Do You Need a Permit to Grow Swiss Chard in Oakland?
Iconic urban farmer Novella Carpenter may face city fines
Oakland urban homesteading celebrity Novella Carpenter could face fines from the city for unpermitted agricultural activities and lose the animals she keeps at Ghost Town Farm, a West Oakland garden that helped make local, sustainable food popular in the East Bay.
Carpenter says she received a notice that she was being fined about two weeks ago from the city’s Animal Services department based on a complaint against her selling rabbit meat. After a follow-up inspection on Tuesday from the city’s planning department, she was also warned that she must also acquire a conditional use permit for her agricultural activities.
Carpenter is a graduate of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, where Oakland North is based, and her 2008 memoir "Farm City" details her efforts to grow produce on the vacant lot next door to her apartment and raise animals in her backyard. Carpenter only recently purchased the lot, and for many years had been squatting on the property, asserting that the garden was a benefit to the public. Since publishing her book, Carpenter has travelled worldwide to talk about growing food in urban settings. Carpenter raises goats, chickens, ducks and rabbits and gives demonstrations on raising and butchering animals at Ghost Town Farm.
Carpenter said she purchased the corner lot next to her apartment last year, and that the area where she grows vegetables — mostly on raised beds — is zoned for mixed commercial and residential use. Currently, she does not have a permit to grow crops or raise animals for sale on the property. But Carpenter said when she bought the property she checked with the planning department to ask whether she would need any permits and was told to wait until April when new zoning laws will loosen restrictions on urban farming throughout the city.
As a result, she said, the notice from Animal Services took her by surprise. “They said they were going to fine me $1,000 and take away all my animals unless I ceased my activities,” she said. “I didn’t know — I guess there is a law against selling rabbit products.”
Carpenter said that the follow-up visit from city planning inspector Chris Candell resulted in a warning that because she had been operating without a permit, she could be charged double the price of a conditional use permit for agriculture, which is typically $2,500. That would be a $5,000 fee on top of the $1,000 fine from Animal Services, according to Carpenter.
voltairesmistress
Another case of over-active government harassing a largely law-abiding citizen with phenomenal fines for a minor violation. These officials are not exercising common sense. I suspect business is slow when nobody is asking for building permits. But surely there are plenty of animal cruelty cases to keep Animal Services busy. This woman who has done much to improve her block may end up personally funding a month's salary for some unaccountable bureaucrat.
Tizzie Lish
Ms. Carpenter is a good writer, and part of being a good writer is to choose the language you write carefully to have impact on the reader. Writing in her blog that she is being told she needs a permit to grow swiss chard might be effective writing but it is also, I submit, manipulatively deceptive.
She was fined, if this article is accurate, for raising rabbits to sell. Admittedly, if they nailed her for donating some rabbit meat in a potpie, donated to a charity auction, for gosh sake, that might be stretching the idea of 'selling'. So I ask: does Ms. Carpenter and the people in her immediate household eat all the rabbit meat she raises? Cause if she is raising meat for sale, she should need a permit.
What is 100 people in Oakland decided to raise rabbits for commercial sale without permits? or 200? When you live in a city, boundaries matter. And little details like limiting agriculture is a boundary issue. I don't suggest there should be no agriculture in urban settings: I am saying there should be guidelines, boundaries, cause we all share the city.
I am thrilled by the movement towards urban farming. We need shared agreements how to organize the system.
And another thing . . . .this article, disingenuously, I think, rhetorically asks 'what is agriculture?'. I think growing a garden becomes agriculture when you are growing to sell your yield to others.
And, come, on, I am as hip as Ms. Carpenter, I swear, but who wants to live next door to chicken coops, rabbit farms and commercial agricultural lots without a clear understanding that the local rules/laws permit it? I guarantee you there are things Ms. Carpenter would not want to suddenly find herself living next door to, such as someone next to where she lives turning their driveway into a nightclub with live bands daily. We have noise ordnances because in cities lots of people share the boundaries and we need guidelines/boundaries/laws for gardens and raising animals.
It sounds like Ms. Carpenter has been coasting on the ambiguity of existing law. Maybe she has been intentionally activist, pushing limits to prod Oakland into writing the new regs. In the end, I hope this kerfuffle yields better zoning for Oakland.
As I have watched the urban farmstead movement grow, I have been surprised that hipsters could seem to do whatever they want in their yards and lots, such as growing chickens and rabbits. I know there are limits on how many chickens one household can raise in their yard, which prevent agricultural chicken farming or egg farming, I guess.
It looks like the laws need to be updated. They will be.
I resent Ms. Carpenter's swiss chard whine. Oakland has not fined her for growing swiss chard.
Oak landresident
Apparently, it is illegal to raise ANY animal for slaughter and to slaughter them in the city of Oakland and it most certainly is illegal to SELL animal meat and other animal products to the public without licensing and following appropriate codes which the health department has in place to protect public health.
Oakland code: “8.40.080 – Offensive places and occupations. It is unlawful for any person to establish or maintain any slaughterhouse, to keep any hog, to cure or keep hides, skins or peltry, to slaughter cattle, sheep or any other kind of animal, to pursue, maintain or carry on any other business or occupation offensive to the senses or prejudicial to the public health or comfort, within the limits of the city.”
I assume the laws are similar in most other cities.
Imagine if someone got e.coli or salmonella from this meat or dairy.
Everyone would be howling at the city for allowing this person to sell tainted meat or dairy.
The USDA codes and standards and local laws are there for a very good reason.
I don’t care if Carpenter grows chard or not or sells chard and other greens to the public.
I do care that she raises and sells animals and animal products without first being certified by the health department. And I know that the various codes regarding animal husbandry and slaughter cannot be satisfied by someone on a small plot in the city (even if the city did not have the above code).
And yeah, I am aware of factory farming and the awful conditions which livestock endure and the inherent cruelty of these methods.
This does not mean that ever person with a plot of land can now raise, slaughter, and sell animals, animal meat or dairy products or food made from this stuff which comes from their backyard without following codes and standards. It would become a code enforcement nightmare, more animals would end up abandoned to local shelters, there'd be rats and eventually someone would get sick.
People treat their own pets poorly enough and the city is already up to it's eyeballs in abandoned animals and the city is simply not set up to deal with abandoned goats, pigs, and other livestock.