“With that mentality, you’re
maybe a more informed voter
on environmental things. You’re
maybe a healthier person with
your diet choices. Maybe you’re
even more involved in local political
decisions that affect you,” said
Palla. “It’s untold what can come
from that.”
An Edible Future
for Everyone
Any smelling of celebratory roses
will be brief for King staff, as they
push ahead with improvements
to commemorate the 25-year-old
program. There will be a bundled
restoration effort, says ESY’s
partnerships and events manager,
Claire Sullivan, which includes
plans to upgrade the wooden
ramada that serves as a physical
touchstone for the garden class;
build a new greenhouse; and
plant a lavender hillside.
And while King’s ESY program
has evolved in its complexity,
the organization has also expanded
globally, spreading to
over 5,600 partner schools in 75
countries as well as 53 US states
and territories. Accessibility and
value-scaling play key roles in
driving that growth, said ESY’s
deputy executive director, Angie
McKee-Brown.
“We don’t want to own what
it means to become an Edible
Schoolyard,” McKee-Brown said.
“We wanted to make it free and
accessible to anyone who wants to
implement it within their school
and their community. So that’s
why we provide our curriculum
online for free.”
Accordingly, to become part of
the ESY network, schools just
have to sign up—in addition, of
course, to embracing the project’s
pedagogy and practices. But
Waters said that’s not as difficult
as it seems:
“Even with planting plants in pots,
on window sills. I mean, it can be
the simplest thing.” She added: “I
bet in every school, there’s a teacher
who’s a gardener and who would
love to connect children.”
Palla agreed. “It’s absolutely possible
in other places,” he said, when
asked whether ESY can be replicated
as successfully outside of
Berkeley. He pointed to summertime
training sessions hosted at
King, where educators learn to implement
their own ESY projects.
“People in these trainings are literally
coming from every single type
of town and city you can imagine.
So that’s been a huge eye opener
for me,” he noted.
What’s more, those training sessions
are about to grow. On Jan.
16, ESY announced a partnership
with UC Davis to establish
The Alice Waters Institute
for Edible Education, in Sacramento’s
Aggie Square.
“We’re about to launch into a whole
new era,” said McKee-Brown of
the opening. “The Institute will
enable us to provide training, yearround,
to edible educators.”
Plus, the organization has kicked
off on-the-ground efforts to implement
Waters’ ambitious “Pledge
to Public Education,” starting at
Taylor Leadership Academy, a
school in Stockton Unified School
District (SUSD).
The pledge, which Waters
announced at the 2018 Global
Climate Action Summit in San
Francisco, has three components:
to provide free, sustainable
school lunch for all students,
from kindergarten through 12th
grade; to shift procurement
practices in public schools to buy
directly from local farmers and
ranchers with just environmental
and labor practices; and to
teach students the values of
nourishment, stewardship and
community through a cafeteria
curriculum that McKee-Brown
analogizes to ESY’s garden and
kitchen programs.
The pledge is an extension of
ESY’s values, which as applied to
the organization’s work in SUSD,
McKee-Brown described as
“school-supported agriculture.”
Ultimately, it’s about responding
to climate change by investing in
farmers who adopt regenerative
agricultural practices.
“There’s 30 million kids eating
school lunch every single day,”
McKee-Brown said. “Imagine
if we were to shift where that
food comes from, and what that
could mean for our agricultural
sector, for small to midsize
organic farmers, and for the
health of our community.”
Taylor Leadership Academy is,
in many ways, a litmus test for
the pledge. After the program
is rolled out there, McKee-
Brown said the organization
will develop a timeline for
implementing similar efforts
across the south side of
Stockton. That area includes
15 public schools, the program’s
focus for now.
“But ideally, we’re building tools
and resources that are able to
translate, and scale up,” she said.
A Delicious Revolution
“No question,” Waters responded,
when asked if climate change is the
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most important issue facing the next
generation: “It’s number one for me.
Above everything; it has to be.”
Towards that end, school-supported
agriculture, she said, could
be a bellwether of efforts to address
climate change, through
regenerative farming—and at
the same time, boost the financial
prospects of organic growers.
“I could imagine every school
adopting a farm, buying locally,
reestablishing a rural economy,
with the schools being the engines.
And that’s what we have to
demonstrate in Stockton.”
Waters, then, strides with ESY into
the next 25 years, exulting in the
transformative potential of its core
values—stewardship, community
and nourishment—even as applied
to more exigent circumstances.
“Addressing climate change with
food is a delicious revolution,” she
said. “We can do it, and I want to
make it feel so easy.”
Reprinted with permission.
Kathryn Bowen is an
Oakland-based writer
with a background
in law and food
policy. Before taking the creative
plunge, Kathryn clerked for two
federal judges and worked as
a commercial litigator at a San
Francisco law firm. Prior to that,
she spent two years in Rome,
Italy, consulting for the United
Nations Food and Agriculture
Organization. Her writing
examines the intersection of
food, law and sociopolitics, or
anything especially delicious. You
can find her on Instagram
@kcampobowen.
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