October 28, 2020 • 38 mins
In the age of free two-day shipping and groceries on demand, it may still be shocking to know that many low-income residents of cities still suffer from a scarcity of affordable or quality fresh food. These are food deserts, and they still exist in thralling metropolises like New York City and Atlanta. Host Mangesh Hattikudur speaks to growers and organizations who are growing for good. These are community members and outsiders who introduce sustainable gardening solutions to help communities gain access to fresh produce and healthy foods. In this episode, Mango checks in with Kamal Bell, founder of Sankofa Farms, and Gary Oppenheimer, founder of AmpleHarvest.Org, and learns about what they've been doing to combat food apartheid.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
When I was a kid, I used to read a
lot of science magazines three to one, Contact pop side
Popular Mechanics, and I like them because I love to
look at the inventions. I genuinely wanted to know what
the future would look like. And sometimes the ideas were funny,
like one scientist decided peanut butter and jelly sandwiches were
(00:23):
too hard to make, so he invented individual jelly slices
that you could lay onto the bread instead of spreading it,
kind of like craft singles, and I have yet to
see those in the real world. Some of the inventions
were ingenious, like what if you could take your sunscreen
in a pill instead of having to deal with applying it?
(00:43):
And sometimes well, there were things I still think about,
like the idea of vertical farms. What if you could
grow entire farms inside skyscrapers and rotate the crops to
face the sun. And what if these skyscraper farms were
in cities so you could reduce the distance to get
all this fresh food to people. It's kind of incredible,
(01:06):
right In some ways, vertical farms are like robot butlers
and jet packs, these things science magazines and the jetsons
told us about inventions that feel like they should be
just around the corner to solve all our problems. But
what if we don't have time to wait. According to
the U s d A, about twenty three point five
(01:29):
million people live in food deserts today. Those are areas
where it's difficult or impossible to access affordable, healthy food options,
and it's no surprise that nearly half of these food
deserts are in low income areas, as well, areas where
grocery stores don't think they can make a profit, so
(01:49):
people are forced to make do with what's available. They
eat fast food or junk food because that's what's near,
which leads to all sorts of health complications. It's a cycle,
and it is depressing. But there are things we can
do right now. It turns out growing your own food
is one of the most promising solutions. We don't often
(02:12):
think of gardening as a path to self reliance, but growing,
whether that's part of a community garden or even in
your own backyard, allows people to eat healthier, disrupt a
broken system, and meet their own food demands. And along
the way, it should make for happier and healthier communities too. Hey,
(02:35):
there I'm Mongais Articular, a co host of Part Time Genius,
one of the co founders of Mental Flaws. And this
is Humans Growing Stuff, a collaboration from my Heart Radio
and your friends at Miracle Grow. My goal is to
make this the most human show about plants you'll ever
listen to, and along the way, we'll share sweet, inspiring stories,
(02:57):
tips and tricks to nurture your plant addiction, and just
enough science to make you sound like an expert. In
today's episode, we're going to explore the issues surrounding food
deserts and the bootstrapped community builders and leaders who are
working on growing solutions to eliminate food insecurity. Chapter six,
(03:21):
Can growing food Grow Freedom? The truth is, food deserts
aren't a new phenomena. Years ago, I was driving into Wilmington,
Delaware to pick up a friend from the train station.
I actually went to elementary school in Wilmington's My school
buzz used to take me along this same route. But
before I picked up my friend, I needed to run
(03:43):
into a grocery store, so I stopped by this familiar chain.
But what I saw inside was dismal. I remember being
struck by how sad the offerings were the shelves were
barely stocked, the produce was meager and old, and for me,
the experience was jarring. This felt like the flimsiest excuse
(04:06):
for a grocery store, and there really weren't other options around.
Of course, this isn't a problem that's unique to Wilmington's.
All over the country you can find areas that are
flush with grocery stores. They have aisles upon aisles of
fresh produce, and then on the other side of town
you can pass through neighborhoods with a single poorly stocked store,
(04:28):
or sometimes areas where they're just dollar stores or corner
stores as replacements. So I've been wondering what's being done
to change or combat this issue. Kamal Bell is on
the front lines of fighting food deserts. Easy teacher and
the founder of Sankofa Farms in North Carolina, just outside
of Derham. The farm is focused on serving those in
(04:50):
the Grham and Orange County urban areas that are effectively
food deserts. Each week, Kamal and his team delivered dehydrated chips,
farm fresh egg, and honey, all made for the bounty
of his farm and his bee hives. Additionally, Kamal has
made it his personal mission to teach students in these
areas stem and agriculture to set them up for success
(05:12):
and the nutrient rich future where they can grow their
food not only for themselves but for their communities. I
called up Kamal to hear more about his journey with
Sankofa and how he seemed to change in the communities
he serves, especially when they have access to healthy foods. Hey, Comal, Hey,
(05:33):
how are you doing doing well? First things first, I
want to hear how you got into farming. All right,
So I was on track to be a veterinarian and
I was sitting in class one day and this dawned
on me. It was like, what are you gonna do
with this? That really serves people, and that serves you
and me and my wife we will find out we
were having our first son. So I was thinking about
(05:56):
what could we do to always support him, like no
matter what happened, whether we were unemployed, whether we employed,
if something goes wrong, and how can we always make
sure this young man is taken care of? And farming
dawned on me. And also at this time, I was
working on my masters. I was studying these things called
food deserts, and I'm thinking about what's the common thread
(06:19):
that connects everything and farming was that thing? And what
sort of gave you the confidence that you could grow
stuff and and be a farmer? That's a great question, Like,
that's a great question. Not a lot of people ask
me that. So the what gave what drives me to
do that is one. I feel like I'm really helping
my community. I'm curious. Santo actually has a few meanings, right, Okay,
(06:41):
can can you talk about the alternate meetings of it? Yes?
So sant cofa also means to go back and get it.
So it comes out of the Aconn language in West Africa,
and it's symbolic or represented by a mythical bird. And
as it's moving forward, its head is turned backward. If
we want to fixed problems in today's time, we have
(07:03):
to look back in our ancestry, in our history to
be able to attack these issues. Saying kofa came up
when I learned about these food deserts, and I was
just like, how can we get people food? If we're
trying to get people food, of course we need more
people to produce food. Um, there's also allocation issue that
goes into the whole making of the food desert. But
(07:23):
for me, like what I felt like I can really
impact was the growing of the food. At first, I
started out selling dehydrat and chips. I have a commercial
dehydrot like fifty ft away from me in my garage
that we used to use. And the whole idea behind
that was to get people who were living in food
deserts and affected by food and security healthier food. So
we should dehydra apples, pineapples, kale, mangoes, cinnamon, apples, bananas.
(07:46):
We used to make all these products and get them
to people who are affected our food and secure areas.
And for me, East Greensboro is a food desert through
and through, but in West Greensboro you had a more
fluid side of the the town. You have like this overabundance
of healthy food white you have food stops everywhere. But
we were able to streamline the leverage that we had
(08:08):
created with the dehydrant chips, and then that led us
into getting the farm. I know you spent a lot
of time delivering food to various communities and groups. Can
you talking a little bit about the diversity of groups
that you're passing food along too. So there's an organization
called Root Causes that works with Farmer Food's a food
distribution uh, it's a cook in Derhm and they get
(08:29):
food to people who have been recommended by the doctor.
And I like the food we really fresh, so like
I'll go to the extra mile to make sure it's
like far Fresh is not as it hasn't been sent
for a couple of hours. I'll go wake up at
around five thirty, get there around six thirty tomorrow morning.
So jobs to the farm. Harvest Food had that dropped
off by nine thirty, and then they distributed it in
(08:51):
their bags like it's part of a larger system. They
send bags of healthy produce to people. It's just been
really cool to work with organizations that can do the
handom distribution aspect. It's just it's just really cool. It's
just really cool. There's a teaching component the story. It
involves you being at a public school and R Yes,
I actually drew up this idea of the farm and
(09:12):
took to the principle because I was teaching agriculture at
the school. And the students will gravitate towards the work
and they will also change their behavior. So I saw
that introducing them to agriculture gave them a foundation outside
the classroom, and that's I think that's what we want
education to do. Like it just can't be useful in
the school. So I literally took them out to the
farm and two of the students, one of them, his
(09:33):
birthday is actually today. His name is Kamani. I have
a birthday Comini. He'll be listening to this at some point,
having another student, Cameron, whose birthday was last week. They
actually have stayed with the program from its inception all
the way until now. So it's been really cool to
see their growth and see their knowledge based growth, and
then see them be able to say, hey, yo, i
am in this food instant care area, but I'm in
(09:55):
this place where I have access to fresh food because
I know how to do it and how to grow it,
and I can take it home with me. I'm curious,
just as we get into food deserts, how would you
define the food desert. That's a great question, um, because
terminology can be use it gets people to confuse them.
I just define it as a place where you don't
(10:16):
have access to healthy food. So it gets tricky because
the U s A has definition and then people saying
not food desert, it's like a food apart tide. I
hear all that, but I might look the reality is
people want to eat healthy and don't have access to it.
And in economics goes into it because you look at cars,
(10:36):
like some people might not have cars to to drive
from the store. Then you look at how the city
is drawing out like city planet, goes into it. Um
through these communities, I'm like, dam, I'm tired of seeing
corner stores. Everywhere you see corner stores or you're left
or you're right. You don't even have to go with
all this unhealthy food. When you start seeing family dollars
in communities, that's a pretty good identified that it's a
(10:58):
food desert. It's just any place that I go in
and I know that people you can like really see
a food and just by the how you see the
people in the area. In an urban setting, now in
the rural setting, you're even further from a grocery store
because our farmers in a rural area, you would think,
since there's farms around there, getting healthy food, but a
(11:20):
lot of the farms aren't producing that quality of food.
So we're really talking about like a really a really
large issue that affects people, that affects a lot of people.
What you think to be I think it's a multi
tier plan. I think we have to look at food distribution.
We definitely have to look at agricultural education and really
getting kids in because if once these students get in
(11:43):
permanent situations like they can turn their backyards into a
into a guarden, everybody has to pitch in. So I
think we have to look at distribution, We have to
look at getting the younger generation to agriculture, and then
overwall awareness, I think a lot of people aren't aware
that they're living in a food insecure area. Once you
would come aware, we can start troubleshooting and working with
structures in our communities that are trying to fix the issue.
(12:07):
But even if you can't get to some of these
large organic like groceries and stuff there, it's expensive, right
it is. There's a real value to being able to
grow your own it is. And then the economic piece
where people if if not saying it's a one it's
like a remedy for everybody, but there are people who
(12:28):
want to do better in their communities and agriculture can
be that tool that resource because like one thing that's
like that you hear a lot is that the community
don't have resources. There are resources in these areas. Just
change your perspective on where you are and you can
begin to reimagine how you can change that area, your
resource in your community. And look at this land that's there,
(12:51):
look at the way the houses are situated. So there
are people who I think were really if they had
access to the resource, were really changed. And I see
that especially with the bees. People like love bees. My
wife just got certified two weeks ago. I'm certified for
the students of certified beekeepers. I never know I was
gonna be a beekeeper. You would have asked me three
years ago, I would have well, four years ago, the
(13:11):
bere like I'm scared of bees. But just getting people
access to resources and opportunities and will see a shift
in a lot of things. I mean, my my favorite
thing on your I was looking at the store on
your website, and you know you've got some lettuce and
T shirts and stuff, and then it's like Lesa be high. Yeah, yeah,
yeah yeah, And I think that's a program that's going
(13:33):
to really be really take off because right, was like
this whole movement start with us seeing the police botell
with George Floyd. When that wave hit, there was a
lot of attention that went to black farmers and black
people in agricultural spaces and we got like this wave
of followers out of nowhere. And somebody hit me up
on Twitter the day They're like, can I at least
(13:54):
to be high? And I'm like, where do you live?
He was like California And I was like, well, you
can lease it at sent off. It will send you
the honey from your high. He was like, I can't
wait till the next spring, but I think we're gonna
see a really big jump in that program next year
because right now we're at forty behalves, so we wouldn't
have a lot. I've never seen that before that. I
(14:15):
loved it so much just looking at um, you know,
you know, but one of the things you were hitting
on with social issues and and uh, when you're not
dependent on others for food and you're not feeling that insecurity,
then you have space to concentrate and change other things
in your life, you know. And and I was curious
if you're thinking about that as well. Yeah, if I
(14:37):
think about like how much time that we spend going
to a grocery store, and society is already fast paced
where we want to be, Like, honest, we're doing all
these things at some level to eat. Everybody wants to heat.
But if we could just start going into this for ourselves,
we would have more control over every other aspects of
our life, especially our health. We had top of the
(14:57):
quality between healthy eating and you're health. Those things go
hand in the head. I don't think it's I think
it's a basic human necessity. Like us, we don't we
grow food for ourselves. I think we can really impact
and create a lot of change. I know you spent
a lot of time delivering food to to various communities
and groups. Have you seen the impact on the people themselves,
(15:17):
the people who are receiving the food. I have it,
and that's primarily because we're dropping it off, and I
probably haven't because I haven't like consciously thought of it. Yeah,
I feel like they made me cry. If somebody I
was just like, yeah, that kills just so good, and
my daughters liked it. On my son, I think i'd
probably like tear up. Yeah, of course, I don't want
to ever feel like the job is done and I
(15:39):
don't want to settle. So this morning in my mind,
I'm like, oh, I didn't do enough, Like I'm that
type of person, so I want to do more. That's
really cool. Come Al though, thank you so much for
hanging out with us and and sharing your story. No problem,
thank you for interview. It has been real cool. Humans
growing stuff will be right back after a short I've
(16:06):
been thinking a lot about what Kamal said about how
the resources are there to grow our own food and
become independent of the food distribution system. It made me
think of the Bronx green Up, the community gardens here
in New York, where sometimes people grow so much food
they end up sharing it with their friends or, in
one man's case, even mailing the harvest to his relatives
(16:29):
in Puerto Rico, and I thought about Shelley from the
Highland Community Gardens to where the organization takes saplings and
plants them in neighbor's backyards so families can cultivate their
own veggies. It's a service they offer to combat food deserts.
But Gary Oppenheimer, the founder of Ample Harvest dot org,
has figured out another way to help. What if there
(16:51):
was a better way to share all the extra food
we end up growing. What if we could take all
the extra produce that's farmed and connect American gardeners the
local food pantries in need. It's an incredible idea and
I wanted to hear more, so we gave him a call. Hey, Gary,
(17:13):
how's it going? I am well man, how are you
doing super well? And it's really nice to be chatting.
So I want to hear all about how you started
apple harvest Dot Oregon and to get your backstory a
little bit. Um. I went to college, studied psychology and
decided when I was done with school that I should
never be psychologist, which my wife bully agrees with. And
(17:38):
fast forward to nineteen. We buy a house in northern
New Jersey and a large piece of property, and I
decided that I had all this time, I should know
how to garden, so I became a master gardener. I
was successfully, as it turns out, like millions of other gardeners,
growing more food than I could use or preserve or
(17:58):
share with friends. I started looking around to see where
I could donate, and I found a battered woman shelter
in my town, and I took the food there. The
woman who accepted the food, she said, thank you. Now
we can have fresh food, And that was a weird thing.
I remember walking away hearing. Around the same time, I
was asked to take over the management of my town's
community garden, and I did at the end of the
(18:21):
prior growing season. When I first met with the people
in the garden, one of the people said to me
that she was deeply concerned because the at the end
of the growing season, there's a lot of food being
left over in the garden. People were bored, overwhelmed, went
on vacation. She said, I don't want to see that
food go to waste. And I said, well, if we're
gonna have an ample harvest, the least we could do
(18:42):
is get it to hungry people. Now, I had never
said the for example, harvest in my life. I've never
those two words, that had never come together. They loved
that idea. We set about setting up a program in
this community garden to do that very thing, and in
the process I discovered that when I went on to Google,
Google said the nearest food program to me was in Morristown,
(19:02):
New Jerseys, away, which I knew was wrong, and It's
suddenly dawned on me that the food problem we were
experiencing wasn't about the food, it was about information. I
had been misinformed, as we all have been, that you
weren't allowed to donate food to a food pantry. That
(19:25):
you will all heard the mantra at food drives of jars, cans, boxes,
but no fresh food. We were told you can't do that.
What I realized this was fundamentally a problem of misinformation
and missing information. The misinformation you're not allowed to donate
the food. The missing information was too word to donate it,
and the optimum day of the weekend time at which
(19:46):
to do it, because if you timed it just right,
the food pantry did not need to refrigerate your food,
because the food could be donated just before the hungry
families take it home. I then got two volunteers to
help me, and over the deck to nine weeks, we
built what is today ample harvest dot org. The idea
was to create a massive public awareness campaign helping millions
(20:08):
and millions of gardeners learned that they can donate food,
and to build an optimized search engine of America's food
pantries and for the pantry to guide the gardener to
the day of the week and time of day that's
best for donation. That was launched in May of two
thousand nine. Here we are now in October of twenty
twenty and nearly nine thousand food pantries, about a quarter
(20:32):
of all the food pantries in America in communities in
all fifty states are now a part of ample harvest
dot org. And I should tell you one big important number.
Pre COVID, the National Guarding Association said that America had
forty two million gardeners of all households. Now in these
(20:52):
COVID years, it's skyrocket at the sixty two million gardeners.
Sixty two million people in this country grow food, not
like a farmer to make money, but for their own
pleasure and enjoyment. And that's our target population. And that's
just since COVID. Well, the the from the jump of
forty two to sixty two million is just since COVID, correct.
(21:15):
And part of that, when you think about it, is
if you're no longer commuting to work, if you're working
from home, for example, you have time to garden. And
most people once they start, really enjoy it and don't stop.
You know you were telling me before before the show
that that you had actually um donated in a vast
amount of food from your own garden. How much did
(21:36):
you donate again? About two hundred and fifty two pounds,
give or take, which is amazing. That's like five times
the size of my seven year old, which is impressive.
Let me tell you something, um, pre covid our data
show that America's gardeners grew eleven plus billion pounds more
(21:58):
food than they could use or pres over share with friends.
If all that food, if all of that food we're donated,
that would feed twenty eight million people a year. And
so how many how many people estimated? Do you do
you think ample harvest dot org is is feeding or
helping to feed right now, we're not really feeding people.
(22:18):
I'd rather say we're nourishing people because food pantries do
their best to feed people, but they're getting whether it's
food donated or it is food that they acquire, but
it's all processed food. It certainly feeds you, but it's
not fresh food. Right now, with this country needs more
than anything else, is nourishing healthy fresh food. With ample
(22:43):
harvest dot org, we don't touch the food. We are
enabling the gardeners across America to learn that they can
donate food and then to donate the food. We are
orchestrating a wholesale change. We also know that two thirds
of gardeners, once know they can don't they will actually
expand the size of their garden if they have the
space to actually donate more food. Do you think that
(23:07):
when people show up to these food pantries and are
receiving fresh foods that down the line they start thinking
about growing them themselves. I don't know. I hope they do.
What I do know is that when food, fresh food
is donated to a food pantry, when a hungry family
(23:27):
comes in and I've been I've been in food pantries
many times across the country, and I try to be
a fly on the wall in the corner, just watching
what's going on. When this fresh food there, that's the
first table that the people go to because when they
see the tomatoes, the zucchini, this squash, what have you,
they know what really value that brings to the nutrition
(23:47):
of the family, and they get that food. You know what.
One of the things I've been curious too is like
as you stand from a distance as this conductor of
this incredible service and organization. How much do you get
to be a fly on the well? What sort of
experiences have you seen uh and witnessed from when you
go into these places. Routinely we get phone calls and
(24:08):
we get emails from people struggling to put food on
the table, and we do our best. We we we
we direct them to the United Way, we direct them
to Why Hunger where they can get help. But I
get to hear firsthanded difficulty that people have. Back in thirteen,
I get an email from a woman who says, I'm
having a great deal of difficulty putting food on the table.
(24:31):
I worked, my husband's not able to work, my kids
are hungry. Can you help us? That's one of many
types of letters and stuff that come in like that.
But this woman was active due to US Navy. Wow,
we had a member of the military struggling to put
food on the table. I have a hard time talking
about it even today. I also, on the other side,
(24:55):
routinely get emails from people about I'm so glad I
found you, and I'm so glad I heard about you.
I got an email from a guy in the Southwest
who said he was so grateful to hear about ample
harvest dot org. The prior year he had thrown away
eight gallon drum of grapefruit from trees on his property. Wow,
(25:16):
the opportunity is staggering. And it doesn't have to be
a garden who has a truckload of food you can
walk in with. You know, a handful of carrots, are
a handful of parsley, or boxes and cartons, whatever it is.
It's not important how much the gardener is donating. It's
that the food doesn't go to waste. And by the way,
I should point out that since food waste is a
critical contributed to climate change, the environmental and climate change
(25:41):
benefits of this program are huge. Not only is climate
change reduced, but so is the waste stream. So the
environment is better, climate change is reduced, the community in
the country are healthier. This is a win win win
all the way around. And by the way, the gardeners
can get a tax deduction for the donor in the food.
But we know from our studies but the majority don't care.
(26:03):
They just want to be doing the right thing. So, Gary,
what kind of work are you doing with community gardens? Specifically,
we have a program if you go to Ample Harvested
Dog Slash Community Garden that we've had a program to
help community gardens learn about donating. My belief has always
been that community gardens are important because there's a good
(26:23):
amount of food there. But the real pressing need for
us is the individual gardener, the person who's working in
their own backyard. They don't subscribe to gardening magazines, they're
not on guardening website. They just they've always known how
to grow food. They learned it from their parents or whatever.
But nobody has ever gotten to them and said, by
the way, you can donate that surplus food. Gary, thank
(26:46):
you so much. It's it's been such a pleasure of
chatting with you. Thank you. It's a pleasure. Thank you
very much. Sankov and Ample harvest dot Org aren't the
only organizations of their kind working so hard to supply
pantries and people in need. But what about self reliance
and this idea of growing your own One of the
(27:07):
things we've heard over and over on this program is
that it doesn't take that much room to grow what
you need, especially if you're creative. The phenomena is called
micro gardening, and it's exactly what it sounds like. The
UN Food and Agriculture Organization describes micro growing as the
intensive cultivation of a wide range of vegetables, roots, tubers,
(27:28):
and herbs, all in small spaces, so think about like balconies, patios, rooftops,
and the u N is huge fans of this. In fact,
the f EO thinks it could be the best answer
to providing food and nutrition security to low income households
because it doesn't require a backyard. Most micro growing happens
in small wooden boxes or stacked garden boxes. You can
(27:52):
do it all in an area of about ten square feet.
Of course, when you're micro gardening, you've got to think
about how to use the space efficiently, and there are
lots of options. If you listen to our first episode
where we talked to Mr Plant Geek Michael Perry, he
talked about these amazing plants that actually grow vegetables on
top of one another. Well, egg and chips plant is
(28:14):
basically all one plant which is grafted in the middle,
so it grows as one and it's an eggplant, a
k a magine on the top and a potato on
the bottom. So hence the egg and chips There's also
another plant in that series, which is the tomotato, and
that is tomatoes on the top and potatoes on the bottom,
(28:35):
and that was actually marketed as ketchup and fries plant
in the US. This is something that used to be
done during the war in order to make the use
of space in limited spacing gardens and on allotments. Plants
like these are great space savers and help your garden
grow more efficiently. With solutions like microgardening your own food.
(28:57):
Suddenly people have some agency and when you're not hungry,
it's so much easier to fight for the things you need.
It's not something I thought about, but Naima Penniman from
so Fire Farms, she put it beautifully, just what's possible
when you have food at your fingertips. I'm curious, you
(29:17):
know you use the phrase food apartheid. I'm wondering if
you could sort of define that for our audience. Yes,
the government designates food desert areas. We put far using
this term food apartib because a desert is a natural phenomenon,
and we believe the system that has created food opulence
(29:38):
for some and extreme food scarcity for others is there's
nothing natural about that that's a man made condition that
we have a responsibility to to shift. One of the
lines that you said that really struck me was to
free ourselves, we must feed ourselves. Can you talk a
little bit about that. Yeah, So to free us out
(30:00):
as we must feed ourselves is having determination over something
as basic as the means of our survival through the
food we consume every day, is a really critical part
of our liberation as people's And Kenny Luhimer, who started
Freedom Farms and Sunflower County, Mississippi, said, if you have
(30:22):
five courts of greens and gumbo soup can for the winter,
no one can push you around or tell you what
to do. She recognized that who controls the food controls
the people, and that as civil rights organizers organizing the
South at that time, if you did not control the
means of your survival, you would come groveling, putting down
(30:44):
your voting ballot, you know, putting down your protest signs,
and come begging for food because that is something we
all fundamentally need for ourselves and our family. So there's
this connection that is so relevant today too, And I
feel as especially in the midst of this pandemic we
found ourselves in where the cracks and the food system
(31:06):
are laid bare, and the food and security that already
existed is heightened and made even more extreme. I feel
that also in this pandemic moment is kind of a
wake up caller reckoning of the importance of reclaiming that
for ourselves, building more community self determination and food sovereignty.
(31:31):
So how do we combat this notion of food apartheid
and give people their agency back. It's like Naima said,
we teach them to grow by empowering people to start
their own gardens. It gives them the tools to fight
against hunger and malnourishment, because self preservation begins with self reliance.
(31:54):
The truth is, I don't think about food security that much.
We give money to food banks, my wife cooks meals
and drops them off to a center close by. It's
a small part of our lives, but not one that
occupies much space in our brains. But this year a
few things came into focus. During the start of the pandemic,
(32:15):
when grocery stores were overwhelmed and food delivery services were
taking a few weeks to deliver food, we started meal
planning and rationing in a way that we never had before.
We started thinking about food is a scarcity, something we've
been lucky enough never to do before, and it made
us genuinely worry for others. I worked on this show
(32:37):
earlier this year where we reported on the Minnesota experiment,
which was new to me. It's this experiment that was
conducted during the tail end of World War Two, and
it was one of the first studies on what famine
and hunger can do to bodies, something that hadn't been
investigated before. The study focused on men in their twenties,
people who were hail and hardy and sweet temperament. But
(33:02):
one scientists started restricting the food, the subject's behavior changed drastically. Suddenly,
they became irritated and impatient when service was slow. They
were possessive over their food. They hunched over their trays
and use their arms to box others out and protect
their meals. They started using a lot more salt, and
(33:23):
fairly soon the food and security made them paranoid and aggressive,
and their bodies began to ache. Their knees and feet swelled.
They didn't have the energy or motivation to do little
things like make their beds, or take showers or go
to classes. It's incredible to see what happens to a
population when you take away the consistent access to meals.
(33:46):
How so much of what drives you and feels like
a hallmark of your personality evaporates when there's no food
on the table. I'm not saying this is one to one,
but if I can get angry when I skip a meal,
what's an And for the kids who have to wait
an entire weekend to get access to a school breakfast
or lunch, but when the only things they can put
(34:07):
into their body is the fast food and food from
a corner store that's available. I was reading this article
in the Journal of Sustainable Development, and it points out
in a recent study by the University of Minnesota, the
highest levels of obesity were observed in census tracts with
no supermarkets, where the residents only had access to bodega's
(34:31):
and convenience stores. These are areas where diabetes and cardiac
problems end up most prolific. But look at what happens
when you tackle the problems early. A two article in
Lancet showed that boys and impoverished areas who benefited from
this randomized nutrition intervention and This was in the first
(34:51):
two years of their life. They earned wages as adults
that were fifty higher than non participants. How we eat
from a young age actually changes our financial prospects in life.
I don't like politics, but I do believe in humanity
and science. So I'll leave you with one last study.
(35:14):
It's an old one, but it's one I think about
a lot. The marshmallows study. You've probably seen or heard
about this one. But scientists take a kid and offer
them this delicious marshmallow. They place it on a table
and then tell the kid they can have the treat now,
where if they wait ten minutes and resist the temptation,
they'll get two marshmallows. Then they leave the room, and
(35:37):
the results are pretty well known. The kids who wait
all that time for the second marshmallow are better at
self control, and scientists have said that these kids have
the grit to become more successful in life. And maybe
that's true. But what happens if you live in a
house where you don't know where your next meal is
coming from. What if you're in a situation where you
(36:00):
take the food in front of you because you can't
trust that a second marshmallow actually is coming. What if
you've been conditioned to grab what you can get to survive.
But also what if a little education and a little
support can change that narrative. What if that same kid
can come into the marshmallow experiment after eating a handful
(36:22):
of cherry tomatoes, or know that there's a fridge full
of food waiting for him stuffy grew and canned or pickled,
or even just food that's waiting for him to pluck
off a little vine in his kitchen. Because having a
full belly might not sound that important until you realize
it is. And what if having a little garden that
(36:44):
you own that you can harvest is actually guy to
your ability to change the world. That's it for today's
episode Don't Again. Whether you're a beginner like me, a
pro trying something new, or someone in between enjoying your
(37:06):
backyard garden, there are incredible resources waiting for you on
the Miracle Grow website. Next time on our show, we'll
focus on the stunning ecosystem hiding in your backyard and
the magical relationships that help a garden to flourish. If
you like what you heard, don't forget to Rain and
review the show on Apple Podcast. Also, we want to
(37:26):
hear from you. What are your inspiring plant stories, relatable
struggles or growing questions. Tag us in your post or
tweet using the hashtag Humans Growing Stuff, and don't be
surprised if you hear your story featured on an upcoming episode.
Humans Growing Stuff is a collaboration from My Heart Radio
and your friends at Miracle Grow. Our show was written
and produced by Molly Sosha and me Mongay Chatigler in
(37:49):
partnership with Ryan Ovadia, Daniel Ainsworth, Hayley Ericson, and Garrett
Shannon of Banter Until next Time, Thanks so much for listening.
When I was a kid, I used to read a
lot of science magazines three to one, Contact pop side
Popular Mechanics, and I like them because I love to
look at the inventions. I genuinely wanted to know what
the future would look like. And sometimes the ideas were funny,
like one scientist decided peanut butter and jelly sandwiches were
(00:23):
too hard to make, so he invented individual jelly slices
that you could lay onto the bread instead of spreading it,
kind of like craft singles, and I have yet to
see those in the real world. Some of the inventions
were ingenious, like what if you could take your sunscreen
in a pill instead of having to deal with applying it?
(00:43):
And sometimes well, there were things I still think about,
like the idea of vertical farms. What if you could
grow entire farms inside skyscrapers and rotate the crops to
face the sun. And what if these skyscraper farms were
in cities so you could reduce the distance to get
all this fresh food to people. It's kind of incredible,
(01:06):
right In some ways, vertical farms are like robot butlers
and jet packs, these things science magazines and the jetsons
told us about inventions that feel like they should be
just around the corner to solve all our problems. But
what if we don't have time to wait. According to
the U s d A, about twenty three point five
(01:29):
million people live in food deserts today. Those are areas
where it's difficult or impossible to access affordable, healthy food options,
and it's no surprise that nearly half of these food
deserts are in low income areas, as well, areas where
grocery stores don't think they can make a profit, so
(01:49):
people are forced to make do with what's available. They
eat fast food or junk food because that's what's near,
which leads to all sorts of health complications. It's a cycle,
and it is depressing. But there are things we can
do right now. It turns out growing your own food
is one of the most promising solutions. We don't often
(02:12):
think of gardening as a path to self reliance, but growing,
whether that's part of a community garden or even in
your own backyard, allows people to eat healthier, disrupt a
broken system, and meet their own food demands. And along
the way, it should make for happier and healthier communities too. Hey,
(02:35):
there I'm Mongais Articular, a co host of Part Time Genius,
one of the co founders of Mental Flaws. And this
is Humans Growing Stuff, a collaboration from my Heart Radio
and your friends at Miracle Grow. My goal is to
make this the most human show about plants you'll ever
listen to, and along the way, we'll share sweet, inspiring stories,
(02:57):
tips and tricks to nurture your plant addiction, and just
enough science to make you sound like an expert. In
today's episode, we're going to explore the issues surrounding food
deserts and the bootstrapped community builders and leaders who are
working on growing solutions to eliminate food insecurity. Chapter six,
(03:21):
Can growing food Grow Freedom? The truth is, food deserts
aren't a new phenomena. Years ago, I was driving into Wilmington,
Delaware to pick up a friend from the train station.
I actually went to elementary school in Wilmington's My school
buzz used to take me along this same route. But
before I picked up my friend, I needed to run
(03:43):
into a grocery store, so I stopped by this familiar chain.
But what I saw inside was dismal. I remember being
struck by how sad the offerings were the shelves were
barely stocked, the produce was meager and old, and for me,
the experience was jarring. This felt like the flimsiest excuse
(04:06):
for a grocery store, and there really weren't other options around.
Of course, this isn't a problem that's unique to Wilmington's.
All over the country you can find areas that are
flush with grocery stores. They have aisles upon aisles of
fresh produce, and then on the other side of town
you can pass through neighborhoods with a single poorly stocked store,
(04:28):
or sometimes areas where they're just dollar stores or corner
stores as replacements. So I've been wondering what's being done
to change or combat this issue. Kamal Bell is on
the front lines of fighting food deserts. Easy teacher and
the founder of Sankofa Farms in North Carolina, just outside
of Derham. The farm is focused on serving those in
(04:50):
the Grham and Orange County urban areas that are effectively
food deserts. Each week, Kamal and his team delivered dehydrated chips,
farm fresh egg, and honey, all made for the bounty
of his farm and his bee hives. Additionally, Kamal has
made it his personal mission to teach students in these
areas stem and agriculture to set them up for success
(05:12):
and the nutrient rich future where they can grow their
food not only for themselves but for their communities. I
called up Kamal to hear more about his journey with
Sankofa and how he seemed to change in the communities
he serves, especially when they have access to healthy foods. Hey, Comal, Hey,
(05:33):
how are you doing doing well? First things first, I
want to hear how you got into farming. All right,
So I was on track to be a veterinarian and
I was sitting in class one day and this dawned
on me. It was like, what are you gonna do
with this? That really serves people, and that serves you
and me and my wife we will find out we
were having our first son. So I was thinking about
(05:56):
what could we do to always support him, like no
matter what happened, whether we were unemployed, whether we employed,
if something goes wrong, and how can we always make
sure this young man is taken care of? And farming
dawned on me. And also at this time, I was
working on my masters. I was studying these things called
food deserts, and I'm thinking about what's the common thread
(06:19):
that connects everything and farming was that thing? And what
sort of gave you the confidence that you could grow
stuff and and be a farmer? That's a great question, Like,
that's a great question. Not a lot of people ask
me that. So the what gave what drives me to
do that is one. I feel like I'm really helping
my community. I'm curious. Santo actually has a few meanings, right, Okay,
(06:41):
can can you talk about the alternate meetings of it? Yes?
So sant cofa also means to go back and get it.
So it comes out of the Aconn language in West Africa,
and it's symbolic or represented by a mythical bird. And
as it's moving forward, its head is turned backward. If
we want to fixed problems in today's time, we have
(07:03):
to look back in our ancestry, in our history to
be able to attack these issues. Saying kofa came up
when I learned about these food deserts, and I was
just like, how can we get people food? If we're
trying to get people food, of course we need more
people to produce food. Um, there's also allocation issue that
goes into the whole making of the food desert. But
(07:23):
for me, like what I felt like I can really
impact was the growing of the food. At first, I
started out selling dehydrat and chips. I have a commercial
dehydrot like fifty ft away from me in my garage
that we used to use. And the whole idea behind
that was to get people who were living in food
deserts and affected by food and security healthier food. So
we should dehydra apples, pineapples, kale, mangoes, cinnamon, apples, bananas.
(07:46):
We used to make all these products and get them
to people who are affected our food and secure areas.
And for me, East Greensboro is a food desert through
and through, but in West Greensboro you had a more
fluid side of the the town. You have like this overabundance
of healthy food white you have food stops everywhere. But
we were able to streamline the leverage that we had
(08:08):
created with the dehydrant chips, and then that led us
into getting the farm. I know you spent a lot
of time delivering food to various communities and groups. Can
you talking a little bit about the diversity of groups
that you're passing food along too. So there's an organization
called Root Causes that works with Farmer Food's a food
distribution uh, it's a cook in Derhm and they get
(08:29):
food to people who have been recommended by the doctor.
And I like the food we really fresh, so like
I'll go to the extra mile to make sure it's
like far Fresh is not as it hasn't been sent
for a couple of hours. I'll go wake up at
around five thirty, get there around six thirty tomorrow morning.
So jobs to the farm. Harvest Food had that dropped
off by nine thirty, and then they distributed it in
(08:51):
their bags like it's part of a larger system. They
send bags of healthy produce to people. It's just been
really cool to work with organizations that can do the
handom distribution aspect. It's just it's just really cool. It's
just really cool. There's a teaching component the story. It
involves you being at a public school and R Yes,
I actually drew up this idea of the farm and
(09:12):
took to the principle because I was teaching agriculture at
the school. And the students will gravitate towards the work
and they will also change their behavior. So I saw
that introducing them to agriculture gave them a foundation outside
the classroom, and that's I think that's what we want
education to do. Like it just can't be useful in
the school. So I literally took them out to the
farm and two of the students, one of them, his
(09:33):
birthday is actually today. His name is Kamani. I have
a birthday Comini. He'll be listening to this at some point,
having another student, Cameron, whose birthday was last week. They
actually have stayed with the program from its inception all
the way until now. So it's been really cool to
see their growth and see their knowledge based growth, and
then see them be able to say, hey, yo, i
am in this food instant care area, but I'm in
(09:55):
this place where I have access to fresh food because
I know how to do it and how to grow it,
and I can take it home with me. I'm curious,
just as we get into food deserts, how would you
define the food desert. That's a great question, um, because
terminology can be use it gets people to confuse them.
I just define it as a place where you don't
(10:16):
have access to healthy food. So it gets tricky because
the U s A has definition and then people saying
not food desert, it's like a food apart tide. I
hear all that, but I might look the reality is
people want to eat healthy and don't have access to it.
And in economics goes into it because you look at cars,
(10:36):
like some people might not have cars to to drive
from the store. Then you look at how the city
is drawing out like city planet, goes into it. Um
through these communities, I'm like, dam, I'm tired of seeing
corner stores. Everywhere you see corner stores or you're left
or you're right. You don't even have to go with
all this unhealthy food. When you start seeing family dollars
in communities, that's a pretty good identified that it's a
(10:58):
food desert. It's just any place that I go in
and I know that people you can like really see
a food and just by the how you see the
people in the area. In an urban setting, now in
the rural setting, you're even further from a grocery store
because our farmers in a rural area, you would think,
since there's farms around there, getting healthy food, but a
(11:20):
lot of the farms aren't producing that quality of food.
So we're really talking about like a really a really
large issue that affects people, that affects a lot of people.
What you think to be I think it's a multi
tier plan. I think we have to look at food distribution.
We definitely have to look at agricultural education and really
getting kids in because if once these students get in
(11:43):
permanent situations like they can turn their backyards into a
into a guarden, everybody has to pitch in. So I
think we have to look at distribution, We have to
look at getting the younger generation to agriculture, and then
overwall awareness, I think a lot of people aren't aware
that they're living in a food insecure area. Once you
would come aware, we can start troubleshooting and working with
structures in our communities that are trying to fix the issue.
(12:07):
But even if you can't get to some of these
large organic like groceries and stuff there, it's expensive, right
it is. There's a real value to being able to
grow your own it is. And then the economic piece
where people if if not saying it's a one it's
like a remedy for everybody, but there are people who
(12:28):
want to do better in their communities and agriculture can
be that tool that resource because like one thing that's
like that you hear a lot is that the community
don't have resources. There are resources in these areas. Just
change your perspective on where you are and you can
begin to reimagine how you can change that area, your
resource in your community. And look at this land that's there,
(12:51):
look at the way the houses are situated. So there
are people who I think were really if they had
access to the resource, were really changed. And I see
that especially with the bees. People like love bees. My
wife just got certified two weeks ago. I'm certified for
the students of certified beekeepers. I never know I was
gonna be a beekeeper. You would have asked me three
years ago, I would have well, four years ago, the
(13:11):
bere like I'm scared of bees. But just getting people
access to resources and opportunities and will see a shift
in a lot of things. I mean, my my favorite
thing on your I was looking at the store on
your website, and you know you've got some lettuce and
T shirts and stuff, and then it's like Lesa be high. Yeah, yeah,
yeah yeah, And I think that's a program that's going
(13:33):
to really be really take off because right, was like
this whole movement start with us seeing the police botell
with George Floyd. When that wave hit, there was a
lot of attention that went to black farmers and black
people in agricultural spaces and we got like this wave
of followers out of nowhere. And somebody hit me up
on Twitter the day They're like, can I at least
(13:54):
to be high? And I'm like, where do you live?
He was like California And I was like, well, you
can lease it at sent off. It will send you
the honey from your high. He was like, I can't
wait till the next spring, but I think we're gonna
see a really big jump in that program next year
because right now we're at forty behalves, so we wouldn't
have a lot. I've never seen that before that. I
(14:15):
loved it so much just looking at um, you know,
you know, but one of the things you were hitting
on with social issues and and uh, when you're not
dependent on others for food and you're not feeling that insecurity,
then you have space to concentrate and change other things
in your life, you know. And and I was curious
if you're thinking about that as well. Yeah, if I
(14:37):
think about like how much time that we spend going
to a grocery store, and society is already fast paced
where we want to be, Like, honest, we're doing all
these things at some level to eat. Everybody wants to heat.
But if we could just start going into this for ourselves,
we would have more control over every other aspects of
our life, especially our health. We had top of the
(14:57):
quality between healthy eating and you're health. Those things go
hand in the head. I don't think it's I think
it's a basic human necessity. Like us, we don't we
grow food for ourselves. I think we can really impact
and create a lot of change. I know you spent
a lot of time delivering food to to various communities
and groups. Have you seen the impact on the people themselves,
(15:17):
the people who are receiving the food. I have it,
and that's primarily because we're dropping it off, and I
probably haven't because I haven't like consciously thought of it. Yeah,
I feel like they made me cry. If somebody I
was just like, yeah, that kills just so good, and
my daughters liked it. On my son, I think i'd
probably like tear up. Yeah, of course, I don't want
to ever feel like the job is done and I
(15:39):
don't want to settle. So this morning in my mind,
I'm like, oh, I didn't do enough, Like I'm that
type of person, so I want to do more. That's
really cool. Come Al though, thank you so much for
hanging out with us and and sharing your story. No problem,
thank you for interview. It has been real cool. Humans
growing stuff will be right back after a short I've
(16:06):
been thinking a lot about what Kamal said about how
the resources are there to grow our own food and
become independent of the food distribution system. It made me
think of the Bronx green Up, the community gardens here
in New York, where sometimes people grow so much food
they end up sharing it with their friends or, in
one man's case, even mailing the harvest to his relatives
(16:29):
in Puerto Rico, and I thought about Shelley from the
Highland Community Gardens to where the organization takes saplings and
plants them in neighbor's backyards so families can cultivate their
own veggies. It's a service they offer to combat food deserts.
But Gary Oppenheimer, the founder of Ample Harvest dot org,
has figured out another way to help. What if there
(16:51):
was a better way to share all the extra food
we end up growing. What if we could take all
the extra produce that's farmed and connect American gardeners the
local food pantries in need. It's an incredible idea and
I wanted to hear more, so we gave him a call. Hey, Gary,
(17:13):
how's it going? I am well man, how are you
doing super well? And it's really nice to be chatting.
So I want to hear all about how you started
apple harvest Dot Oregon and to get your backstory a
little bit. Um. I went to college, studied psychology and
decided when I was done with school that I should
never be psychologist, which my wife bully agrees with. And
(17:38):
fast forward to nineteen. We buy a house in northern
New Jersey and a large piece of property, and I
decided that I had all this time, I should know
how to garden, so I became a master gardener. I
was successfully, as it turns out, like millions of other gardeners,
growing more food than I could use or preserve or
(17:58):
share with friends. I started looking around to see where
I could donate, and I found a battered woman shelter
in my town, and I took the food there. The
woman who accepted the food, she said, thank you. Now
we can have fresh food, And that was a weird thing.
I remember walking away hearing. Around the same time, I
was asked to take over the management of my town's
community garden, and I did at the end of the
(18:21):
prior growing season. When I first met with the people
in the garden, one of the people said to me
that she was deeply concerned because the at the end
of the growing season, there's a lot of food being
left over in the garden. People were bored, overwhelmed, went
on vacation. She said, I don't want to see that
food go to waste. And I said, well, if we're
gonna have an ample harvest, the least we could do
(18:42):
is get it to hungry people. Now, I had never
said the for example, harvest in my life. I've never
those two words, that had never come together. They loved
that idea. We set about setting up a program in
this community garden to do that very thing, and in
the process I discovered that when I went on to Google,
Google said the nearest food program to me was in Morristown,
(19:02):
New Jerseys, away, which I knew was wrong, and It's
suddenly dawned on me that the food problem we were
experiencing wasn't about the food, it was about information. I
had been misinformed, as we all have been, that you
weren't allowed to donate food to a food pantry. That
(19:25):
you will all heard the mantra at food drives of jars, cans, boxes,
but no fresh food. We were told you can't do that.
What I realized this was fundamentally a problem of misinformation
and missing information. The misinformation you're not allowed to donate
the food. The missing information was too word to donate it,
and the optimum day of the weekend time at which
(19:46):
to do it, because if you timed it just right,
the food pantry did not need to refrigerate your food,
because the food could be donated just before the hungry
families take it home. I then got two volunteers to
help me, and over the deck to nine weeks, we
built what is today ample harvest dot org. The idea
was to create a massive public awareness campaign helping millions
(20:08):
and millions of gardeners learned that they can donate food,
and to build an optimized search engine of America's food
pantries and for the pantry to guide the gardener to
the day of the week and time of day that's
best for donation. That was launched in May of two
thousand nine. Here we are now in October of twenty
twenty and nearly nine thousand food pantries, about a quarter
(20:32):
of all the food pantries in America in communities in
all fifty states are now a part of ample harvest
dot org. And I should tell you one big important number.
Pre COVID, the National Guarding Association said that America had
forty two million gardeners of all households. Now in these
(20:52):
COVID years, it's skyrocket at the sixty two million gardeners.
Sixty two million people in this country grow food, not
like a farmer to make money, but for their own
pleasure and enjoyment. And that's our target population. And that's
just since COVID. Well, the the from the jump of
forty two to sixty two million is just since COVID, correct.
(21:15):
And part of that, when you think about it, is
if you're no longer commuting to work, if you're working
from home, for example, you have time to garden. And
most people once they start, really enjoy it and don't stop.
You know you were telling me before before the show
that that you had actually um donated in a vast
amount of food from your own garden. How much did
(21:36):
you donate again? About two hundred and fifty two pounds,
give or take, which is amazing. That's like five times
the size of my seven year old, which is impressive.
Let me tell you something, um, pre covid our data
show that America's gardeners grew eleven plus billion pounds more
(21:58):
food than they could use or pres over share with friends.
If all that food, if all of that food we're donated,
that would feed twenty eight million people a year. And
so how many how many people estimated? Do you do
you think ample harvest dot org is is feeding or
helping to feed right now, we're not really feeding people.
(22:18):
I'd rather say we're nourishing people because food pantries do
their best to feed people, but they're getting whether it's
food donated or it is food that they acquire, but
it's all processed food. It certainly feeds you, but it's
not fresh food. Right now, with this country needs more
than anything else, is nourishing healthy fresh food. With ample
(22:43):
harvest dot org, we don't touch the food. We are
enabling the gardeners across America to learn that they can
donate food and then to donate the food. We are
orchestrating a wholesale change. We also know that two thirds
of gardeners, once know they can don't they will actually
expand the size of their garden if they have the
space to actually donate more food. Do you think that
(23:07):
when people show up to these food pantries and are
receiving fresh foods that down the line they start thinking
about growing them themselves. I don't know. I hope they do.
What I do know is that when food, fresh food
is donated to a food pantry, when a hungry family
(23:27):
comes in and I've been I've been in food pantries
many times across the country, and I try to be
a fly on the wall in the corner, just watching
what's going on. When this fresh food there, that's the
first table that the people go to because when they
see the tomatoes, the zucchini, this squash, what have you,
they know what really value that brings to the nutrition
(23:47):
of the family, and they get that food. You know what.
One of the things I've been curious too is like
as you stand from a distance as this conductor of
this incredible service and organization. How much do you get
to be a fly on the well? What sort of
experiences have you seen uh and witnessed from when you
go into these places. Routinely we get phone calls and
(24:08):
we get emails from people struggling to put food on
the table, and we do our best. We we we
we direct them to the United Way, we direct them
to Why Hunger where they can get help. But I
get to hear firsthanded difficulty that people have. Back in thirteen,
I get an email from a woman who says, I'm
having a great deal of difficulty putting food on the table.
(24:31):
I worked, my husband's not able to work, my kids
are hungry. Can you help us? That's one of many
types of letters and stuff that come in like that.
But this woman was active due to US Navy. Wow,
we had a member of the military struggling to put
food on the table. I have a hard time talking
about it even today. I also, on the other side,
(24:55):
routinely get emails from people about I'm so glad I
found you, and I'm so glad I heard about you.
I got an email from a guy in the Southwest
who said he was so grateful to hear about ample
harvest dot org. The prior year he had thrown away
eight gallon drum of grapefruit from trees on his property. Wow,
(25:16):
the opportunity is staggering. And it doesn't have to be
a garden who has a truckload of food you can
walk in with. You know, a handful of carrots, are
a handful of parsley, or boxes and cartons, whatever it is.
It's not important how much the gardener is donating. It's
that the food doesn't go to waste. And by the way,
I should point out that since food waste is a
critical contributed to climate change, the environmental and climate change
(25:41):
benefits of this program are huge. Not only is climate
change reduced, but so is the waste stream. So the
environment is better, climate change is reduced, the community in
the country are healthier. This is a win win win
all the way around. And by the way, the gardeners
can get a tax deduction for the donor in the food.
But we know from our studies but the majority don't care.
(26:03):
They just want to be doing the right thing. So, Gary,
what kind of work are you doing with community gardens? Specifically,
we have a program if you go to Ample Harvested
Dog Slash Community Garden that we've had a program to
help community gardens learn about donating. My belief has always
been that community gardens are important because there's a good
(26:23):
amount of food there. But the real pressing need for
us is the individual gardener, the person who's working in
their own backyard. They don't subscribe to gardening magazines, they're
not on guardening website. They just they've always known how
to grow food. They learned it from their parents or whatever.
But nobody has ever gotten to them and said, by
the way, you can donate that surplus food. Gary, thank
(26:46):
you so much. It's it's been such a pleasure of
chatting with you. Thank you. It's a pleasure. Thank you
very much. Sankov and Ample harvest dot Org aren't the
only organizations of their kind working so hard to supply
pantries and people in need. But what about self reliance
and this idea of growing your own One of the
(27:07):
things we've heard over and over on this program is
that it doesn't take that much room to grow what
you need, especially if you're creative. The phenomena is called
micro gardening, and it's exactly what it sounds like. The
UN Food and Agriculture Organization describes micro growing as the
intensive cultivation of a wide range of vegetables, roots, tubers,
(27:28):
and herbs, all in small spaces, so think about like balconies, patios, rooftops,
and the u N is huge fans of this. In fact,
the f EO thinks it could be the best answer
to providing food and nutrition security to low income households
because it doesn't require a backyard. Most micro growing happens
in small wooden boxes or stacked garden boxes. You can
(27:52):
do it all in an area of about ten square feet.
Of course, when you're micro gardening, you've got to think
about how to use the space efficiently, and there are
lots of options. If you listen to our first episode
where we talked to Mr Plant Geek Michael Perry, he
talked about these amazing plants that actually grow vegetables on
top of one another. Well, egg and chips plant is
(28:14):
basically all one plant which is grafted in the middle,
so it grows as one and it's an eggplant, a
k a magine on the top and a potato on
the bottom. So hence the egg and chips There's also
another plant in that series, which is the tomotato, and
that is tomatoes on the top and potatoes on the bottom,
(28:35):
and that was actually marketed as ketchup and fries plant
in the US. This is something that used to be
done during the war in order to make the use
of space in limited spacing gardens and on allotments. Plants
like these are great space savers and help your garden
grow more efficiently. With solutions like microgardening your own food.
(28:57):
Suddenly people have some agency and when you're not hungry,
it's so much easier to fight for the things you need.
It's not something I thought about, but Naima Penniman from
so Fire Farms, she put it beautifully, just what's possible
when you have food at your fingertips. I'm curious, you
(29:17):
know you use the phrase food apartheid. I'm wondering if
you could sort of define that for our audience. Yes,
the government designates food desert areas. We put far using
this term food apartib because a desert is a natural phenomenon,
and we believe the system that has created food opulence
(29:38):
for some and extreme food scarcity for others is there's
nothing natural about that that's a man made condition that
we have a responsibility to to shift. One of the
lines that you said that really struck me was to
free ourselves, we must feed ourselves. Can you talk a
little bit about that. Yeah, So to free us out
(30:00):
as we must feed ourselves is having determination over something
as basic as the means of our survival through the
food we consume every day, is a really critical part
of our liberation as people's And Kenny Luhimer, who started
Freedom Farms and Sunflower County, Mississippi, said, if you have
(30:22):
five courts of greens and gumbo soup can for the winter,
no one can push you around or tell you what
to do. She recognized that who controls the food controls
the people, and that as civil rights organizers organizing the
South at that time, if you did not control the
means of your survival, you would come groveling, putting down
(30:44):
your voting ballot, you know, putting down your protest signs,
and come begging for food because that is something we
all fundamentally need for ourselves and our family. So there's
this connection that is so relevant today too, And I
feel as especially in the midst of this pandemic we
found ourselves in where the cracks and the food system
(31:06):
are laid bare, and the food and security that already
existed is heightened and made even more extreme. I feel
that also in this pandemic moment is kind of a
wake up caller reckoning of the importance of reclaiming that
for ourselves, building more community self determination and food sovereignty.
(31:31):
So how do we combat this notion of food apartheid
and give people their agency back. It's like Naima said,
we teach them to grow by empowering people to start
their own gardens. It gives them the tools to fight
against hunger and malnourishment, because self preservation begins with self reliance.
(31:54):
The truth is, I don't think about food security that much.
We give money to food banks, my wife cooks meals
and drops them off to a center close by. It's
a small part of our lives, but not one that
occupies much space in our brains. But this year a
few things came into focus. During the start of the pandemic,
(32:15):
when grocery stores were overwhelmed and food delivery services were
taking a few weeks to deliver food, we started meal
planning and rationing in a way that we never had before.
We started thinking about food is a scarcity, something we've
been lucky enough never to do before, and it made
us genuinely worry for others. I worked on this show
(32:37):
earlier this year where we reported on the Minnesota experiment,
which was new to me. It's this experiment that was
conducted during the tail end of World War Two, and
it was one of the first studies on what famine
and hunger can do to bodies, something that hadn't been
investigated before. The study focused on men in their twenties,
people who were hail and hardy and sweet temperament. But
(33:02):
one scientists started restricting the food, the subject's behavior changed drastically. Suddenly,
they became irritated and impatient when service was slow. They
were possessive over their food. They hunched over their trays
and use their arms to box others out and protect
their meals. They started using a lot more salt, and
(33:23):
fairly soon the food and security made them paranoid and aggressive,
and their bodies began to ache. Their knees and feet swelled.
They didn't have the energy or motivation to do little
things like make their beds, or take showers or go
to classes. It's incredible to see what happens to a
population when you take away the consistent access to meals.
(33:46):
How so much of what drives you and feels like
a hallmark of your personality evaporates when there's no food
on the table. I'm not saying this is one to one,
but if I can get angry when I skip a meal,
what's an And for the kids who have to wait
an entire weekend to get access to a school breakfast
or lunch, but when the only things they can put
(34:07):
into their body is the fast food and food from
a corner store that's available. I was reading this article
in the Journal of Sustainable Development, and it points out
in a recent study by the University of Minnesota, the
highest levels of obesity were observed in census tracts with
no supermarkets, where the residents only had access to bodega's
(34:31):
and convenience stores. These are areas where diabetes and cardiac
problems end up most prolific. But look at what happens
when you tackle the problems early. A two article in
Lancet showed that boys and impoverished areas who benefited from
this randomized nutrition intervention and This was in the first
(34:51):
two years of their life. They earned wages as adults
that were fifty higher than non participants. How we eat
from a young age actually changes our financial prospects in life.
I don't like politics, but I do believe in humanity
and science. So I'll leave you with one last study.
(35:14):
It's an old one, but it's one I think about
a lot. The marshmallows study. You've probably seen or heard
about this one. But scientists take a kid and offer
them this delicious marshmallow. They place it on a table
and then tell the kid they can have the treat now,
where if they wait ten minutes and resist the temptation,
they'll get two marshmallows. Then they leave the room, and
(35:37):
the results are pretty well known. The kids who wait
all that time for the second marshmallow are better at
self control, and scientists have said that these kids have
the grit to become more successful in life. And maybe
that's true. But what happens if you live in a
house where you don't know where your next meal is
coming from. What if you're in a situation where you
(36:00):
take the food in front of you because you can't
trust that a second marshmallow actually is coming. What if
you've been conditioned to grab what you can get to survive.
But also what if a little education and a little
support can change that narrative. What if that same kid
can come into the marshmallow experiment after eating a handful
(36:22):
of cherry tomatoes, or know that there's a fridge full
of food waiting for him stuffy grew and canned or pickled,
or even just food that's waiting for him to pluck
off a little vine in his kitchen. Because having a
full belly might not sound that important until you realize
it is. And what if having a little garden that
(36:44):
you own that you can harvest is actually guy to
your ability to change the world. That's it for today's
episode Don't Again. Whether you're a beginner like me, a
pro trying something new, or someone in between enjoying your
(37:06):
backyard garden, there are incredible resources waiting for you on
the Miracle Grow website. Next time on our show, we'll
focus on the stunning ecosystem hiding in your backyard and
the magical relationships that help a garden to flourish. If
you like what you heard, don't forget to Rain and
review the show on Apple Podcast. Also, we want to
(37:26):
hear from you. What are your inspiring plant stories, relatable
struggles or growing questions. Tag us in your post or
tweet using the hashtag Humans Growing Stuff, and don't be
surprised if you hear your story featured on an upcoming episode.
Humans Growing Stuff is a collaboration from My Heart Radio
and your friends at Miracle Grow. Our show was written
and produced by Molly Sosha and me Mongay Chatigler in
(37:49):
partnership with Ryan Ovadia, Daniel Ainsworth, Hayley Ericson, and Garrett
Shannon of Banter Until next Time, Thanks so much for listening.
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