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HOMEGROWN WEST ADAMS CROP SWAP LA IS BLOOMING!

Details: Category: Free and Low Cost Food Sources; Published on Thursday, 11 June 2020 23:59; Written by D.V. LAWRENCE

Last year TNN featured local residents who were responding to the healthy food scarcity in many parts of our community with projects that helped get fruits and vegetables on community tables. One of the food heroes we featured was Jamiah Hargins and the beginning of his West Adams Crop Swap program.

Photo by Jeff Minton, courtesy of Simple Magazine

The program allowed local backyard gardeners to come together to share their abundant produce with each other and their neighbors. In 2018 they created the volunteer run West Adams Crop Swap, Crop Swap LA, inviting gardeners across Los Angeles to bring their extra veggies, fruits, herbs, and valuable homemade items to trade whatever they wish. The abundance was enormous, and they got to thinking about ways to form infrastructures to help grow the project.

In the first year, 2018, over 100 gardeners gathered in Jamiah's backyard to support the movement, and now they hold the crop swaps at the Seeds of Carver Community Garden the first Saturday of the month. During the Covid-19 pandemic, they have delivered over a ton of fruit and CSA boxes to seniors, single parents, veterans and people in need.

There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come, and Crop Swap began to gain attention in all the right places. Jamiah was featured in Time magazine as one of 27 people “bridging divides across America.” He received a plaque of recognition from Mayor Garcetti's Green New Deal Neighborhood Council Toolkit Advisory Board as a Good Food Champion.

Most exciting is the recent announcement that they are finalists in the LA2050 Grant Challenge in the LIVE category. They propose to create a residential garden district in the community by selecting 15 homes on residential streets to install professional gardens and rainwater harvesting systems on their front yards, back yards, and available rooftops. They will train and hire a green team of gardeners to become a fleet of hyper-localized specialists, rotated between gardening trades, and paired in groups to learn from each other. For their participation, residents would receive a crop share as a part of the arrangement. This project will serve as a model for creating jobs, food and a resilient society.

There are 25 finalists and everyone will receive a grant but the amount will depend on which project gets the most votes and that will depend on You!

Starting MONDAY, JULY 13 2020 and ending MONDAY, JULY 20, 2020, you dear reader can vote for this project at

https://challenge.la2050.org/vote/

•First place winners will receive $100,000

•Second place winners will receive $50,000

•Third place winners will receive $25,000

•Fourth place winners will receive $15,000

•Fifth place winners will receive $10,000

Members of the public may vote once per goal category for a total of five votes.

Voters must be at least 14 years old and a US resident.

To participate in the My LA2050 Grants Challenge, voters must sign in with their mobile phone, email address, or Facebook account.

Voters signing in by phone will receive an SMS text message with a confirmation code to enter.

Voters signing in by email will be sent an email message with a confirmation link to press.

VOTE for our very own homegrown Food Heroes!

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