Who knew it is easier to get permits for a medical marijuana garden in the San Francisco area than it is for an urban farm to grow and sell vegetables? In cities across the country urban zoning laws are being changed to allow people to grow food for a profit as Zusha Elinson reports for The New York Times,
 
Brooke Budner and Caitlyn Galloway are a common sight on the streets of the Mission district — covered in dirt and carrying baskets of salad mix from their backyard farm to Bar Tartine, a stylish upscale restaurant.
 
“We’re fairly scrappy ladies and often pretty dirty,” said Ms. Galloway, 29, a part-time sign painter who founded Little City Gardens with Ms. Budner, 29, last year.
 
But their new piece of land — three-quarters of an acre on a quiet residential block in the outer Mission — is now mostly quiet and overgrown with weeds and without much sign of the lettuce, kale, arugula, purslane, lemon balm and other greens for which the women are known.
 
The problem is the legality of selling vegetables grown in San Francisco without a special permit, an expensive and time-consuming requirement for a small, low-profit business.
 
Even as the hype around urban agriculture and the local-food movement has exploded, laws governing land use are still stuck in another era, one that frowned on farming in the city, especially in residential areas, experts in urban planning say.
 
“There was an effort to zone agriculture out; it wasn’t seen as the highest and best use of the land,” said Jennifer Wolch, dean of the College of Environmental Design at the University of California, Berkeley. “Culturally, there was a shift in the postwar period where it was unacceptable.”
 
A changing attitude and new ventures like Little City Gardens are now prompting city planners to consider revising zoning laws.