January 24, 2017 | Robert Puro

To provide an up close and personal look at a series of innovative community development ventures that have emerged to increase food security, reduce food waste, create jobs, enhance food access, and improve health and nutrition in communities, Seedstock has put together the ‘Future of Food – Community Development Field Trip’.

Slated for Friday, March 17, 2017, the second ‘Future of Food’ field trip will look at the impact of community food systems ventures in Southern California, and include lectures from experts in the fields of community garden and urban farming program development, food access, and food justice.

The tour is the second in a series of Seedstock ‘Future of Food’ field trips that was recently launched to facilitate the exploration of food system innovations that are generating economic and community capital.

Spots on the field trip are limited, and it will sell out. So grab your Early Bird Tickets before it’s too late!

Scheduled Field Trip Stops Include:

• L.A. Kitchen Founded by Robert Egger in 2013, L.A. Kitchen is located in a 20,000 sq. ft., two–level processing kitchen, in NE Los Angeles. L.A. Kitchen operates Strong Food, a wholly owned, for-profit subsidiary that hires training program graduates and competes for food service contracts, with an emphasis on opportunities to serve healthy senior meals. L.A. Kitchen’s founding partner is the AARP Foundation, which gave its first million dollar grant to help establish the model. L.A. Kitchen believes that neither food nor people should ever go to waste. By purchasing and reclaiming cosmetically imperfect fruits and vegetables, which would otherwise be discarded, and using them to train and create culinary jobs for unemployed men and women, we make scratch-cooked, healthy meals for the community.

• Seeds of Hope is a ministry of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles which seeks to help congregations, communities, and schools turn unused land into productive gardens and orchards to provide healthy and fresh food in areas of need across the county. Over 80 institutions of the Diocese of Los Angeles have urban gardens and are distributing food to those in the community. “More than three quarters of our congregations are now growing and/or distributing food,” says Tim Alderson, executive director of Seeds of Hope. The field trip will visit Seeds of Hope’s Edendale Grove urban farm situated on a previously vacant lot next to the Cathedral Center of St. Paul in Echo park. The lot has been transformed into a parish garden that supplies fresh produce to local families as well the essential ingredients to create sacramental oil and bread for the church.

• Los Angeles Community Garden Council (LACGC) manages 40 community gardens in Los Angeles County. The garden types that the council manages include the following: traditional community gardens where people rent a plot to grow their own fresh produce; educational gardens where LACGC teaches gardening, landscaping, nutrition and cooking; and urban farms where volunteers grow vegetables for local markets and people in need. The field trip will visit the Lavender Hill Urban Farm, which is a key project of the LACGC. Comprised of four and half acres of land, the farm is located alongside the 110 freeway near Chinatown in Los Angeles, directly behind the Solano Canyon Community Garden. Lavender Hill was launched by Al Renner, co-founder of LACGC, to provide meaningful work for ex-cons, former addicts, and at-risk teenagers. Renner instructs them in the five basic skills of successful gardening: design, soil prep, propagation and planting, harvesting and composting.

Register Now for Early Bird Tickets!

http://seedstockfieldtrip.eventbrite.com

 

Select Confirmed Speakers include:

Tim Alderson, Executive Director of Seeds of Hope
Julie Beals, Executive Director of the Los Angeles Community Garden Council
Robert Egger, Founder and CEO of L.A. Kitchen

 

A farm-to-fork lunch will be hosted and prepared by the staff at: