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
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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.
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