Santa Monica is a city defined by overdevelopment with greedy landowners taking land away from its rightful owners (the community), and overpriced grocery stores on every corner. 

Regenerative Urban Agriculture is a solution to all of these problems. It provides healthy fresh, affordable fruits and vegetables, increasing food security for the food-insecure. Regenerative Urban Agriculture would revolutionize our unsustainable and vulnerable food system, where our food shipped and packed in plastic from thousands of miles away, grown by voiceless workers, and grown with thousands of gallons of pesticides. It would provide unthinkable social capital for the disinvested areas and populations of our City... though we could go on for days like this about the benefits of regenerative urban agriculture, this petition regards an actual way we can implement it at scale. 

The Urban Agriculture Incentive Zone, or AB 551 is a state bill that, if adopted in Santa Monica with certain provisions, will encourage the symbiosis of private landowners and public interest to dedicate more land to Regenerative Urban Agriculture through tax exemptions in exchange for a land-lease to urban farmers. It has been highly effective in urban areas such as Oakland, San Diego Los Angeles and Long Beach. 

Regenerative urban agriculture is clearly paramount in our transition to a sustainable food system in Santa Monica, but without monetary facilitation in relationships between urban farmers and private interest, the transition will be much harder and much slower. We need local fresh vegetables with a low economic and carbon footprint. We need food security in an insecure time. We need regenerative urban agriculture to combat the climate crisis, restore our soils, honor those who inhabited the land before us, restore biodiversity, and reduce the impact of urban heat islands. 

We ask you to sign this petition in support of AB 551 (Regenerative Urban Agriculture Incentive Zone) to make these goals, and this vision, a reality.