One man’s vision is to plant hundreds of micro-farms in front yards around Los Angeles.
He’s already started, transforming a corner yard in the View Park neighborhood of South LA into a thriving space where everything from lettuce and herbs to tomatoes and rainbow Swiss chard has been growing.
Jamiah Hargins is the founder of Crop Swap LA. The first farm took a year of planning and a month to install.
“We dug 7-foot-deep pits that are storing 660 gallons of rainwater now and other municipal water, hooked those up to pumps and laid irrigation piping,” said Hargins.
The water feeds crops that are planted in sacks of nutrient-rich organic compost, and you can taste the difference.
Margaret Carrero/KNX Newsradio
“When you taste something that is fresh and grown properly, it tickles your senses,” Hargins said.
He hopes to grow the project to as many as 400 micro-gardens around the city.
Margaret Carrero/KNX Newsradio
Rhys Hastings works with Crop Swap.
“Hopefully we're ushering in this new generation of reclaiming private land [and] growing hyperlocal hyper organic food where the whole community is involved,” he said.
The neighbors don’t seem to mind a farm in the area.
“Some folks are excited to have healthy food nearby. Others think that it’s beautiful,” said Hargins.
Hargins and Crop Swap LA say they want to demonstrate a new model that creates value from where there was none.
“It’s amazing. This front yard microgarden replaced the grass that was typically using 700 gallons of water everyday to water itself and now it’s down to 8% of that to grow food,” said Hargins.
Every week, Crop Swap serves a mix of the harvested produce to 50 families who have purchased subscriptions.
Angela is one of their weekly subscribers. “My dad has a garden, and he lived to 86. So this is great,” she said.
Hargins already has other spots in mind for the next Crop Swap micro-farm.
Margaret Carrero/KNX Newsradio
