Farewell to the Farm

I posted several times earlier this year on the efforts of the South Central LA Farmers to keep their urban farm intact, a communal food source for numerous families in the community. The putative owner of the land, Ralph Horowitz, wanted to evict the farmers in order to clear the land for development. The land battle and ownership questions have a long history, but the farmers have been there for almost fifteen years.

The battle seems to have come to an end last night, with the arrival of bulldozers and battalions of LA County Sheriff's Dept personnel bursting into the acreage and arresting over forty people, including several celebrities who were protesting on behalf of the farmers. The LA Times has the story: Farmers, Celebrities Evicted from Urban Plot...

The 14-year effort to establish an urban farm in the heart of South Los Angeles came to an end today when authorities evicted the farmers, as well as some celebrities who were supporting them by keeping vigil on the land.

The eviction occurred during a frenzied day both at the farm site and at City Hall as Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and other city leaders negotiated with the landowner through the morning, failing to reach a deal to save the farm even though the mayor said they had come up with the owner's $16-million asking price.

...and there is a good deal more information at the LA Indymedia site, complete with tons of photos. The bewildering thing about all this is that it seems to have come at the moment that the Farmers had obtained funding in the amount of the asking price, via the partnership of the Annenberg Foundation, to purchase the land from Horowitz . The saddening thing is that the destruction of the farm comes at a time when many crops were surely coming to fruition, thus causing the loss of food sources for people who depend upon these crops. Middle of June is a hell of a time to destroy food growing plots.

There is a lot of blame going around, and there are those who are blaming the "corrupt" leaders of the Farmers for their militant tactics and domineering handling of the whole situation, Cast Out of the Garden: A Post Mortem (LA Voice). I have no way of knowing the truth, from this distance. It's just a shame that something so good could have come to such a bad end. The city is repositioning some of the growers' plots, but it's a hard time of the season for starting over.

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