The Arcadia Center for Sustainable Food and Agriculture, located near the Mount Vernon estate, planted 72 fruit trees and plants at the center in partnership with vitafusion, a national vitamin company and the Fruit Tree Planting Foundation.
Arcadia grows vegetables on the historic farm, selling them at affordable prices from their Mobile Markets in low food access neighborhoods. The trees will provide nutrition and benefit market customers.
The farm, at 9000 Richmond Hwy., is also home to a USDA-backed training program for military veterans who want to become farmers; the orchard will expand and deepen their year-long training program, as well as provide food for Arcadia's Mobile Markets and enrich its field trip and farm camp programs for local school children.
The Fruit Tree Planting Foundation, an award-winning international charity and vitafusion Gummy Vitamins, have partnered since 2017 with a goal to plant 200,000 fruit trees by 2020 in areas around the world that need it most and are weeks away from reaching their goal.
These fruit trees will generate 28 million pieces of fruit, 33 million pounds of oxygen and eliminate 40 million pounds of CO2 from the air each year, Arcadia noted.