ImPact Farms, Inc.

ImPact Farms, has a plan to develop underutilized property and building rooftops in South Los Angeles into Hydroponic/ Aquaponic Urban Farms. These high tech soilless Urban farms are capable of producing 10 to 20 times more produce per sq. ft. as compared to traditional soil farms. The increased yield is the result of an extended growing season, controlled environment and growing in three dimension and are essential to supporting investment in Urban Farms. As a triple-bottom-line Social Enterprise, ImPact Farms replaces outsourced manufacturing with agricultural technology while directly and indirectly supporting a potential of 30 local permanent, family-supportive-wage jobs per acre. At ImPact Farms, we define family-supportive-wage as the income required to support three people as established by the city of Los Angeles and then add health and other benefits. As a matter of policy, base wages will be adjusted for inflation using the US Census Cost of Living Index. In addition employees are eligible to participate in a profit sharing pool committed at 20% of Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization (EBITDA). ImPact Farms founders are committed to converting profit sharing into 40% employee ownership within 15 years, using the latest models, definitions, and ideas for ownership transfer and classifications from the Sustainable Economies Law Group (SELC) in their policy group's public comment for the proposed Worker Cooperative Statute to be put into the CA Corporations Codes. Although it is in the drafting process, we have included this to show Impact Farms' commitment to creating fair and meaningful worker ownership. Los Angeles, benefits from keeping more of our “food dollar” circulating in the Local economy. Meeting Los Angeles nutritional requirements locally by 2050 could retain as much as $10 billion annually representing over 90,000 permanent local jobs. Even community groups will benefit from profit sharing at 10% of EBITDA for nutritional, education and to fulfill other group defined quality of life objectives. ImPact Farms is able to sell its organic, locally grown, fresh and therefore highly nutritive vegetables, fruit and fish at an affordable rate in South LA community and offer the above mentioned benefits by selling its produce at a premium price in wealthier neighborhoods and bringing revenue and income back into the inner city. Our one day harvest to table direct delivery to households will be specially helpful to single-parent families and those who have no or limited access to transportation, saving them time from shopping they can use the time to prepare fresh food and enjoy quality time with family members. For example, to further ease access to fresh food, ImPact Farms in cooperation with LAUSD will provide CSA produce and eventually meals at school sites for parents to pick up when they pick up their children. Our goal is to create jobs that allow the community to build wealth and equity that will help create a middle class in the poorest neighborhoods of Los Angeles as opposed to creating many minimum-wage jobs that barely raise people above the poverty line. A middle class strata has the economic power to impact the real estate economy through home purchase and improvement, leading to higher property and income taxes that benefit the city and higher buying power that will bring more economic movement to the ancillary and surrounding businesses. ImPact Farms solution directly addresses Los Angeles existing income disparity.