The History of the Southern California Agricultural Land Foundation
In 1988, the state of California passed proposition 70 which allocated 776 million dollars for a statewide program to preserve open space for wildlife habitat, farming and park lands. San Bernardino County received 20 million dollars from this fund with which it purchased 350 acres of land. These properties were primarily operating dairies in close proximity to Chino Airport. SCALF was organized as a non-profit organization to manage these properties and oversee their evolution into open space crop farming. At the end of 2006, San Bernardino County ended its contract with SCALF and took over management of the properties. The SCALF board of directors, with the exception of Mr. Randy Bekendam, elected to resign and release operation of the non-profit organization to Mr. Bekendam.
Transfer of the non-profit was completed in Sept of 2008, and with a vision for promoting urban farming, Mr. Bekendam recruited a new board of directors. SCALF reconvened under new leadership in 2009 with a new mission of “providing agrarian solutions for urban sustainability”. The primary work of SCALF is assembling vacant urban properties into a land trust, preserving them in perpetuity for food production.
