-- and we feel like there's a lot of potential there and we want to make sure it is adequately research. >> the report looked at seattle -- supervisor mar: the report looked at seattle was significantly more money per site and san francisco. i know you did not do this but if you could talk about the -- what is adequate funding? >> for right now, we would like to focus on that there is someone and non-profit or some city agency that could help coordinate everything. this a first that of just having one person dedicated full time, there is funding to pay the person to coordinate, that would be a huge step for getting everything more organized. supervisor mar: i'm going to call the rest of the cards. [reading names]

>> thank you. i'm here representing pesticide watch and i will keep this brief. i would like to thank everyone for their support on this legislation. as an organization that works directly with community members and in gauges the city's policies around urban agriculture as well as pesticide use, a pesticide watch would find ideal to have a specific person or body to which we can direct questions and direct better understanding around the use of pesticide as well as urban agriculture as a way to

invest in healthier food systems. we are looking for a more coordinated support and this would be an incredible support not only to san francisco residents and organizations, but organizations that work at the regional and state level like pesticide watch. i would like to ask you support the amendments as proposed and has just outlined. thank you for your support. supervisor mar: and we are joined by the president, which like to make some remarks? president chiu: i'm sorry i was running little late. want to thank the urban agriculture community and think spur for jump starting this conversation. we passed legislation to finally

of folks in san francisco to grow and sell what they want, but we need a is centralized program that brings cohesion to the city government and i would like to think the department's that worked to move this fall word and i would like to go back now to public comment, but let people know we did take into account all lot of feedback since we introduced the legislation five or six months ago, and i do hope we will be able to move this forward because there are an awful lot of things we want to grow and develop in the city and i looked toward to helping it do that. >> thank you for introducing this. i'm from the urban agriculture alliance. i want to address the question about funding because we have heard from city agencies and

nonprofits. so many are passionate about getting this work done but we need funding to make it happen. we are all excited about expanding the role of the city in supporting urban agriculture but we need to think in terms of what that should look like in terms of supporting community organizations doing that work. centralizing is an important step toward supporting the grass-roots level and some of that is having a central coordinating role in city government or nonprofit that could link people with bill people they need to be in contact with to activate public land or get resources that are available like the community opportunity fund. right now, it is disjointed and hard for a community group to do that. ongoing, the important pieces are seeking funding for this position and looking for some

model of community over size of a different constituency groups can be involved in directing the ongoing use of the money for a supporting urban agriculture. thank you for introducing this legislation and i hope you support it and i look ford to working with you on making a better. >> i am with the center for urban education about sustainable agriculture. we are best known for running the farmers' market and the mission is to promote a sustainable food system. thank you for introducing this legislation and thank you to the city of san francisco for taking a food system perspective on policy. we appreciate what has been done and we feel supporting urban

agriculture is an important part of the food system as a whole and we support this legislation and support all of the amendments as brought forward by the urban agriculture alliance. specifically, i want to bring up a couple of points. we have urban and agriculture in our name and we get a lot of calls for people wanting to have gardens or people from other parts of the world looking to us as a model and i feel it would be really important to have a coordinated body and funding for that. i hear a lot of frustration on the part of our residents for not having a place to garden. although there is a beautiful, contact -- compact city, there is not a lot of space and not a lot of land. someone in coordinating the land that is available, we get

delegations from all over the world looking at san francisco as a model. thank you. president chiu: if you have been called, please line up on the right hand side so that we can move along. >> i have a copy of the letter that i wrote to you guys. i'm an owner of a landscape contracting company and we grow food here in san francisco in people's backyards. we are also a member organization of the you a and ask that you support the ordinance and amendments we have suggested. i also have some language here

about exploring how urban agriculture can provide employment opportunities. as a business owner, i know there are employment opportunities out there and exploring is good but i think we should step further and in hands and create these opportunities. if we could get the overhead going. i don't know if someone knows how to operate this, but i don't think i do. what i am proposing is changing some wording at that last bullet point. thank you very much. before we get to that, i want to

mention i am and favor of the oversight body. that would help oversee this program. that is not our position at this point but it is something i feel strongly about and it would be a good way to get oversight from different businesses. i can not read what i have if we cannot show it on the overhead. he essentially, as it stated before -- [tone] v. new program should explore how urban agriculture should provide it -- if we could change it to enhance job programs including low-income and use persons and create employment opportunities and incentives to hire san francisco residents for their food growing programs.

feel free to talk about that and it would be great if we could get other folks in the city the opportunity to learn these things because right now there are not a lot of comprehensive programs in the city. the closest place is santa cruz with comprehensive programs. would be great if we could have a program where employers like myself could hire from. >> i am a community organizer and i focus on doing food security issues. we operate the tenderloin people's garden. just last year, we gave 3,000 pounds of fresh produce away.

i want to give my support to this ordinance and i think san francisco should be leading the way in the global -- the urban agriculture movement globally. there is no reason we should not be leading the way on this. we need to look at not just the environmental aspects, but the social components. i would like to see some of the language in this ordinance focus on low-income communities, especially around access to food and job training. i know that is a systematic issue we are facing, but i think we can start looking at it through this legislation. there are a lot of folks here that don't have a lot of access to fresh food and this type of urban farming holds potential to increasing access for low-income people across the city. i have a letter of support i would like to hand off.

>> good afternoon. i'm from kaiser permanente a. i have a little laryngitis today. i'm the community and government relations manager for the government center and i'm pleased to be here on behalf of kaiser permanente to show our support for this ordinance and its amendments. we have had our own community garden initiative for just over four years now. we support community gardening programs in 10 of the 11 districts and we're working on the 11th, which is supervisor chiu's district.

part of our overall mission is to help the communities we exist in and part of that is creating programs around healthy eating, active living, wallace, prevention, and structural public health. community gardens are a wonderful example where communities can engage and people have access to fresh produce and it supports an alliance with our goals and the cities, we believe. we are thrilled to be here and we look forward to being supporters of the ordnance and continuing the community garden the initiative. >> i am a resident of san francisco and member of the

community garden. i've been a member for four or five years. i want to speak to the community building aspect of the garden. it is a wonderful to have fresh produce for your meals, but there is an equally beneficial aspect, which is the value of people working together, learning from each other. one of the things about community gardens that are special is that it is across generational. we have children, grandparents like myself, all age groups can learn and participate and to participate in our community garden plots. it is a great process of community building and we meet once a month to work on projects around the garden. i want to support this proposal

and stress it has many beneficial aspects. thank you very much. president chiu: are there any other members of the public to wish to speak on this topic? please line up on the right hand aisle. >> it good afternoon, the supervisors. i am an urban farmer and resources toward native and part of the hayes valley farm community. i did submit a brief report to all of you via e-mail. i won't go into details because it has been covered by a lot of people. thank you for introducing the legislation. i support it and i am glad to see it included the most current draft of the legislation. i think it is a good start and i

think we could dedicate a lot more. the benefits of urban agriculture to quickly some up, i support the legislation and welcome a cohesive program. recreation, education, blade reduction and the transformation of urban space. i know people have a wide range of opinions and experiences and i hope many of these community members comport to share their views and we can help to shape truly effective legislation that provides for a fully funded, fully staffed urban agriculture program for the city of san francisco. i would also point out any program created will most certainly benefit every district of the city. with job creation and job training, i would like to emphasize there are many people in this city who grow hungry and

the growing of the food is not to be overlooked as a great benefit. thank you. >> i am a physician working for a community clinic. i'm not reduce -- representing the clinic, but i am representing the fact that i work with politicians that one of their primary problems is improper nutrition, namely obesity. the lack of knowing about food, not having land to grow food, however when i bring up community gardens and so forth, they always seem interested. i'm asking for your support on this wonderful legislation and i agree with the amendments for all of the communities in san francisco, but especially the

mission district. thank you. >> my name is j. rosenberg. i have worked and volunteered with many of you throughout the city. i am one of the co-founders of hayes valley farms, i teach agriculture and farming culture, incorporating the landscape with human habitat and finding ways for all to work together. in the past two and a half years, i've had the opportunity to meet many people and so many of these people have responded to the volunteer opportunity to say it is amazing. we get a chance to design the world we want to live in even if it is just for a little while. i think that is a great

perspective. for a brief time, they're given a chance to research, educate, and demonstrate what is possible in urban agriculture in partnership but the city, we were given a grant to start the program and support from the san francisco park's lines. once again, as development and real estate and all the exciting things of the future city come to fruition, the notion of an term used project is being questioned and is of concern to many people, the idea that you can do something temporarily and see benefit to that. when we first received a notice -- if i may go on for just a moment here -- when we first received notice a year ago that the development plans were going to proceed, we were excited about the opportunity to sit and work with the mayor's office and a number of neighborhood and

community-based organizations to identify additional spaces. one of the lessons i learned was an urban farm is something worth understanding a little about. [tone] it's not always going to be a very large space. what i would like to see is a community that has spaces throughout the neighborhood. some available for thing slyke composting, some for tools, some for class's and i don't think we need to have it all in one large space, but many spaces. as i stand here before you, i teach at the community gardens as well as two days in the bayview doing a job training program with some of the most at risk use. i'm confident the enthusiasm is

there and they're our capabilities for these things to become very productive. the last thing, i want to touch the talent from the people's garden and the tenderloin -- san francisco continues to be a leader the rest of the world looks to in response to social, environmental, and economic crises we respond to daily here and i look forward to this legislation being a big part of the future. i have a copy of the report and i would like to share that with you. president chiu: are there any other members of the public who wish to speak on this topic? >> i am interested and very much in utilizing the resources we

have in san francisco and not using any more of our money to do any more research on how to do airports. we have a big community that will be receiving five years from now and a university known for building the best of the best engineers and the world. people from around the world come to san francisco university to graduate and to get the best. why can't we use those guys to do the research on the best merino we can build -- supervisor mar: you were talking about the previous item. >> we opened it and we closed

it. please try to speak any urban agriculture program. >> that's what we have forms for. supervisor mar: is there anyone else would like to speak? let's close public comment. president chiu: i would like to thank all of the folks who came out today. there has been a lot of frustration about the fact we have seven different agencies that impact agriculture but we were not able to see the type of coordination i hope will arise out of this legislation and hopefully we'll have more full- time staffing and make sure the declining resources and our budget is something we will be able to address. i would like to think the city administrator's office, the rec and park department, planning and real estate.

in particular, have to think the urban agriculture alliance and all of you who have been working together to create a vision not just a san francisco being a green city, but being on the forefront of the urban agriculture movement. i would like to summarize the changes we have made. we introduced a new version last week and some of the changes includes a new language that for the upcoming fiscal year, we would have at least one of full- time employee for this urban agriculture program. we included language to require the strategic plan to include budget and funding sources to make it explicit the mayor and administrator will consult with relative -- relevant departments and ensure once the program is in place, we will seek public and put from

stakeholders and including the language to conform with agriculture and public health laws. to make explicit the rooftop audit will identify suitable roofs and not make final determination of the suitability. language that would allow changes to the completion date should be processed result another time lines. broadening the definition to include non-food plants and will include in the duty to ensure existing spaces are fully utilized. there was one other change that was made that i would like to propose an amendment today. that refers to the language around job training and employment opportunities. there was a suggestion that we reference we want job-training opportunities for low-income and used as well as think about employment opportunities for a

san francisco residence. i think that language is worth putting in. i would like to suggest on page 4, subsection 7, line 11, that we state one of the duties shall be to explore our urban agriculture can provide new opportunities and enhance existing programs for all san francisco residents and how employment opportunities and incentives can be created for employers to hire a san franciscans. i thought that was useful to add to this language. i would ask for that amendment and ask for your support. supervisor mar: -- supervisor olague has joined us.

supervisor ma supervisor olague: this is something i find very exciting. i have been trying to reach out individuals engaged in this work, particularly there is a lot of strength in the african- american community and a lot of folks there who are actually expert on african american farming and this sort of thing. we are hoping in august to have a conversation and presentation from the rosa parks senior center which is adjacent to the buchanan mall. we hope the mall will be used to replace some of what we will be losing when the hayes valley farm ceases to exist. we're glad we got a six month

extension. i would love to have more time than that and hopefully we will continue to engage in conversations to that and because some of the work going on is pretty incredible and i would encourage anyone who hasn't been there to go by. they have beehives where they produce honey. they have rehabilitated the soil through composting efforts. it is a beautiful sustainable project and there is a see the farm there pyrrhic if it is amazing what can happen when people come together spontaneously and create a beautiful space in the middle of an urban environment. i am hoping when -- i don't know that a task force will be created but as we focus on the issue of urban agriculture, i hope we can identify some spaces

that are publicly owned. there are a lot of underutilized public space and i realize these soil needs to be rehabilitated but i think there might be a way we can work on sites in between development. there was some talk of this a couple of years ago but maybe we can start looking again at publicly owned, under-utilized sites since the idea is one that is being discussed. i look forward to having discussions with public health. therefore the lot on community health impact studies, i think that directly links to this issue of our urban agriculture. finally, i do srt