About
CRECE Urban Farms is committed to building a local food system through democratic stewardship of land and life-giving workspaces that nourish our bodies, mind, and spirit
Our Story
In 2016, CRECE emerged out of a vision to confront food apartheid in our neighborhoods so that Santa Ana’s working families could enjoy a better quality of life by strengthening and healing our relationships to land, food, and each other.
CRECE formed to bridge the gap between the food justice and food sovereignty movements by empowering local producers to thrive and ensure that locally grown organic food could be accessed by community members who need it the most. CRECE uses the term ‘food apartheid’ over the more popular ‘food desert’ out of an acknowledgement that the City of Santa Ana, like many other BIPOC communities, has been and continues to be developed across racial and socioeconomic lines with the poorest food options being concentrated in neighborhoods where people of color live with little to no opportunities for meaningful participation in community development efforts. It’s our conviction to overturn this historic wrong by building critical community designed and implemented infrastructure that can lead to long-term community wealth– economic, social, and environmental.
CRECE acknowledges the Achjachemen and Tongva peoples as the original caretakers of the lands where Santa Ana and greater Orange County now reside. Since 2016, La Granjita has been at the center of CRECE’s development. This ⅓ acre urban farm is small but mighty and has provided space to heal, gather, organize, mobilize, train, revitalize cultural practices, farm, and compost. La Granjita micro-farm has become an intergenerational community space where children, young adults, and older generations make meaningful connections to the land, their food, and one another. As the stewards of this fertile and nurturing community space, we invite you to visit the La Granjita.
La Granjita
cultivar la tierra es cultivar la liberación.
cultivar la tierra es cultivar la liberación.
Why Just Transition?
“Just Transition is a principle, a process, and a practice. The principle of just transition is that a healthy economy and a clean environment can and should co-exist. The process for achieving this vision should be a fair one that should not cost workers or community residents their health, environment, jobs, or economic assets. Any losses should be fairly compensated. And the practice of just transition means that the people who are most affected by pollution — the frontline workers and fence-line communities — should be in the leadership of crafting policy solutions.”
- JUST TRANSITION ALLIANCE
Our Values
CRECE is rooted in food sovereignty and cooperative principles
Cooperative Economy
Ecological Sustainability
Equity
Food Sovereignty
Knowledge Sharing
Culture