On a recent Thursday morning at the FoodWhat farm on the UCSC campus, Max Tejeda was the man of the hour.
Tejeda, 16, is one of 50 high school students participating in the FoodWhat youth empowerment program this year, and his job this fall has been to organize the group’s annual Harvest Festival. The event brought together 300 Santa Cruz middle and high school students at the FoodWhat farm on Oct. 27.
Tejeda’s hope was to impart to his peers that the way we eat affects the world around us—a message that is at the heart of the FoodWhat mission.
“We started FoodWhat to bring food justice into a more real form in Santa Cruz,” explains Abby Bell, who co-founded the program with Doron Comerchero in 2007. Their intent was to reconnect youth to their food while empowering them with job skills and knowledge about social justice.
The FoodWhat program begins with a spring internship for 50 kids from Santa Cruz County Schools. Out of that group, 22 continue on with a paid summer internship, and those who desire can continue in the fall, specializing in an area that interests them. Those include a CSA, a flower business, a farm stand, culinary arts, event planning and “Blast Crew”—a group that fixes up school gardens.
Over the past few years, FoodWhat has become increasingly popular. Last spring, it received 150 applications but could only take 50 kids due to funding and space restrictions.
“We’re constantly trying to figure out how to meet the demand and reach as many youths as possible,” says Comerchero. The Harvest Festival is an effort to expand the program’s reach.
Activities at this year’s Harvest Festival included cider pressing, squash and apple tastings, apple pie making, pumpkin carving, a sack race, and an informational session and skit on food justice.
Throughout the festival, FoodWhat youth Sal Vasquez led discussions on the meaning of food justice. He talked about the differences between the working conditions of employees on large, industrially managed farms versus those on smaller organic farms. He noted that the workers on large farms tend to have monotonous jobs and receive no benefits, while those on smaller organic farms are more apt to have a variety of farm jobs and get compensated with a living wage and benefits.
Comparing Santa Cruz and West Oakland’s residents’ access to fresh fruits and vegetables, he showed that the ratio of grocery stores to liquor stores was more favorable in Santa Cruz, illustrating the unavailability of fresh produce to many Americans living in low-income urban areas.
This past summer, Vasquez traveled with other FoodWhat members to the Rooted In Community conference in Philadelphia, where, he said, “We kicked all the adults out,” and with other youth groups from around the nation developed a Food Bill of Rights. On the way back to Santa Cruz, he traveled to the Mexican border near San Diego and joined the Food and Freedom Riders, a group of young leaders working to expose the injustices of our food system.
“I want to open up my own farm and give food to the underserved,” Vasquez says of the career plans that his experiences with FoodWhat have inspired him to pursue.
Already, he says, his neighbors come to him to ask for fresh organic fruits and vegetables. But until he’s old enough to pursue his dream of starting a farm, he wants to continue working with FoodWhat and sharing the principles of food justice.
“You get to experience food you’ve grown and cooked yourself,” says Jacques Jackson, a 17-year-old high school senior who wants to study culinary arts at Cabrillo College next year. “I’ve learned how to cook, what’s in my food, what’s healthier for my body, and what will fill me up more.”
Jackson’s job this fall has been to co-manage the FoodWhat flower business. This involves harvesting flowers and arranging bouquets that are bought each week by local businesses and restaurants and sold at the FoodWhat farm stand at Gault Elementary School.
Max Tejeda, the Harbor High School student who was in charge of the Harvest Festival, says that since starting his FoodWhat program last spring he’s been tending a small vegetable garden in his backyard and has enjoyed sharing his new passion for fresh, healthy food with his mom. She remembers having a small garden and eating local food while growing up in Mexico, but had been consuming mostly processed foods out of convenience before Max began the FoodWhat program.
Many volunteers lent a hand at the festival, including Life Lab employees, UCSC students and Farm Apprentices from the UCSC Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems. Jamie Smith—head of food services for Santa Cruz schools and a huge advocate for healthy school food—spent the day baking pizzas topped with veggies grown by FoodWhat in Life Lab’s frog-shaped cob oven.
One volunteer was Kitty Bolte, a 2008 FoodWhat alumnus who studies sustainable agriculture at UC Davis and dreams of starting her own organic farm.
“FoodWhat totally changed my life,” Bolte says.
–Kalia Feldman-Klein
About the author
At Edible Monterey Bay, our mission is to celebrate the local food culture of Santa Cruz, San Benito and Monterey Counties, season by season. We believe in sustainability, and we believe everyone has a right to healthful, clean and affordable food. We think knowing where our food comes from is powerful, and we hope our magazine, website and newsletters inspire readers to get to know and support our local growers, fishers, chefs, vintners and food artisans.
