A local non-profit has been given access to more land by the City of San Luis Obispo to continue its work in agriculture and sustainable farming.
Since 2013, City Farm SLO has managed more than 20 acres for tenant farming, food production and education for the local community.
“Lots of great stuff happening there, both in terms of state-of-the-art, sustainable regenerative farming and also with agricultural education,” said Bob Hill, Sustainability and Natural Resources Official for the City of San Luis Obispo.
The city council recently approved a lease amendment to add an additional 1.5 acres to City Farm SLO.
“Most likely that land will become available for other farmers to lease and then use for their agricultural production,” said Kayla Rutland, City Farm SLO Executive Director.
Additional acreage means greater production, which in turn could mean more food sent to local schools.
“A large amount of the food that we grow here at City Farm is brought to local school districts, in particular San Luis Coastal Unified,” Rutland stated.
Erin Primer, San Luis Coastal Unified School District Director of Food and Nutrition, said that to feed the students at the 15 schools across the district, she buys local from 50 different food partners, City SLO being one of them.
“We’re able to purchase those goods for our school meal program. We’re able to purchase from tenant farmers that they work with as well as City Farm directly,” Primer said.
While City Farm doesn’t provide a substantial amount of produce, Primer says it’s not about the quantity they provide; it’s about the quality.
“One time I purchased five pints of cherry tomatoes. Not only were they the best tasting cherry tomatoes we may have ever had, they were the most meaningful,” Primer said.
She explained that students from Pacific Beach High School were able to see the fruits of their labor, literally. They worked at City Farm SLO, helping cultivate and harvest the tomatoes before receiving the finished product.
The additional acreage will also be used as an area for habitat restoration and education.
“It provides a pretty unique opportunity because it’s at this interface of both agricultural land and then this restored creek corridor, this riparian corridor,” Rutland said. “There’s a lot of opportunities back there to make it accessible for both agriculture use, but then also restoring habitat land.“
“It’s a small site and so they have to really take care of the land and the soil to continue to have it be sustainable and continue to have it be productive for growing food,” Hill explained.