L.A. exists as a microcosm displaying the best and worst facets of our country. Some of society’s largest blemishes are on full display in our city, alongside our beloved boundary-pushing artistry, harmonious culinary-cultural melding of different communities, and activism working to claim a better future for subsequent generations.
Attached to the city’s underbelly are regions that teeter on food desert status despite belonging to metropolitan L.A. and the fact that race remains a determining factor in the quality of healthcare and education doled out to Angelenos.
Black-owned businesses throughout the county have been combatting these issues, utilizing education and joy in tandem.
In God’s Hands (IGH) Gardens is a non-profit in Long Beach operating within the intersection of race, food, and homelessness. “It is our mission to provide educational services to the underserved communities . . . in the instruction of sustainable living from organically raised food,” they write on their website.
South Central-based SUPRMARKT, a community grocer aiming to end what they call “food apartheid,” is one of L.A.’s food activism giants, focusing on offering affordable fresh produce. They recently announced a temporary hiatus, but we have four more organizations for you to visit, whether that means attending a curated farmers market on wheels or visiting a local community garden event.
CROP SWAP LA
Sitting on the corner of a quiet street called Degnan is a home unlike any other. Rows of basins sit in the front yard growing vegetables like beets, carrots and leafy greens. Residents who drive by the house are often greeted by towering sunflower plants and Jamaiah Hargins himself, who calls out a friendly hello and invites them in.
Hargins transformed his entire front yard into an urban gardening space with raised plots of dirt bordering the property. Every Sunday from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., Hargins hosts a “Crop Swap” where locals can purchase fresh vegetables and have the comfort of knowing exactly where their food is coming from.
Crop Swap LA, a nonprofit organization founded by Hargins, focused on turning unused urban spaces like his front yard into a small sustainable microfarm. He was originally inspired to grow food when he became a father, wanting to provide only the healthiest options to feed his family. Over time, that motivation changed.
“Now my motivation is about justice and revenge. I want to take revenge on a system that’s harmful and overly priced and disruptive to everyone it touches,” Hargins tells L.A. TACO. “We’ve been put in this corner to have to pay so much and work so hard to be poisoned so much.”
The front yard of the corner residential house is just one of the many locations that have these microfarms, with others existing in schools, churches or even other homes. The food from his home feeds over 60 families through a membership service that delivers fresh groceries to their doorsteps.
The organization also works with experts to host workshops for community members willing to learn how to turn their own underutilized spaces into small gardens. Hargins aims for food to be clean and accessible to everyone, like community members Armani and Chidubem Lee, who were eager to learn more from him.
“These are people who are just happy to see something growing in their neighborhood and this is beautiful,” Lee tells L.A. TACO. “It brings community together, it’s very healthy for community building.”
Crop Swap LA ~ 3753 Degnan Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90018
PROSPERITY MARKET
Prosperity Market moves across Los Angeles on wheels, setting up in different neighborhoods to bring fresh produce and Black-owned food businesses directly into communities that have long faced limited access to healthy groceries. Instead of relying on a fixed storefront, the mobile farmers market meets people where they are, turning pop-ups, parking lots, and community spaces into temporary hubs for food access and local commerce.
The market was founded by Carmen Dianne and Kara Still, former Hollywood makeup artist and fashion designer. It grew out of the COVID-19 pandemic, when they saw how quickly food insecurity and economic instability deepened across Black communities. In response, they created a model centered on food as both necessity and economic opportunity, designed to support farmers, small businesses, and families at the same time.
At the core of Prosperity Market is the belief that food access and economic stability are directly connected. “We believe the first step in addressing any systemic constraints is to strengthen our economy, and what better way to do so than with the very thing we all need for health and survival? Food!” they say on their website.
That mission continues through its community activations, including its May collaboration with TMC Community Capital in South Central Los Angeles for “Run Your Business,” a community 5K focused on entrepreneurship, movement, and local economic empowerment. The event brought together residents, small business owners, and community leaders for a non-timed run, alongside a vendor marketplace featuring local businesses and food offerings.
Check out their Instagram to know where they’re heading next.
IMANI GARDENS
Darin Imani Diggs can often be found outdoors in a parking lot, standing among boxes filled with organic produce. Diggs and the rest of his team stand outside of Imani Gardens—a collective-style Black grocer—wielding large machetes and slicing fresh watermelons and coconuts.
Imani Gardens is the product of Diggs’ efforts to heal himself. In an interview with L.A. TACO, Diggs, the CEO and founder, explains food played a huge role in improving his health. He says gardening and understanding food forces helped him get his health back on track.
Quickly, Diggs realized he was not the only one facing a lack of knowledge and a lack of access to organic foods. Taking from his own experiences, he set out to create a space that can provide comfort to community members struggling with and in distress over health issues. “If I'm spending all this time and energy just to heal myself, let me make this easier for our community,” he says.
The team travels all across California to source the freshest foods from a network of Black farmers prioritizing organic produce. Mangos, seeded grapes, oranges, and soursops are all part of a long list of produce Imani Gardens offers, depending on the harvest season.
Diggs explains that they operate on a holistic approach. Aside from produce, the store also offers cold-pressed juices and smoothies and features an in-house chef offering cooked vegan meals.
“We’re not just selling fruit, we're not just giving you something that’s good quality. We're selling you a culture,” Diggs tells L.A. TACO. That culture is built on the belief that addressing a gap in knowledge and providing quality food can “increase the longevity of mankind.”
While the storefront offers a convenient and localized hub for community members to discover Imani Gardens, the business aims to bring produce to everyone across L.A. with regularly scheduled pop-ups. On Saturdays they make their way to Woodland Hills and on Sundays they set up shop in Leimert Park. As their network has grown, they’ve also found the time and space for pop-ups in Oakland and Las Vegas.
Imani Gardens is on a mission to end food-deserts and empower communities with agricultural knowledge.
Imani Gardens ~ 7701 Crenshaw Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90043
HERB N’ SOUND
Tahj Lakey grew up in South L.A., studied ethnicity, race, and migration at Yale, and returned to L.A. to launch Herb N’ Sound—an organization focused on bringing wellness, agricultural knowledge, and music to communities throughout the county.
Herb N’ Sound first came to fruition in March 2025, collaborating with the Pomona-based Sarvodaya Farms to celebrate their ten-year anniversary through a music and wellness festival. Lakey had completed an urban farming program at Sarvodaya and was also one of the festival’s featured performers, showing his talents go far beyond the soil.
Lakey said that his inspiration for Herb N’ Sound largely grew from feats of culinary justice like the Black Panther Party’s “Free Breakfast for Children” program and Cooperation Jackson, a Mississippi-based organization.
“[Cooperation Jackson] basically [has] this kind of closed loop of a farm, a restaurant, a recycling and waste facility, but they kind of built this complex around the ideas of Black self-determination,” Lakey says. “Just understanding the means of production, means of representation are extremely important for self-determination, for community uplift, for liberation, but they also don't run an exclusionary program, right? It's like prioritizing the Black experience, but everyone has access to it, as long as you're willing to buy into the idea of cooperative economics.”
Lakey tells L.A. TACO that his initial purpose of establishing Herb N’ Sound was to “bring Black and Brown folks to community gardens” and offer musical entertainment, but the mission began shifting to “inclusive economic development and creating impact programming” soon after launching.
In April 2026, Lakey brought the first installment of the Herb N’ Supper series to life with the help of Compton College Farmers’ Market and Food Access LA. The free event consisted of group yoga followed by a live cooking demo by Chef Angelina Torres aka Ebony Vegan (who cooked with ingredients from the featured market), underlined by a set from DJ g.rola.
“There's an opportunity to support food access organizations, whether that be urban farms, community gardens, or just organizations that are in the food access space, while also creating opportunities for education for community members,” Lakey says.
Check out future events on Herb N’ Sound’s Instagram.
