potential to grow enough feed-stock (likely to be safflower) to produce 10,000 gallons of biodiesel fuel sufficient to power 15 city vehicles for a year. Ben McAdams, a senior adviser to Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker, said the urban farming plan struck a positive chord with the city.

"We immediately saw the potential in Councilman Bradley's proposal," McAdams said. "Using that property in a productive, sustainable manner is something we would very much like to be part of."

Tapping that potential in a plan that looks at re-tasking public properties puts Salt Lake County near the forefront of a national tidal change in urban land use, said Utah State University research scientist Dallas Hanks.