South Central Farm
former urban farm in Los Angeles
The South Central Farm, also known as the South Central Community Garden, was an urban farm and community garden located at East 41st and South Alameda Streets, in an industrial area of South Los Angeles, California, (known as South Central Los Angeles) which was in operation between 1994 and 2006. At 14 acres (5.7 ha), it was considered one of the largest urban farms in the United States. The farm was sold in 2004, and the farmers were evicted in 2006. On July 5, 2006, workers began bulldozing the farm amidst strong protest and acts of civil disobedience. The farmers disputed the validity of the sale in court and staged vigils in protest. The farm is the subject of the 2008 Academy Award-nominated documentary film The Garden and the PBS documentary, South Central Farm, Oasis in a Concrete Desert.
History
Before the creation of the garden, the land belonged to nine different owners, the largest of which was Alameda-Barbara Investment Company, a real-estate firm which purchased its share in 1980. The company held 80% of the property that would become the urban garden. The City of Los Angeles acquired the land by eminent domain in 1986, for the purpose of building a waste-to-energy facility known as the Los Angeles City Energy Recovery Project (LANCER). The city paid $4,786,372 for the property.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “South Central Farm” is former urban farm in Los Angeles. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through South, Central and Farm, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “former urban farm in Los Angeles” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5105428. The first chronological checks are 1994, 2006, 2004 and 2008.
A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “South Central Farm”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow South Central Farm primary sources, South Central Farm archive and South research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “South Central Farm”?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
- Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “South Central Farm” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.