Urban Food Futures, Part 4: How Extension is Advancing Urban Agriculture Programs in Cities

The fourth session of the NUREC Urban Food Futures Seminar Series brought the conversation firmly into practice—exploring how urban agriculture Extension professionals are building and supporting urban farming programs across diverse communities.

While earlier sessions focused on defining urban agriculture and its ecological role, this webinar asked a more applied question: what does it take to make urban agriculture work on the ground?

Speakers from Rutgers Cooperative Extension, UMass Extension, and Cornell Cooperative Extension shared real-world examples of programming, technical assistance, and research. Together, they illustrated how urban agriculture Extension is evolving to meet the needs of growers, communities, and cities.

Community Engagement as the Foundation of Urban Farming Programs

In New Jersey, Claudia Geneva’s work with Rutgers Cooperative Extension highlights how successful urban farming programs begin with community relationships. Gardens in public parks, seed libraries, and compost education initiatives create spaces where learning and food access intersect.

Programs also extend into urban farmer training and workforce development, including initiatives like the Urban Grower Training Program and business management education for new producers. Youth programs help build leadership pipelines, while multilingual outreach—including Spanish-language education and digital content—ensures broader access.

This approach reflects a core principle of urban agriculture Extension: programs must be culturally relevant, locally grounded, and relationship-driven to be effective.

Urban agriculture, in this sense, is not simply about growing food—it is about building community through shared spaces and knowledge.

Technical Assistance and the Role of Urban Agriculture Extension

At UMass Extension, Olivia Golden presented a model that emphasizes hands-on technical assistance for urban farms. The Urban Mentor Farm Program works intensively with a small number of farms each season, providing ongoing support through site visits, troubleshooting, and collaborative problem-solving.

This type of Extension-based technical assistance supports growers in key areas such as:

• Soil health and fertility
• Pest identification and management
• Season extension and high tunnel production
• Food safety and farm operations

Through this work, a critical issue has emerged: urban soils do not behave like conventional agricultural soils.

Urban farms often rely on constructed soils with high organic matter, which can produce confusing or inconsistent results in standard soil tests. This highlights an important gap in urban soils research, where existing agricultural tools may not fully meet the needs of urban growers.

These findings reinforce the importance of long-term Extension relationships, where support evolves alongside the farm and contributes to identifying new research priorities.

Scaling Urban Agriculture Extension in Complex City Systems

In New York City, Cornell Cooperative Extension is supporting more than 65 commercial urban farms—demonstrating how urban agriculture Extension programs operate at scale in dense urban environments.

Their work includes:

• Technical support for soil management and pest control
• Farmer networking and peer learning opportunities
• Engagement in policy discussions affecting urban agriculture

A major focus is the challenge of managing constructed urban soils, which differ significantly from traditional agricultural systems. High organic matter and unique physical properties make it difficult to interpret soil test results using conventional methods.

At the same time, ongoing conversations around nutrient management have raised questions about nutrient leaching in urban agriculture systems. While soil tests may indicate high nutrient levels, current observations suggest that actual environmental risks may be relatively low compared to other urban land uses.

These findings point to a growing need for urban soils research that better reflects real-world conditions—an area where Extension, research institutions, and farmers must collaborate closely.

Urban Soils Research: A Shared Priority

Across all three regions, one issue stood out: urban soils are a critical and unresolved challenge in urban agriculture.

Unlike conventional soils, urban soils are often:

• Constructed from imported materials
• High in organic matter
• Influenced by past land use and infrastructure

As a result, key questions remain:

• Are current soil testing methods accurate for urban systems?
• How do nutrients behave in high-organic-matter soils?
• What are the actual environmental impacts of urban farming practices?

These uncertainties highlight a major opportunity for advancing urban agriculture research and Extension collaboration. They also reinforce the idea that urban farms, despite these unknowns, may have a lower environmental impact than many other urban land uses.

What This Means for Urban Agriculture Extension

This session makes clear that Extension is central to the growth and success of urban agriculture programs nationwide. From community engagement to technical assistance and policy support, Extension professionals are already shaping how urban farming functions in practice.

At the same time, the work is evolving. Urban agriculture demands approaches that are more relational, adaptive, and interdisciplinary than traditional models. It requires Extension to operate in spaces where research is still developing, especially in areas like urban soils and nutrient management.

It also calls for a broader understanding of value. Urban farming programs provide food, but they also support education, public health, environmental stewardship, and community resilience. Recognizing and communicating these benefits is increasingly important for sustaining support and investment.

Equity remains foundational. Programs that succeed are those that reflect the communities they serve—through culturally relevant content, multilingual access, and meaningful opportunities for youth and new farmers.

Looking ahead, a key priority is coordination. Efforts like the NUREC Urban Data Hub offer a pathway to better connect urban agriculture Extension programs, share data, and align research and practice across regions.

Looking Ahead

Urban agriculture is continuing to expand—and so is the role of Extension in supporting it. The challenges ahead are technical, social, and systemic, but they also present opportunities for innovation and collaboration.

This session highlighted a defining reality: urban agriculture succeeds not because it is simple, but because Extension professionals are willing to work within its complexity.

In doing so, they are not only supporting urban farming programs—they are helping to shape the future of urban agriculture in cities across the country.

Speaker Bios

Sam Anderson, MS
Urban Agriculture Specialist, Cornell Cooperative Extension

Sam is an urban agriculture specialist with Cornell Cooperative Extension’s Harvest NY team. He provides technical assistance and educational programming for urban farmers throughout New York City. His work is primarily focused on soil health and integrated pest management (IPM) for vegetable crops, with an emphasis on uplifting the expertise of historically underserved urban farmers.

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