South Central Farmers’ Cooperative
Community Supported Agriculture
CSA Member Information
South Central Farmers 1702 E. 41st St. Los Angeles, CA 90058
www.scfcoop.southcentralfarmers.com 1-800-249-5240 csa@southcentralfarmers.com --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bienvenidos ~ Welcome Dear CSA Member,
Welcome to the South Central Farmers’ Cooperative Community Supported Agriculture Program (SCFCSA). We are very excited to share our work and life with you and look forward to developing a long lasting relationship.
As you know, the relationship between the local farmer and the local consumer is an important one. While gas and food prices continue to rise for the consumer, and the livelihood of small farms is put into jeopardy every day, it is essential for a new way of living to emerge within our communities.
Our hope as a small farm cooperative, members of the local community, and people who live on this planet is to be a part of the movement for sustainable food systems and the struggle for food sovereignty. Not only does our existence as farmers depend on this, but so does the future health and survival of our children and community.
Similarly, as urban dwellers many of us recognize that a separation from the land and the rhythms of the seasons exists. CSAs offer a step towards re-engaging this piece of our humanity, whether it is through learning about the cycles of the seasons, eating produce grown locally, or volunteering on the land where the food is grown.
The CSA creates a direct relationship between you and the farm. You will receive a weekly box of our fresh, in-season produce. You’ll know your produce dollar goes directly to the people who plant, tend, and harvest your food. Also, you are purchasing organically and locally grown produce, thereby avoiding the high environmental and health costs, agricultural chemicals, and the fossil fuels and other resources necessary for shipping the produce long distances.
In order to begin the process of establishing this relationship you will find through out this website the following:
§ In-depth information about the SCF Cooperative and our CSA program. § Volunteering at the Farm or for the CSA. § What is in a box and seasonal produce lists. § Recipes and storage information. § Contact information.
As mentioned earlier, it is through the cooperation between the farm and the community that a sustainable local food supply will become a reality. We look forward to entering into this journey with you and invite your thoughts, comments, and questions.
Thank you again for your support of your local organic farmers.
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Who We Are… South Central Farmers’ Cooperative and Farm:
The South Central Farmers’ Cooperative (SCFC) is a grassroots economic development of the South Central Farmers’ Health and Education Fund, a 501c(3) public benefit organization, that is committed to engaging and empowering community members around attaining food sovereignty and access to high quality organic produce. All produce is grown and harvested on land that is currently leased by SCFC located in Shafter, California. Community members from Los Angeles, travel to the Bakersfield farm each week to plant, clean, and harvest the produce. The SCFC Farm is certified organic by the CCOF.
South Central Farmers’ Health and Education Fund:
The South Central Farmers Health and Education Fund (SCFHEF) is a grassroots organization dedicated to community self-reliance through urban organic agriculture. Through our efforts we seek to restore the traditional place of local, organically grown fruits and vegetables in the diets and lifestyles of displaced indigenous people and other low-income, ethnic minority populations. Our work emphasizes cross-generational ties for the benefit of youth who face increasing childhood obesity and adults who face alarming rates of diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer.
History of the South Central Farmers:
The SCFC and SCFHEF was designed by those who once grew produce on the 14 acres, known as the South Central Farm, to meet the need to provide fresh, healthy grown produce to its community members. For fourteen years the 14-acre South Central Farm was the largest and most biologically diverse urban farm in the U.S. It was established in 1992 in an industrial part of South Central Los Angeles beset by extreme poverty and gang violence. It contained 350 family plots cultivated by an indigenous community that included displaced Mixtec, Nahua, Maya, Seri, Yaqui and Zapotec people. The South Central Farmers (SCF) fought a three year battle with unscrupulous developers and politicians that ended in the violent and forceful eviction of the farmers and the bulldozing of the crops in June 2006. The SCF was an organic breadbasket and a pharmacopoeia. The plots were used for family gatherings and social events in a crowded area of multifamily dwellings, sorely lacking in green space. Different generations mingled and traditional knowledge of plants was transmitted from elders to the youth. The SCF was a first step in attaining food security, a concept that refers to access by people, regardless of class or ethnic origin, to a safe, nutritious and stable source of local foods. This is achieved “when people have access to adequate amounts of safe and nutritional foods that are both personally and culturally acceptable.”
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Our Goals and the Future
The Land:
In 2006 the South Central Farmers’ Health and Education and Cooperative purchased 85 acres of land in Buttonwillow, CA. Our vision and hope for this land is to transform it into a fully functioning sustainable farm with vegetables, fruit, orchard, animals, housing, and more. We envision this place to be a source for local organic produce as well as a place of education and work for the community around sustainable living. Our first steps towards making this a reality are getting a pump set up in our well, clearing the land, and setting up housing. The work we do through the farmer’s markets, the CSA program and other projects are all part of the process towards developing this sustainable farm.
The Community:
We seek to encourage our CSA members to gather and build community around healthy eating. Members would be able to encourage place-based/local-knowledge strategies for better living through nutritious and sustainable food supply, as well as, developing and celebrating cultural differences around food. Through this, eating communities will provide up-to-date reliable food and health information with resources and feedback to develop healthy eating patterns amongst its members and throughout society.
Our hope is for healthy eating communities to negotiate their own definition of what constitutes healthy. So often we are bombarded with the latest fads, trends, and diets, which tell us what healthy is. Similarly, civil society imposes limitations and determines what is “good” or “healthy” for our communities based scientific, medical, political or corporate needs. We believe that people can engender their own base of knowledge and discourse to create a definition of what experience and knowledge of life “is”. We hope that through discussion of personal knowledge and learning experiences that our members will come to understand what improves their quality of life.
Much of this conversation emerges out of communities of discourse and we hope through our CSA members that such dialogue can develop. Two goals that we have for this are our seasonal CSA dinner and these healthy eating communities. In these two places we can come together to discuss and determine for ourselves what it means to be healthy…to live healthily.
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