Food Justice for Youth

When Doron invited me to the 2011 "Food, What?!" Harvest Festival at the UCSC Farm, I thought I’d go and stay an hour at most, but I ended up staying all morning. FoodWhat, a project of the non-profit Life Lab founded by Doron Comerchero and Abby Bell, promotes Food Justice for youth in Santa Cruz County. FoodWhat teaches high school students to grow, prepare, and eat healthier foods, enlightens them about sustainability, and empowers them to take control of all aspects of their own lives.

Salvadore Vasquez, nineteen years old and a first-year student of the program, recently took his FoodWhat knowledge to Philadelphia, where youth from all over the nation gathered, in the tradition of our founding fathers, to create a Youth Food Bill of Rights.

“It was hard,” he said. “A hundred and fifty kids in a room --all of the adults got kicked out. Everyone was arguing and yelling….But we came together and busted out.”

The students’ Bill of Rights called for greater respect and higher pay for local farmers and laborers. It called for healthy food that was as cheap as fast food, and the creation of more community gardens and healthy food grocery stores in lower-income communities.

“I used to smoke,” Salvadore said. “I used to drink. I worked here, I started thinking outside the box. People…who didn’t have a backyard to grow their own food…came up to me and asked me for vegetables and stuff. I’m the man.”

While Salvadore told his story at the Festival to visiting groups of youth from various high schools in the county, a Life Lab instructor showed students the Farm’s resident bees. She lit the smoker used to settle the bees before opening the bee box, then set it down saying we didn’t really need it. She lifted a frame heavy with honeycomb and bees that, sure enough, paid no attention to us.

“You can actually sign up with firefighters,” she said, “to get a colony of bees they’ve rescued.”

“But I live in an apartment complex!” one student said.

Visitors to the Festival could carve pumpkins, go for a hayride, and sample foods grown on the Farm. A Life Lab instructor encouraged passers-by to sample three types of squash and vote for their favorite. The Acorn was predictably smokier than the Butternut, but the Delicata, which I’d never tasted, was buttery and almost salty, and it won my vote hands down. A student walked up to the table, tried the first two kinds of squash, and cast his vote. I asked him about the third kind. He picked up a piece of Delicata and popped it in his mouth.

“Oh!” he said, pulling his vote out of the Butternut box and sliding it into the box marked Delicata.

After the squash I sampled a variety of apples from the orchard. Pippins won hands down. Then I went to find Jamie Smith, Santa Cruz City School’s Director of Food Services, who was firing up fresh veggie pizzas in the wood-burning oven. With a very hot fire Jamie was churning out pizzas in record time, one with squash, another with peppers, another with beets. Hands grabbed for slices before he even finished cutting them.

Finally I walked down to the stage area to watch a Food Justice skit starring Doron, Life Lab instructor Allison O’Sullivan, and two students. Doron and Allison showed what not to do: eat junk food, smoke, party all night, while Brandon and Michelle went jogging, ate healthy food, and did their homework. The skit was humorous and very real. After the skit, Brandon recited a hip-hop poem he wrote about how FoodWhat helped him overcome drug addiction.

As I left the Farm overlooking the Monterey Bay, I thought about how that morning I had wondered, with my daughter in her first year of college, if I’d be able to muster the passion to write about high school students. But as I headed down the hill on that warm October afternoon, I realized it wasn’t just students for whom FoodWhat ignited a fire, but anyone entrenched, as I was, in the community of youth, justice, and sustainability.