LONG BEACH GROWS™ (www.longbeachgrows.org) is Long Beach's original urban agriculture resource hub for >4 years, since 2010.
LONG BEACH GROWS' mission is to promote green, healthy, environmentally sustainable urban agriculture in Long Beach, California, & other activities that educate, enhance, & grow our communities by ensuring & safeguarding local food security.
Our vision is a city that feeds itself.
Showing posts with label LONG BEACH GROWS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label LONG BEACH GROWS. Show all posts
Please vote once a day as often as possible through April 21st, at this link.
Long Beach Grows has served the Long Beach community as a resource on all things urban ag in our city for >4 years. We are all volunteers-we receive no salaries or stipends to do what we do.
LBGROWS began Long Beach’s first community farm co-op, Unity Farm, to grow food together on shared land for a shared harvest—shared among the growers and others in the community, including homeless. We believe the local food movement should be about food for people, not for profit. We advocate for what we think is best, growing food locally—in a manner that fosters cooperation and sharing of resources—such as we accomplished at the original Unity Farm.
We will be relocating the farm co-op and ask for your daily vote so that we might get this grant, much needed financial assistance. A Seeds of Change grant will also help with our educational mission and with ours and Long Beach's first heirloom vegetable seed library, freely available and shared at workshops and community events.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR CONTINUED INTEREST AND SUPPORT OF LONG BEACH GROWS, INCLUDING YOUR DAILY VOTE IN THIS CONTEST.
Best wishes,
Donna Marykwas
Long Beach Grows
Growing a more sustainable future
Long Beach's urban agriculture resource hub for >4 years
562-912-3364
Long Beach Grows (aka LBGROWS) is a grassroots organization that advocates for a just and equitable food system that includes food security through urban agriculture. The group is building a network of urban farm co-op sites where people can grow food together while building community. LBGROWS has recently partnered with the Unitarian Universalist Church of Long Beach on Atherton Street to use some of their land for their first site. Food grown will be shared among the gardeners and with the homeless and other underprivileged Long Beach residents.
Unity Farm, as it is called, is not your typical community garden. The operative terms are community and co-operation. In a typical community garden, individual garden plots are rented to and tended by individuals on a seasonal basis. Some community gardeners make better use of their alloted land than others. Some community gardeners never even meet the person gardening right next to them. Where is the community in that?
Long Beach Grows’ community farm co-ops promise to be different. Members will work together in teams on land that they all grow together. There will be scheduled work days, scheduled harvest days when crops ready to be picked are divvied up amongst co-op members and the underprivileged of the community, and other scheduled gatherings, celebrations, and fundraisers.
The Farm Coordinator, Steve Passmore, who helped start the farm, says
“We will strive to keep the division of labor as equal and fair as possible, while trying to accommodate the special strengths, interests, and assets that individual members have to offer.”
All members are asked to pledge to uphold and abide by the mission and vision of Long Beach Grows.
Organization mission. LBGROWS’ mission is to promote green, healthy, sustainable urban agriculture in Long Beach, CA & other activities that educate, enhance & grow our communities by ensuring & safeguarding local food security.
Organization vision/goals. LBGROWS is the first organization of its kind in Long Beach, with a mission to advocate for change & to educate the public on issues of local food security & urban agriculture. The current food system in Long Beach, particularly as it pertains to local food & real food, really caters to the wealthy of our residents. LBGROWS plans to change this. The ultimate goal of LBGROWS is to grow a network of urban farm co-operatives for food production in the heart of urban Long Beach, with at least one community kitchen and urban farm site per city district, where people can grow & harvest real food together while building community & relieving hunger.
The goal is for everyone to work in harmony together as peacefully, joyfully, and stress-free as possible, for the benefit of all.
There will be a modest fee to join Long Beach Grows to farm at The Unity Farm. People will be contacted to join in the order they have signed up on the LBGROWS co-op wait-list. To join, add your name here. Volunteers are also welcome.
More farm co-op sites are in the works. The group is actively seeking other underutilized properties in Long Beach that LBGROWS could transform into productive community farm co-op sites to help relieve hunger in our community.
Youth unloading mulch to prepare a vegetable bed
at Unity Farm.
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Long Beach Grows™ is a grassroots organization that promotes food security through urban agriculture. The current food system in Long Beach, particularly as it pertains to local food and real food, really caters to the wealthy of our residents. Long Beach Grows plans to change this.
We are in the midst of one of the worst recessions ever. A recent report prepared by LAANE for the Coalition for Good Jobs and a Healthy Community indicates that one in five Long Beach residents are living in economic hardship and over 50% of our children are living in poverty. HealthyCity.org, an authoritative source of demographic data, indicates that 62.3% - 66.19% of LA county residents cannot afford enough food to eat. The remaining 33.81% - 37.7% remain hungry.
Long Beach Grows recently established the LBGROWS™ Real Food Security Coalition to advocate for a just and equitable food system in Long Beach, and to empower the low income Long Beach communities to establish their own food security, independence and freedom from hunger. The Coalition will work to identify Long Beach’s populations at greatest risk of food insecurity, the reasons for this, the strengths and weaknesses in our food system, and long term solutions to create a future of food security for all. While the main focus of the Coalition is community organizing, outreach may influence positive change on regional, state and national policy and will include reporting and documenting on food issues.
The Coalition will attempt to connect all sectors of the community and local food system. All Long Beach residents are encouraged to join. Low-income residents who need access to better food are especially welcome. So whoever you are, whether you are rich or poor, an adult or youth, an individual with only personal interests or a community organizer leading a group with a mission, your input and help is wanted. Local growers, environmentalists, non-profit food distributors, grocers, restauranteurs, dieticians, artisanal food crafters, city employees, big consumers such as Long Beach Unified School District or Long Beach Memorial, all are invited.
The Coalition will assemble at least once a month and is currently scheduled to meet the first Thursday of each month from 6 - 8 PM at the Catalyst space at 430 East 1st Street in the arts district of downtown Long Beach. Mark your calendars. As the Coalition grows, so will the venue.
Spread the word. Join the Coalition today. Enjoy this? Please share the link and comment below, even if only to say "Hi!"
The beautiful Earl Burns Miller Japanese Garden on the Long Beach CSU campus was the perfect setting for the third in a series of Student Sustainability Task Force (SSTF) green mixers designed to foster dialogue and collaboration to unite the campus and local community on issues of environmental sustainability that affect us all.
Held April 13, this prelude to Earth Week 2011 featured guest speakers spotlighting green efforts on and off campus and representing the city, the university, and other community groups. Jeanette Schelin, Director of the EBM Japanese Garden, and Tracy Gorden, Program Assistant at the Garden, presided over the event and introduced the speakers.
Whole Foods sustains local & ethical healthy food choices!
Adrienne Peters, the marketing supervisor at the Long Beach Whole Foods Market that sponsored this event, spoke about Whole Foods’ green mission and commitment to local healthy food and environmental sustainability. She introduced Whole Foods’ Health Starts Here program to help people make healthier food choices, and the store’s participation in Global Animal Partnership (GAP) which she described as “beyond organic.” GAP is a 5-Step animal welfare rating standard used to rate and certify meat producers based on their animal welfare practices.
Donnie Bessom, the SSTF Project Coordinator, asked Ms. Peters to consider bringing Whole Foods to campus because as he said,
“right now food on campus is pretty bad.”
The snacks Whole Foods shared at the event were pretty good,
Green Long Beach! shines a spotlight on the green community!
Tiffany Chen, recent CSULB alumna, current sustainability assistant in the city’s Office of Sustainability, and co-Catalyst of Green Long Beach!, highlighted the evolution of the Green Long Beach! festival. First held in 2009, the festival attracted >1,000 attendees and 100 participants. The theme of this year’s festival is Ignite Change! and is expected to draw > 5,000 attendees and 400 participants. It will take place Saturday June 11, 2011 from 10 AM - 8 PM at The Promenade between Broadway and 3rd Streets.
City of Long Beach sees a greener future!
Larry Rich, who has worked for the city in various positions for 20 years, became one of the city’s sustainability commissioners in 2008 the year the Office of Sustainability was formed to develop and implement green initiatives throughout Long Beach. He describes himself as the most sustainable of the sustainability commissioners, since he is the only one of three remaining. His office currently oversees 10 part time interns (8 who are paid) and 17 youth workers from the Workforce Development Bureau’s green jobs program.
In what Larry describes as a soft sell (of green awareness) some of the interns act as one-on-one field supervisors of the youth workers, working on projects such as planting native drought tolerant plants at city installations, and delivering mulch to vacant city lots as part of Project Mulch-A-Lot and to residential applicants as part of a new Mulch Delivery Program. In collaboration with West Coast Arborists, the Office of Sustainability diverts ~6,000 tons of green waste per year from the waste stream.
Larry explained that the city’s solid waste reduction program does not include green bins (such as are offered in neighboring San Pedro) because Long Beach has the largest of the only three California Southeast Resource Recovery Facilities (SERRF) where solid waste is burned for energy. This is considered diversion, not incineration.
CSULB facilities are green behind the scenes!
Jon Root, the campus manager of integrated waste management and waste services, spoke about the university’s recycling efforts that mostly go unseen. The mulching mowers used on 60 acres of campus turf divert ~400 tons a year of grass from the waste stream, The tree trimmings from the 7,200 trees on campus are saved and re-used in the landscape. The university’s recycling efforts include not only paper and plastic recycling (see these images from last year’s CSULB Earth Week fair) but also a scrap metal program and an Associated Students Recycling Center that is operated by student employees.
Long Beach Grows plans for local food security! Grow Beach!
Long Beach Grows promotes food security through urban agriculture. Donna Marykwas, the Executive Director of Long Beach Grows, spoke about her plans and vision for a Long Beach with at least one community farm co-operative per city wide district, where people can grow and harvest real food together while building community. Donna has gardened at various community gardens throughout the country since 1985, first at Cornell in upstate NY, then in Cambridge, MA, Lincoln, MA, and Long Beach, CA. Describing the major differences between typical community gardens versus community farm co-ops, she envisions truly cooperative sites where people share in the work, share the rewards of their efforts, and share the bounty with the community. There are over 100 families on a waiting list to grow food with Long Beach Grows. Donna expressed serious interest in growing food security through urban agriculture on the CSULB campus, preferably at the site where there once was a community garden in the past. She thinks that growing food for the present on the Native American Indian ancestors of the past is a way to honor, respect and preserve their connection to the land.
CSULB faculty designs green phones!
Department of Design Professor Wesley Woelfel spoke about design methods to divert cell phones from the e-waste stream, citing statistics that with 1.2 billion cell phones sold globally per year, only 10% of obsolete cell phones are e-cycled. This is the motivation for his life cycle analysis of ways to design sustainable cell phones. Some ideas that he and his students have come up with are to encourage the design of new phones that are modular, easier to repair, upgradable, and did I hear him say biodegradable? We’ll see.
Industrial designer dreams green transportation!
Max Beach, a founding partner of Impact Design Associates in Culver City, teaches part time at CSULB. He wowed the audience with a futuristic animated video that brought to life his dream of an alternative transportation system based on inductively charged solar-powered CSULB streetcars.
Go green!
Connect with the green community at the next mixer to be held Wednesday, May 4th, 4:30- 6:30 PM, also at the Japanese Garden.
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San Francisco is leading the way as an example of a big city successfully embracing urban agriculture as part of its approach towards food security.
Urban agriculture in San Francisco’s mainstream began as a vision of former Mayor Gavin Newsom, who in January of 2009 issued an executive directive “Healthy and Sustainable Food for San Francisco” in which he declared
“Access to safe, nutritious, and culturally acceptable food is a basic human right and is essential to both human health and ecological sustainability.”
In his directive, Mayor Newsom essentially mandated permitting backyard urban agriculture. An outcome of this executive directive was an audit of unused land that can contribute to urban agricultural practices including gardening and farming. The directive stated
“Food production and horticulture education will be encouraged within the City and to the extent feasible, on City owned land, through urban agriculture including community, backyard, rooftop, and school gardens; edible landscaping, and agricultural incubator projects.”
The directive further stated that residents must be allowed
“the opportunity to make healthy food choices and reduce environmental causes of diet and related illnesses.”
Since the directive, the city of San Francisco has updated its zoning code to be more compatible with urban agriculture. Most recently, at a hearing held February 17, San Francisco’s planning commission voted unanimously to support an urban agriculture zoning proposal that allows Neighborhood Agriculture activities ≤ one acre in size to grow and even sell produce in all city zoning districts. Neighborhood Agriculture is defined to include backyard gardens, community gardens, community supported agriculture, market gardens and small private farms.
One “healthy food choice” that people might want is to raise one’s own poultry and other small livestock such as dairy animals. Indeed, San Francisco is also leading the way in this aspect of local food security. For example, the San Francisco municipal code allows residents to keep two female goats per any city lot. There are no lot size restrictions, no setback restrictions, no zoning restrictions, and no special permits or exceptions are needed.
In an interesting interview embedded here from YouTube, Rebecca Katz, Director of San Francisco's Department of Animal Care & Control, illustrated how mainstream urban agriculture including small scale animal husbandry is becoming in her city. When asked about the future of home farming of small livestock in the Bay Area, and whether it's here to stay, Rebecca Katz, Director of Animal Control in San Francisco, said
"I see it growing, certainly with vegetable gardens. The Mayor [former Mayor Gavin Newsom] has called for this here in San Francisco and he had the garden at the Civic Center Plaza for quite some time and he has asked people to do this and it seems that it's a growing trend, it's not a fad. AND AS FAR AS ANIMALS GO THEY ARE GOING TO COME WITH IT [emphasis added]. Like I said, people are coming to take chickens out of our care all the time, they want fresh eggs."
Author of "Farm City" Novella Carpenter's response to the same question
"It's a growing trend and its gonna be building community."
Interviewer Leslie Sbrocco's summary
"Absolutely here to stay.
The Long Beach municipal code currently has several provisions that stand in the way of urban agriculture in our city. However, recently the Sustainable City Commission unanimously supported a recommendation by the Office of Sustainability “to forward a report on Urban Agriculture Ordinances to the appropriate City Council Committee for consideration.” Also forwarded was an independent report prepared by a Long Beach resident who has been working to change the code of Long Beach to allow backyard urban agriculture including chickens and goats. For more information, view her [my] presentation that was entered into the record on December 1, 2010.
Long Beach is one step closer to food security through urban agriculture in Long Beach. Hopefully, the city’s leaders will agree with all of the other major cities who have seen the benefits of urban agriculture and with a recent signer of the pro urban agriculture petition who said that
The Real Food Nutrition & Health E-Course is being offered by Kristen Michaelis, AKA Food Renegade. She is one of the core Real Food Media bloggers in support of the real food philosophy taught by the Weston A. Price Foundation and Sally Fallon's Nourishing Traditions.
This class is for your children and for you to watch together. It begins this Friday, February 4! You must enroll by then in order to join in on the course. It runs through April 8th, with final assignments due by the 15th. New class materials are posted each Friday.
If you enroll in the class, you probably should buy a copy of Real Food Nutrition & Health, the textbook for the class.
This course is not a regurgitation of what the U.S. government has convinced us is healthy, with its upside down food pyramid. Instead, here you will learn the truth. Even if you don't homeschool your children, it would be good to teach them the truth, perhaps highlighting and contrasting what they learn from this course with what they learn from their public school teachers.
My child is in the public school system, and I find that I often have to tell her what is right and what is wrong of the information she is learning at school. It makes it awkward for her, because when tested she has to give the answer that is expected, not the answer that her mother tells her is the truth, but in the end I hope that she learns the truth and the fact that our understanding of the truth evolves as we learn more, and not just from the research conducted by scientists, medical doctors, nutritionists, and university professors, but also from reviewing the traditional dietary practices of the past, which the above-mentioned professionals often overlook.
If you decide to take this course based on my suggestion, please let me know by commenting below. I hope that you enjoy it.
A Google Earth view of the Dervaes family's urban homestead in Pasadena, CA.
Long Beach residents who wish to contribute to their own food security might consider a permaculture approach to growing their own food. This term, permaculture, has been bouncing around lately. But what does it really mean?
The simplest definition, literally, is permanent agriculture. That is, the cultivation of our land to meet our basic needs in a way that is permanently sustainable. The grander vision, though, is that we sustain not just our immediate personal needs to get through this life but the capacity of this Earth to sustain future generations (of humans and ALL of Earth’s creatures), at least until the next big asteroid hits.
Thus permaculture, if successful, means permanent culture. This will require species conservation, resource conservation, and responsible, low-impact living, not just for those who live in rural locations, but for those who live in urban human settlements called cities as well.
In essence, the practice of permaculture doesn’t really sound like a choice, as was offered to Long Beach residents at the start of this article, but a necessity if we are to conserve our culture. The alternative is dire. Conserving our culture mandates a shift from our current, selfish, resource-greedy lifestyles to a more conscious, conservative way of living.
The permaculture philosophy is based on lessons learned from nature, from those ecosystems that haven’t yet been tampered with by man. These natural ecosystems are balanced, diverse, resilient, stable, yet living and thus evolving.
Most of the food that feeds the world is grown NIMBY on rural land set aside for agriculture, in most cases big ag. Large tracts of land are planted with a single crop, one variety of a particular genus and species, for as far as the eye can see. This is the antithesis of diversity. There is no ecosystem involved. The soils may even be sterilized by chemical fumigation before the mono-crop is installed. This type of agriculture is unstable and lacks resiliency. If afflicted with an infectious plant pathogen, the whole crop will be susceptible since it is all one and the same clone. It will die without constant human attention because it lacks the self-supportive infrastructure of a diverse ecosystem. And with the exception of perennial crops like fruit and nut trees and grape vines, the vast field must be replanted year after year. Farming is inherently labor intensive, but it is made even more so when it includes labor to kill the soil of all life, labor to deplete the soil of fertility, and labor to chemically supplement the soil with nutrients, a destructive rather than sustainable cycle.
The world’s population is expected to approach 9 billion people by the year 2050. How are we going to feed everybody? It seems that it is our personal and global responsibility to break this cycle in part by taking responsibility for our own food security. The more we can do to feed ourselves and to teach others to feed themselves, the less burden there will be on big ag to use unfriendly practices that might temporarily increase yield but ultimately defeat the principles and practices of permanent agriculture.
This of course is going to mandate an attitude facelift and land use reform so that anyone, regardless of where they live and whether they are vegetarians, flexitarians, or omnivores, can grow their own food at home, in their backyards, front yards, rooftops, parkways, and other under-utilized spaces.
In practice, a permaculturist need not merely replicate a natural ecosystem but can apply an understanding of basic principles and work with nature to design a homestead supported by an intentional ecosystem that includes plants and animals that supply his or her needs.
While this article focuses on food, other cultivable resources include plants for building materials, plants for energy generation, and plants for other uses. Learn more about permaculture here.
Source and buy the rest of our produce from local growers, preferably at one of Long Beach’s numerous farmers’ markets to show our support of a local food economy.
Share our excess with those who are less fortunate than we are. Excess food can be shared via SoCal Harvest or other local sharing resources. Other items that we no longer need can be donated to charity or exchanged for items that better meet our needs at the Seven-Ten Swap and potluck held on the third Friday of each month at the Catalyst Space, 430 E. 1st Street, Long Beach.
Join LONG BEACH GROWS to help grow our urban community farm co-op.
Explore our neighborhoods and meet our neighbors while getting some exercise. Some say that a simple half hour walk once a day is all it takes to keep our hearts healthy. Our dogs will appreciate the walks too. But please scoop the poop and throw it into a trash can!
While taking that daily walk, be on the lookout for under-utilized space such as vacant lots, relatively open land, and sizable flat rooftops in Long Beach. Please share this information with LONG BEACH GROWS.
Sign the petition to permit urban agriculture in Long Beach.
Make an effort to attend some of the monthly meetings of our city’s Sustainable City Commission, the City Council, and other committees. We can use these opportunities to make our voices heard. Attendance at these meetings is instructive to see how things get done and to learn about who is making what decisions that impact us all.
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approach to growing their own food. This term, permaculture, has been bouncing around lately. But what does it really mean?
