What Happens to Agriculture in the Space Between Urban and Rural?

As Augusta Agriculture Month winds down, I’ve been thinking less about individual programs and more about the systems surrounding them. Conversations with farmers, food-system leaders, state partners and people thinking about how our community grows have kept bringing me back to one question: Where does agriculture fit in a place like Augusta?

I've been thinking about geography lately.

Not simply where farms are located, but where agriculture fits as communities change.

Georgia has a strong rural agricultural identity. We are also having increasingly sophisticated conversations about urban agriculture. But many communities—including Augusta—occupy a space somewhere between the two.

We are urban, suburban and rural at the same time.

Drive across Richmond County and you can move from downtown neighborhoods to subdivisions, industrial corridors, community gardens, wooded acreage and working agricultural land without ever crossing a county line.

And I'm beginning to wonder whether places like ours face a particular set of opportunities—and pressures—that neither our urban nor rural systems were quite designed to address.

What does agricultural development look like in a community that is becoming more urban while still retaining agricultural land, producers and traditions?

Land suitable for agriculture competes with housing and commercial development. Small and specialty producers need markets. Agritourism businesses need visibility. Beginning farmers need affordable access to land. Residents want opportunities to grow food closer to home. And economic-development decisions can permanently change what land will be available to the next generation.

No single program owns all of those questions.

And perhaps that's the point.

I've become increasingly interested in what happens in the space between our existing systems—between urban and rural policy, agriculture and economic development, land-use planning and food systems, production and markets.

Augusta's current zoning rewrite makes this conversation particularly timely. The city is reconsidering the rules that will guide development across a community containing rural, suburban and urban environments.

That shouldn't make agriculture the enemy of development.

It should invite us to ask better questions about what kind of development leaves room for agriculture to remain part of our economy and our communities.

Can families grow food where they live?

Can community and teaching gardens become lasting neighborhood assets?

Can small agricultural enterprises operate appropriately in suburban environments?

Can working agricultural land survive increasing development pressure?

Can local producers reach consumers, institutions and visitors more effectively?

And can planning, agriculture, food-system and economic-development leaders begin discussing those questions together rather than separately?

I don't have a new program to announce or a predetermined answer to offer.

I'm more interested right now in listening.

But I do believe there is an important conversation emerging around peri-urban agriculture—the places where city and countryside increasingly meet.

Augusta may be one of those places.

And perhaps our position between urban and rural isn't something we need to overcome.

Perhaps it is something we can learn to design for.