The Brief

One of the world’s most high-tech indoor vertical farms is right here in Southern California, in Compton.

I headed there to find out more about what role indoor farming may play in the future of food. As increasingly extreme weather driven by human-caused pollution in the atmosphere makes it harder — if not impossible — to farm outside in formerly high-producing regions, could farming indoors be part of the solution?

I admit I’m pretty skeptical of this high-tech farming. How practical is it? What are the tradeoffs? And how much does this farm really benefit Compton?

Those were the questions I wanted to answer as I pulled into the parking lot of a clean white warehouse in north central Compton. The formerly empty warehouse is across from a neighborhood and next to a larger industrial building and yard full of big-rig trucks.

Inside, is the flagship commercial-scale farm developed by San Francisco-based startup Plenty. It officially opened last May and is the West Coast’s largest indoor vertical farm.

When I walk in I’m greeted by cool air conditioning and Erin Santy, the company’s media liaison. She walks me upstairs to the mezzanine. From there, I can see huge robot arms moving tall, thin towers of greens.

“When you say farming, this is not what I think of, but how cool that it can be?” Santy said. “Fifty years from now, what will people think of?”

The indoor vertical farm in Compton is highly automated.

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Why farm indoors? 

Within 100,000 square feet, the farm can grow some four million pounds of spinach, kale, spring mix and arugula every year. That amount adds up to about 16 million of those packages of greens we see at the grocery store. And it's produced within a much smaller area than what's need to grow the same amount outside.

They sell at Whole Foods, Bristol Farms, Gelson’s and most Walmarts in Southern California. They just launched a partnership with 7/11 to sell salads there too.

“We want to be able to deliver a locally grown fresh product and part of that is how do we get it closer to the people who are eating it?” Santy said. “Some of that is about growing in a more urban and dense area like Compton.”

An aerial view of the indoor farm in Compton.

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Courtesy Plenty

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She said the prices are on par with organic for now, since it’s so expensive to build these farms and they’re not common. But she said the prices don’t fluctuate like conventionally grown greens because they’re not affected by weather volatility or supply chain disruptions.

One of the biggest perks of indoor farming is that it can use as much as 98% less water than conventional farming, said researcher Shamim Ahamed, who studies advanced farming techniques at UC Davis. But he said the biggest drawback is that it also uses a lot of electricity. That’s because they need to use artificial light to grow the plants as well as keep specific temperatures inside.

“That's basically the prime reason for having a high carbon footprint,” Ahamed told LAist.

He said because the power grid is getting cleaner overall, that footprint will continue to go down. And there are lots of ways these indoor farms can use energy really efficiently or generate their own cleaner energy on site, Ahamed said.

Erin Santy, media liaison for the startup Plenty.

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Erin Stone

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Santy said Plenty used solar to generate their energy on their far smaller pilot farm in Northern California, but she said they didn't go that route for their Compton site because they don't have the space for the number of panels they'd need. She said the amount of electricity generated by putting panels on their rooftop would be essentially negligible and didn't pencil out. She added the current mix they're paying for from the power grid is currently about 40% renewable sources.

And, Ahamed pointed out, conventional agriculture also has a huge carbon footprint. Mostly due to land use changes, livestock and soil depletion, large-scale farming accounts for about a quarter of human-caused global greenhouse gas emissions and about 10% of the U.S.’ total greenhouse gas emissions.

Plenty's indoor vertical farm in Compton is in a formerly empty warehouse.

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But there are limits, at least right now, to what food can be farmed indoors in this way. Ahamed said indoor vertical farming works for certain crops, such as leafy greens, strawberries and tomatoes — crops that are also highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, he said.

While Ahamed said indoor farming can’t completely replace farming outdoors, he said it does play a role in the future of our food.

How the farm works

Before going inside Plenty’s Compton farm, we have to get dressed in full protective gear and sanitize everything.

The greens never get touched by human hands: The environment is kept so clean they don’t need pesticides. That means they also don’t need to be washed before being eaten, so the greens don’t get that “triple wash” like many we buy at the grocery store.

Machines place seeds in a soil tray at Plenty's indoor farm in Compton.

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That, plus the fact they’re grown so much closer to the stores where they end up, means Plenty’s greens have a longer shelf life, staying fresh for as many as 21 days, Santy said.

Once we’re fully suited up, we head inside.

Seed trays getting irrigated with a precise amount of water in the seeding room.

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First stop is the seeding room. Seed trays run along a conveyor belt, where machines place a precise number of seeds into the soil, then squirt just enough water and nutrients on top.

Then we head into a brightly lit room full of colorful lights called the propagation room. I can’t take pictures — the specific combination of artificial light in here is proprietary because it’s the company’s secret sauce for helping the plants grow faster. They’re ready to harvest in around 30 days, instead of the 60 to 90 it would take outside in the field, Santy said.

After a couple weeks in this room, the baby plants are routed on a conveyor belt to a series of robots that pull them from the trays and place them into growing towers that are several stories high.

“Imagine how delicate the fingers of that robot have to be to lift it without ripping the plant or tearing the roots,” Santy said.

Robot "fingers" pluck plants from trays and place them in a growing tower, where they'll eventually be ready to harvest.

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Then, the towers full of plants are transferred by a much larger robot arm to another conveyor system that moves them into the final growing room.

“When you're able to stand in front of a 30 foot wall of lettuce, that’s when it gets really cool,” said Yatae Lewis, the farm’s site operations manager. “I tell people I work at Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory.”

The light in here is super powerful and also proprietary. This is where the plants stay for a couple weeks until they’re ready for harvest. Stories of lush purple and green spring mix and kale and spinach tower above me.

And it’s humid. All the water the plants in this room respirate, or essentially sweat out, is recycled. That helps the farm use about 90% less water than conventional growing, Santy said.

The final growing room. The light is proprietary, which is why LAist couldn't take its own photos. That artificial light helps the plants grow about twice as fast as they would in the field.

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Courtesy Plenty

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Leafy greens grow inside a high-tech indoor vertical farm based in Compton and developed by San Francisco-based startup Plenty.

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Courtesy Plenty

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What the farm means for Compton

Farming is actually nothing new to Compton. In the early 1900s, Compton was an agricultural hub. Compton Creek, a major tributary to the L.A. River, made for a reliable water source and rich soil. Southern California sunshine made for ideal growing conditions.

Compton’s Mayor Emma Sharif said the Plenty indoor farm is a way to bring that legacy back in a new way.

“This isn't just a nod to our past. It's a bold step into the future of farming,” she told LAist.

A robot "arm" that moves the towers of greens onto a conveyer belt that takes them to the final growing room, where they'll be ready to harvest after a couple weeks.

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And Sharif said a big reason she supported the company coming to Compton was that it brings needed jobs. Part of the city’s agreement with Plenty is that at least a third of the farm’s 70 employees have to be from Compton. As of now about 31% are, said Yatae Lewis, the farm’s site operations manager.

Lewis grew up in Long Beach and has lived in Compton for 20 years.

Yatae Lewis is the site operations manager at Plenty's indoor farm in Compton.

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“Compton is known for so many things,” Lewis said. “Indoor farming is absolutely not one of them. So being a part of changing the narrative of Compton was something that I absolutely jumped at.”

He’s worked here for three years, and watched the farm go from empty warehouse to indoor growing powerhouse. He said that while the number of jobs may not be high, the quality is.

“We want jobs, and not only jobs, we want good jobs,” Lewis said. “And not only good jobs, we have jobs that we can brag about. If we can do that for 30% of the workforce, that's amazing.”

Yatae Lewis holds leafy greens in a photo from 2022, before Plenty officially launched its flagship commercial indoor farm in Compton.

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Lewis said the jobs for Compton locals range from field techs to growers to managers. The majority of roles in the farm have no educational requirements and they offer competitive pay as well as benefits, Santy said. Lewis said one of their Compton employees was able to afford her dream of traveling to South Korea for a K-pop concert recently.

“If we have an individual that now has a passport and can see the world and bring that back to Compton because they work at Plenty, that's what we're rooting for,” Lewis said.

Lewis, who also serves as Plenty’s community liaison, said the company has partnered with the Compton Run Club to co-host events and fundraisers, and they have partnerships with seven local middle schools to highlight STEM education.

“I have a 13-year-old, and he's into robots, he's into engineering, he's into computer coding,” Lewis said. “When I bring him to a bring-your-kid-to-work day and he sees the robots and he talks to the engineers, his mind is blown. It's very humbling and encouraging that my son's dream job can be five minutes away in the city that he lives in.”

On Friday Southern California Edison filed lawsuits against Los Angeles County and several other agencies over their alleged roles in the Eaton Fire.

Two lawsuits were filed.

In one suit the utility company alleges Southern California Gas delayed shutting off gas in the burn area for several days after the fire, making the blaze worse.

“SoCalGas’s design and actions caused gas leaks, gas fires, reignition of fires, gas explosions, and secondary ignitions during the critical early stages of the Eaton Fire,” according to the suit.

The claim goes on to say this contributed to the spread of the fire and made firefighting and evacuation efforts more difficult.

In the second suit the utility company alleges the Eaton Fire was made worse by the local government response, “including due to the failures of LASD, LACoFD, OEM and GENASYS in issuing timely evacuation alerts and notifications,” the claim reads.

The same filing says that L.A. County was to blame for vegetation and overgrown brush in the Eaton Canyon area that fueled the blaze.

It also named the City of Pasadena, and its utility system Pasadena Water and Power, the City of Sierra Madre, Kinneloa Irrigation District, Rubio Cañon Land & Water Association, Las Flores Water Company, and Lincoln Avenue Water Company as parties responsible for water systems running dry in Altadena as the fire broke out.

Edison says hydrants running dry compounded the extent of the disaster.

Those claims will be heard in the L.A. County Superior Court, which is also handling L.A. County’s lawsuit against SoCal Edison.

Edison itself is the subject of hundreds of lawsuits from survivors of the Eaton Fire, which could cost the company billions of dollars in settlements.

Edison has said its equipment likely sparked the Eaton Fire, and filed these suits, in part, because it believes these various entities should share some of the blame for the disaster, which resulted in the destruction of thousands of buildings and the deaths of 19 people.

A compensation program Edison for fire survivors who forgo suing the company has made settlement offers to more than 80 of those who applied.

A new organization is taking over production of the MLK Day Parade, almost 40 years after the first parade was held in South L.A. to commemorate the civil rights leader.

Bakewell Media, publisher of the Los Angeles Sentinel newspaper (a partner of The LA Local), was granted the permit in September to organize the parade for the first time by the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners. Formerly called the Kingdom Day Parade, the parade has been rebranded as the Los Angeles Official Martin Luther King Day Parade. The parade was previously produced and organized by Adrian Dove and the L.A. chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality California (CORE-CA).

With less than a week before the parade kicks off, LA Local reporter LaMonica Peters sat down with Danny Bakewell Jr., president and executive editor of the LA Sentinel, to discuss the details and what attendees should expect.

This Jan. 12 interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Why did you decide to produce the MLK Day Parade this year?

Bakewell: It all started because Adrian Dove, who was the previous promoter, had announced that he was retiring. When he announced he was retiring, LAPD, city council offices and other people said, “Hey, we still want to do the MLK Day parade. Would you guys be interested? You have the infrastructure to put it together.” And we said yes.

What’s different about this year’s production?

We’re going to start the parade with a singer performing “Lift Every Voice.” We’re going to play the message from Bernice King at the start of the show. Obviously, we have Cedric the Entertainer as our grand marshal to add the entertainment value, but the community has always been and will continue to be a major part of this parade.

Is ABC 7 covering the parade this year? 

It’s still going to be televised by ABC. We’re working diligently on how the show is going to be, but ABC has been a great partner.

What was the preparation for this parade?

Thanks to our corporate sponsors, we have a number of bands. The truth is, particularly in LAUSD at this time, and other school districts, they don’t have the funding to just get a bus and get here. I can’t say enough about Airbnb to Bank of America, all of our corporate sponsors, who are supporting all of the youth organizations.

Were there any unexpected challenges while preparing for this parade? 

This [The LA Sentinel office on Crenshaw Blvd.] is usually our command center during The Taste of Soul. It dawned on me last week that we’re going to be a mile away [from the parade route]. So, we made the decision to bring in a trailer to be our office at the corner of King and Crenshaw boulevards.

Any special guests this year besides the grand marshal?

I’m working on a surprise guest to be the singer for the national anthem. No matter what, we will give tribute to the Black national anthem “Lift Every Voice” as loud as we can next Monday.

What’s the long-term vision for this parade, if Bakewell Media continues to produce it?

We see the MLK Day Parade, and we want the world to see and expect to see this parade, the same way they see the Macy’s Parade, the Hollywood Parade or the Rose Parade. BET has come in this year as a partner. So there’s an opportunity to possibly do a national broadcast on BET. Not that we would lose our local television, but we see this as a major parade in this community and in the national African American community, celebrating the great work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. So, we are very excited.

Bits of conversation drift out of Aladdin Used Books as people lined up at the register with stacks of books.

The bustle of activity is bittersweet as the Koreatown bookstore will close its doors at the end of January after 13 years in the neighborhood.

Jina Lee, store manager, said declining sales at the Koreatown branch led to the decision to close the store. In recent years, staffing at the 5,000-square-foot store on the third floor of Madang Mall dropped from six to two, Lee said.

“This was a happy place for everyone,” she said, “but we were struggling.”

On a recent January afternoon, the shop looked lively as customers took advantage of the clearance sale on Korean and English books, CDs, DVDs and other media.

Koreatown resident Jin Lee wishes he visited the bookstore more often.

“It would have been great if it had been this crowded all the time,” Lee said. “But nowadays, people don’t read paper books and prefer devices, so it’s hard for all bookstores.”

Some customers traveled from as far as Orange County and the Inland Empire to visit one last time.

Minjung Kim, who moved from Koreatown to Fullerton five years ago, still made trips to the bookstore after she moved away.

“It’s the only place that sells this many new and used Korean books,” she said.

Each visit to the bookstore was important to David Artiga of Pomona, because it gave him a chance to connect with friends over literature.

“I feel like this is really negative for the community,” he said. “The importance of having a well-versed society, keeping in touch with literature and art is so important. And now this place is just going to be gone.”

South Korea-based Aladdin Used Books opened its first U.S. brick-and-mortar store in Los Angeles in 2013. The store carries around 50,000 new and used books, with a majority in Korean.

Customers will still be able to order books through Aladdin’s website after the store closes.

Ken Derick, a Koreatown resident, walked around the store aisles with a stack of books.

“It’s like we’re kind of moving towards a new technology, like everything’s virtual and online,” he said.

Longtime customer Anthony Kim said he’s enjoyed looking for gems in the English-language shelves.

“My Korean ability is rather limited but I’ve always enjoyed browsing their English language sections,” he said. “And now that I have a niece and nephew, their children’s book section has always been a great place to pick up new books for them.”

Valerie Laguna perused the shop’s CD section, a bygone experience in the era of streaming.

“I really like their CD collection and their literature collection they have in English,” she said.

“I was so sad about it, I immediately texted my friend,” she said. “I’ve gotten so many of my favorite books and my favorite CDs from this place. I feel like losing a place like this is just so sad and makes a huge dent in the community and culture.”

Less than a mile away on Western Avenue, Happy Bookstore owner Jung Jae-seung said it has been difficult for bookstores for some time now. His Korean-language bookstore is also struggling in an era when so many people have abandoned print media.

“It’s really about how long printed books can survive,” Jung said. “From that point of view, it’s hard to be optimistic.”

South L.A. or South Central? More than 20 years ago, that question came with high emotions for some residents who were sick of the stereotypes they saw in media coverage of their neighborhoods.

So in 2003, the Los Angeles City Council renamed the collection of communities south of the 10 freeway in an attempt to cut ties with the connotations of poverty and crime that some believe came to represent South Central after the turbulence of the 1980s and ‘90s. Today, you see South L.A. on official documents, maps and even historical and cultural districts.

Even though city officials moved to wipe away the old name, some locals never stopped calling the area South Central — a name that for them represents history, resilience and Black and Latino culture.

“I think it will always be South Central for its residents and for the people that were born and raised here,” said Evelyn Alfaro-Macias, a social worker who was raised in Historic South Central and whose office is on Hoover Street. “It means home. It means culture. People should respect the name South Central.”

What and where is South LA, anyway?

By the early 2000s, television news and pop culture had given South Central a reputation for violence and chaos that some were eager to shake.

Helen Johnson, a resident of Vermont Square, helped lead the campaign to change the name.

“I think the media can make you or either break you,” 72-year-old Johnson told reporters in 2003 after the city council approved the name change, according to the L.A. Times. “This is what you’ve done to us. You’ve broke us.”

Supporters of the change included then-Councilmember Janice Hahn, who is now a county supervisor and said at the time that the South Central name had become “mostly derogatory.”

L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, who was working then as executive director of the nonprofit Community Coalition, said the area’s image problem wasn’t just about its name.

“If the media paid a little more attention to covering positive things in the community, that will also help,” Bass said, according to an L.A. Times report.

The LA Local has reached out Bass and Hahn’s offices, as well as L.A. City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson.

The exact borders of South Los Angeles, or the area formerly known as South Central, are fuzzy.

The South Central name originally only applied to the neighborhood around Central Avenue south of downtown Los Angeles, but it spread west as populations grew.

City planning documents today designate a strip of neighborhoods between Interstate 110 and Arlington Avenue as South Los Angeles and tag the Central Avenue neighborhood as Historic South Central. Others, including academics and the city tourism board, use a map of South Los Angeles that stretches to the border of Culver City.

This is what the community told us

Some businesses in the area adopted the South L.A. name, notably South LA Cafe, the coffee shop that has grown to five locations and become a local institution.

More recently, some groups have made a concerted effort to embrace South Central, like the South Central Run Club or South Central Clips, an Instagram-based group that sells skatewear-inspired “South Central” apparel. (Even South LA Cafe today sells some merch with the South Central name.)

Several locals told The LA Local the official designation never changed anything for them.

“It’s South Central for me. That’s where my roots are,” April Brown said. “When you go anywhere across the country, across the world and you say South Central, they know exactly what you’re talking about.”

To Emily Amador, the name change erases the history of South Central, including “the Black migration that occurred, redlining that created what we know today to be South Central and the demographics, which are here today, which is Black and brown and undocumented.”

Ulysses Alfaro, who was born and raised in the Historic South Central neighborhood, said he uses South L.A. with people from out of town but South Central with locals.

South L.A. is a geographic designator, he said, but he considers South Central to be an identity: “That’s where the grinders are, the hard-working people that work their butts off, their asses off. The ones that keep the city running.”