‘Until the 1950s, Los Angeles County was the top agricultural county in the U.S.’

Today, urban agriculture is making a comeback

By Zach Behrens
KCET
February 11, 2011

Excerpt:

“Until the 1950s, Los Angeles County was the top agricultural county in the U.S. From approximately 1910 to 1955, this was it; it was bigger than Iowa or any of those Midwestern states in terms of its agriculture. We grew everything here,” Surls explained. “It sort of dates back to the founding of Los Angeles when people first came and looked at Los Angeles as a potential site for a mission. They saw that it had great soil, they saw that things grew well here and they thought, ‘ah ha, perfect place for farming.’ So that’s how it started.”

Wheat and cattle were some of the major products of the area, and with the gold rush and the intercontinental railroad, the population began to grow. “The small agricultural village–basically–of Los Angeles started to become an agricultural powerhouse, farmers started growing different things. They started experimenting with citrus for example, and by the early 20th century, the whole L.A. basin and Southern California were full of citrus and other fruit trees,” said Surls.

Today, urban agriculture is making a comeback. Surls says a survey found a 19% increase in home vegetable gardening between 2008 and 2009 and attributes it to two things: the economy and a new way of thinking about the environment and nutrition. “Even though we haven’t been a huge agricultural producer since the 1950s, I’d like people to remember that food matters in Los Angeles.”

Read the complete article here.