Oakland -- You can now legally sell peas grown from your backyard in Oakland.

The City Council voted Tuesday to eliminate the ban on selling homegrown produce, a relic of an era when cities wanted to distinguish themselves from rural areas.

But the old code, which was updated, has come into conflict with a growing but relatively new movement, urban farming. Urban farmers generally seek deeper connections to their food by growing it themselves, and the money helps. Kitty Sharkey harvested 80 pounds of heirloom tomatoes Tuesday from the 3-by-24-foot raised bed at her home in the Havenscourt neighborhood of East Oakland. She thinks she could make up to $400 at a farmers' market, which would help her finances.

Until now, she gave away or bartered what she couldn't eat, cook or can.

"A little bit more money makes it more enticing," said Sharkey, 47, who devotes time to being an urban homesteader and growing almost all of her own food. "I might work a little harder on that winter garden."

Others saw a larger significance in the change.

"It's the first step in legitimizing urban agriculture in Oakland," said Esperanza Pallana, 37, who has a 1,200-square-foot backyard plot in the Grand Lake neighborhood and has been pushing for the change. "It's also preserving our right to grow our own food for ourselves and our community."

The code change altered the definition of "home-based businesses," which previously required that it had to be indoors. The new code allows outdoor vegetables as long as farm equipment isn't needed to produce them. Previously, all it took was one phone call from a neighbor to bring down the city's wrath on someone selling backyard carrots.

Not a primary occupation

Eric Angstadt, the city's deputy planning and zoning director, said that anywhere from one-half to three-fourths of urban farmers in Oakland will be protected by this change.

"These are people for whom urban farming is not a primary, money-making occupation," he said. "These are maybe people who are just trying to recover their own costs of growing, or maybe people who are trying to see if it can be a possible commercial occupation."

There's little if any controversy over this code change - the first and perhaps least disputed element of the city's desire to revamp its urban farming rules. But that's partly because of what this does not address.

Farmers whose operations are so big they need a tractor won't be covered by this code change. Nor are cooperatives that sell produce boxes or people who grow on vacant lots - because those lots aren't considered yards.

Farm animals not addressed

But the biggest reason Tuesday's change attracted little hubbub was because it didn't address the issue of farm animals.

The city's vegans and farm animal lovers have been battling over this issue. The vegan farmers say animals should not be used in farming because they are almost always slaughtered. Those who want to have animals on their farms say they help the vegetables, by tilling soil, eating bugs or providing manure.

Livestock prompted complaints to the city against Novella Carpenter, who wrote about the creation of her West Oakland farm in the book, "Farm City." Rabbit rights activists complained about her rabbits and other farm animals after learning that she was slaughtering rabbits and offering rabbit pot pies from her farm to people willing to donate cash.

The city forced Carpenter to apply for a $2,800 conditional use permit to grow vegetables and raise a small number of animals. None of Tuesday's changes would have helped her because her farm is on an empty lot adjacent to her apartment - but the lot is not considered a yard at her home.