“The Living Tower” by Pierre Sartoux, courtesy Atelier SoA Architectes
June 2007 | On Our Radar
The Farm on Your Doorstep
No matter how much you may adore visiting LA’s bountiful farmers’ markets for your local, organic, fresh, seasonal produce-fix, sometimes the neglected laundry takes precedence over hand-picking your weekly harvest.
But what could be more convenient for the overworked, Kiss-Me-I’m-Organic Angeleno than having farm-fresh picks delivered right to your door? So stop wasting time in the checkout line, and check out these organic delivery service alternatives:
L.O.V.E. Delivery (Los Angeles Organic Vegetable Express)
Are you a picky eater? You can pick — or click — the items you love or don’t love from L.O.V.E. Delivery’s online menu. Depending on how much love you can handle, the service offers eight various, fully-customizable boxes of fruits and veggies. L.O.V.E. loves to keep it local too, making a point to source from farms within 100 miles, except for specialty items like coconuts and mangos, which you can nix if you’re a die-hard locavore. All products are certified organic unless otherwise indicated and distributed at the current market value. Plus, you can opt to include coffee or flowers! 310.821.LOVE, lovedelivery.com.
The Farmer’s Cart
Serving the neighborhoods of Los Feliz, Silver Lake, Echo Park and Downtown, The Farmer’s Cart (and Mother Nature) will surprise you each week with a fresh selection of USDA certified harvest grouped into three categories: Cooking Veggies, Salad Veggies and Sweet Fruits. 213.509.9821, visit thefarmerscart.org.
Organic Express
In addition to 90 percent California-grown, USDA Certified Organic produce, Organic Express also delivers organic must-haves like Lundberg Porcini Mushroom Risotto or Annie’s Naturals Green Goddess Dressing. Keep it simple by letting them select the week’s best produce for you, or use their website to build your own box. 310.ORGANIC, organicexpress.com/main.lasso.
Paradise O
While this 100 percent organic company makes a major effort to buy local, paradise wouldn’t be paradise without ripe fruit mid-winter. So if you don’t mind produce shipped off-season from warmer climes abroad, you may want to go with Paradise O for variety’s sake. But if you’re counting food miles, you can request only items from the good ol’ USA — where tomatoes don’t grow in February, no matter how much we wish they would. paradiseo.com.
Tierra Miguel Foundation Farm & Community Supported Agriculture
Okay, okay, we know we said delivered “right to your door,” but would you settle for nearby? Most organic delivery services in the southland are not farms themselves; rather they’re companies that source produce from farms and distributors around the country. But if you’re willing to go the extra mile, Community Supported Agriculture programs (CSAs) are a meaningful way to directly support local organic farmers — you just have to pick up your box at a pre-determined drop spot in your neighborhood yourself.
Each box from Tierra Miguel farm, located 100 miles from LA in Pauma Valley, includes a wide variety of seasonal, CCOF-certified, competitively priced, organically grown fruits, vegetables and herbs. There’s also a Farm Newsletter (with recipes) and an open invitation to visit the farm for events, classes and volunteering. Call 760-742-4213 or visit tierramiguelfarm.org.
— Jolia Sidona Allen
Let’s Get Vertical
Are “living buildings” a step to agriculture in the skies?
Vertical farming reads like an idea from a 1950s science fiction novel: dedicate the top six or ten stories of a skyscraper to agriculture, use the building’s own redistributed greywater to fertilize the crops, and then transform the biomass waste from the farm into pellet fuel that, in turn, powers the building. Besides being carbon neutral and self-sustaining once it gets up and running, vertical farming’s other implications — less actual land needed for farms, less fuel needed to transport food — are far-reaching and inspiring. Last month, a story on the possibilities of vertical farming in New York magazine set the eco-blogosphere on fire — not bad for a concept that some architects claim is at least fifteen years away.
Clearly, the very idea of vertical farming scratches an itch in the imagination of a lot of green-leaning thinkers. But is it even possible? “Most of the technology already exists,” says Cory Stoerker, an designer at Seattle firm NBBJ. “Living buildings are right around the corner, but none of these buildings will do all of the things (that vertical farms do) all at once.”
Today’s buildings are getting greener from the roof down: Chicago leads the nation in green roof projects, incorporating rooftop gardens into the design of new and preexisting structures. And many green designers, such as organic ARCHITECT in San Francisco or Rana Creek in Los Angeles, consider sustainability as integral to the idea of a building as doors or windows.
The median step between the energy-wasting skyscrapers of yesterday and the vertical farms of tomorrow seems to be the “living building” — a sustainable building that interacts with its ecosystem in a positive, non-invasive way. At “Living Future ’07,” a recent architectural conference in Seattle, hundreds of area architects gathered to discuss buildings that would “harvest all their own energy and water” and “function as living batteries.” The standout conceptual work of the conference was a project dubbed “The Center for Urban Architecture,” planned for the heart of Seattle. The giant multistory glass structure includes a café in the base that would utilize edible plants growing on each level. While it wasn’t quite vertical farming, it was certainly breathtaking — and a sign of exciting changes to come.
If the idea of vertical farms or living skyscrapers scratches your green itch, check out:
• VerticalFarm.com A crash course in urban agriculture, packed with illustrations and links to other pertinent websites.
• CascadiaGBC.org The home of the Living Building Challenge, providing information and rules for the construction of eco-friendly buildings.
• LivingTower.new.fr This plan, which could be constructed in the very green-friendly French city of Rennes, is the closest to a real world example of a vertical farm.
— Paul Constant
Don’t just get mad…get active
It’s here! That time of year kids live for and parents dread: the infamous summer vacation. Why should the lil’ rascals run free in the streets or slump comatose in front of the boob tube all summer long, when they could be spending time with an awesome socially and environmentally conscious person like yourself? If you’ve got wisdom and a few hours a week to spare for the next generation, step up to one of these volunteer opportunities:
stokedmentoring.org Nonprofit action sports organization Stoked Mentoring is seeking sporty types to teach the joys of surfing and skating to at-risk teens.
layo.org Remember how intimidating those college entrance exams were? Help underprivileged youth get to college by mentoring and tutoring them though the Youth Opportunity Movement.
apch.org Calling all sports fiends! A Place Called Home is seeking bilingual baseball, softball and drill team coaches.
childrenslifesaving.org Children’s Lifesaving Foundation would love to find some painters, dancers, actors, photographers and yoga teachers to share their creative talents with homeless and at-risk youth.
readingtokids.org Love a good book? Reading to Kids is a grassroots nonprofit in need of volunteers for their monthly reading clubs.
lifeworksmentoring.org Life Works Mentoring, an organization dedicated to helping lesbian, gay and questioning youth reach their goals and dreams, seeks volunteers for movie screenings, fundraising dinners, biking trips and more.
— Jessica Ridenour
Worth Repeating
“There is a line in the Hindu scriptures: ‘Let good knowledge come to us from all sides.’ There is no follow-up that adds, ‘And let us pay royalties for it.’”
— Bombay-born writer Suketu Mehta objecting to the 150 yoga-related copyrights, 134 patents on yoga accessories and 2,315 yoga trademarks that have been issued by the US Patent Office (NY Times, 5/7).
“Our whole goal of sustainability means using as little energy as we have to. Shipping bottles of water from Italy doesn’t make sense.”
— Mike Kossa-Rienzi , general manager of San Francisco’s Chez Panisse restaurant where imported water (but not wine) has been dropped from the menu (SF Chronicle, 3/21).
“War is young men killing other young men they do not know, on the orders of old men who know one another too well.”
— German volunteer Erwin Kowalke who has unearthed remains of 20,000 fallen WWII soldiers (LA Times, 5/2).
“In just seven months, more than 93,000 people worldwide have joined us in calling on Starbucks to sign this agreement. The eyes of Africa will be on this agreement, which could even set a precedent for further deals beyond Ethiopia in the future.”
— Phil Bloomer , director of campaigns for OXFAM, discussing Starbucks’ concession to stop blocking the nation of Ethiopia’s attempts to trademark its signature coffee beans in the US — a major victory for the 15 million Ethiopians who depend on coffee for their livelihood. (Guardian Unlimited, 5/3).
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