Subject: Farming in Los Angeles

From: "Lawrence F. London, Jr." <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 29 Sep 1997 19:30:02 -0400

http://www.marketreport.com/lafarm.htm

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 Lawrence F. London, Jr. - Dragonfly Market Gardens
 mailto:[email-masked] - mailto:[email-masked]
 http://sunSITE.unc.edu/InterGarden
 http://sunSITE.unc.edu/InterGarden/permaculture.html
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IN SEASON
A report on locally grown produce

Agriculture in a Megalopolis

Farming in the Heart of L.A.
Presents Opportunities
Along With Challenges

By Frances Anderton
and Mark Thompson

Bruno Luconi farms under powerlines

Top Veg Farm
Is a Vestige
of the City's
Bucolic Past

Utility Company
Rents Out
4,000 Acres to
400 Farmers Under Power Lines

Short Commutes to
Farmers Markets
Compensate for
Urban Woes

High Costs Force
Urban Farmers
to Maximize
Return Per Acre

Rows of carrots on
the MOA farm

Just past a steel fabrication plant and not far from the immense ARCO refinery in Wilmington lies a large stretch of land neatly divided into rows of vegetables, herbs, greens and root crops. It is called Top Veg Farm. A chorus of barks announces the arrival of a visitor. Dusty, disheveled cats cast mildly curious glances, and laborers look up from their work in the fields. Large trucks line the bumpy track alongside the fields. At the helm of one of them sits Top Veg patriarch Frank Takahashi. His daughter Katchi and her daughter Naomi, still lively after a working day that started at 4:00 a.m., emerge from a row of chicken-wire sheds to say hello.
To an outsider, Top Veg Farm is an enchanting rural oasis in an urbanized sprawl of metal, chemicals and glass-and-steel office buildings. But to the Takahashis it is simply the farm that three generations of family members have tended for 35 years. Top Veg Farm has dwindled from 200 to 35 acres in that period of time, as the once open fields of Carson have been transformed into an industrial adjunct of Long Beach. But the Takahashis fully intend to keep on working the fertile parcel that is left.

Top Veg Farm is a vestige of a time at the turn of the century when the coastal plain south and west of Los Angeles was a breadbasket, producing exportable quantities of produce ranging from milk to cherimoyas. As recently as the 1960s, there were 100 urban farms covering 3,500 acres in the coastal stretch running from Santa Monica to Long Beach, according to a UCLA study of Southern California's food distribution system, "Seeds of Change," published in 1993. By the time of the study, 98 percent of that urban farmland had disappeared. Just 60 acres were left in crops.

Top Veg Farm is perhaps the only commercial "family farm" left in the heart of the city. But a surprising array of other commercial agriculture enterprises are thriving in the midst of the city -- from backyard gardens that produce a small stream of crops for sale at farmers markets, to burgeoning sprout growing operations, to diversified farms under power lines.

L.A.'s urban farmers are part of a global phenomenon, judging from a report recently published by the United Nations Development Program. Though they are "overlooked, underestimated and underreported," there are perhaps 800 million urban farmers worldwide who produce about 15 percent of the world's food supply, the report concluded.

In the Los Angeles area, Southern California Edison is probably the largest owner of what passes for farmland in the city: the thousands of acres of grassy rights-of-way under high-voltage power lines. The utility company rents out 2,000 acres to 300 growers of nursery stock and another 2,000 acres to 100 farmers for all-purpose farming, an Edison spokesman said. Edison's tenant farmers include Jim Weiss, who owns The Orchid Garden in greenhouses in Torrance, and Bruno Luconi, who with a group of other people runs the MOA Farm on six acres in Long Beach.

The Takahashis, Weiss and Luconi all sell their crops at farmers markets, highlighting the role that the open-air markets play in keeping urban farmers on the land. There are now nearly 100 growers in the county who are certified to sell at farmers markets, said David Kruger, an inspector in the Los Angeles County agricultural commissioner's office.

The markets play to one of the most obvious advantages of farming amidst millions of people: proximity to customers. Urban farmers face commutes to markets measured in minutes, not hours. Weiss goes himself to seven in six days, dashing from Venice back to Torrance in the course of a Friday. The MOA Farm is just 15 or 20 minutes away from farmers markets that Luconi attends in Long Beach, Torrance and Westchester. The farm also supplies several dozen members of a community supported agriculture network with a box of food each week.

Top Veg Farm has evolved over the years to exploit the advantages of farmers markets. The Takahashis used to sell all their produce through conventional channels. They now sell almost everything they grow at farmers markets. Different members of the family travel to 18 markets throughout the Los Angeles area every week and they have one of the most varied and heavily laden display tables in every market they attend. Their vegetables are at most only a day out of the ground. As Katchi Takahashi observed, while out-of-town farmers often have to send employees to represent them, her family can control what is sold at the Top Veg table, making sure customers get the best vegetables. The family members are also able to establish relationships with market regulars.

To be sure, being close neighbors with millions of city folk brings plenty of headaches along with marketing opportunities. The Takahashis got a taste of the downside of urban farming when they once owned land near their present farm that was gradually surrounded by residential growth. The new inhabitants insisted the farmers install a fence to conceal what was perceived as the unsightly workings of the farm, and that they foot a bill for the cost of cleaning the streets after their muddy trucks had passed through. Occupants of new condos near their present farm complain insistently about the noise of farm machinery.

Michael Ableman of 12-acre Fairview Gardens in Goleta, several miles north of Santa Barbara, and author of "From the Good Earth," a photographic documentary of sustainable agriculture around the world, has written eloquently of his struggle to defend his farm from systematic harassment by local officials and new neighbors. Despite the fact that Fairview far preceded the residential development that subsequently enveloped it, the locals once kicked up a fuss about his crowing roosters, even suggesting that the bird's voice-boxes be removed.

Stealing and vandalism are other problems that are ever-present for urban farmers. It got to the point where the Takahashis had to bring in guard dogs a couple of years ago. Weiss, whose orchid greenhouses are located near a high school, suffers from the same problem. But he can't use dogs. Southern California Edison doesn't want its employees attacked when they work on the lines, so dogs aren't allowed.

This lack of security is compounded by the unavailability of insurance for Weiss. The cost of insurance is so prohibitive that he and other small city farmers in the same position must shoulder losses themselves.

There are still more extraordinary costs associated with urban farming. Farming equipment is hard to obtain and move around. There are no suppliers of fertilizer, seeds and other necessities nearby. And land and water are very expensive.

The Department of Water and Power has a special agricultural rate for farmers who have five acres or more, said a spokesman for the department. The rate of 62 cents were 100 cubic feet is much cheaper than the $1.70 that residential users pay. But it's steep by rural standards. The DWP's special rate for agricultural uses comes to $270 per acre foot, more than 10 times higher than what many Central Valley farmers pay.

Weiss said his water bill has doubled since he started five years ago. He said his supplier has dropped its special agricultural rate for water to discourage farming in the city. The Takahashis, who use Dominguez Hills water, recycle theirs in an effort to economize.

Luconi, who conserves by using a drip system, said there is one compensation for using costly city water: unlike the Central Valley's untreated irrigation, it is clean.

The unusually high costs of urban farming forces farmers to seek the highest possible dollar return on their crops. And yet, due to the proximity of neighbors, they can't spray pesticides at will, further narrowing their options. Beth van Gunten, who organizes meetings in Ventura County for the Community Alliance With Family Farmers on reducing chemical inputs, said urban and suburban farmers respond to these circumstances in one of two ways. Some, like the MOA Farm, turn to organic farming, which is labor-intensive but also enjoys a higher financial return. Other farmers choose a lucrative crop that is even more costly to grow, strawberries, which due to its susceptibility to micro-organisms is one of the most chemically-intensive crops. Lacking extra land to use in a crop rotation, urban strawberry growers must fumigate the soil with methyl bromide, one of the most toxic and controversial pesticides and herbicides presently in use.

Air pollution is another matter. The Takahashis and Luconi, who farm near the coast, say it has not harmed their crops. Katchi Takahashi said Top Veg's vegetables got a clean bill of health when they were surreptitiously tested by a biochemist who was searching for produce that could be consumed by a patient with severe allergies. Contrary to expectations, Takahashi said the researcher, who later reported his findings to the family, found Top Veg's produce to be the purest, beating out supermarket-bought organic vegetables.

Organic farmer Luconi of nearby MOA Farm also had his vegetables tested. The lab found a very low content of lead. Luconi believes that it is not the location -- whether rural, suburban or urban -- that matters. "If you do real farming," he said, "nature protects."

The MOA Farm is named after Mokichi Okada, a Japanese philosopher who advocates "nature farming," which involves long-term enhancement of the soil. The technique has paid off in soil that is vastly improved from four years ago, when the MOA association first started to farm the Edison right of way, said Luconi. The trouble is, Luconi and his farming partners have no guarantees about how much longer they'll be able to farm their piece of land. The MOA farmers, and all other Edison farmer-tenants, operate with licenses from Edison, not leases, and they are subject to eviction at any time. The MOA Farm narrowly avoided eviction last year when Long Beach shelved plans to turn the farm into the parking lot for a container company.

Kevin Kelly, a spokesman for Edison, denied that the company would ever summarily evict a farmer. But his words aren't terribly reassuring to farmers striving for perpetual viability of farmland. "The implication that we can get rid of them at any time may be legally correct. But it has certainly never happened," said Kelly. "We work with our farmers very, very well."

The MOA farmers saw the writing in the pavement of the proposed parking lot last year. "There is no long life for farming under power lines," Luconi said. His group is looking seriously at land elsewhere, in particular a parcel in San Juan Capistrano. It, too, is in close proximity to urban development, surrounded by a park and baseball diamonds. But the land is in an agriculture preserve that the city is committed to keeping in farming.

Patrick Madden, president of the World Sustainable Agriculture Association, who works with the MOA Association and many other groups to promote sustainable agriculture, is helping negotiate an arrangement for use of the Orange County parcel. If that doesn't work out, there are other possibilities.

"It's not a lack of land," said Madden, who believes urban farming has a bright future. "It just takes people with the will to make it happen," he said.

Copyright 1997 In Season