Oakland, Calif., where I live, doesn’t have a lot to celebrate, what with budget-driven police layoffs and an unemployment rate of 11.5 percent. Still, one piece of good news has urban agriculture proponents cheering.

Not about Oakland’s plan to sanction (and tax) large-scale marijuana farms, but the announcement that City Slicker Farms, a leader in urban-farming and food-justice circles, has been given $4 million to buy land on which to farm.

City Slicker got its start in 2001 on a parcel of borrowed vacant land in the “food desert” of impoverished West Oakland (see Grist’s food-justice story), where 32 percent of residents live below the poverty level and mortality rates for diabetes and heart disease are well above the county rate. They soon started a “pay what you can” farm stand, and then a program to help residents grow their own food in their back yards. Today, City Slicker Farms operates seven Community Market Farms, more than 100 backyard gardens, a greenhouse, and Urban Farming Education programs. It grows 20,000 pounds of food annually.