Kern contributes to 'noble cause' of veggies for low-income families

BY COURTENAY EDELHART, Californian staff writer
| Saturday, Feb 20 2010 12:00 PM

The South Central Farmers Cooperative sells organic produce from 8 a.m. to noon Saturdays at Certified Farmers Market next to Golden State Mall, 3201 F St. in Bakersfield.

For information about the cooperative or to make a donation, visit the group's Web site at www.southcentralfarmers.com.

Images:

Casey Christie / The Californian

Los Angeles resident, Tezozomoc, harvests romaine lettuce, Saturday, on a leased field in the Shafter area. The farmer comes up on several weekends during the year, working the fields and harvesting as seen here along with other co-op farmers.

Casey Christie / The Californian

This co-op farmer picks onions in a leased field near Shafter, Saturday. They are a group of South-Central Los Angeles farmers who lost their makeshift inner city farm to development and have had 85 acres of farmland in Buttonwillow donated to them.

The land is 85 acres of bumpy, weed-infested clumps of dirt. Rusted pipes and other castoffs are strewn about, and there are three abandoned trailers on the property, all vandalized by thieves in search of scrap metal. One of them is tipped over.

But when Tezozomoc scans this long-neglected acreage, his eyes gleam as if he's beholding paradise.

"It may not look like much to you," he told a visitor Wednesday. "You might just see weeds, but I look at this and see a farm."

The Mexican-born aerospace engineer is among the leaders of a group of South-Central Los Angeles growers who in 2006 lost their makeshift inner city farm to development plans. His late father was one of the original growers.

They regrouped first in Fresno and later Shafter, where they are sharecropping, but they dream of a farm all their own on donated land in Buttonwillow.

The unsuccessful fight to preserve the community farm south of downtown Los Angeles was chronicled in the Academy Award-nominated documentary "The Garden." The struggle of the roughly 350 families who farmed there drew international media coverage and celebrity supporters such as actors Daryl Hannah and Danny Glover and singer Willie Nelson.

Now, agricultural companies across the state, including many in Kern County, are donating equipment, services and training to the South Central Farmers Cooperative, the nonprofit organization that grew out of the standoff.

The cooperative grows organic vegetables in Shafter and sells them at rates impoverished families can afford at farmer's markets in the Los Angeles area, Frazier Park and Bakersfield.

"We want to be good neighbors," said Tezozomoc, who is named for an Aztec historian and legally has only one name. "We don't want to just use local resources and take everything to Los Angeles."

A box of organic vegetables costs $15 a week, or $390 for six months.

The land in Buttonwillow is a gift from the estate of the late Roger McAffee of Fresno, who died four years ago. The acreage hasn't been a functioning farm in years, and needs a lot of work.

Freelance journalist Mira Tweti has been volunteering to solicit in-kind donations and does media outreach on the cooperative's behalf.

"It's amazing, amazing, in this economy, how many companies who are struggling, themselves, have been willing to help us," she said.

Pomona-based Energy Efficiency Solar is willing to design a solar energy system for free if the cooperative can find someone to donate solar panels.

Bakersfield-based Rain for Rent is in the early stages of examining ways it might be able to help with irrigation.

"It's a noble cause," said branch manager Ismael Diaz. "We're trying to see what we can do."

Shafter-based Farm Pump and Irrigation Co. donated a $20,000 pump for a non-working well on the land.

"Mira called me up and told me what happened to them, and she was very persuasive," said owner John Gargan. "They're trying to help themselves, and anyone who does that, I think I ought to help."

Remnants fight on

There are only 15 families left of the original 350 in Los Angeles. Most gave up. A few splintered off to grow food for themselves on nearly eight acres of land beneath high voltage power lines.

But the cooperative has bigger plans.

Leading a brief tour of the 80 acres the cooperative sharecrops in Shafter, Tezozomoc beamed with pride as he explained that weeds are removed mechanically or by hand.

"You see, we have actual grass," he said. "We just deal with it. No pesticides."

In a nod to the cultural diversity of the region, the cooperative grows a stunning mix of produce, from pak-choi (an Asian cabbage) to multiple varieties of mustard and collard greens, as well as beans, lettuce, radishes, kale, broccoli and spinach.

"This is our hottest seller," Tezozomoc said, stooping low to pick a leaf of Bloomsdale spinach. "And this chard kale, they recommend it for people with anemia. It's really, really rich in iron."

Don't get Tezozomoc started on health issues. He preaches breathlessly with the passion of an evangelist.

"In poor communities, there are no grocery stores, so you can't buy any vegetables, much less organic," he said. "And even if you had organic, who can afford it?

"That's why there's such a high instance of cancer and cardiovascular diseases in the inner city."

It's no better for the rural poor, Tezozomoc said.

"We're here in the capital of agriculture, but we have people going hungry every day," he said. "The food banks have to go glean a field so they can feed people who a lot of times are the ones whose job it is to pick that very field."

Education outreach

Along with giving poor people access to affordable, nutritious food, the cooperative has formed a health education fund and is doing outreach work at schools and other venues to teach the importance of eating right.

The group's pioneer project was to help middle school children in Carson cultivate a garden at their campus.

"It's a great outlet for children to express themselves besides the usual negativity you hear of in the inner city," said longtime volunteer Rose Luján, 36, a substitute teacher in Compton who works on the Shafter farm every weekend. "A lot of these kids have no idea where food comes from. They think it just appears when you open the refrigerator."

The South Central Farmers Cooperative started out on a 14 acre-lot in Los Angeles that had become a blighted eyesore following the 1992 Rodney King riots.

The city had acquired the land through eminent domain intending to build a trash incinerator there, but activists branded the project environmental racism and successfully lobbied to kill it.

Then the land's original owner, developer Ralph Horowitz, sued to get his land back. In a settlement, the city sold it to him for $5 million, the same amount it had been acquired for 17 years earlier.

Horowitz then asked the farmers to make way for development.

They labeled Horowtiz's settlement a secret sweetheart deal that shortchanged taxpayers and won a preliminary injunction against their eviction in 2003, but a higher court ruled against them.

Horowitz did not respond to a request for an interview placed through his attorney.

At the time of the eviction, which he pursued even after the group raised enough money to buy the land, he told the Los Angeles Times and television stations that he wouldn't sell to them at any price because they had demonized him, picketed his home and were anti-Semitic.

The cooperative said anti-Semitic leaflets distributed about Horowitz did not come from them, but from misguided activists acting without their consent.

A reprieve from up north

Shortly after the eviction, a Fresno man who had followed the dispute on television offered to let the group farm land he owned there, but it was a long, expensive commute from Los Angeles, and the owner, McAffee, was killed by a drunken driver later that year.

Then Carlos Gomez offered to let the farmers work land he owns in Shafter, where they've been ever since. Gomez helped train the urban volunteers in the use of farm equipment, some of it borrowed from or given to them by him.

Alberto Tlatio, 23, drives from south Los Angeles once or twice a week to help cultivate, harvest, wash and pack more than 1,000 boxes of produce a week.

It's grueling work, but Tlatio said it's a calling.

"I see the need in my community," he said. "There are more liquor stores in my community than grocery stores, and there are problems in low-income parts of Bakersfield, too. Something has to be done."