I am so glad to be back to blogging, after April, which seems like many lifetimes ago. So much has happened since then. This summer my research internship took me to a different coast for almost two months. While I continued to monitor my vegetables remotely thanks to the sensors installed in my garden, I had a very enriching experience in community gardens and farms all over the East Coast. Every day in Cambridge, when I would bike across Memorial Drive to Allston, I often found myself glancing over the wrought-iron gate of a community garden, curious to see what was being grown. To my surprise, a volunteer at the Riverside Community Farm noticed me one day and invited me to learn urban farming techniques from them. I had a great time growing squash, tomatoes, beans, dill, and garlic with community members. It was the perfect ice-breaker for conversations. Not only did I get to meet new people of varying ages, but I found a common passion in sustainable gardening and a goal to keep the earth safe for all. It filled my heart to see a coalition of neighborhood groups and block clubs focused on building better communities through sustainable methods.
The best way to learn about food systems is to understand how food is produced. It has helped me get better educated about how our diet impacts our health and how the world of fast food marketing influences our diet. On my tours, I was gifted Mark Bittman’s book - “Animal, vegetable, junk” - which reveals all the cracks in the food system and urges readers to go back to basics and reclaim the future. On the weekends, I visited 2 different farms in New Hampshire and Massachusetts with some family friends, who themselves volunteer and knew about my passion for growing food. I was lucky to eat some great wood-fired pizza and classic New England lobster rolls everywhere I went. I even got to be a part of a really cool wheelbarrow race on the farm.
As I get ready to fly the nest, I urge all my young readers and their parents to immerse themselves in the art of planting seeds and watching them grow. It definitely brought me in touch with communities and their problems, forcing me to be more conscious about the choices I make, both good and bad. I would encourage schools to have more student groups like my school Dublin High’s Environmental Technology and Sustainability club, Culinary Academy, and Engineering Academy - where they can learn about smart gardening and hydroponics. Maybe the California state school system can integrate mandatory food literacy into our curriculum to teach hands-on projects to children from a young age. I discovered how some schools on the East Coast teach students the value of farming fish, growing vegetables, keeping livestock, preparing food, and even monitoring soil nutrients through project based work. Students should grow up with these necessary life skills - how to source local food, how not to waste food and how to work in partnership with local communities. For me, growing my own food led me to opportunities where I observed the cracks and inequities in the food system. Food literacy can help students find new career opportunities as food scientists, activists, technology entrepreneurs, smart farmers and so much more. The growing use of technology for agriculture applications and the need to analyze crop health is also leading to a new breed of technologists, who deeply care about our earth and societal challenges.
Right before the pandemic forced us into lockdown, my mother and I were invited by tea growers in Gumati, Georgia to visit and work on their farm. The farm was reclaimed from an abandoned pre-soviet era tea estate and needed a lot of helpers and we were eager to do some agro-tourism. With irregularities in weather throughout Europe, I often wondered if I could introduce them to environmental sensors that we use here in America. That trip did not happen as Covid disrupted travel but instead, this summer, I had the good fortune to visit farms here in rural America on a different coast, make lifelong friendships, and ruminate on how to free society from Big Food’s evil marketing. I am glad to be back with my family in California and harvest my crimson tomatoes with a certain pride as I slice it for my mother, who seems genuinely pleased to not shop for heirloom tomatoes at the supermarket.