ECOFARM
ECOFARM stands for Ecological and Community Oriented Farming and Resource Mobilization. The ECOFARM initiative supports local gardens in designing and building biodiverse, regenerative farms integrating ecological design for wildlife habitat and pest management, that centers food access for the neighborhood, with space for community gathering, education, and well-being. In modern urban industrial cultures, people have become very separated from their connection to nature, food, and the environment, pressured to participate in exploitative, extractive environments for survival, which contributes to stress, chronic illness, and isolation. The ECOFARM initiative is a model for holistic healing, creating space to practice more supportive and nurturing connection to the land and to each other.
Ecological and Community Oriented Farming and Resource Mobilization
ECOFARM envisions appropriate resource flows such as tool sharing and food distribution, ensuring that gardens with an abundance of food growing get harvested and distributed to those who need it most. More established or larger gardens are sometimes in a position to share more resources, such as soil, knowledge, seeds, tools, or irrigation supplies to new gardens just starting out. By providing the basic resources for starting a farm, we create the opportunity for each farm to express creativity and innovation. We envision a network of farms supporting community well-being through sharing. In this way, as we facilitate the flow of resources towards the greatest needs, we contribute to building up equity, reciprocity, and mutual aid within our community.
The ECOFARM concept was the inspiration for CalRecycle’s trailblazing Community Composting for Green Spaces program. Our ECOFARM team was a core partner in the inaugural round of funding collaborating to support 117 community composting green spaces statewide, including 28 sites regionally in the Eastern LA and Inland Empire regions, and supported 13 local Pomona Valley-based projects.
Root 66 ECOFARM
Beginning in 2014, The Root 66 Garden became the steward of 14 acres of neglected land in a Rancho Cucamonga powerline corridor. Early on in their project development they established a one acre community garden, a half acre community orchard, a native plant & bee sanctuary, and partnered with a local farmer to maintain a 4 acre vineyard. In 2020, The Root 66 Garden responded to our Community Composting for Green Spaces Community Composting Support call and in 2021 our team began to design a food forest and community composting project there. During 2021-2023, our team engaged in extensive soil building, diverting over 1,000,000 lbs of organic matter (yup, you read that correctly, over 1 million pounds!) and building up an incubator farm location for PCFA collaborator and Community Farmer Nicolas Reza. We also planted a diverse climate appropriate food forest with 36 trees, including pomegranates, a wide variety of citrus, mulberries, guava, cherimoya, loquat, jujube, figs, and more! In the fall of 2023, we redesigned our composting initiative and built soil up for six fields in a second incubator farm. In 2024, we planted an additional 8 fruit trees as part of a planned pollinator hedgerow, and redesigned our composting initiative for a third time in its current and permanent location. Our composting initiative is currently processing about 375,000 lbs of food scraps and over 600,000 lbs total organics on an annual basis, building soil that we share out to local farms and gardens. In 2025, we planted an additional 20 fruit trees on site and have continued our robust composting program. With support from the IERCD (Inland Empire Resource Conservation District), we will complete a pest exclusion fence around our incubator farm plots, greatly increasing the productivity of these areas; install a cultural foods garden, a pond, and native plant berm in our food forest; and develop ceremonial & community gathering and learning areas. With support from the CDFA (California Department of Food and Agriculture) we will install solar powered walk-in refrigeration for the incubator farms as well as community facing refrigeration for the community garden food share.
Holy Missionary Baptist Church ECOFARM
The Holy Missionary Baptist Church stewards 1.5 acres of land in Pomona and has dreamed of developing a garden to serve the local community. In late 2024, a community member acquainted with the church’s vision and the work of our team made a connection and we are currently developing an ECOFARM project on site. Through a community design process we have developed a plan which includes a 15 bed production garden, food forest and perennial herb garden, a pond, a composting area, ample & accessible pathways, a solar powered refrigerator and learning laboratory, community gathering space, and more! So far, we have installed the main water infrastructure, the production beds, 20 fruit trees, drip irrigation systems, and have launched our composting program on site. We hope to launch community educational programming in the fall of 2025.
Dulzura Village ECOFARM
In late 2024, our team partnered to purchase 40 acres of land in unincorporated San Diego County as our inaugural Commons Restoration site. Here we intend to steward the farmlands with an ecological focus as a subsistence farm for intentional community residents as well as a demonstration farm for the community at large. We envision many kinds of planting and cultivation here, including a food forest, perennial kitchen garden, medicinal native garden, ecological farm, as well as pastures for animals, such as chickens, goats, and sheep. We have currently planted 22 trees and will be working in 2025 to develop a more detailed plan for the growing spaces and composting areas.
