The Los Angeles wildfires in early January destroyed entire neighborhoods and leveled businesses. They also burned down vital parcels of land used for urban farming in the unique neighborhood of Altadena, but farmers like Choi Chatterjee and Omer Sayeed have vowed to rebuild, according to the Guardian.
Before the fires, Chatterjee and Sayeed's backyard was home to a thriving farm that boasted beehives, hens, fruit and vegetable harvests — and even some goats and tortoises. The duo opened up their property to the community, offering free tours and homemade meals since 2020.
Many local residents came to know the couple while tending to their own plants in the free communal garden next to the Chatterjee and Sayeed's home. People would swing by for guavas, citrus fruits, herbs, and persimmons.
"We'd get 100 to 200 pomegranates and just hand them out to whoever was walking by," said Chatterjee, the co-director of the Urban Ecology Center at Cal State LA, per the Guardian. "It was just bustling with life."
The fires destroyed the backyard garden, the couple's 102-year-old home, and the next-door communal garden. The effects of the climate crisis and extreme winds fueled the fires that devastated many other urban farms in the area.
Altadena has had a local food system that benefited the community's diverse population. Local farming helps more people have access to healthier and more affordable food, and it's beneficial for the environment, reducing the pollution generated from shipping store-bought groceries.
"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, executive director and co-founder of Farm2People, a food justice-centered nonprofit organization based in Los Angeles, according to the Guardian. "There were many official and unofficial pathways to exchanging food."
Experts are now concerned about the impacts on residents' access to food and what the future will look like for urban farming in the area, which is now covered in toxic chemicals and ash.
Hopkins, who also lost her home in the Eaton fire, explained to the Guardian that without soil remediation, anything grown in areas impacted by the fires would be compromised. "The conflict of having these Altadena homesteaders returning and being able to do things mindfully within this generation or even the next versus the implications for public safety — it's very, very tricky."
But many Altadena residents, including Chatterjee and Sayeed, will not be swayed by the challenge and are set on returning to their community. Neighbors on entire blocks have vowed to rebuild together, including their farms.
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Not enough time ⏳ "I am 100% going to redo the garden — if anything, we'll do even more than before," Chatterjee told the Guardian. "We can't imagine living differently. It's a lifestyle; it's not just a home."
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