Solving Food Deserts

It began with a fight. Two women in a local liquor store both looking for the last food available in town. This isn’t fiction. It actually happened in 2018 after Summerland, CA was cut off from the world after the devastating Montecito and Carpinteria debris flows isolated the town from neighboring areas. Summerland’s 1600 residents had no potable water, no gas in some areas, no internet, no phone or cell phone service, no newspapers or news - but all of that paled in comparison to not having a grocery store.

Sweet Wheel Farms was born from the story from one of the fighters who won “the last stale sandwich in town.” “What was I supposed to do?” she asked. “I have three children,” she explained.

Once we started an organic food cart, the next step was to make sure it was available and ecologically sustainable. The best way to insure food security is to farm in the same urban area the food is consumed. We are farming around an hour and a half away. After signing a lease with for just under seven acres for the last available open farm space in Summerland, the Santa Barbara Agriculture and Farm Education Foundation was born to try to save the land from development and ensure a local sustainable and emergency food supply.