Urban agriculture (UA) is any form of agriculture practiced in urban spaces. Across the Rust Belt Midwest, where deindustrialization and depopulation have resulted in vacant and abandoned land, UA has increasingly been embraced as a strategy for neighborhood revitalization. Research has shown that returning vacant land to use through UA can increase food security, beautify spaces, and catalyze community relationships. Much of the academic literature on UA in the United States focuses on case studies in large cities, including Detroit, Chicago, and Milwaukee, though many small and mid-sized cities across the Rust Belt also have growing urban agriculture systems. The lack of scholarly attention on these cities, which greatly outnumber larger cities, raises questions about how UA systems function across scale and whether direct comparisons between large and small systems are effective. This exploratory study establishes baseline insight about UA activities in Toledo, Ohio, a mid-sized Rust Belt city with an established and growing UA system. We conducted 27 semi-structured interviews with stakeholders to better understand the history, present activities, and future goals of farmers, organizations, and policymakers who are involved with UA activities. After conducting an inductive analysis to identify emergent themes, we discuss the results in conversation with literature on mid-sized and large Rust Belt cities to identify intersections and distinctions. This research provides a first step in understanding the dynamics of UA systems in mid-sized Rust Belt cities.
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