Gainesville, FL Right to Farm: Agricultural Zoning Protection (2026)

Sec. 30-5.30 governs "urban agriculture," defined in article II as encompassing subsistence gardens and urban market farms, and it lets either use stand as the principal use of a property or operate as an accessory use alongside a residential or nonresidential principal use. Every other design standard in chapter 30 that would normally apply to a development, setbacks, gates, fences, walls, signage, parking, and stormwater management, still governs the urban agriculture use.

The section sets specific operational conditions: adequate hand-washing facilities must be available on site for workers and volunteers unless a facility is reachable within a quarter mile; growing structures cannot be built from tires, appliances, railroad ties, or pressure-treated lumber manufactured before 2004; unused equipment must be secured and hidden from the public right-of-way; compost must be managed at least weekly to control odor and pests; and trash must be kept in appropriate containers and hauled off the property at least weekly. Chicken keeping is allowed on market farms of a half-acre or larger, starting at 10 chickens for the first half-acre and adding two more birds for each additional half-acre, up to a citywide cap of 24 chickens per farm, with any keeping beyond that scaled allowance otherwise governed by the residential fowl-keeping standards in article V. Operators may not run practices that create mosquito breeding grounds under chapter 16, article IV, and every urban agriculture site must give the city the contact information for a designated on-site manager responsible for the operation.