From the street, it may not look like much — a dusty lot with scattered pump jacks bobbing away for oil on the outskirts of Brea. But for Adam Navidi, one of Orange County’s most innovative restaurateurs, the land has been a prosperous field of agricultural dreams. Since 2009, Navidi has been leasing space near Lambert Road and Valencia Avenue to house Future Foods Farms, whose motto is “sustaining the planet one plate at a time.”
His farm’s products are used at his Yorba Linda restaurant, Oceans & Earth, and his catering business. Throughout this year, however, Future Foods has been winding down production. The farm will be displaced to make way for a future housing development. Though relocation has been delayed by the COVID-19 outbreak, Navidi plans to keep Future Foods in Orange County. “And we’re going to do it better this second time,” Navidi said.
Future Foods currently only takes up a small portion of its original 65 acres, though at its peak, Navidi maintained about 100,000 square feet of growing space spread out among a host of greenhouses and other enclosures. Within that was one of California’s largest and most successful aquaponics facilities. The greenhouses grew 30,000 to 40,000 heads of lettuce a month. Many styles of farming were used, including vertical, NFT (nutrient film technique), and flood and drain. They produced many varieties of tomatoes, herbs, vegetables and peppers.
Read more at LA Times (Bradley Zint)