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SUSTAINABLE FOOD SYSTEMS2020-07-27T13:28:44-07:00

Project Description

SUSTAINABLE FOOD SYSTEMS

Mission
We are dedicated to creating and supporting regenerative local food systems. Through community engagement, education and project-based assistance, we intend on empowering low-income communities and creating equitable, affordable food access throughout Arizona.

Objectives

  • Increase food security in low income communities and mitigate food deserts by creating and supporting projects that provide low-income communities with equitable, affordable, convenient access to healthy foods.
  • Provide education to Arizonans on best practices for growing, eating and recycling healthy foods
  • Provide support to local farmers, distributors and vendors to strengthen the local food economy by increasing the amount of food that is grown and consumed locally

Partners

  • Maricopa County Food System Coalition (MARCO)
  • Vitalyst Health Foundation
  • Creighton Community Foundation
  • Alhambra School District, Phoenix
  • Fowler Elementary School District, Phoenix
  • Los Ninos Elementary, Tempe
  • Kyrene del Norte Elementary, Tempe
  • Microsoft
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Volunteers
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Volunteer Hours

Current and Planned Projects

Current Projects

Food Tech for the Future: Growing Digital Farmers Program
The Food Tech For the Future: Growing Digital Farmers Program introduces students, teachers, volunteers and the community to the world of food computers. The innovative nature of this project will inspire local engagement from tech industries, and also global support from giants like Google. This program will be highly interactive and students will have the chance to build their own food computer, conduct plant growth experiments, share the data globally and learn about biology, genetics, technology and robotics through first-hand experience.

Students will continue studying food technology in college and continue on to ensure that global food needs are being met. This program is meant to educate, engage, and inspire young adults into thinking critically about sustainability issues and creating solutions based on well founded science, research and technology.

Sow It Forward: Vertical Garden Program
This is an expansion of the vertical garden projects. The goal of the program is to create opportunities to expand access to healthy foods beyond the classrooms that have vertical gardens. This will be done through creation of farmers markets within the schools and increased vertical gardens within individual schools.

Help-A-Farm
AZSA hopes to not only support local farms, but to also strengthen the local food culture, and therefore economy, in Maricopa County. The overall goals for this project include:

  • Helping one farm a month for the first months with farm productions labor
  • Learning more about what type of help AZSA is able to provide to farms
  • Create relationships with local farms to build on in future projects
  • Connect our community to local farms and gardens to strengthen local food culture

This project aims to strengthen our local food community through farm support. We will not only be providing support to farms in the form of labor, but we will also be providing an experience to volunteers, who will be able to learn about the farms, food, and the process it takes to grow it. We hope that we can engage people from our community to take part in the program and learn more about their local food system.

By connecting our community with local farms, and teaching people more about what it takes to grow food, we hope we can create a greater perceived value of locally grown food among our volunteers. This will ideally inspire volunteers to source more of their produce from local farms, in support of all the work that they do.

Past Projects

Past Projects

Fowler Elementary School District – Sow it Forward: Vertical Garden Project
This project aimed to increase food education and security in Fowler Elementary School District (FESD) through the use of vertical, aeroponic Tower Gardens. The project created and supported a food growing curriculum throughout an entire school district located predominantly within Maricopa County food deserts, thereby also strengthening food access for the students and teachers. The aim of this project was to teach kids how to grow food through alternative gardening methods, to create the space and access for students to experiment with growing and eating nutritious food, and to provide the schools with a source of fresh produce for students, staff, and family.

Kyrene del Norte Elementary – Sow it Forward: Vertical Garden Project
This garden was funded by FIGG Community Gardens. Two first-grade classes helped us set up and install the gardens, creating food education and access for over sixty students.

Los Ninos Elementary – Sow it Forward: Vertical Garden Project
Funded by The City of Tempe, this garden also supports a first-grade class in Tempe. Our first two classroom gardens convinced us of the value of Tower Gardens as an educational tool and source of fresh, healthy food for students.

Grow-My-Own Partnering
With a local refugee assistance organization, AZSA supplied a garden to two local refugee families in need of food assistance. The food in the gardens was chosen by the families to help provide for their individual family food needs.

Memorial Union Restaurant at ASU – Sustainable Tower Gardens
Engrained in Memorial Union at Arizona State University- AZSA assisted this sustainability-focused restaurant in securing ten tower gardens for the patio of their restaurant. These gardens not only provide fresh food access to local college students, but also promotes the concept of urban agriculture and food sovereignty.

Videos

The Little Gifts

July 13th, 2020|Tags: |

In Braiding Sweetgrass, Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer recalls her childhood experience being “raised by strawberries.” She contrasts the gift of wild strawberries with the commodity of strawberries from a private neighboring field, watching the latter

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Reconnecting Food with its Roots

September 11th, 2017|

A report from Guardian.com estimates that “fifty percent of all produce in the United States is thrown away, some 60 million tons valued at 160 billion dollars.” Also, according to the EPA, “wasted food is the single biggest occupant in America’s landfills.” Worldwide, 34 million children suffer from severe malnutrition and another 1 million children die each year from hunger related causes.

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Greenhouse Gardens

July 30th, 2017|

There are naysayers who lament, that too many regulations, and too much competition from mega-farms, make it impossible for the independent farmer to survive. A local couple, Jeannine and Cameron McChesney, are proving them wrong. Their success is made even more astounding, by the fact that their enterprise, Greenhouse Gardens, flourishes in an area that once was all desert.

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MAKE AN IMPACT TODAY

“Never believe that a few caring people can’t change the world. For, indeed, that’s all who ever have.” – Margaret Mead

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