The environment of Los Angeles can appear admittedly harsh, with the hot desert sun, swaths of cracking concrete and tightly woven knit of boulevards and buildings. Cities in general can be tough environments, yet they are home to more than 80 percent of Americans. Urban agriculture is increasingly being considered as a method of addressing some of the issues associated with city living. In addition to increasing access to fresh fruits and vegetables, which is often insufficient in urban areas, community gardens and urban farms infuse neighborhoods with dynamic green space, improving the health of the overall environment.

In California, a state known for its progressive environmental and social politics, new legislation is aiming to increase urban agriculture statewide. The Urban Agriculture Incentive Zone act passed in the state legislature in 2013, and since then has begun the trickle-down process of county and city level adoption of the ordinance in a couple regions across the state.

The bill is designed to encourage the owners of vacant lots to allow their land to be transformed into an urban farm or community garden. Landowners enter into a 5-year minimum contract with a nonprofit or community group who wants to cultivate the space, and in return, the city offers a break on the property tax for that piece of land. For a 24,000 square-feet lot eligible for this incentive, the tax would drop from $20,000 annually to $7,000, according to Iesha Siler with the Los Angeles Food Policy Council.

“It’s a huge savings, and you’re doing something good, also,” Siler said. “It incentivizes property owners to not let [their] vacant lots be dumping sites. Make it productive, make it beautiful, make it a friendly, community space.”

Increasing access to fresh fruits and vegetables to communities in need throughout the county is a major point of the bill. Access disparity is starkly visible in LA, where Whole Foods are a fixture of many wealthy Westside neighborhoods, while in South LA, the country’s most notorious food desert persists. Though the streets lined with fast food restaurants may not align with the barren image suggested by the term, food deserts are technically places with low access to supermarkets or major grocery stores, which serve as most Americans’ main resource for produce. In such environments, residents are often left with produce on its last leg, that trickled through the reject bins of grocery markets before winding up in streetside bodegas and corner stores. Even that produce, though — rare and unappealing as it already is — often provides less sustenance for the money, which means shoppers on a tight budget will still often opt for cheaper, processed foods. Policy influencers at the city, county, and community level are hoping urban agriculture can help mitigate this disparity, which has devastating consequences for the health of low-access residents.

In April, AB 551 passed unanimously in the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, with Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas leading the charge. Ridley-Thomas oversees the 2nd District of LA County, much of which is a heavily populated, urban environment, including parts of Compton and Carson, as well as unincorporated areas like Willowbrook.

“It’s about bringing urban greenery, food access, open space to the Second District,” explained Lacey Johnson, assistant deputy for Ridley-Thomas. “I think this is something very in line with our environmental philosophy, which is to bring as many opportunities to green urban space as possible.”

The bill passed unanimously in the Board of Supervisors, and should go into full effect in unincorporated parts of the county by the end of the month, according to Johnson. Now that the bill has passed at the county level the 88 individual cities within LA County each need to go through their own process of adopting the ordinance through their city councils.

In the city of LA, a resolution to begin the city’s process of implementation was introduced in 2014 by Councilmembers Felipe Fuentes, who represents part of the San Fernando Valley, and Curren Price, whose district includes much of South LA. Christine Frey, Fuentes’ legislative deputy, said part of the councilmember’s motivation to support such legislation is because, as an urban gardener himself, he knows the benefits of homegrown food firsthand.

“Access to fresh fruits and vegetables is an issue in many parts of the city,” said Frey. “Oftentimes growing them is one of the easier and more affordable ways to get that access.”

Frey expects the city to hold its final vote on the matter within the next few months. She’s optimistic that it will pass without issue; the original resolution to begin the implementation process passed unanimously, and since then, their team has heard nothing but support for the legislation so far.

“Everybody wants organic, healthy food. Everybody thinks it’s a good idea, it’s just that not everybody has access,” said Siler, who heads up the urban agriculture projects with the LA Food Policy Council. Since its inception in 2011, the LAFPC has been closely advising city and county legislators on the real needs of the communities in LA. The council collaborates with several working groups composed of stakeholders representing various related interests across the county in an effort to ensure they’re embarking on projects that people actually want.

The LAFPC’s Urban Agriculture Working Group was instrumental in showing Supervisor Ridley-Thomas that there was both a desire for increased urban agriculture as well as multifaceted quantifiable benefits that community gardens offer.

“To us it’s clear that LA is running out of space, and we need to get very, very creative with how we create green space, how we create access to healthy food,” Johnson explained. “When you have someone bring you an idea like Urban Agriculture Incentive Zones, it’s a no brainer.”

Johnson said the next step for the unincorporated city zones that don’t have to wait on city approval is for groups interested in gardening or other greening projects to be matched with eligible property owners willing to enter into a UAIZ contract. The LAFPC and its Urban Agriculture Working Group are currently in the process of creating one countywide database of privately owned, vacant lots, and another of organized, interested groups of urban farmers. Though Siler doesn’t expect any challenges to passage in the city of LA, she said other cities in the county will likely be more encouraged to follow suit once they see the legislation successfully put into action.

The barriers to implementing this project in LA seem to be few, but the ones that are cropping up are serious. According to Siler, they’ve begun soil tests on some of the eligible sites, and that all the plots they’ve tested thus far have toxic contaminants in the soil. Johnson said that this is something that the Regional Planning department is looking into very closely.

“The worst possible scenario is that we allow people to start cultivating and selling fruits and vegetables in a community, only to find the soil is contaminated,” Johnson explained. She said the county is responsible for assessing any lot’s eligibility for the tax break, and that measures are being put into place that prevent gardening in unsafe soil.

In addition to the protections being implemented by the county, Siler said a nonprofit group called the Collaborative for Agroecology Los Angeles is working to develop a program that would offer free soil testing to existing or hopeful urban gardeners throughout the city. Siler also said that contaminated sites could be used as sites of soil reclamation and composting, and could be used as teaching sites for such greening practices until they’re safe to farm on.

It’s clear that AB 551 is a highly collaborative effort among county, city and community advocacy groups. Food access and urban blight are complex issues in an economically diverse city like Los Angeles, but the lines of communication are open between advocates and legislatures on the issue, resulting in an unusually holistic response. It appears that the necessary folks are on the same page in terms of needs, and willing to experiment and troubleshoot in order to find solutions.

“I think what we’ve set up is pretty incredible. This is uncharted territory,” Johnson said. ”The idea is to get it on the ground, let’s try it, evaluate it, and if there need be changes made, let’s do that to make this program as productive as possible. But we have to start.”