Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): Okay, so the agenda today is going to be that from 12 to about 130 will have presentations from all of our amazing guests. Join us on and from 132 two, we'll have kind of like a discussion.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): Q AMP, a kind of interactive component of the event. And so if you have pressing matters to attend to at 130 then feel free to leave but highly encourage you to stay till the end.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): Um, if we could have just a short one sentence introduction from each panelist you today on with the name pronoun organization or partners and your favorite fruit or vegetable, we can start with
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): Each
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): Other first. So hi, my name is Kristen Suarez my pronouns are she, her, her is I'm representing UCC the environmentalists of color collective and my favorite fruit is a mango and specifically in Alfonso mango, which is like an Indian variety
ECC- Diana Garcia (she/her): Hi, I can go next. Um,
ECC- Diana Garcia (she/her): I'm also with etc. And I think my favorite fruit would probably be warmer.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): Hundred prophets
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: And
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: Ship Ali from hunger project. Um, my favorite fruit is mango. I really liked mangoes.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): Um,
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): Oh, you're muted.
Marianne Brown: My, my pronouns are she, her hers, and I'm an emeritus faculty member from the UCLA School of Public Health and
Marianne Brown: My favorite food. I think or avocados. I could live on them.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): Very California
Yeah.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: Um, my name. CELIA I you she or they pronounce.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: I'm representing food forward today and I i was gonna say mango, but to mix it up. I'll save my favorite vegetable is a sweet potato.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): So I thought, hungry.
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): Hello, my name is Selena and my pregnancy. She, her hers, and I'm the president of so I bet Hugger at UCLA.
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): My favorite fruit mango and my favorite soup with vegetables potato have already been mentioned, it's I feel very original but those are mine.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): And I think that's everyone I am Karen, I am one of the marketing directors at Dave the campus garden inclusion and what's often introduction
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): Now we want to also have a man acknowledgement and all of us or organizations within the land land citizen UCLA.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): And with knowledge, like I really my tongue. The People's as a traditional nine Curtis's of Obama, which includes Los Angeles Basin and the South Channel Islands.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): And we encourage you, if you do not know whose land you reside on on that on. We encourage you to explore on whose land you are on and
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): I'm sorry, we will send a resource for that later after
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): This event.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): And yeah.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): So,
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): Our first on presentation will be by foot forward to just introduce the topic of living in security and what they do to address it. So foot forward is
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): Baby and pretty. I think all organization on and South Southern California. And they do a lot of gleaning which is on repurchasing food waste.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): Along I think eight counties in Southern California.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: Okay. Hi, everyone. As I mentioned, my name is Julia and I am here with food for it. I'm also a
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: Bruin alum. I graduated in 2013 and so nice to be in this space. I was part of a three and
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: Did some garden days at at Digg. So yeah, thanks for having me. And we can go the next slide.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: So food forward is a nonprofit organization here in Southern California. We fight hunger and prevent food waste by rescuing fresh surplus produce connecting this abundance with people in need and inspiring others to do the same.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: Next slide.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: We do this work, because according to the NRDC up to 40% of the food we produce in the US is wasted.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: And at the same time, one in nine Californians lacks adequate access to food. So we see food recovery as a win win solution to tackle both of these problems at the same time to, you know, stop food from being wasted and instead direct it to people who can use it.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: And we have a team of volunteers and staff who collect fresh fruits and vegetables that would normally go to waste from backyard fruit trees public orchards farmers markets and the downtown LA Wholesale Produce market.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: And 100% of this produce that we recover is donated to over 1800 Hunger Relief agencies across eight counties in Southern California. So food forward is really
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: Kind of an intermediary between the source of of produce that would otherwise be wasted and agencies Hunger Relief organizations anything from a big regional food bank to a church food pantry to, you know, a college food pantry.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: tons of different programs that then get the food out to their end users their clients their constituents.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: So a little bit about each of our programs and we started. We're 11 years old. We started in 2009 our first program was the backyard harvest program so food for it hasn't really grassroots and
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: Like origin story. Our founder and executive director Rick minimize was just kind of walking around his neighborhood and the San Fernando Valley was seeing all these fruit trees.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: You know, orange trees tangerine trees lemon trees and we're seeing all this fruit falling to the ground and rotting
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: And at the same time. It was right after the Great Recession of 2008 and he was seeing a lot more food insecurity and people, you know, lining up the food pantries and not being able to
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: Afford a meal and you know groceries for their families. And so he kind of felt like, you know, there's this mismatch here and maybe we can solve this problem.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: So he asked his neighbor to harvest their fruit tree and delivered it to a local Hunger Relief agency in the valley, and that's how we got started. So we still do this today.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: homeowners who have surplus fruit on their trees and if you, you know, are familiar drive around Los Angeles. There are so many fruit trees here in Los Angeles from legacy orchards from
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: You know, early in the 20th century. And a lot of people just can't eat all the fruit they have
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: So we will harvest it for them and donate it to agencies. We also harvest large properties like the Huntington gardens out in your Pasadena.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: Franklin Canyon and Beverly Hills work at ranch properties and Ventura County. So those those this picture.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: On the left is from Franklin Canyon, so we can get you know a ton of boxes of fruit in one day from these big portraits and so yeah we engage lots of volunteers to come out and pick all this fruit and make sure it doesn't go to waste.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: And our other volunteer powered program is the farmers market recovery program. This was started in 2012 at the Santa Monica Wednesday farmers market.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: And we go around to the vendors and ask if they have any extra produce that they aren't going to sell and want to donate to us. A lot of times they will just end up
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: throwing it away because it is too expensive or time consuming to either pay for it to be tossed or to bring it back to the farm and it might not last till their next market.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: So they can donate it to us. They get a tax deduction. They don't have to deal with it and they know that it's going to people in need.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: And so our volunteers, ask them if they have, you know, extra produce box it up way it and then get out to our agencies.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: And before the pandemic. We were at 25 markets every week. And now we've had to scale back a bit. So we're at 11
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: But we're still recovering a lot of produce that each of those markets because you know some of our other vendors
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: Are donating to us at their normal market. So we are able to recover sometimes 2000 even 3000 pounds at a really large market like Santa Monica. Santa Monica or Hollywood and
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: So yeah, and this is all you know really fresh mostly organic produce. That's local and we're able to get it out to agencies organizations in that same community.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: Our last program is our wholesale recovery program. This was started in 2014. It is our largest program by volume, and we recover.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: millions of pounds a month in this program. So we go to the wholesale produce district in downtown Los Angeles and the surrounding area.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: And we have relationships with vendors. These are folks who supply grocery stores supermarket chains school districts and big people who are buying large quantities of produce
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: And and there's often waste that happens sometimes it's just because of cosmetic imperfections. Sometimes it's because of oversupply
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: So they might just have too much or even the grocery store have one variety and they don't need anymore. So they're going to toss it
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: So we come in really early in the morning, our staff and our drivers and they recover pretty spread palette so at the at the right you can see this as a whole palette of one variety of produce
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: We can fit about 10 of those and I'm truck to get back to our warehouse and which is in Bell our produce PitStop which you can see on the far left photo.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: And and we get it out to unreleased agencies large scale some mid sized agencies all across it and California this program. And as I mentioned, we recover.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: We can recover several million million pounds a month, last year we did about 25 million pounds in this program alone. And so we're really
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: Kind of redirecting a large, large quantity of food that would otherwise be wasted. But is perfectly good and can be eaten by people who are food insecure.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: So,
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: We work with a relief agencies across all social service sectors. Here are a few examples. We have seeds of hope. Men meeting with dignity, the valley.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: These are from a couple other places. I think I'm project angel foods, one of these. So really anyone who's providing food, they could be doing a grocery kit delivery that could be doing
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: hot meals, but we were really lucky to work with just so many different agencies are total numbers about 1800 when you factor in that kind of
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: Partners below our food bank. So we get food out to food banks and then they have smaller, smaller agencies that they donate to and so yeah these are just a couple examples.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: Here's a little just run through of our impact, as I mentioned, we were started in 2009 so we've been around for 11 years
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: In that time, we've recovered over 100 million pounds of fruits and vegetables and redirected them to hunger relief agencies and we have 1800 of those in total.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: We engaged 4000 volunteers last year and last year, we also opened that warehouse. I mentioned, which is our first ever warehouse space with refrigeration. You can see it there. There's a bunch of watermelons.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: And that are all being stored store there briefly. So we have dry storage and refrigerated storage for our produce
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: So Cove, it has definitely impacted us and our operations as it has everything
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: And we are lucky to have a really amazing core of trained volunteer leaders in our backyard harvest and farmers market programs. So they have been able to continue
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: Cleaning and doing food recovery on our behalf and we've we've been able to continue recovering a lot of food through those volunteers.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: Our wholesale program has been also recovering a lot. We participated in the USDA farmers to families food. Food box program, which was a federal program to
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: Make sure that food was not being wasted on farms and instead of us being directed to hunger relief agencies. So again, he served as an intermediary
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: Helping to redistribute those boxes. So you can see a picture of that. This is from the LA dream center those that's a family going home with a box about 15 to 20 pounds of mixed fruits and vegetables and we also kind of have found new ways to serve our partners so we
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: Started more these rapid response food hubs, which are and where we bring a truckload of produce to one agency that has kind of the space and capacity to stage a distribution.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: And smaller local organizations can come and get you know 10 boxes 20 boxes 30 boxes of produce to fill in their cars. And so it's a way to kind of localize the distribution and make it more accessible to folks who maybe don't have a truck that they can
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: Drive out to our warehouse. We also have a new addition to our warehouse sprout, which is
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: A kind of section, the warehouse that's reserved for smaller and mid sized agencies who who also don't have a truck maybe have a van or a couple SUVs.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: And can take more produce and they would have the rapid response hub, but not you know the amount of produce that they would get at the parties PitStop which is if you have like a box truck.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: And so just really trying to be flexible and and meet our partners, we've seen a huge increase in need.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: Most of our partners are our reporting three to five times their normal client base coming to produce and food distributions. So we're just doing all we can to to meet the massive me that's out there right now.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: Okay, I'm Karen can get a time check
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): Yeah.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): I forgot to give us a when you started but
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): How many associate
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: I think I have
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: Maybe 10 or so.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): Who can have
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): Maybe five minutes.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: Okay, great. I will rent it says
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: Yeah.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: So, um, as I mentioned, the two main issues that food for it deals with our food waste and food insecurity and the way that we do that is food recovery.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: So a little bit about food waste we consider food waste edible food that is grown or produced, but not consumed.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: And here are some stats about food waste up to 40% is wasted and there are lots of ways we can measure that. But it's very bad. And it's very wasteful and there's a huge economic and environmental costs.
Next slide.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: Food waste happens at all stages from, you know, production to making it to our homes, but the vast majority happens in the distribution and retail space, which is where food for it comes in at the wholesale market and also
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: Waste that happens at grocery stores and then the biggest percentage is consumer. So once once it's at our homes. Once the, you know, we've got it in our fridges and that's the biggest chunk of where food is wasted. So we do have a lot of ability to make a difference.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: So a little bit about the environmental impact when we waste food we waste. First of all, all the resources that went into growing and transporting the food. So the cropland, the water, the fertilizer. The gas and energy, it took to, you know, run the
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: All the machinery on the farm and to transport it and to process it. So that's a huge environmental impact.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: And then we also see greenhouse gas emissions, because most food that gets wasted ends up in landfills, where it cannot properly decompose
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: And it releases methane and total it accounts for about six to 8% of total global greenhouse gas emissions. So curbing food waste is a huge way that we can make an impact on climate change.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: So also food waste has a huge connection to food insecurity, because if we were able to reduce the amount of food that we wasted, we would have enough to feed everyone
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: Who suffers from undernourishment and food insecurity, obviously, we would also need the infrastructure and networks to distribute it, which we don't currently have around the world.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: But basically this is a to make the point that we don't have a food production problem we have a food distribution and food waste problem. So we don't necessarily need to produce more food than we are already producing
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: We need to distribute it better make sure it's not getting wasted, make sure that we are you know taking equity into consideration and not over producing in places Western countries where we have a lot already. And, you know, making sure that everyone around the world has enough to eat.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: So we, our goal is food security, which is making sure that everyone has reliable access to enough good healthy and culturally appropriate food that is all subjective.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: Based on who you are. But I'm the main things are enough healthy and culturally appropriate so so having enough and having good options that are right for you. And that are healthy for your body.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: Looks like so food insecurity is obviously not having that and and across the US California and La on all three fronts about 11% of people of households are food insecure here in Los Angeles County that's 1.1 million people.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: On food insecurity obviously does not affect everyone at the same rates. So people who affects higher or groups that it affects higher include students
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: families with children, those experiencing homelessness, people of color, low income communities LGBT q plus individuals veterans and seniors. So essentially, a lot of groups that are already experiencing marginalization are more likely to experience students security.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: So since Kobe. We definitely seen a huge increase in food insecurity by some reports here in California. It's skyrocketed from about one in 11 people
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: Two or one nine people something around that to one one in four which is huge and it's definitely not just the rising unemployment.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: It also is going to affect the people who are more likely to already be affected by food insecurity and impacted by code and economic downturn. So, people of color, those in the service retail manufacturing industries. And as I mentioned, we're seeing huge amount of need from our partners.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: So I'm just a little bit about food justice as an overall term as a as another way to think about how we're addressing these problems and
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: We see food justice as viewing healthy food as a human right and addressing structural barriers to that right
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: And food sovereignty is also another really important thing, the idea that people should have control over the food they produce and consume and some common barriers to these kind of ultimate goals, our food deserts and food swamps, the high cost of food and systems of oppression.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: Okay, almost on here. And so just some kind of more good news or things to be optimistic about
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: And there are obviously lots of solutions to these problems. One of which is food recovery, which is what we do at Food forward.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: And to just invest in the infrastructure to ensure equitable distribution of surplus food.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: We are an incredibly efficient organization we recover food at the cost of 10 cents per pound. Which, if you were to go to a grocery store, you know that most food costs more than that and
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: And we are giving everything away for free to our partner agencies. So this is replicable. But we need to have the resources and the support for this kind of food recovery and distribution and also just understanding. I'm sorry.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: Just understanding the intersections between everything and yeah and just understanding you know this stuff is really coming from communities. I put a picture of a mutual aid community fruits here because you know what we're seeing right now with communities really stepping up and
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: Taking on food insecurity their communities. This is really amazing and just really shows the power of communities and understanding the links between climate justice food justice and social justice.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: And then I just have some links and things. So we can
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: send those out later. Whatever.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): All right, thank you so much. Delia. That was great.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): For
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): For those of us coming. And if you have questions for the panelists, feel free to put them in the chat and we'll have a Q AMP a session of. And so that's why I dress off questions.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): So that was fruit forward and
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): Other organizations here today have different relationships with food justice food recovery food insecurity. And so that's really cool to get a lot of perspectives. Our next presenter is going to be swept out hunger with Selena and
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): Sky. I bought hunger is actually pretty cool. They
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): You might have seen them around the UCLA trying to set your sights on line of every quarter to donate to students need
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): And so I thought, hunger started at UCLA and is now a national organization. They're really active and the foods and security, security space on college campuses. So that's what they will be presenting today, I'm going to switch their presentation.
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): Okay. Hello, everyone, and thank you karen for the introduction and I'm so excited to be here and
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): I guess I wanted to start off by talking a little bit about the history of so I thought finger at UCLA. You can just stay on this on the title side.
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): But yeah, I'm very similar similarly to food forward, actually. So I thought, hunger was founded in 2009 by a group of friends who
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): Who saw the on house population in Westwood as a crisis that that they had the power to to change or to at least have some kind of positive impact on and so
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): Rachel sumac and her friends started out by using their leftover swipes to swipe sandwiches from the calf and go down into us with village in Westwood Park and give sandwiches to their neighbors and
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): In the past 11 years. And since grown to a nationwide nonprofit organization with over 128 chapters in
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): 30 plus states. And we've also since built the infrastructure and connections with administration to put into place. A swipes donation.
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): Donation campaign quarter, where we ask for or ask the community on campus to do it on your swipes and
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): As of as of last year, we have
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): Collected as nationwide nonprofit over 2 million swipes. So we're very proud of that. Okay. Next slide please.
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): Okay, so, um, as Celia from food forward already went over.
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): Food insecurity is just the lack of reliable access to sufficient quantities of affordable and nutritious food that is also culturally appropriate and
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): And for the purposes of this presentation will be focusing on college student food insecurity.
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): Slide please. Okay, so, um,
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): Campus hunger that the campus hunger problem. It is something that a lot of people kind of tacitly recognize when people talk about
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): You know college students are broke. They live off ramen. Those are very commonly heard tropes that
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): People like to exaggerate and make fun of. But it is a very serious issue and we see that a lot. When especially with the rise and college administration's thinking, okay, we have a very diverse campus. We have
In
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): Specifically UCLA. They like to boast about having large populations of first generation students
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): Latinx students undocumented students, and yet we see consistently a
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): Systematic lack of support for those populations who have been marginalized and so when they enter college, many of them struggle to support themselves and finished their degrees and that is because they are forced to make
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): Forced to basically prioritize different costs over others. And so with the many costs the college, including tuition housing textbooks.
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): Health care and care for some, some of them support their ease their parents. It's very difficult for some students to be able to prioritize taking care of themselves and
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): So food lead source you refer to. But somewhere between 30 to 40 something percent of students experienced food insecurity, according to a
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): Study by the global food initiative and published but the University of California office of the president 40% of UC students experience hooting food insecure their time at college, and some of the
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): Some of the factors.
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): Some of the students facing the greatest hardships are people from low income background.
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): People who are undocumented have children or dependence people who come from out of state first generation students former and current foster youth and recipients of financial aid and students who have jobs.
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): Next slide please.
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): Okay. So as we kind of already discussed some of the obstacles are
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): rising cost of tuition housing, transportation, we have a lot of commuter students textbooks healthcare and you know the
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): There are a ton of other living expenses that might interfere with people's access to food.
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): We see
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): A lot of cases where students are referred to things like scholarships and financial aid programs, but a lot of those are either very, very limited or some of the loans that
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): That students have access to are very predatory and have very high interest rates. And additionally, a lot of scholarships and financial aid programs aren't open to people like a documented students
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): Students who are disabled or can't work a certain number of hours or
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): We're out of state students are international students. And so there's kind of a
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): almost kind of a catch 22 because, you know, the people who are kind of facing the, the largest obstacles are the ones that are barred from from seeking help. And so
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): And so when people are forced to get jobs or full time jobs, even while they're in school. So they're full time workers and students. It doesn't eliminate the threat of food insecurity, because
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): A lot of them like are now having to juggle.
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): School work and all their other responsibilities and that creates a very significant physical, mental, psychological, emotional stress.
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): And there is also a lack of knowledge about things like food pantries food stamps and meal vouchers and in part that is because of the stigma surrounding food insecurity.
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): A lot of
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): A lot of people see food assistance as something that is only reserved for I
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): Think people who are in the most dire straits.
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): And there's we see a lot of resistance that students have
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): Resistance to talking about their indeed resistance to taking
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): Taking resources from people who might need it more. And that's actually something that we are hoping to address as I got hungry because they're
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): There actually are a lot of options that people can take, but a lot of them just have kind of different barriers to jump and different obstacles that we're working to dismantle and
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): Yeah, but the stigma certainly doesn't help. Because it, it prevents students from even reaching out to resources that they would be able to have access to and make
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): It more difficult all excited
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): And the many impacts of hunger nutritional deficits.
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): A lot of students who face food insecurity turn to things like fast food.
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): Like cheap sources of calories that don't really provide adequate nutritional benefits like vitamins and minerals and that can lead to chronic health problems.
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): And things like stress traction having food on your mind or day not knowing where your next meal is going to come from.
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): And of course for college students that leads to compromise academic performance. It's difficult to college. So we see a lower retention rate in students who experience dirty and the many psychological effects and potential
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): Social casting because a lot of social events do have all revolve around food and
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): Yeah. Okay. Next slide.
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): Oh no. Okay, so we had a short video prepared and you know I could I could turn I could share my screen. And I could play the video.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): Um, if you want. Yeah.
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): Oh wait, okay, okay.
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): Yeah, that's a, I think a two minute video so we could just watch
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): Let me restart my shirt. So the sound.
Thank you.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): Good afternoon. My name is Emily and I am a third year student at Sonoma State University majoring in philosophy and political science and my entering in criminal justice.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): I also serve as the Associated Student Body President I sit on 13 committees and I'm taking 18 units and I serve as the voting member for our CSA Board of Advisors.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): The students and the rest of the Sonoma State population see me as someone who is successful, someone who is a leader, someone who has my life together.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): What they don't know is that over the summer before serving as a student body president this year.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): I lived out of my car and the best week of my summer vacation was the week where all the ASI presidents have the opportunity to
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): Attend the Panetta Institute for Public Policy and that wasn't my favorite week of the summer, because of the experiences I had, but because for a week long. I had a secure meal and didn't have to worry about where I was going to sleep that night.
What students don't know is that I'm a first generation low income college student, and that I worked 20 extra weeks 20 extra hours a week as a full time nanny and part time at a yogurt shop.
I've been homeless four times in my life and what they don't know is that I'm a sexual assault survivor and that I deal with mental illness and some days it is extremely difficult to get out of bed.
But I get out of bed and I serve as their student body president, so I can advocate for affordable and accessible higher education for those students who can't work three jobs as I do and who can't get out of bed.
So I'm here today to support a B 214 and I want to thank Dr. Pepper for all of your efforts in this because it really does make a difference in the lives of students as myself. Thank you.
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): Okay, yeah. Um, I guess this
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): This video it. I've seen it a few times now. And every time it's very hard to watch because I think
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): A lot of people with food insecurity kind of
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): Um, yeah, sorry, it's
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): Yeah, I think it's just hard to think that you might be the only one. Or if you like to get that you have to hide. But one of the side by anger is really most fervent goals is to really extend and start conversations about security and how it's okay to
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): It's okay to
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): Be in a tough spot and to have to ask and to to ask for help. Okay. So next slide please.
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): So our events have changed a lot. Due to cover 19 but here are some of the campaigns that we run every quarter to help address on student food insecurity at UCLA. So our main
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): Event that I've kind of touched on already is our Skype strive, where a lot of y'all UCLA, students may have seen us on the Hill asking for extra meal sites and those go to actually oh no other
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): there'll be other side talking about this. So just go through everything really quickly, we also started out in our mind.
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): We also do fruit and dying. Farmers Market leading and a an event called sandwiches for smiles, but I just realized that will be covered more in depth in the next slides so
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): Yeah, so our side stripe on our donated swipes, I get converted on a one to one ratio to UCLA is economic crisis response team, you know that your program and
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): The way it works is that any student can get up to five meal vouchers, no questions asked to be used out to be the dining halls and afterwards. Students who who demonstrate urgent financial need can get up to 20 to 30 swipes for quarter for a maximum of three quarters.
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): Yeah. And right before CO, but actually we set a new record of over 30,000 swipe donations, which was very exciting and
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): very encouraging.
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): We also have
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): Collaborated with the hunger project, which is also here and Bruin shelter to create a program called Bruin time which is kind of a very small scale food recovery.
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): Program, where we
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): We collect on eating food at the end of dinner at dining halls and
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): And redistribute it for free.
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): On Tuesdays and Thursdays. Unfortunately, that's not operational right now, but hopefully soon and cleaning, which we're very happy to do in collaboration with food forward.
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): Yeah, and they've already talked about that. So it looks like
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): sandwiches for styles and centers for smiles is one of our favorite events because
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): We set up shop at Bruin plaza right next to the Bruin bear and we
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): And we make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. While inviting passers by to to make sandwiches with us. And that way, it's a really effective method of both creating a ton of sandwiches and
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): And some outreach, because during those, you know, one or two minutes. We were able to start conversations with students about food insecurity and kind of the numbers surrounding it, and what people can do if they are experiencing food insecurity, or if they have friends who are and
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): The image next to those
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): It's not labeled for some reason, but that is one of our other programs where it's not directly related to student food insecurity, but I'm a couple times a quarter we go to a shelter for the enhanced and we cook dinner for them.
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): Yeah. And finally, here are some of the kind of miscellaneous collaborations and projects that we do.
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): Working with the CPU food closet, the free food at UCLA Facebook page.
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): We have a good relationship with CalFresh initiative at UCLA, which is a really great program.
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): Which gives pre grocery money to students in need and as well as a relationship with five at Cafe, which is one of the one of the organizations that we donate green to produce
Swipe Out Hunger - Celina Lee (president, she/her): Right, and that's it from us, we've attached a couple of sources and for DVD. Thanks everyone.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): I'm sorry.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): All right, thank you so much.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): Great. That was awesome. And now we have an activity.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): Which will be presented by Justin.
Dig - Justin Haggard - he/him: Yes. So now that we've discussed what food security is we want to give you all an opportunity to explore the food landscape around where you live. So Shelby is going to send a link in the chat.
Dig - Justin Haggard - he/him: And it's a map of food deserts, which you can input your hometown or zip code. Take a look around and its interactive so
Dig - Justin Haggard - he/him: There's a legend, where you can mouse over and see the different colors to see what they mean or toggle different layers and you can also use this time, we're just going to take a few minutes here.
Dig - Justin Haggard - he/him: To do this, so you can also take this time to take a stretch break or grab a drink of water or something.
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: Hello everyone, I'm Chef Ali from hunger project, and I'll be talking about health care and food insecurity.
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: And I just wanted to thank everyone who went before me. I think you all did a really good job as panelists. So
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: I'm excited to just tell you a little bit more about the link between healthcare and food insecurity and as it says I'm a board member for hunger project I'm the co path site director
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: So path is an organization that houses a lot of different types of homeless individuals and the specific path that we work with actually works with veterans, but we have been expanding out to the other path sites as well. So, next slide please.
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: Okay, so this is just kind of like a table of contents of what I'll be talking about. So, primarily, I'll go over what food insecurity is and why it matters.
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: But I really think that people who went before me, did a really good job of explaining this. So I'll go through this pretty quickly.
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: And then I'll talk about the connection between healthcare and food insecurity and then there's some data that I have between the slide so
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: It's not really its own section but it's kind of dispersed throughout throughout the presentation so
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: I'll point that out whenever we come to that. And then the last thing I wanted to talk about hunger project. Well, we do. And then how like we all can make a difference with food insecurity and with like the link with health care. So, next slide please.
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: Okay, so this is like a very basic definition I think someone who went before me had a really good definition.
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: But this is kind of like a easy like definition of food insecurity. If you're not sure about it. So it's just like
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: A condition in which households lack access to adequate food due to limited money or other resources. So that's just kind of like generally what food insecurity is and. Next slide please.
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: So I primarily did some research on how this is measured. So the USDA measured it measures this through a bunch of different surveys that they give to families.
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: And some of the questions include if individuals ever go without a meal because there isn't enough food if they have to cut down the sizes of their portions and if like they have to
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: Ever like skip any meals, because of the fact that they weren't able to access food for that specific time
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: And then if the adults like answer yes to more than two or three of these questions, then they will be determined to be low food secure if they do to five or six questions.
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: Then they're very low food secure and depending on like this classification. They can be given food stamps or other resources, depending on like what
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: Level of food security, they're at. So that's just kind of a background of how food security is measured and how like families are determined to be low food secure. Next slide please.
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: Yeah, so this is basically just data up to 2013 I couldn't find the most recent data.
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: But I feel like this graph does a good job. So like after 2008 because of the recession that happened. There was a very high like burst in families that became food insecure.
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: And then it kind of plateaued so that's really bad because people were much less food insecure before that recession and then after that, like it never went down again.
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: It just kind of stayed at a very stable level. And so, that indicates that people who are food insecure, like they weren't able to get out of that state, even though the recession was over. Next slide please.
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: Okay, so let's get into the connection between food insecurity and health care. So for food insecurity with healthcare. Basically, the problem is that
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: Whenever your food insecure. You can face a multitude of different issues with your health care.
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: So, as it says in the slides children and senior who have food insecurity have much higher risk of asthma poor health.
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: And many limitations to daily living. And as you become less and less food secure. There are many different things that happen with your health.
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: Like you may start experiencing dizziness and low blood sugar and all of this leads to like slower metabolism and like growth defects like all of these things are really bad for your health care.
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: And about 50 million people, which is a lot of people in the US deal with this on a day to day basis.
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: And there are many different households that are facing this issue and most likely what will happen is that the parents will kind of like not eat to feed their children.
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: But then, because the parents are not eating, they won't be able to properly like to their jobs and then they develop other health conditions and then
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: The whole family is negatively affected because the parents can't do their job well so that they aren't able to get the food to the table, and although the children are fed for some amount of time. Like they won't be fed for the long term time
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: So healthcare wise like
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: A lot of different hospitals, try to do something about this and they try to get individuals to come in for their like routine checkups, which is also an issue if you are food insecure than
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: Most likely, you may be struggling with health care costs and insurance costs. So this is not just one issue. It's kind of like a web of issues that combine and it's not just food insecurity.
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: That makes the difference. But like, healthcare, you won't be able to afford the health care because of the fact that you may be food insecure and so it's just a web of different issues that kind of connect
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: So that's the basic like connection. Next slide please.
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: Yeah. So as I was saying, this is kind of like a definition.
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: Oh I'm sorry about the other two but ok so for the basically I wanted to go over the negative effects. So actually, can we go to the next slide. There's a better
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: Okay so negative effects as I talked about in previous slide. And so this is kind of like they the
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: Way that healthcare HELPS CONNECT individuals who are food insecure. So if a person is able to come to a hospital or a clinic and they're determined to be food insecure based on the people who are working there the social workers at the hospital.
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: They conduct a primarily, they do a screening where they give a survey and then they try to refer them to different food bank programs or food pantries.
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: And they also try to connect them with other places that they can get help and then hospitals usually also have emergency food bags are boxes that they can provide for the time being.
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: And they can kind of like Mobley distribute this to different people. But this is just how healthcare can help connect people who are food insecure.
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: Next slide.
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: Okay. So I talked a lot about how healthcare does it and about like the different issues that healthcare for you face if you are food insecure with your health.
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: But one thing I want to talk about is how we can make a difference because I feel like if I do tell you this issue like will be educated about it, but there are different ways that we as individuals like just today, how we can make a difference. So next slide.
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: Okay, so a lot of food banks. I know covered is going on. So this is a little hard to do right now, but a lot of different food banks are still accepting volunteers to help out their food bank.
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: And this is a really good way to help because a lot of the food banks are actually still practicing social distancing and
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: Mask wearing and everything and you can just go individually or with your family or with friends that you trust to be covert conscious
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: To go and help at a specific time point. So like for an hour or two hours and you'll get the whole food bank to yourself, except for like one person who will be there to kind of guide you in what you're supposed to be doing.
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: So in that way. It's like a very code conscious way to give back and volunteer.
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: But if you're not, if you are still like don't feel safe doing that which I completely understand there's a lot of different places in LA.
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: Hunger project is actually doing this right now is that we either make a meal at home or we order a meal from a restaurant and we sponsor food for one meal out
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: Specific sites like path and midnight mission in LA, but depending on where you're located, you can find different sites in your own area that are also doing this and
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: Just making one meal of like sandwiches or one like meal of anything that you really want, as long as they are okay with it. I think that's a really good way to give back. And it really makes a difference to these different sites.
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: You can always do donations. I think donations are always very welcome.
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: Oh, where do you sign up to volunteer okay to sign up to volunteer for food banks, I can send you some
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): Links.
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: It's actually not in here, but I can send you the links for that in the chat after my presentation and and then. Okay.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): Oh, sorry. I was just gonna say we have an activity after you're done.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): Presentations and that will be where people can explore this is to get them all around them.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): Okay, thank you. Thank you care.
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: Okay, so you can also, as always, you can always donate like money or canned foods which is a good way to help
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: One of my friends actually has been working in a soup kitchen near him for quite a while now.
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: And his soup kitchen is very covert conscious and like they practice social distancing and everything. So that's another way that you can help if you're comfortable doing that.
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: And then one major thing is like only buying when you're at the grocery market. I feel like a lot of us.
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: Kind of get carried away and we start buying a lot of different things, but one major way that I found that you can help the issue of food insecurity is just by like
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: Making sure you're buying what you know you can eat and being kind, just a little bit more conscious
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: About what you put into your car. And what you end up buying and that that way you're going to be reducing like food waste in case like you are like overbuying which I know my family tends to do sometimes. So we've been trying to be more conscious of that.
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: And if we're cognizant about this like the the reason that food may be at a higher cost is because there's more of a demand for it. So, like, if we are conscious of what we're buying
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: Then maybe that will be able to lower some of the costs and maybe individuals who may not have been able to afford it before like they'll be able to afford it in the future. Okay. Next slide please.
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: Okay, so I just wanted to briefly talk about hunger project. So obviously we don't really work with like health care, necessarily, but I think
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: There's a very, very clear line between between like homelessness food insecurity and
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: Healthcare. Because if you are not food secure, you will be like dealing with different health issues.
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: And a lot of the populations that we do work with our homeless individuals who face both the issue of health care.
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: And food security. So basically what we do at hunger project is we donate food to combat this food insecurity. So as I said, I'm path site director and every other week we sponsor a meal for the homeless population at path.
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: And then we also work with a parking la where people who are
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: In underserved populations can come or homeless individuals that live in their cars can come over and they can have a warm meal. And so we donate meals to that it's not currently running right now due to coven
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: But we're trying to find a way around it so that we can still help that population.
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: And we're it's different, just because of copia so that was the last bullet point. So, next slide please.
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: And yeah, so that's basically the end of my presentation just some links that you can look at if you want more information and
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: I hope that was helpful to understand the link between healthcare and homelessness and food insecurity.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): Thank you for following. Great. And yeah, we're looking forward to the resources.
Hunger Project- Shefali Varma: Okay.
So,
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): I'm running a little behind on time.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): For everyone to be aware of, but
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): Our next presenter is Marion Brown, who used to teach Community Health Sciences 131 on called healthy food access in the US and Los Angeles, the history and practice of urban agriculture and pretty sure it's still on taught
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): At different quarters, like the ceiling, but she used to teach that are you selling and she's very involved and
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): Then alia see and education and
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): She has a proponent of low cost and quality healthcare so very involved in all these faces on that we're expressing right now and
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): If we go to the present.
Marianne Brown: Hi, can you hear me.
Yeah.
Marianne Brown: Okay.
Marianne Brown: Thank you very much. Karen and thank you for inviting me to participate today.
Marianne Brown: So I'm all my life, I've tried to be involved in in change making around things that
Marianne Brown: I or the people around me felt like needed to be changed. I grew up in
Marianne Brown: Very Northern California and Scotts Valley, not the Santa Cruz one, but the one further north and they were all small farmers there. So I have and they still are, and the
Marianne Brown: Native American tribe or the cook, and now I'm in Berkeley, where the native tribe was the Olin alone. A OH, H lol any
Marianne Brown: And so I'm going to talk about policies.
Marianne Brown: At the at all these levels. I'm also federal state city.
Marianne Brown: Small stores schools also community organizations and UCLA. But I think maybe Karen and others are going to talk about the ways you can be involved at UCLA. So I might not
Marianne Brown: Oh, except for one when when aspect of it. Okay. So next slide please. So at the federal level. There's the farm bill and that is
Marianne Brown: Is change. There's an new farm bill about every five to six years at the federal level, and most recently the version was passed in.
Marianne Brown: 19 or excuse me 2018 but I'll talk about that a little later, a little bit more about snap, which is an CalFresh which are the food stamps programs and also abt the electronic way of paying for those and then women and infant children programs that provide free food and then
Marianne Brown: Former
Marianne Brown: Michelle Obama.
Marianne Brown: former First Lady and the Healthy, Hunger Free Kids Act of 2010
Marianne Brown: So let's move on to the next one. The Farm Bill okay so
Marianne Brown: It basically sets the rules for the US FOOD SYSTEM. But in many ways it's the world food system because we are such a big agricultural country and it
Marianne Brown: has traditionally favored agribusiness they lobby the federal government. They lobby, the Department of Ag and also our congress people and and they, they often when they get a lot of subsidies as a room. So for for foods that aren't necessarily good for us.
Marianne Brown: So when Trump signed the bill in December 2018 about two years ago it the total set aside for
Marianne Brown: The farm farmers were 860 $7 billion dollars and the current director who probably will be changed soon.
Marianne Brown: Is sandy Purdue, who was a veterinarian doesn't really have any farm background. He's in Georgia and and he was a strong supporter of our current president
Marianne Brown: No surprise there. So the key components of the farm bill will the Farm Bill determines largely which crops in the in the US will be subsidized
Marianne Brown: Farmers get federal money based on how many bushels of certain kinds of foods they will grow and the big ones are corn and with the increase in
Marianne Brown: High fructose corn syrup.
Marianne Brown: In almost everything. Certainly in
Marianne Brown: sugar sweetened beverages, but corn is in a lot of items. It's not just in what is food and you should look that up because
Marianne Brown: So we have an overproduction of these commodities. So the federal government gives farmers money so that they won't get you know go bankrupt or something. So, corn, soybeans, wheat, rice and cotton are the big
Marianne Brown: And not all of those are, of course,
Marianne Brown: Cotton, you don't you don't eat, eat, eat, cotton, usually, but in California. We're one of the biggest rice producers in the world and we export most of our rice to Asia and other countries.
Marianne Brown: And
Marianne Brown: And rice requires a lot of water to grow in it and it grows in the Sacramento delta primarily and in around the Sacramento area and they are have strong lobbyists and they continue to produce rice more rice than we need and export it.
Marianne Brown: So,
Marianne Brown: The Farm Bill does almost nothing to support farmers growing fresh produce in our country.
Marianne Brown: If you want to know more about the the farm bill. And the last one you might want to read Michael Pollan
Marianne Brown: Po Li an article in the New York Times in 2007 that's about the previous one. But it gives you a sense he's on the faculty in the journalism department at UC Berkeley.
Marianne Brown: And he writes about food issues you've, you may have read some of his books. Okay.
Marianne Brown: All right, and then I just like I mentioned the Healthy, Hunger Free Kids Act of 2010 because when Michelle Obama work to get that passed it it affected the kinds of it's P RO LL EY n someone's asking how you spell his name, no d
Marianne Brown: Healthier food into schools and and some of that has stayed they've reduced the sugar and the salt and and
Marianne Brown: And they've eliminated unsaturated fats and things like that in schools as a result of that Act. Okay, so we'll move on to snap. So that's basically the food stamp program, which has been with us, I think, since the mid 60s.
Marianne Brown: And
Marianne Brown: The average monthly payout in that is only $125 per participant and you have to be seen as being at the US poverty level or a little above it in order to be all eligible to get food stamps.
Marianne Brown: Which now they have
Marianne Brown: A look electronic you know transfer for that so that
Marianne Brown: You, you are carrying stamps around anymore. You get a card and and it can be used in farmers markets and in a lot of outdoor farmers markets.
Marianne Brown: They have programs where you can actually get twice the amount of compensation to buy food using the food stamp program with CalFresh so
Marianne Brown: That's to encourage low income people to you to shopping farmers markets because they've been seen as being more expensive farmers markets, then you know of course going to safely or a corner store or something like that. Okay.
Marianne Brown: So then we'll go on to the woman infant and children food program which been. Oh, that's definitely been around since the mid 60s.
Marianne Brown: I don't know if you know what that there's two plants. They're there for my backyard.
Marianne Brown: Anyone have an idea what they are. They're both edible yes Swiss chard Celia thank you and hiding among the Swiss chard with the little white flowers is a rubella which is not it's OH, MEGAN you recognize the regular. Yeah. And when it gets to that stage, it's going to be pretty
Marianne Brown: Strong flavored. It's better to to pick your regular unless you like it that that strong. Okay, so then
Marianne Brown: So the, the people who are eligible for the WIC program have to be 185% of the federal poverty guidelines and and then that's revised annually.
Marianne Brown: Based on the Consumer Price Index with the average increase in cost of food is ok so now we'll go to the state and talk about a few things. This is one thing that's near and dear to my heart is the school gardens assembly bill that was passed.
Marianne Brown: In 2006 in California.
Marianne Brown: I have worked in school gardens in the LA Unified School District.
Marianne Brown: So it's and it was
Marianne Brown: Speaker of the Assembly Fabia Nunez, who was the author of that bill.
Marianne Brown: And he was he was lobbying strongly by the Western Growers trade association and other
Marianne Brown: Organizations to pass this bill so schools in school districts could apply for these funds.
Marianne Brown: And certain amount could go to an individual school, depending on the number, the population. How many students are in the school and that existed until 2009 when the money ran out and about 250 school gardens still exist in the LA Unified School District and
Marianne Brown: The state also a past and past in 2014 an urban AG incentive zones Act, which I'll talk more about later.
Marianne Brown: Let's go to the next one. So,
Marianne Brown: The first la applied to get money for that and that was that people private parties who owned vacant lots in Los Angeles City and we're not using them, they could
Marianne Brown: Be neighborhood people could use those.
Marianne Brown: Lots. If they agreed and and the owners of the lots would get a reduced property tax every year we have to pay property taxes, the California
Marianne Brown: And that goes to schools, a largely largely goes to our public schools and city and county governments, so they there. That was the incentive
Marianne Brown: Plan. Plus it you know for the neighborhood. It's a lot more attractive to have vegetable gardens. It was primarily you know edibles. Well, only a very few number of people actually went through that process and
Marianne Brown: That you know that the those lots were converted to gardens. I think part of it was the bureaucracy that they had to go through and so forth.
Marianne Brown: More recently,
Marianne Brown: There's a new AG incentives policy that are lots that are owned by the City of LA. And these are also supposed to be in underserved areas and this one is for parks, gardens and also markets like farmers markets and one that has been successful and getting
Marianne Brown: Getting a lot of fairly large one is south LA community farms and you might want to look that one up. Maybe you'd want to go visit
Marianne Brown: And see how that's going okay so let's see.
Marianne Brown: Now we'll go to the now one organization that
Marianne Brown: has sprung from the city of LA when mayor.
Marianne Brown: Anthony virago so it was mayor was the Los Angeles Food Policy Council and I, they have food policy councils and a large of large a lot of large cities all over California and and the US and
Marianne Brown: The there.
Marianne Brown: They, they are the ones who actually
Marianne Brown: Pushed for that urban AG incentive zone act.
Marianne Brown: That was one of the things they did. I was involved in the early stages of of the LA FPC and if you want to find out more about what they did. You can go to their website, but some of the things, some of their working groups are farmers for all project helping people.
Marianne Brown: Learn how to be in how to grow food.
Marianne Brown: Street Food vending permits before lots of food vendors were arrested or ticketed because
Marianne Brown: You know, people markets around them, didn't want them selling or whatever. And now there's a permits program so they can't they aren't going to be getting in trouble with anyone.
Marianne Brown: Selling food on the street.
Marianne Brown: And so I mentioned that
Marianne Brown: The Urban AG incentive zones.
Marianne Brown: They also work with groups on like of food forward on food waste prevention and rescue
Marianne Brown: The UN has a national, international food day every year. And there's an annual celebration.
Marianne Brown: I imagine. I don't know if it went on this year on October 24 and
Marianne Brown: And many other working groups.
Marianne Brown: So they are a good group and some to get involved with some UCLA faculty have been involved. I know gets wolf Professor gift. What gets wolf from urban planning is still very much involved with the LA Food Policy Council. Okay. So we're ready to go on now to the next one.
Marianne Brown: And it's the LA Unified School District. So
Marianne Brown: They have established a good food purchasing policy. And actually, Dr. Wendy slusser head of the healthy campus initiative at UCLA played a very positive role in seeing that that this came about and some of the things are that they are no longer purchasing
Marianne Brown: Chicken that has been injected with antibiotics and hormones and they had a vegan meal pilot. I don't know whether that has been
Marianne Brown: You know, is no longer pilot is part of the regular program now and also
Marianne Brown: They have a whole thing about Farm to School products produce from local farms, rather than really big agribusiness so they get a lot of their produce from a farm in
Marianne Brown: East of Los Angeles just an hour or two away.
Marianne Brown: They also have through the LA County. Oh, the LA USD has egg in the classroom classes that are administered through the LA County Department of Public Health.
Marianne Brown: They, they do lessons in nutrition using my plate, you may be familiar with that it's no longer the pyramid.
Marianne Brown: It's the play, how you know how much of which kinds of food, you should get every day and fruit and vegetables is half of the plate proteins is a quarter and carbohydrates is a quarter with the pyramid carbohydrates was the big one. And they've reduced that
Marianne Brown: And they have breakfast in the classrooms, which are free to children and free lunch to two schools that are at least one and a half times the poverty level the poverty level.
Marianne Brown: for a family of four is $26,200
Marianne Brown: For family of two it's 17,240
Marianne Brown: Virtually every school in the LSD is an impoverished school so
Marianne Brown: Children are not having to pay for their lunches and now during the pandemic, there is something like 63 places, close it in the different school areas where families can go and pick up breakfast and lunch for their children every school day.
Marianne Brown: Okay, so we're on to community organizations.
Marianne Brown: One that I just wanted to mention was started by someone
Marianne Brown: Dart scores, he called Cosmic South Dart down there, the director and he he grew up in Inglewood, he was
Marianne Brown: A US Navy iraq war vet and he came back and he got a PhD in in education at UCLA, and he went back to work in his community in Inglewood, and Linux. He's
Marianne Brown: He's actually president of the school board in Inglewood, and they have one of their big things was to get
Marianne Brown: To get a garden in into 1000 homes in Englewood, an edible garden. So, and it's largely made up of
Marianne Brown: Voluntary volunteers, although they've gotten very big grants also to help them and now they're partnering with programs outside of the LA area. As you can see in the city of Houston and the Sacramento Unified School District. So
Marianne Brown: He teaches in in the fielding School of Public Health and he's President of the Alumni Association and is very approachable. As are his staff. So if you ever want to find out what they're doing. They're also very welcoming their offices are in Inglewood
Marianne Brown: And food forward. CELIA says yes. It's the best. Yeah.
Marianne Brown: He's he and his team are amazing. I always had them come and talk in our class.
Marianne Brown: Ch s 130. OK, so moving along and UCLA so
Marianne Brown: If you're not familiar with the Jonathan kit and Karen fielding School of Public Health.
Marianne Brown: There are a lot of great faculty. I haven't listened to them all who are involved in Food Research and Action and the school is named after
Marianne Brown: fielding because he he. Well, partly he contributed a lot of money to school, but also he was the director of the Department, the UCLA County Department of Public Health for many years. Okay.
Marianne Brown: And may Wang does a lot of research on
Marianne Brown: Cut evaluation of nutrition programs, including the edible schoolyard here in Berkeley. She he was, she was very involved in evaluating that program and Michael pre lip.
Marianne Brown: Has his
Marianne Brown: That he worked with a group of graduate students undergrads other faculty to transform corner stores and underserved neighborhoods, so that they are able to sell fresh produce and and put them up front, instead of the the sodas and
Marianne Brown: The candy and stuff, putting them.
Marianne Brown: And and James facet is the person who teaches CH s 131 now the healthy food access course that I taught and
Marianne Brown: You. So that's offered in the spring every year.
Marianne Brown: And let's see, I
Marianne Brown: Think that's it. So there are lots of ways you could get involved.
Marianne Brown: In in any angle here on related to healthy food access because it's not just food access, but we want it to be healthy. Right.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): Thank you.
Marianne Brown: And I work and I've worked in school gardens, where
Marianne Brown: You know, children, where we actually connected the garden to all the academic subjects math, science, language arts history, etc. And when children plant food.
Marianne Brown: And then pull it out and eat it, they say, Oh, I never liked this, oh, this is, this is really good. Okay, this is chard. This is kale kale smoothies, we were
Marianne Brown: With the morning shoes in there for sweetener. Anyway, that's the way to reach them reach them early was school gardens and they'll have a great diet for the rest of their life.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): Thank you. Thank you. That was really, really well researched on talk that was awesome.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): I forgot to mention, she's a Certified Master Gardener.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): So that'll be in our slides for anyone who's interested in that, after presentation but um we will do just this really quick activity and then
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): Move on to the other on our events other toxins.
Dig - Justin Haggard - he/him: Yeah. So now that we've looked at food deserts. We want to give you all an opportunity to look at food away sees or resources where people can find relief. So Shelby is going to share the link to this on the chat.
Dig - Justin Haggard - he/him: And you can use the LA specific one or the general us one but you just input your zip code and find resources nearby.
Dig - Justin Haggard - he/him: There'd be a good idea to write down some of these resources so that you can go back to them later. And we're also going to have like a little discussion about this.
Dig - Justin Haggard - he/him: At the end, so it'd be good to have some of these written down. And you could also take this time to stretch, get some water, do what you need to do.
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): Students
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): Okay, so where's face created by in for by Fox students and by proxy for black indigenous and people of color.
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): On campus who are interested about environment and environmental issues and we focus on, you know, community healing environmental justice education and other means of challenging mainstream and white environmentalism.
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): So today we're here to focus on food justice. Obviously you can keep you can go back yet. Today we're here to you. Yeah. Okay. Sorry. So they're here to focus on food justice, obviously, but specifically that were turning
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): Intersection of veganism, which is a sort of critique of mainstream veganism and an approach to redirecting the narrative to be more accessible and inclusive and you can go to the next slide.
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): Um, so yeah so notes on intersection of veganism. So, first in this discussion and all discussions we are aiming to call in not just call out
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): So calling in is respectfully engaging in a dialogue about certain behaviors, focusing on reflection,
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): Whereas calling out is sort of like immediately bringing attention in a sort of public way to what's going on. So we're who space for both of these behaviors in a lot of situations, but we're hoping to be reflective and really just calling in people to this discussion.
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): And we're, we're talking about the like a harmful side of veganism, which is not all vegans and it's not all environmentalists.
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): But about the perspectives which dominate these spaces which are often white and otherwise privileged and so we are always speaking from the lived experiences and knowledge of by Park within environmental spaces.
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): And remember that many people, you know, may have completely different experiences from you.
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): Or the people you're surrounded by so yeah we're speaking in the hopes of creating a sort of sort of more intersection of vegan culture.
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): And this means a lot of things, but perhaps most important among them is like, as you've seen through all of the other people's presentations today.
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): There's a lot of barriers within food accessibility and environmental general isn't generally accessibility. Um, and so
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): We're trying to start a dialogue about talking about the assumptions that are often associated with in this these movements and how accessible.
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): Traditionally environmentally friendly practices are and then and moving towards intersection ality means being inclusive of all people all communities in terms of the various factors which shape our identities. So like race ability religion income, all of those sorts of things.
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): And understanding how these identities intersect and how society creates new and nuanced barriers for people who hold these multiple intersecting identities.
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): So that's the main piece of our presentation some barriers to accessibility within like a fully like traditionally vegan diet, um,
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): And so yeah, without recognizing these barriers we cannot have a truly intersection of vegan or environmental movement.
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): And so no particular order. Some of the ones will be talking about today, our food deserts, which have been mentioned before cost health cultural significance and some injure plays with capitalistic ideals.
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): So food deserts are also we're already talked about like quite a bit. So I'm not going to go into what they are but yeah there's kind of a lack of healthy and affordable options for food. These are
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): Often, like in low income in communities of color because of various like play space socio economic factors that lead to like short
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): Like long traveling distance between where grocery stores are and where residents live. Um, so some of the solutions that we have
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): For these are like increasing accessibility farmers markets which like food forward and a lot of these other organizations have been talking about.
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): Farmers markets are usually not in super accessible areas due to a lack of public transportation or like a perception like sort of social perception of
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): Who the farmers market crowd looks like and what those sorts of people who are interested and have access to organic and healthy food look like
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): And so, increasing accessibility farmers markets by moving them in areas which are more which are low income or communities of color and also increasingly many markets have been accepting snap and abt
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): Which is super great and super like definitely helps to increase accessibility in that way.
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): Another important piece is investing community development and creating self determination by establishing access to community gardens, where residents can grow their own food.
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): Connect to their local culture and even develop economic opportunities and that helps create opportunities where you can have fresh and healthy.
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): plant based foods. And then the last option is like working with local and regional governments to sort of change zoning practices or even subsidize local convenience stores which sell fresh and accessible produce
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): And this will help. This helps increase accessibility in food deserts and other low income areas to a more plant based diet.
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): And yet here's a little just like a map of, like, I guess, like a food desert sort of map where
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): The darker the shade. The farther, people are from with no car and no supermarket stores within a mile, which is kind of
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): You know, if you look at where these areas are and you know this is not overlaid with a race map or ethnicity or income map but it definitely has a lot of intersections with with those identities. So just some food for thought.
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): Yes, and a lot of areas are located within the South, and that is not, you know, that is not a coincidence. I don't think, um, so the next thing we'll talk about is the cost of veganism so
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): Obviously there's like kind of different factors to this. So, so first the first layer is like, I think a lot of this is his argument that's often made is that like alternative dairy and meat products are often expensive.
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): And finding but additionally finding products that actually tastes good and like provide the proper health benefits that are plant based, and like are generally like are higher quality tend to be more expensive, like, Sure, you can buy
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): Produce maybe that is like low cost, but like plant based meat alternatives and like plant based dairy alternatives are like increasingly expensive also Whole Foods and other stores which like had a reputation for being high quality like vegan, organic sort of plant based foods.
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): Are way pricier than the regular like convenience store, which is found in a lot of like low income or communities of color.
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): In fact, according to the analyst for Morgan Stanley prices were 15% higher in Whole Foods type stores than those that a typical grocery store.
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): Um, so yeah, it causes a known barrier, I think, but it's also one, which is kind of misunderstood, in my opinion, so obviously household make less money will have less money to spend on groceries.
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): But further there's often a lot of intersections where maybe they have multiple generations living in one household or they have high medical bills due to pollution and environmental like toxins in their environment workplace.
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): And so a lot of other factors are creating even more barriers to what some may see is just a slightly more expensive diet and then also like transitioning into a vegan diet takes time and takes like knowledge and education that not everyone has
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): And then personal health, which is like something that I am like personally very, I like to talk about this.
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): is yet another issue that prohibits. A lot of people from moving to a completely vegan diet is health and I think that this is a not very understood and commonly overlooked factor.
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): So there's a lot of factors like chronic illness which may create existing deficiencies and imbalances within the body and require a specific diet to maintain a healthy lifestyle, which may not be compatible with like 100% fully plant based life.
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): And many of these illnesses are invisible but that certainly doesn't make them any less real. Um,
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): Another issue often discussed in like topics of like veganism is the issue of protein as well. There are tons of tons of plant based protein options which can and do provide
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): Many people with like healthy and like very adequate amounts of protein and there are many conditions for which certain types of proteins are required.
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): So this can be both short term, such as like surgeries related to muscle and muscle growth, like if you
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): Need to like if you tear your ACL or something and you need to be rebuilding muscle pretty quickly. Like, that sort of thing.
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): Or even just like long term related to like chronic diseases affecting musculoskeletal sort of systems and those require different types of
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): Diets and then there's also into place that veganism has with medicine so certain conditions are accompanied by medicinal regimen, which requires a specific diet or even just the medicine itself is like a gelatin capsules.
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): And so yeah, there's lots of others. And I think the main takeaway from this is that health is extremely complex and a very personal issue.
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): And so like I think a lot of people assume that if they are able to go vegan. It's like easy for other people to go vegan, but you can never know what a certain persons like health burdens are. And now I'm going to pop over to Diana to talk more about some of the larger barriers.
ECC- Diana Garcia (she/her): Hey Diana. Thank you for having me. So right now I'm going to be talking about
ECC- Diana Garcia (she/her): Animals and culture so prior colonization. It was common practice for many indigenous people data to the American, Native Americans and other continents to hunt for food.
ECC- Diana Garcia (she/her): And use every part of animal to day lives. So these eco friendly practices, then some survival and also the belief that one is a part of nature.
ECC- Diana Garcia (she/her): So nature is to be respected and therefore only what is needed is taken.
ECC- Diana Garcia (she/her): And this highly contrast views of call mentors who not only brought violence indigenous people and decimated the population.
ECC- Diana Garcia (she/her): But also hunted animals to access and regarded land as disposable and something that could be owned. It is important to note the indigenous people are everywhere.
ECC- Diana Garcia (she/her): And they're still currently facing challenges because of colonization and then here on the slide, we have some examples of indigenous people in the Great Plains and then invite people and Alaska.
ECC- Diana Garcia (she/her): And me is an integral part of many cultures and religious practices. So it is important to remember here practices that include that the consumption of animal products.
ECC- Diana Garcia (she/her): To not necessarily demonize people participating, because it is not individual people who are the problem is systemic. It is commonplace in our society to validate dietary restrictions to to really just practice.
ECC- Diana Garcia (she/her): Like not eating specific animals or other foods, but for some reason when it's the other way around. Many people a certain cultures claim that their culture and religious traditions requires an animal based products. And this is something that we should respect.
ECC- Diana Garcia (she/her): And cultural relevance is an extremely important barrier. And then, next slide please.
ECC- Diana Garcia (she/her): And then quickly. I'm going to be talking about a petition and the aneurysm. So, and lastly I'm just thinking of you eat me. It's not. You're not a bad person meeting is not inherently bad
ECC- Diana Garcia (she/her): Humans have eaten meat for millions of years. Animals are seen as property under capitalism, people are seeing as expendable.
ECC- Diana Garcia (she/her): So animals under capitalism are forced to live people live. We see different documentaries, such as we incorporated Kaspersky which you can find out that place where animals.
ECC- Diana Garcia (she/her): Have really short lifespan or felt extremely unhealthy diet define the mark on etc. And then this is on capitalism access to read
ECC- Diana Garcia (she/her): systemic racism imperialism and then these people who are victims of racism imperialism cetera are exploited for their labor and then also exposed to have to just work conditions, including pesticides.
ECC- Diana Garcia (she/her): He's dressed like a water, etc. So while individuals have power and agency to change their lives. They also have that same power and agency to call upon institutions to make changes.
ECC- Diana Garcia (she/her): They certainly have a power and further the empathy to access and not everyone can change their lifestyles, in the same way.
ECC- Diana Garcia (she/her): So we hope to get the information on why the it isn't as much more complex than it seems. And hopefully none of this deters you but inspires you to understand that it's not about being perfect.
ECC- Diana Garcia (she/her): It's about doing the best you can. And then, next slide.
ECC- Diana Garcia (she/her): And then I'll repeat back what
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): Yeah. So yeah, this is kind of just
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): A thing of like never assuming what the perfect environmentalist looks like never assuming that like food itself is like such a complex thing and like this is a Nisha of a food justice that we kind of see a lot as
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): As within the models of color collective of like going vegan is like a good way to like support the environment and like if you're not vegan like you don't care enough and
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): That's often not the case. And that's also that's also not like you know the only position that a lot of vegans hold
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): But it is an important one, and it is something that we need to, you know, keep into consideration. So always look with a critical lens at the environmental movement as a whole.
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): And that food systems.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): Thank you so much, etc. That was
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): A lot of really important information and research about different like this, we should keep in mind and
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): I'm going to spend the rest of the time interval to on just talking a little bit about community gardens. We're going to skip the rest of activities and go straight to the Q AMP. A which will go into it until 215 and I promise to go with them on.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): But anyways, I'm Stig is an organization. We usually have a community garden on behind some sort of recreation center. There's also another community garden on the HDI organizes
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): That you may have seen on top of sunset amphitheater. But ours is kind of a little bit of an untraditional community garden.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): Because we don't have individual products, but we'll talk about that soon. And we on during the pandemic we hold workshops about food gardening and sustainability, a little bit about once
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): A mistake.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): So what is a community garden, um, as Marianne also already mentioned a little bit. Um, there's a lot of
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): Or sorry, the traditional on Community Garden, I guess, is often like a bacon city plot but on people either asked us to leave us religious go ahead and make into a garden, maybe clean up and all lot and put in some bugs and stuff.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): And on it can kind of be thought of as a nonprofit farm because it produces food or as a communal green space instead of a city and green space.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): Where people can gather and enjoy the plants and stuff. This is a picture of a community garden which is unfortunately inaccessible right now.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): I'm usually in community gardens people be assigned individual plots, which they can use however they want. They can grow whatever is relevant to them. Um, our community garden is a little bit more on down product I guess all the plus want everyone
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): But that's for them.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): Um,
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): community gardens are really good for building communities on there are not only just a source of food, but a source of social connection. They give you an excuse. If you're going to
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): The garden you see your neighbor there gives you an excuse to talk to share knowledge and to build on again connections.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): Some community gardens have an exclusive sort of structure where they pair on if you are a kid or younger person and you want to grow the community garden you're required to contact and older members on and ask them how to get started. So that's some explicit on connection building
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): And they can also provide not only space for humans also space for wildlife. They can be a conduit for pollinators and other flora and fauna that or may not have that space and urban environment.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): And a lot of the literature about on community gardens is about urban agriculture, but there is also a lot of community gardens.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): Like I mentioned on in schools, that's been a really a resurgent movement lately. Um, and suburban even rural areas and urban areas as well. So my new gardens can be anyone.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): On the his a little bit of history about community gardens and the 1800s, where cities weren't out history in the in America.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): Specifically when 1800s, where cities weren't as dense yet on some people who live in cities were encouraged to use it plots to subsist on if they weren't as well off as I guess.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): White collar workers on and and and the early 1900s during world war one and World War Two. The government without a really massive effort to
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): Encourage people to patriotically grow their own food so that resources can bite and could be diverted to war.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): On during one time. So these were called liberty and Victory Gardens. And the reason why they were called Victory Gardens is because even after the war elements encouraged people to do growth food to help the reconstruction efforts. So that's that.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): And then when I can send us an 80s. There was a lot of hippie stuff going on. There's a resurgence of interest and that continued to today.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): Common question that is brought up is a community gardens produce like meaningfulness of food on right to care. It's going to be worth anything and
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): The Victory Gardens actually produced over 40% of Americans vegetables, which is a lot on our fruits and vegetables and assault rifles today because they were heavily subsidized during that time and the government doesn't support me in gardening on that level.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): But there was a study on one study in Wyoming showed that even in the worst growing zone in America with lots of dryness snow, all that kind of stuff.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): They grow enough for the average revenue per enough for two adults to eat the recommended amount of fruits and vegetables performance.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): On this was in a certain area. So obviously it's not going to be like that in all areas, but it goes to show that people on in gardens and grow a nutritional a meaningful amount of food that can make a difference for the family.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): And there's other benefits of community gardens, a lot of communities come together and use these these spaces to grow. Who's that are culturally relevant and cannot be found at normal civil not good. So a lot of people from
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): Who have I guess immigrant backgrounds family backgrounds. They know that it's really, it can be hard to find a cool fairly relevant supermarket near them. So a lot of people grow on
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): The Wind River Indian Reservation rose to carries and some Asian communities grow bok choy, and I'm Korean companies grow callaloo and things like that. So those are just some examples.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): And community gardening organizations can provide something on infrastructure to allow people to access gardening when they weren't able to when they
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): Would face obstacles to garden otherwise. So trans people who can't necessarily bend down to pardon.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): I'm some of the bigger organizations. The community organizations in America will provide resources to get raised beds so you don't have to bend down and then there's also indirect benefits if you save money that would have gone towards flying
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): Towards my fruits and vegetables. You can use it to pay rent pay fees intuition, all that kind of stuff that cyber hunger addressed and the other panelists present address
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): And just a really put a slide on Community Arduino is pretty cool. Obviously, where we like it but it's not a silver bullet. There's a quote here from a study I found from food justice activists whole humanists and
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): They said no amount of fresh produce will fix urban America has food and health gap, unless it is accompanied by a reversal of the diminished political and economic power of the poor and working class. So this is just a reminder that on
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): But, you know, can in gardening is one tool for people to, uh, to achieve the goals that they set for themselves whether that be health goals or economic goals, but
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): It's, you know, it's not the end all be all and
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): Ultimately is kind of a stopgap solution to some of the more systemic
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): shortcomings that we have and providing enough nutritional
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): Really relevant and
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): Good food for everyone. So that's the end of my presentation, those really fast. I'm sorry.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): We're gonna skip the activity in the breakout sessions and
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): And stop share
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): And we're going to address questions now for any of the panelists that anyone may have you can unmute yourself or go to the participants button and raise him.
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): I actually have a question.
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): For Celia from food forward and about your opinion or like perspectives on companies like imperfect produce
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: Yeah.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: Um, we often like I think that's something that people often compare us to or when people hear about food for that's like, oh, it's like, Oh, you're like in perfect
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: And, you know, our kind of general positions that we're filling a different niche there a for profit company. So they are working to
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: You know, get consumers involved with this issue and provide a resource to consumers and we're nonprofit. So we are working to address food waste.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: And and and food insecurity through that kind of line of work. So there's like some similarities but our models are definitely really different and a huge part of that is just that they're a for profit company and we're a nonprofit. So we are we have different goals.
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): Yeah, I guess I meant like do you like what fruit juice does
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: Um, I think. I mean, for it as an organization, we, we are supportive of anyone like trying to address food waste and yeah
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): We also have a question from the chat room and he was on
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): Um, oh, you can see
ANGELA ZHANG: Okay. Um, yeah, I was just wondering, like, you guys are talking about how we kind of like an infrastructure for equitable for distribution right now. I was wondering, like,
ANGELA ZHANG: I know you guys talked about kind of working on that infrastructure, at least. And I was just wondering what that kind of looks like those just one of my questions. Yeah.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: Yeah, totally. Um,
ANGELA ZHANG: So,
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: I would say, I mean, a big part of infrastructure is just funding and resources. So putting money to something, because that's how the world works.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: Currently we need money to funding and but for us specifically
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: You know, our kind of infrastructure is, I would say there's like a few main components. There's equipment and so things like trucks to to pick up and you know deliver produce
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: You know, our warehouse uses pallet jacks and forklifts. So you need physical stuff and equipment to do this work and even our volunteers use things like things like fruit pickers cardboard boxes.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: handcarts at a farmers market, all that kind of stuff you need people. So we have 35 staff members who work at our organization. And we also have thousands of volunteers.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: And you also need technology to track everything and you know track how much produce your food you're recovering where it's going.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: And like net like literal networks of like people. So we have relationships with
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: Fruit and Vegetable donors who give us produce. And then we also have relationships with
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: The organizations we donate to. So all of those pieces of the technology, the equipment and the physical space, the people that all makes up like what I would call infrastructure of like
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: Doing this work and it is replicable. And there are lots of other examples of food recovery organizations.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: And around the country. But in terms of like scaling it up, you know, there's some that are really small, but just do like backyard gleaning and then there's other ones that are really large like us, but it's, you know, there's a lot of places where we could be doing it as well.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: Thank you.
ANGELA ZHANG: Yeah, I'm that kind of relates to my second question, too.
ANGELA ZHANG: I was just wondering like how you guys really utilize technology like
ANGELA ZHANG: That technology to to kind of scale your efforts, maybe to like for connecting to individuals or donors and then also in like managing volunteers, I guess.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: Yeah, so food forward utilizes two primary platforms. One is called fusion where which is a inventory tracking software, I believe it may be specifically meant for produce
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: But we use that for our wholesale program and and that's just to track how much produce is coming in and how much is going out and where it's going.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: And then we have our own proprietary software that we created, which tracks our other two programs record harvesting and farmers market recovery.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: And as well as all of our Hunger Relief agency partners and that tracks pounds of produce type of produce and then volunteers.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: Homeowners properties where the producers coming from where the practices going. So basically, there was no existing thing that did all of those things. So we just built it, but that is all super important to our operations and and being able to
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: Keep track of, you know, engage with our volunteers and supporters and also be able to report on our impact of how much did we actually recover. Where did it go
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: Who are we serving. So yeah, I would say, Are we used to do things in like Google Sheets and that's not sustainable for recovering millions of pounds of produce. So technology is hugely important to do this kind of work right.
ANGELA ZHANG: That's really cool.
Thanks.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): All right, Jen says in the space.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): Thank you.
Janice Smith: I have a question for Professor Brown. And I was very tripped up on learning about their rice paddies and Sacramento everything that I've heard about
Janice Smith: Sacramento is that it's very desert and dry. I don't know how much you know about this. But what is the bigger picture here. If we produce that much rice from Sacramento and there seems so many back like drawbacks to it. Why do we do that, how is that still a thing.
Marianne Brown: Yeah, I
Marianne Brown: Just, I got a couple of questions through Chat. Well, I mean, the there's the Sacramento River.
Marianne Brown: Up there there and and they they siphon off the water for that and the environmentalists are, you know, try to fight that because those are bird and other
Marianne Brown: Native sanctuaries for animals.
Marianne Brown: And plants and things so
Marianne Brown: But yeah and and I may be wrong about it being exported. Well, I kind of was over arching I was saying, Asia, but
Marianne Brown: Because a lot of people who know better.
Marianne Brown: On the zoom were saying in some countries in Asia, at least they aren't interested in American rice at all.
Marianne Brown: But it's it's exported somewhere because we export a lot of the rice to other countries and the trade association of rice growers is very powerful in our state and they fight any efforts to reduce their usage of water.
Marianne Brown: To produce rice.
Janice Smith: Very interesting. Thank you.
Mm hmm.
ALEXANDER YAN: Well, I have a question. I don't really know who should address the question through. So, like, how do you sing the rising like culture of like
Marianne Brown: Take calls and
ALEXANDER YAN: online grocery shopping walk back the full waste issue. Thank you.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: I think I can try to feel this one and
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: So to see you're saying takeout from restaurants.
ALEXANDER YAN: And online grocery shopping. Yeah.
And
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: Yeah, I mean, I would say I think from a waste perspective, overall, like, including zero waste in general and take out is generally worse because you're here. Everything is coming in packaging and that's usually not
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: recyclable or compostable or anything. You should just have to throw it away.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: And you know a lot of people though. However, when they go to restaurants. If you want to reduce your food waste you you get a package of whatever you have left and you take it home. So in a way, it's like
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: Maybe you know from a food waste perspective, not that different and online grocery shopping. Yeah, that's a really good question. I'm not really sure if there's been any like studies are looking into if that's better or worse. I could imagine people
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: Maybe they're spending less money and buying less because they're like seeing the total like add up on their app versus like waiting till you get to the register.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: But also, maybe you're just like, you know, I'll just get everything because I'm just, I just have to sit on my couch and I'll have to leave. So it'd be interesting to see if there's an actual increase or decrease in how much people are buying and then wasting
ALEXANDER YAN: Also a for proposal wrong also kind of shocked to see
ALEXANDER YAN: Like California grow rice does does actually shocked me.
ALEXANDER YAN: typically associate rice was like what places or warm places like Thailand, Vietnam, southern China not like
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): Alright, the next question in the chat is from Angela can you wanna yes
ANGELA ZHANG: Oh yeah, sorry.
ANGELA ZHANG: I was just wondering for the
ANGELA ZHANG: What is it the ag incentives for
ANGELA ZHANG: Private
ANGELA ZHANG: Property owners or something like that. If that Oh wait, I think she she already answered that question for me.
ANGELA ZHANG: Oh yeah no I yeah
Marianne Brown: Chat. Yeah.
Marianne Brown: Cool. And I suggested that anyone who's interested, contact the LA Food Policy Council to get the current status, since they are the conduit.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): That's a good resource.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): Center security is your question.
Janice Smith: Yeah, sorry.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): This should have been a lot of people ask questions.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): No one has questions I have one for all the panelists. How did you get involved with the justice.
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): Go ahead.
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): I
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): Have always been interested I my major is environmental science. And I've always been interested in environmental ism and then coming to
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): UCLA, I realized that like my experiences with environmentalism were super different from a lot of people that I was meeting and specifically that a lot of
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): The ways that the mainstream environmentalism goes about doing things are from an often like privileged point of view.
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): And food justice is one of the, like, major things that I found in LA, and especially at UCLA, which was
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): Really an issue and has like a lot of overlap with different like like with ability and with income and with religion and a lot of the other factors which often have an intersection like interplay with with with privilege and with oppression, so
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): I was really interested in that. And I was actually part of a three.
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): For the past two years, I'm no longer with them, but I actually partnered with food forward to do a like free produce fair during Earth Month in April.
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): In like 2019 and 2018 I think or something along those lines. But yeah, so
ECC - Kristen Soares (she/her/hers): That's how that's a little bit about me.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): Okay.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): If no one else wants to then thank you all so so much for attending today, sorry, the time was super work well.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): Thank you to all the panelists for doing preparing all these great talks. Thank you to the audience fundraise um I think Lauren will send out surveys. Now, Carlos.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): Yes, I
DIG - Kyros (he/him): Have a survey.
DIG - Kyros (he/him): Or shoot. Let me pull that up.
DIG - Kyros (he/him): But please give us your opinions on how you thought today's meeting went
DIG - Kyros (he/him): And we will also post this on the slack afterwards.
DIG - Kyros (he/him): Yes. Okay.
JISEON KIM: Um,
JISEON KIM: I actually have a sorry I know we're ending, but
I actually have a question.
JISEON KIM: I'm sorry. Okay, so I know that
JISEON KIM: So food forward is a food recovery program that redirects food that would be wasted.
JISEON KIM: But I am I'm in the high desert region which is pretty England and the nonprofit organizations, you're actually pot partner with fruit forward.
JISEON KIM: And they have produce we have because I want you to food distribution event or weekly food distribution of it.
JISEON KIM: And we get the produce that is provided to us from food for word, but by the time it reaches us because we're inland the food gets wasted because it's a lot of the posts that we get for flu forward is don't away. So how do we solve that.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: Yeah, that's a really good question. Um,
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: Yeah we I mean we we are recovering food that
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: Some of it is, you know, a not 100% like not 100% of the palette is viable and so
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: There's often some amount of the food that is spoiled and has to get thrown away. And, you know, we're able to recover are able to use some of it. So it's better than throwing away all of it.
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: Um, but I would say, you know, foot forward tries as much as we can to set up composting partnerships with
Food Forward - Celia Cody-Carrese: Partners so that you know we're able to compost, the food that can be eaten. And so I think if there's any opportunity to to partner in that way. And, you know, I'm happy to think my emails will be sent out. So I'm happy to talk more about that.
JISEON KIM: Um, Yes, I was. That was what I was thinking. But currently, there is no I guess like support or resources to start that. So I'll reach out to you.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): Alright, if anyone has additional questions for the panelists will be emailing on the panelists contact information.
Dig - Karen Yi (she/her): On seeking out involved. And if you're interested in food justice academically, they're slipping studies minor food Studies Department has a lot of these classes on the they are. Thank you for joining us today. Have a good day.
Mackenzie Van Valkenburgh: Thank you.