Scott Berndt

Fox Farm

Riverside, CA

Riverside Corona Resource Conservation District

Scott Berndt farms a 2.5-acre urban farm in Riverside, CA called Fox Farm. His operation includes one-half acre of row vegetables and 130 mixed fruit trees. In addition to being an urban farmer, Bermdt is the Food Hub manager for Riverside Unified School District and serves on the following boards: Riverside Food Cooperative, Riverside Food Systems Alliance, and California Alliance of Family Farms. Berndt is also a healthy soils technical assistance provider for the CDFA healthy soils program.

Fox Farm is a CDFA healthy soils grant recipient, and over the past seven years, Berndt has added 2,000 tons of compost to improve the soil structure and reduce water use. Twenty percent of the cost of this compost was funded through the CDFA healthy soils program.

With the successful use of compost on Fox Farm, Berndt has assisted an additional seven local farms in writing successful healthy soils grants. Some of the challenges local farmers struggle with, however, is installing the compost due to the lack of equipment and/or labor to spread the compost.

Fox Farm is also a recipient of a CDFA Farm to School grant which will fund a tool library and utilize the greenhouse to grow low-cost trays of vegetable transplants for farmers that grow produce for the Riverside Unified School District Food Hub.  The tool library will include seeders and a BCS tractor with attachments including a compost spreader.

The biggest challenge Berndt sees is a lack of awareness on the importance of healthy soils and the role it can play in mitigating climate change. Many of the local farmers are older farmers who are not open to regenerative farming practices.

Posted April 2023