Why don’t more people grow their own food? 

This question inspired us to start Farmscape, four years ago, yesterday. We saw the potential for Los Angeles to become a “garden city,” where neighbors and hired farmers together grew enormous quantities of top-quality food within the city limits, from a network of farms strung across our yards and our rooftops. We imagined a city where landscaping became farmscaping, improving our food, our health, and our neighborhoods alike. 

It’s been a delicious, delightful, adventurous -- at times back-straining -- four-year journey since that day. We are not nearly done with our mission, but we have made incredible progress. We are honored and proud to share our birthday with you: our members and our fans.

I keep seeing news about urban agriculture concepts, and even financed projects, that are enormous. Big ten-acre lots for a closed-loop super-farm. Hydroponic mega-greenhouses across entire warehouse rooftops. Indoor warehouse farms with enough grow lights to require a hectare of solar panels. Big rotating tumblers of plants around aeroponic misters. The next vertical innovation, some foodscraper using a masterful system of mirrors to redirect all sunlight in a half mile radius to a thirty-story stack of aquaponic tanks. Alright, some of these are hyperbolic, but just a little.

In truth, most of these projects might be feasible, horticulturally or even financially. But when I think about the goal of the Urban Farming Movement -- bringing food production to the city to create a more local, or a more transparent food supply, grown using socially and environmentally conscientious practices, and hopefully producing a fresher, tastier product -- well I don’t picture a Zipper carnival ride or anything the size of Sams Club. I think small.

Here is a frontyard garden that the authorities want replaced by conventional grass at a Canadian residence.. Online, a resistance formed and you can sign a petition to support the food production. Obviously, Farmscape stands with our French-speaking kindred gardeners: this beautiful potager should be allowed and encouraged...

It’s coming back round again. For more than a century, most technological developments produced a dehumanizing effect on society because of their large scale: factory production, mega-machines, extractive fuels. All dwarfing the individual. Driving a wedge between producer and consumer. Size mattered. The bigger a machine, the more economically efficient it was, because our competencies with engineering and the sciences were very crude. And big things were best operated far from where people lived a human-sized life, except in communities where a human-sized life seemed a dispensible thing anyhow.

Farmscape is seeking a full-time urban farm consultant to help us convert Los Angeles into a network of thriving farms. Become part of an innovative, fast-growing, and fast-paced start up in an environment that thrives on collaboration, creativity, and success. This position would be responsible for managing the sales process from start to finish within a given sales territory.