South Central Farm

South Central Farm (also South Central Garden ) was an early example of contemporary urban horticulture in the U.S. city of Los Angeles. The community garden was used by Latin American immigrants from 1994 to the growing culturally typical foods and as a social meeting place. The forcible eviction by the police in 2006 was the subject of the 80 - minute documentary The Garden of the filmmaker Scott Hamilton Kennedy, which was published in 2008 and 2009 received an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary.

History

1986, the city acquired a Los Angeles area within the city area to build an incinerator here. This incinerator was not realized after protests of the urban population. In order to feed the fallow one use, the city of LA Regional Food Bank granted a revocable permit to build a community garden here. This offer has been used mainly by Latin American immigrants, who grew on the site of traditional Latin American vegetables and fruits. The brisk adoption of this possibility by Latin American immigrants leads the journalist Jennifer Cockrall -King back in part to a still existing knowledge about farming methods and to the poor supply situation within this district. For nationally significant supermarket chains the establishment of stores due to poor income situation of the local population in this district was unattractive. Devon G. Pena, Anthropology Professer at the University of Washington who examined the number of cultivated vegetables and fruits, found between 100 and 150 different species of plants that have been grown here. Rottlieb Gottlieb, a professor at the Urban and Environment Policy Institute in Los Angeles assessed the community garden as a successful example for ensuring intra- urban food supply and urban greening. The appreciation of the property -related, however, that the original seller of the property invoked his right to repurchase vested in 1986, which was granted to him in the sales contract at the time. The city then sold without the knowledge of the user of the land back the land to the original owners.

The clearing of the site began on the morning of 13 June 2006 as the police forces of the City of Los Angeles with chainsaws destroyed the enclosure of the garden. The gardens were eingeebenet by bulldozers.

Rating

The journalist Jennifer called South Central Farm as an example of an urban community garden, which anticipated the development towards a support urban horticulture. The garden project ultimately failed because it did not succeed the recently immigrated garden users to gain sufficient political support. As a counter example, they called Fairview Gardens, sponsored by the charismatic ( and white ) Michael Ableman Gartenrpojekt in a suburb of Santa Barbara, who managed to make this similar kind project almost simultaneously under legal protection.