A one-time trash dump in the Willow Gulch area is now Farm Lot 59, the latest addition to a trend toward organic food production in urban environments. “It’s not possible to feed the entire city,” says Sasha Kanno, whose business card identifies her simply as Farmer. “But it’s a start.”
Because of the terms of the lease on the land, Sasha Kanno knew that the Wrigley Community Garden was a temporary project. But that’s not all she knew.
“I knew there was something…else — that there was a better model, a better mantra,” she relates. “We weren’t actually producing food: we were managing people to come and tend their garden plots. In the city I wanted to have intensive food production, because that’s what we need. […] Community gardens are wonderful, but I just wanted more. And so I sought property.”
The end result of that seeking is Farm Lot 59, a one-acre biointensive farm in the Willow Gulch area that is soon to become a local source of organic food production — part of a trend that can’t catch on soon enough for Kanno, who finds herself reeling from the number of well-patronized fast-“food” establishments she passes on just her one-mile commute from home to the lot.
“I see the semitrucks unloading palettes of foodish-looking items in boxes,” she said in her prepared remarks at a Farm Lot 59 fundraiser held at Keesal, Young & Logan on Friday. “The workers inside are going to heat it up for you and give it to you through a little window. This is no way to eat a meal.”
While Kanno says that the City of Long Beach itself was supportive of the project (as Councilmember James Johnson’s presence Friday attested), Farm Lot 59 was the fourth parcel Kanno tried to acquire, with one attempt thwarted by a bit of neighborly NIMBYism.
“The neighbors were very against [it]. They protested the garden and the farm,” she recalls. “They were very hateful. So even though I had the support of the Parks & Recreation Department, who owned the land, I decided to seek [land] elsewhere, because I didn’t feel like being picketed. […] We had community meeting and outreach to pitch the idea. I invited them all to the garden; I went door-to-door with information and a proposal — and they literally told me they would picket if I decided to grow food there.”
Kanno was more bewildered than disheartened by the experience. “I just laughed it off,” she says. “I thought they were crazy.”
It was from spending time “on Google Earth […] looking for big chunks of land in the city” that she came across the neglected acre. “Nobody else was jockeying for it, so I got it,” she says.
There was a good reason Kanno’s interest in the land was uncontested: “It was a dump, literally a dump,” she says. “When I would tell people what I was doing and where I was doing it, they would say, ‘Oh yeah — I used to dump my garbage there.'”
Kanno and co. started prepping the site in July 2010, replacing the contaminated soil and so forth. When a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for initial stages of project attracted 219 separate donors, “I knew I was filling a void in our food system,” she says. And from Farm Lot 59’s official start-up in November, “It’s been full-throttle ever since. […] I’m glad it worked out the way it did.”
“Sasha actually took this acre of contaminated brown field […] and said, ‘I’m going to make a garden out of it,'” Johnson said Friday. “Sasha is the first person in 130 years to actually take this property and do something productive with it for the people of Long Beach.”
Kanno reports that although Farm Lot 59 produce and flowers will be 100% organic — “no chemicals or pesticides […] We’re doing it the old-fashioned way, the way family farmers did it before big ag[ricultural] and chemical companies got involved” — the farm will not be receiving official certification as organic. “It’s extremely expensive to become certified,” she says, “and I believe the good intentions of the certification process have been tainted.”
Justin Hectus, director of information for Keesal, Young & Logan, got turned on to the idea of organic urban farming in September 2009 when he read a District Weekly article about Adriana Martinez.
“I clipped it out and put it on my bulletin board, and it’s been staring me in the face for three years,” he says. “And then about six months ago I read an article about Farm Lot 59, and I just picked up the phone and I called [Kanno] and asked to come see it. […] It was just, like, a dirt lot, and she described her vision. It was that compelling vision of, ‘I want to do something’…It almost didn’t matter what she said from that point forward, because it was something she had so much conviction about that it just drew you in. You don’t believe in a thing like a charity — you believe in people. And I was just kind of following along like those cartoon people following a scent.”
Hectus calls Farm Lot 59, which is a 501(c)(3) corporation, “a shining example of not just how non-profits should operate, but how we should be as people. […] I love the idea that our work lives and our personal lives shouldn’t really be separate. There should be a blur between what we feel as people and what we do for a living — and I love that for her there’s that complete crossover. Like, who [Kanno] is is what she does. I think that’s amazing. I think that’s something we should all aspire to be.”
Farm Lot 59 utilizes food-growing strategies like companion planting, crop rotation, the employment of hens for pest management, and acquiring food scraps from restaurants for composting. “It’s not a conventional farm, and it doesn’t look like one.”
Kanno admits that with one acre of land, “It’s not possible to feed the entire city, but it’s a start. With our bio-intensive growing methods, we’re going to be able to produce tons of beautiful food each year.”
Farm Lot 59 is slated to begin producing food by early July. “We’re fully planted, and our hens are laying,” Kanno says.
Johnson notes that Farm Lot 59 is merely a precursor of good things to come in the area. “If you go out there today, you’re going to see a one-acre down payment on what will eventually be the biggest park in Long Beach since El Dorado [Park],” he says, referring to what will be California Gardens.
“We truly are an oasis surrounded by a city,” says Kanno. “[And w]e are changing the local food system.”
“I love food, and I love this very simple concept of taking a thoughtful approach to what we eat,” says Hectus. “If you’re a meat-eater, you should care about the animals being treated well [and] you should care about the impact the animals you eat have on the land, or whatever those simple things are.”
While Kanno has big dreams, she’s realistic about the pace of change.
“I know I won’t be able to change everyone’s habits and dependencies, but I can do my part to provide an alternative,” she says. “That’s what we’re doing at the farm: we’re growing an option.”
Farm Lot 59 is located at 2714 California Ave., LB 90807. Volunteer days are Wednesday, Fridays, and every second Saturday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. For more information, visit longbeachlocal.org.