“When you’re talking about local food security, Altadena was a total outlier in LA county for what it was able to do for its community,” said Anna Rose Hopkins, co-founder and executive director of Farm2People, a food justice-centered non-profit organization based in Los Angeles.
Because Altadena is unincorporated and has different zoning laws than other parts of Los Angeles, it’s common for people to keep poultry, have backyard vegetable gardens, take part in produce swaps and offer free boxes of hyperlocal harvests for anyone to take and enjoy.
“I would say a majority of the people depended on what they grew to eat and a source of their consumption,” said Mary McGilvray, vice-president of Altadena community garden, who noted that 44 of its members’ homes were also lost.
A couple of pygmy goats and a pair of 100-pound tortoises, Layla and Manju, roamed the urban farm, keeping the weeds trimmed, the compost turned and the soil alive with microbes, much to the delight of the hundreds of visitors who have enjoyed free tours and home-cooked meals since the couple began offering them in 2020.
“There were many official and unofficial pathways to exchanging food.” Now that those pathways have been ravaged by fires and thousands of residents have had to vacate their neighborhoods, experts worry about the impact on people’s access to food, hunger and the future of growing in a region that was blanketed in toxic ash and chemicals.
