On Tuesday, December 4th, 2018 I went to a workshop to learn about food justice. Once I got upstairs, I knew I would learn a lot. We dove right in by identifying how we felt on some of the information posted on the wall of a timeline of food culture in The United States. Fun fact: in the early part of the 20th century, about 14% of farms were owned by African Americans and in the present day less than 1% of American farmlands are owned by African Americans. After the timeline, we played a game. We were all given a character to play. Our characters either faced problems with accessing affordable, fresh food or had no problems at all. The purpose was to understand how some people are at a disadvantage when they don’t have close farmers markets or community gardens or how some people could be so fortunate and whether they could empathize with the less fortunate. We then went into learning about corn mono culture and how it could potentially be bad for the environment. Us teens also learned about the benefits of community gardens and what they provide and even how to grow a garden in your own home!
One student, Lydia Jones expressed her experience as, “Informative and well organized”. She also said that the others who attended “were very respectful and were opened to our ideas and thoughts”. Overall it was very informative and made me want to learn more about gardens in my community and how to be more involved.
