from the Farmers:

Los Angeles, CA 11 May 2011--Today, the Los Angeles Times editorial board announced its support for restoring the South Central Farm (see below), once a fourteen-acre miracle of family agriculture in the heart of industrial Los Angeles. What the Times isn't saying here is that the land that was the Farm is in escrow according to reports received by the Farmers, with only four months left to find a way to return the Farm to the community before the land is sold. The Farmers are again relying on Angelinos to come to the aid of the legendary urban farm.

The South Central Farm is one of those rare causes that, in 2006, united Los Angeles across racial and generational divides. Thousands of people, some who had never been to South Central and others who lived there, stood in line side by side to hear Zack de La Rocha and Son De Madera do a benefit concert for the Farm. Tens of thousands contributed time and money to save the agriculture paradise they had "discovered" wedged between the train tracks and the trucking corridor. Word spread around the world and found support from farmers from South Africa to Oaxaca. Day after day, the ordinary and the famous, from Willie Nelson to Ralph Nader to Joan Baez to Danny Glover, made the pilgrimage to the Farm and tasted air that was palpably fresher, cleaner inside the chain link fence. Environmentalists Daryl Hannah, John Quigley, and Julia Butterfly Hill climbed trees and took turns in perches until the sheriffs drove two hook-and-ladder trucks across the crops to pull the tree sitters down. Hundreds who had camped on the land for weeks after the eviction notice were run off, and over forty-four protestors were arrested.

The Farmers' mission was and remains to provide fresh food to the food desert that is South Central Los Angeles. Today, they truck in food grown on their farm in Bakersfield, but they hold fast to the promise they made to the South Central community and all of Los Angeles back in 2006: Aqui estamos, y no nos vamos. We are here, and we're not leaving. The Farmers stand ready to restore the Farm.

The fight for green space, for community space, in recent years has coursed from Taylor Yard to the Cornfields to Ballona Wetlands to the South Central Farm. The Farm was a glimmer of beauty, a source of pride for a poor community and for a mostly concrete-covered urban metropolis. The land sits fallow, waiting to be a Farm again. To make that happen in just four months, the Farmers call on all of Los Angeles to help quickly.

The South Central Farmers are asking that everyone who has heard the story of the Farm take two actions now:

,
1. That you join the Farmers' mailing list
2. and that you write to the Los Angeles City Council and our local politicians to ask them to Stand Up and support the restoration of the Farm.

Back in 2006, we were still deep into the real estate bubble, and I believe the asking price was $16 million.

Today, he's asking $18 mil - or two million more. That's unreal. Real estate prices have been dropping. There are more vacancies all over town.

I can't find the commerical real estate prices, but residential, especially in South Central LA, has plummeted by around 60%. $300k houses now sell for $100k.

Sales of commercial real estate plummeted. Real Cap. Analytics reports that in the past 6 months, LA metro has seen 18 sales of developable land. That's three sales per month. A free report on their site, about the IE, indicates that sales have not recovered, though there was a surge of sales in 2009. But this is in the IE.

The report also shows, in the IE, that most sales were from banks or investors, and that the purchases seem to tilt toward banks as well. This isn't development - it's real estate trading. The vacant lots will remain vacant.

The outlook for LA looks stronger. According to a NAR report referenced online:

"Industrial vacancy rates are projected to decline from 14.2 percent in the current quarter to 12.9 percent in the first quarter of 2012.

"At present, the areas with the lowest industrial vacancy rates are Los Angeles and Salt Lake City, with vacancies of 7.5 percent.

"Annual industrial rent is likely to decline 2.5 percent in 2011, before rising 3.0 percent next year. Net absorption of industrial space in 58 markets tracked should be 127.5 million square feet in 2011."

But the same report says that multifamily units are already rising in price.

LA's unemployment is still high, and south LA is always higher than the average. Partly, this is due to the fact that employed people move out of the area. Someone gets a job, and unless family is holding them there, they might move to another area. The unemployment rate in the area will actually rise slightly due to this move. And the rate in another area will decline slightly.

Re-establishing the farm, and making it more accessible to the community, could be a way to retain residents, who may find a reason to stick around.

As an occasional visitor to the LA region, i can attest that there are plenty of warehouses and developed spaces where the Earth was paved over by concrete and asphalt, suffocating the ground below.

Here at the south central farm/garden space, the Earth can breathe and plants convert sunlight to energy for food. This is important for several reasons, food independence in coming times of trouble being the main one.

Our beloved Democrat/Republican establishment government isn't telling any of us the truth about the future, an upcoming unpleasantry dubbed "peak oil" by petroleum researchers. The basics of the peak oil theory are that the recoverable petroleum will be more difficult and expensive to access, thus resulting in price spikes for any and all petroleum derived products (gasoline, fertilizer, pesticides, herbicides, etc...).

Guess what? Most of the conventional agribusinesses that employ illegal farm workers are ALSO very much dependent on petroleum derived fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides. So when the peak oil hits the ag sector, we can count on food price spikes and all the illegal farm workers will have to go home anyway (without even needing any help from ICE!). The overworked agribusiness lands will then have soils devoid of nutrients and will become reclaimed by whatever can survive there.

The south central farm is an example of how we ALL should be growing and raising our own food independent of the agribusiness cartels and their addiction to petroleum derived farm products.

Of course then when people are actually making the ecologically correct choice by growing food in community gardens, the status quo political elite will stop at nothing to try to shut this down and plop a drab gray monolithic warehouse on top of the blooming ground, once again destroying life and suffocating the Earth.

Best wishes to the south central farmers!

BTW - Another factor to consider for the future is restoring the L.A. river to a greenspace with trees and riparian vegetation instead of a concrete channel!


Background on peak oil;

"Cheap Abundant Fossil Fuels in Society and Agriculture

To begin with – who here is familiar with the concepts of peak oil and peak energy? For those of you who have heard about this, you know that I am not referring to the possibility of us running out of oil, natural gas and coal. I'm talking about the peaking and irreversible decline in production of these fuels. This occurs when we're about halfway through the resource, and its only a problem because the demand for these fuels continues to rise.

So the peak of production of these fuels is really more important than when they run out. Because the peak is when it will impact society in remarkable ways. After the peak, fossil fuels are no longer cheap and abundant, but scarce and expensive.

So why does this matter? Because our society and way of life are dependent upon fossil fuel energy. Fossil fuels provide more than 90 percent of the world's energy. Our most important fossil fuel, oil, which has the highest energy concentration and the most value as a transportation fuel, provides more than 40 percent of the world's energy, more than any other source, and accounts for more than 95 percent of all transportation fuel. After oil we have natural gas, a valuable feedstock for artificial fertilizers and manufactured products, and the number one source of energy for space heating.

Both oil and natural gas are invaluable resources for our industrial food system. Ten calories of fossil fuels are used in the production of each calorie of food today. Of that about one-third is in production, one-third is in processing and packaging, and one-third is in distribution and cooking.

Let's start with oil. About one fifth of all petroleum used in the US is used in agriculture. This accounts for nearly 400 gallons of oil equivalent per person per year. First of all, oil is the basis of all commercial pesticides – whose use, as you know, is ubiquitous in industrial agriculture.

More than one billion pounds of pesticides are applied each year in the US alone. Less than one hundredth of a percent reaches the target pest and the remaining 99.9 percent pollutes the environment. More than 90 percent of US corn farmers rely on herbicides and many of you are no doubt also aware of the use of certain strains of crops that are bred to be used with pesticides. Environmental effects also include increased health risks to agricultural workers exposed to pesticides, including a possible correlation between high rates of lung cancer in farmers and pesticide use.

On the farm oil is also used to fuel tractors, combines, harvesters, and other large machinery. This allows larger plots to be farmed and encourages mono-cropping, mostly corn and soybeans in this part of the country. These crops are then likely fed to livestock or processed into the oils used in packaged food.

Now onto natural gas-derived nitrogen fertilizers. Natural gas is a critical feedstock for nitrogen fertilizer production through the Haber-Bosch process, and accounts for 70 – 80 percent of the cost of fertilizer. It has been said that 40 percent of the world's population is alive today because of the Haber-Bosch process and the use of natural gas in fertilizers. The environmental effect is that fertilizer run-off accumulates in bodies of water, resulting in eutrophication and algal blooms.

Another use of oil in agriculture is in the transportation of food, and perhaps this is its most vital role in the industrial food system. For the large mono-cropping operations that use oil-fed machinery and massive amounts of petroleum-based pesticides and natural gas-derived fertilizers would not be viable if the crops couldn't be transported to processing facilities and national and international markets, then finally to wholesale and retail outlets, restaurants and consumers' homes."

read more here;
http://www.communitysolution.org/talks/1-11-06OSUMegan.html