“Eight miles from downtown, amid the warehouses and factories and railroad tracks of Bell, Corinne McAndrews plots out two rows of Purple Queen garlic. “I want to be part of a new way of thinking about urban agriculture,” she says of GrowGood, the farm she manages here. This isn’t a communal plot; it isn’t really a commercial one, either. GrowGood harvests food for people who are in no position to sort through the produce at the Santa Monica Farmers Market. Spread over one-and-a-half acres of U.S. Army land that a few years ago, she says, was “void of biological life,” its dozens of varieties of vegetables and herbs and 50 fruit trees serve as the engine of GrowGood’s mission: sending its harvest to the large homeless shelter across the parking lot.
This little urban farm has only 6 employees, and a dozen or so volunteers. Visitors to the shelter are encouraged to volunteer and may even be hired for employment.
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