For many of us, Thanksgiving is our yearly opportunity to indulge in a bountiful feast, and to gather around a table with our loved ones to enjoy our family’s most delectable dishes.
We fill our stomachs with delicious food until we’re so full we can’t have another bite, while taking a moment to show gratitude and reflect on all that we’ve cherished throughout the year.
Yet for nearly 5 million adults and 2 million children across California, Thanksgiving is another day spent deciding between paying bills and buying food; another day when cabinets are empty, tables are bare and stomachs are growling. Extreme hunger is something millions of our neighbors face on a daily basis – not just around the holiday season.
Due to high food prices and the end of pandemic-era emergency boosts to the CalFresh program, food insecurity in L.A. County increased 30% during the first half of 2023, with more than 1 million families now unable to afford to put food on the table.
With odds like that, there’s a good chance that someone you know won’t have a warm holiday meal this week.
To make matters worse, nearly one million Californians live in food deserts without access to a nearby grocery store with fresh, high quality fruits and vegetables. And it’s not just in rural areas and small communities – right here in Los Angeles, 370,000 families experiencing food insecurity currently live in a local food desert.
Most of us know full well that depending on where you live in Los Angeles, your access to the best grocery stores and high-quality produce can vary significantly. More than half of food retail stores across all three neighborhoods that make up South LA do not sell any fresh fruits or vegetables whatsoever.
In this area, if you’re a parent trying to feed your kid, you’re likely to find a couple liquor stores before a supermarket with fresh, high-quality produce.
Think about that for a moment: for many families already struggling to afford food, it’s even harder for them to find a grocery store and access fresh vegetables and produce.
These families can’t catch a break – and it doesn’t have to be this way.
What we believe is simple: no matter where you live, you should have access to affordable, healthy food right in your community, and you shouldn’t have to travel outside of your neighborhood for the best ingredients to feed your family.
So with that in mind, we came together to create the Freedom Farms program right here in Los Angeles.
Born out of a historic interfaith partnership between a Jewish rabbi and Christian pastor, our organization Partnership for Growth Los Angeles created Freedom Farms as a sustainable, long-term solution to feed our neighbors in West and South LA with high quality fruits and vegetables that are grown locally.
Launched this summer and inspired by a long history of Black-owned farming co-ops and Jewish principles of land stewardship, our new program aims to create sustainable, community-led urban farms throughout the region as a way to bring healthy, affordable farm-to-table produce to families in these areas.
We’ve kicked off Freedom Farms as a three-year pilot program, with the goal of launching 15 local farms by summer 2024. To date, we’ve already received more than 40 requests for local urban farms in LA. Ultimately, we want our program to become a national model for urban farming as a way to address food insecurity, and the food deserts that make it harder for families who are already struggling to eat.
And we’re not stopping there. Freedom Farms is a key part of our vision for community development in South and West LA – because food insecurity does not exist in a vacuum, and neither can our solutions.
Our workforce development programs—Project Jubilee and YouthBuild Growers Program— are providing hands-on training and urban farming curriculum designed to teach skills in planting, tending, and harvesting so we can set up young people to be local stewards of our urban farms. And these kids are enthusiastic to learn, with Project Jubilee having an incredible 98% retention rate.
Imagine that: young people learning hands-on urban farming skills, while fostering a deep connection to nature, promoting sustainability and spurring local economic development. Right here in the middle of Los Angeles.
Through Freedom Farms, we are challenging ourselves to develop community-focused solutions to feed our friends and neighbors and make Los Angeles a better, healthier, and more equitable place.
So this week, as we gather with friends and family for our yearly feast, we want to challenge you to ask yourself:
What can I do by next Thanksgiving to ensure more of my neighbors in LA have access to healthy food? How can I ensure fewer people in my community go hungry?
It’s going to take all of us, our entire community, to step up and do our part. Whether it’s supporting a local urban farm, volunteering at a food bank, or urging our elected officials to support programs like ours that address food insecurity – how will you choose to make an impact?
