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