As a lifelong Malibu farmer, I have personally represented my farm and our Malibu community at scores of farmers market appearances in the Southland, and have supervised hundreds more done by farm interns and volunteers. This Malibu farm grows a far wider range of both fruit and vegetables than most. It has its own heritage processed food line made exclusively with its own fresh harvested food. Its beehives produce what is widely considered to be the very best local, raw, wild honey available. In recent years, it has hosted well over 300 field trips, farm tours, and volunteer groups including two years of weekly third grade organic planting seminars in conjunction with the Santa Monica/Malibu Unified School District. Groups of organic farmers come from all over the world to visit this farm to see how we do the drill in Malibu!
This being the case, for four years the consistent and firm message from the farmers’ market management in my own community, to this and some other farms, has been “not to come.” We all know at the gut level that whoever operates a farmers’ market in Malibu has a responsibility to include our Malibu farmers. This situation is out of line, especially for any organization receiving sincere aid from our community on the basis of helping our community farmers.
Malibu is many times more agriculturally abundant than one would suspect by looking at the current farmers’ market. The current market has no root in our Malibu earth. Let’s clear the field and allow a management that will reverently root our market in the thick, vital, black adobe clay soil of real Malibu agriculture, and serve this community with mission, eyes ablaze. Let’s once and for all welcome all of our Malibu farmers and proudly display all the rich, diverse, heady and outrageous Malibu agricultural abundance we have. This is Malibu, and like it or not, we will always be on stage for our national and world communities. Therefore, I challenge us all to see with new, inclusive eyes as we aspire to become a premier and gracious exemplar of real community agriculture for generations to come.
Alan George Cunningham
Vital Zuman Organic Farm