About Our Projects
Food Justice means ensuring everyone has equal access to food that is culturally significant, nutritious, affordable, and dignified. Everyone involved in the food system is treated fairly, compensated justly, and their voices are heard. Lastly, it means a food ecosystem that honors natural ecosystems, maintains clean waterways, regenerates soil food webs, and works to reduce emissions that pollute our air.
LVEJO’s food justice work is the result of more than 20 years of community organizing to remediate former industrial and contaminated sites and return land to community use. In Little Village, a neighborhood with some of the least green space per capita in Chicago, that land now grows food for residents and serves as a hub for community life.
LVEJO stewards two growing spaces totaling nearly three acres, both reclaimed from contamination through resident-led organizing. These spaces are the result of a just transition, away from harmful industry and towards regenerative community-led spaces.
La Villita Farm
La Villita Farm is a 1.3-acre organic production farm located at La Villita Park, 31st Street and Albany Avenue. The farm sits on the former Celotex Superfund site, contaminated land that LVEJO and Little Village residents spent 15 years fighting to remediate and return to community use. That campaign resulted in La Villita Park, the largest Superfund-to-park conversion in a major American city.
In 2018, LVEJO signed a land-use agreement with the Chicago Park District to steward land on the northern and southern ends of La Villita Park. In 2022, La Villita Farm opened its first growing season on the southern end as a production and demonstration farm.
La Villita Farm grows food for Little Village families and mutual aid programs. Our approach is rooted in agroecological and sustainable practices that honor the land, the people who tend it, and the ecosystems that sustain us all. Since opening in 2022, the Farm has produced and distributed more than 25,000 pounds of produce, including weekly home deliveries to more than 50 families.
La Villita Farm operates in partnership with Lincoln Park Zoo, Openlands, Illinois Extension, Advocates for Urban Agriculture, Daze of Autonomy Solar LLC, Cedillo’s Fresh Produce, Grow Greater Englewood, Chicago Food Policy Action Council, and Greater Chicago Food Depository.
The farm welcomes individual volunteers and group experiences from elementary and secondary schools, universities, non-profits, and businesses. Activities include seeding, transplanting, weeding, harvesting, and supporting food distributions. Join us in the field!
Semillas de Justicia Garden
Semillas de Justicia is a ½ -acre community garden at 2727 S. Troy Street. The site operated as an industrial facility for decades before sitting abandoned and contaminated. When neighbors reported a strong oil smell and discovered the fenceless site was being used to dump oil barrels, LVEJO organized with Troy Street residents to demand cleanup and transform the land into community green space. Remediation was completed in 2011 and LVEJO assumed stewardship in 2013.
Today Semillas de Justicia is home to more than 60 families with their own garden plots, growing vegetables, fruits, legumes, flowers, and culturally relevant foods. Our approach is rooted in intergenerational exchange, with master gardeners supporting families in sustainable and organic growing practices. Families have ownership of their plots and are free to grow what is meaningful to them. The garden also raises chickens, distributing eggs to community members throughout the season.
Semillas de Justicia is also a gathering place for the neighborhood. Programming includes community potlucks, cultural programming, a fall harvest festival, and educational workshops on sustainability and climate. It is also a stop on LVEJO’s Toxic Tours.
In 2025, the garden grew 6,160 pounds of food and distributed more than 150 dozen eggs and 278 bags of free produce to community members.
Interested in becoming a Semillas gardener or volunteering at the garden? We are also accepting chickens! Please contact sruiz@lvejo.org.
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