Our Farm at The Los Angeles Mission
A rooftop garden to combat food apartheid and restore green space on Skid Row
The Program
Our Farm at The Los Angeles Mission was established to improve the physical, social and emotional well-being of the community experiencing homelessness in Skid Row as well as the students at the Los Angeles Mission. The urban farm, located on the rooftop of The Los Angeles Mission, when complete, will be 150 Aeroponic vertical gardens filled with 4,200 edible plants and currently is made up for 46 towers.
The produce from Our Farm is used to serve healthy, nutrient dense foods to the Skid Row community. The produce is grown by men and women enrolled in The Los Angeles Mission’s Life Start Program as they learn skills such as horticulture, supply chain, food science and customer relations.
By 2025, Our Farm will be watered by air and powered by the sun, and our produce will be sold and distributed to restaurants in Downtown Los Angeles. Within the next two years, our Urban Farming students (part of our Arts+Wellness Program!) will collaborate with our Los Angeles Mission community to grow together, learn with, and from each other.
The Impact
People experiencing homelessness seldom eat nutritious meals, lack food more often, and are more likely to have inadequate diets and poorer nutritional status than housed U.S. populations. How can we expect folks to improve their life if their body’s fuel is poisoning them? The men and women working and learning in our farm are gaining valuable skills for, not only a healthy future, but for employment working in food service, farming, food delivery and beyond.
Our long-term goals is for Our Farm at The Los Angeles Mission to be climate positive by adding energy, water and food into the ecosystem of Downtown Los Angeles. Our Farm at the Los Angeles Mission is one of three urban farms that ABG has fostered across Los Angeles County, with the other two making their homes at Los Angeles Senior High School and Aveson Global Leadership Academy.
Our Partners
We couldn’t do this without the support from our partners.
