South LA's Alternative to Industrial Farms & Megastores
Meet the environmental and food activists of Crop Swap LA who are turning the city’s yards into thriving small farms, growing fresh, water-wise and pesticide-free produce for community members. Can their work create an agricultural revolution in Los Angeles?
#UrbanFarming #CropSwapLA #Gardens #CommunityGarden
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Video Summary
AI GeneratedJamaya Hargens, founder of CropSwap LA, is transforming urban spaces in Los Angeles and Gardena into productive micro-farms. By utilizing private yards, schools, and churches, the initiative combats food insecurity and provides hyper-local, nutrient-dense produce to community members through a sustainable, member-based distribution system.
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I'm Jamaya Hargens. I'm the founder of CropSwap
LA where we grow food on yards, schools, churches,
apartment buildings, and other places in order
to sell that locally through a distribution and
a farm stand. Right now we're at my home
which is our headquarters here at Leimert Park. It's
the CropSwap LA Dagnan Micro Farm.
It started about four years ago and is a terraponics rainwater
It's a water capturing,
water recycling system that grows food like crazy.
So this is your home, but you've turned it into urban farmland.
That's right. When we were looking for homes,
we found a place with a nice corner lot that was empty.
Right now, we're now managing 12 locations across L.A. and Gardena,
and we're looking to partner with more
homeowners and schools to grow more.
Job number one is just our preparation
of making sure we have available fruits and veggies for our members.
So we start off our day with setting up these tables
and then after that we have a chart or
spreadsheet of the known members that have
been receiving food this Sunday.
But each member has a tote bag which they have their name
and their number assigned to them
and we pre-load them with certain fruits like we have cucumbers today
that came from the farm.
They're actually getting two forms of cucumbers.
This is a Japanese cucumber and this is a slicing cucumber.
Do you like having this in the neighborhood?
Absolutely, 100%.
Why is that?
Because you know where it's sourced.
It's not been in the market for 20 years
or has preservatives and all that.
You know where it's sourced.
You know it's from the ground.
And you know, to be honest with you,
the vegetables that you get from the garden,
You can taste it. They're very aromatic.
When you go to the market, it's like dead food.
That's just my opinion.
Food insecurity is a concern many of us are facing, especially parents,
but primarily anyone who cares about their own well-being.
Just as important as water and air,
food goes inside our body and it was essential for me
as a new parent eight years ago to have food available
for my daughters and then to live
as an example for other parents and other people
who are caretakers to give the best
to the people you're caring for.
So it's a matter of living the example that I want to see in the
world and it's a matter of addressing
a real serious issue that we're all facing.
I love getting my hands dirty and meeting a lot of cool people
and the people who run it are awesome.
I love their mission, their impact,
everything they're doing for the community
and seeing all of this like every week.
Like this is from here. I picked it two minutes ago
and it has more nutritional value than probably anything grown
on like a monocrop farm.
The potential is huge in Los Angeles
because we have great weather and yards
where many places in large cities don't.
In the United States most large cities
are in cold temperatures or very dense areas
but Los Angeles is relatively spread out
so we have the ability to leverage private property,
long growing seasons.
High volumes of labor availability
and the unique variety that's possible to be grown
in this temperate zone
and to create an entirely new food system for ourselves.
Do you think there's a lot more potential
for something like this here in LA?
Definitely in LA, definitely just around the world.
Each community has space that can do this.
I mean this is just one house on one block right here
and it's feeding hyper local 40 members.
If we could do a farm on each block and taking care of that block,
I think it can continue to take off.
The best way to tell what celery is, is by looking at the stalk.
Oh, there's the celery.
Yeah.
Oh, that's super cool.
Oh, and check it out. It just started watering itself.
Get a view.
The water comes up from the bottom.
This is a terraponic system,
so it floods the roots each time it waters,
and then it drains right back down into the reservoir underground.
And when it rains, it captures all the rainwater that falls
on the surface and stores that in the tanks also.
Oh, that's really cool.
It's solar powered too.
This whole garden is really cool.
Thank you. I love that. I love that you like it.
People heartwarmingly offer their thanks
and kindness just for our efforts in creating food
locally. People honk and smile, they walk by,
they bring gifts, they write letters, offer their
service and volunteerism.
We're really grateful because that kind of thing helps us move forward
even if it's just solidarity.
That reminds us how important the work that we're doing is.