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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Courtesy Plenty

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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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LAist

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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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Courtesy Plenty

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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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Courtesy Plenty

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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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Courtesy Plenty

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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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Courtesy Plenty

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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 of Plenty

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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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Courtesy Plenty

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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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Erin Stone

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LAist

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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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Courtesy Plenty

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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.”

The $360 million effort to turn Exposition Park’s largest parking lots into green space won’t be completed in time for the 2028 Olympics.

State leaders announced the multi-million dollar investment into the park in 2024, planning to prep the park for an Olympic close-up by replacing the warren of asphalt lots on Expo Park’s southern edge with an underground lot and green park land.

Now park officials say the 6-acre project now won’t break ground until 2028, after the Olympic torch is extinguished.

Expo Park and the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum will be a centerpiece of L.A.’s Olympic image in the summer of 2028. But for residents of the surrounding South L.A. neighborhoods, the park and its facilities help fill a serious need for recreation and green space.

Andrea Ambriz, general manager of the state-run park, said the park hasn’t had an investment of this kind since the 1984 Olympic Games, but that the inspiration and funding for the park project go beyond the 2028 games.

“Whatever we do now is intended in full to support the community. It’s not just for these games,” Ambriz said.

Ambriz said park officials hit pause on project planning after realizing it would not be completed before the Olympics.

State leaders are still angling to get at least some of the park freshened up in time for the Olympics, with officials announcing in January that Gov. Gavin Newsom planned to earmark $96.5 million in proposed funds for renovations in the park.

The funding, according to the governor’s proposed budget, will be used for “critical deferred maintenance” to meet code compliance and accessibility requirements.

Ambriz said the lion’s share of the money will go to rehabbing roadways, sidewalks and ramps throughout the park to ensure safe pedestrian and vehicle access.

“This is a part of what we know we need,” Ambriz said. “It is a really significant downpayment from the state.”

How will the park affect the neighborhood? 

John Noyola is a 42-year resident of the Exposition Park neighborhood who sits on the North Area Neighborhood Development Council. For him, any major overhaul of the park still feels like an abstract concept.

He’s seen news reports about the proposed changes, but heard little more.

“It hasn’t really affected us or the community,” Noyola said.

The 150-year-old Expo Park has one of the densest collections of cultural institutions in Los Angeles, said Esther Margulies, a professor of landscape architecture just across the street from the park at USC.

Four museums, including the under-construction Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, will soon share the park with the BMO Stadium and the Coliseum.

Margulies said Grand Park, in downtown Los Angeles, has begun to fill a role as a “living room for the city” in recent years, but that Expo Park is falling short of its potential.

“People should see Expo Park as a place to begin their journey of visiting Southern California and Los Angeles,” Margulies said. “This is where you should come and there should be this energy of, like, ‘Wow!’”

Changing Expo Park, Margulies said, starts with building a space that serves its community.

In its current design, the park’s best-kept green spaces sit behind the fences of its museums, Margulies said, and large asphalt expanses act as heat sinks. Major events often come at the community’s expense.

“There’s tailgating, day drinking in the park,” Margulies said. “People don’t come to the park on those days.”

Noyola, the Expo Park resident, said his family and others in the community frequent the park recreation center, pools and fields near the intersection of Vermont Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. He worries that construction could block parking or other access to the park spaces that are available.

He remains wary of the unintended consequences of a park remodel, especially after watching traffic spike in Inglewood when SoFi Stadium and the Intuit Dome were built.

“It would be nice,” Noyola said of the remodel. “Looking at the greater vision of LA 28, it’s needed. But at what cost?”

Southern California is in for a wet week, with the potential for what the weather service is calling "widespread" impacts.

Ahead of the heavy rain, L.A. Mayor Karen Bass has issued an evacuation warning for the Palisades, Sunset and Hurst burn scar areas due to the potential for mud and debris flows.

The warning is in effect from 9 p.m. on Sunday until 9 a.m. on Tuesday.

Storm details

When is the rain coming?

Rain is expected to arrive in Ventura and Los Angeles counties Sunday night, according to the National Weather Service.

When is the rain heaviest?

Weather forecast this week for Southern California.

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Courtesy NWS

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Moderate to heavy rain is expected early Monday, with significant snow and damaging winds starting at about 3 a.m. Heaviest impacts, including the possibility of widespread flooding and thunderstorms, are expected to last until around 9 p.m.

Rain continues all week

Light rain is expected to continue Tuesday through Friday.

Upcoming weather alerts for L.A.

• A Flood Watch will go into effect on Monday, from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.
• A Wind Advisory will go into effect Monday, from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.
• A High Surf Advisory will go into effect Monday at 10 a.m. through Thursday, Feb. 19 at 9 a.m. for the Pacific Palisades, Playa del Rey, San Pedro and Port of Los Angeles areas. Angelenos are encouraged to avoid the ocean.
• A Gale Watch, which includes sustained surface winds near coastal areas, will go into effect Monday from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. for all inner waters near the Pacific Palisades, Playa del Rey, San Pedro and Port of Los Angeles areas. Angelenos are encouraged to avoid boating until the weather is calmer.

Today, millions of Angelenos use the Central Library downtown (which turns 100 this year) and over 70 branch locations to access the Los Angeles Public Library’s collection of over 8 million books.

But this juggernaut wasn’t created overnight. What started with just 750 books in 1872 was transformed in part because of city librarian Everett Perry, a visionary who wanted books to be easy to access. Here’s a look at how his influence can still be felt today.

A library in disarray 

Perry got the job as top librarian in L.A. after working at the New York Public Library, which opened a main building during his tenure. He was accustomed to growth.

But when he arrived in 1911, the Los Angeles Public Library was struggling. With no permanent location, it had moved several times into different rented spaces, the most recent being in the Hamburger's Department Store, where patrons had to ride an elevator to check out books in between women’s clothes and furniture.

Perry aired his grievances in a 1912 library report.

Everett Robbins Perry in 1911.

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Witzel Photo

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Los Angeles Public Library Institutional Collection

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“The modern library aims to be a vital force in a community,” he wrote. “It can not perform this function, if its usefulness is limited by an inaccessible location.”

This is an early look into his ethos as librarian. Perry was part of a progressive crop of librarians, whose ideas were shifting about how books should be stored and used by the public.

His goal was to create a library system focused on great service and that rivaled the very best on the East Coast. With others, he pushed for a central library to be built, funded by a $2 million bond measure. Voters passed that in the 1920s, which led to the creation of the impressive Art Deco building that still stands downtown.

But what was perhaps even more impressive was how he infused the building with novel ideas about how to make reading more accessible.

One key example was his decision to set up subject departments. For decades prior, libraries stored books on fixed shelves (these couldn’t be adjusted), so they were usually sorted by size or acquisition date. Libraries had only recently moved to the not-very-user-friendly Dewey decimal system.

By grouping books under subjects, Perry made it much easier for people to find what they wanted. His idea was so successful that it eventually spread to other libraries across the country.

Another innovation was where you could read the books. Perry put the circulation and card catalog area in the center of the floor, which was surrounded by book stacks and reading rooms along the edges. That meant they were next to the windows and full of natural light, which according to LAPL, wasn’t customary at the time.

The reference room of the Main Library, seen circa 1913, was in an enclosed section on the third floor of the Hamburger Building, a department store.

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Los Angeles Public Library Institutional Collection

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Building a teaching program

Perry earned a reputation as a fair, iron-fist leader who wanted top-notch library practices.

He issued a rulebook for staff that covered everything from the janitor’s responsibility to make brooms last longer to requiring librarians to go with patrons to find books.

But Perry’s legacy also includes the next generation of librarians. In 1914, he revamped an aging LAPL librarian training program into a full-fledged, accredited library school that was known as the best in California.

Artist Dean Cornwell, left, shows his proposal for the Central Library rotunda murals to city librarian Everett Perry sometime in the 1920s.

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Los Angeles Public Library Institutional Collection

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The history department at the Central Library in 1926. This was one of the largest reading rooms of the library.

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Mott Studios

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Los Angeles Public Library Legacy Collection

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He aimed to professionalize librarianship by encouraging men to apply (it had commonly been women), urging all applicants to have at least some college-level education, and creating a formal internship program. The program covered technical librarian skills, as well new coursework that compared how other libraries functioned across the country.

Perry served for over two decades until his death in 1933.

His achievements were numerous. Aside from getting the Central Library built, he grew the staff from 98 to 600, helped the 200,000-book collection balloon to 1.5 million, and added dozens of more branch libraries.

In 2018 he was inducted into the California Library Hall of Fame.

Federal immigration agents have left a U.S. Coast Guard facility that's been a key staging area for them in the Port of L.A., according to U.S. Rep. Nanette Barragan who represents the area.

Since last summer, agents have been using the base on Terminal Island as a launch point for operations.

In a statement to LAist, Barragan, a Democrat, says she confirmed with the Coast Guard last night that Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol have vacated the base. She says it's unclear at this time whether the move is permanent or if agents are moving to another location in L.A. County.

Local officials and community groups are celebrating the agents' departure from Terminal Island. Volunteers with the Harbor Area Peace Patrols have been monitoring agent activity for months, tracking vehicles and sharing information with advocacy networks.

Earlier this week, the group said it received reports of the department.