Swanton Berry FarmCentral Coast Innovations: Empowering Farm Workers and Low-Income Youth

This trip is now closed.

California’s Central Coast region has long played a pivotal role in the organic farming and sustainable food movements, cultivating a diverse group of food and farming enterprises dedicated to ecological sustainability, social justice, and community empowerment. On this tour, you will visit four farms that focus on cultivating strong and empowered farmworkers, low-income youth, and people who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless.

Homeless Garden ProjectThe tour will start at the Homeless Garden Project, a job training and transitional employment program that offers trainees an opportunity to rebuild and develop basic life skills and a sense of worth as human beings. We’ll learn about the project’s successful 20-year history, including its community-supported agriculture (CSA) and Women’s Organic Flower Enterprise programs. You will then visit Food What, a teen youth empowerment and food justice project, to hear from youth about their role in the movement. The FoodWhat crew will also cook up a farm fresh lunch from the fields.

Next up is Swanton Berry Farm, an organic farm whose unionized workers grow fruits and vegetables on 200 acres on Santa Cruz’s north coast. There we’ll get a tour of the farm, talk with the farm’s workers and help out with some weeding or planting. We’ll end the day with a visit to Pie Ranch for a discussion about youth empowerment and food justice over pie made with ingredients grown on the farm.

Pie RanchTour Highlights

  • Meet with long-time Santa Cruz farmer and Homeless Garden Project Farm Manager, Forrest Cook
  • Hear the stories of FoodWhat youth leaders in the food justice movement and learn more about the national Rooted in Community (RIC) youth movement from FoodWhat Director Doron Comerchero
  • Farm fresh lunch prepared by FoodWhat youth crew highlighting seasonal produce from the farm
  • Tour Swanton Berry Farm with founder Jim Cochran and the farm’s union workers
  • Sample farm fresh pie at Pie Ranch

Participating Organizations

  • The Homeless Garden Project provides job training and transitional employment to people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness, offering trainees an opportunity to rebuild and develop basic life skills and a sense of worth as human beings through gardening and marketing of products.
  • FOOD, WHAT?! (a project of Life Lab) is a youth empowerment and food justice program that partners with teens to grow, cook, eat, and distribute healthy, sustainable food, using food, ag and health as the vehicle for leadership development and personal growth.
  • Swanton Berry Farm was the first organic farm in the country to become 100% unionized, formalizing the farm’s commitment to the human side of farming and creating a framework for operating that encourages workforce sustainability and longevity.
  • Pie Ranch‘s mission is to inspire and connect people to know the source of their food and to work together to bring greater health to the food system from seed to table.

This trip is now closed. Please check back for future Food Justice Tours to the Central Coast.

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Bay Area Food Justice Tours (Nov. 4 – 5, 2011) are brought to you by CFSC in partnership with Food Sovereignty Tours, a project of Food First/the Institute for Food and Development Policy.

For more information, contact Tanya at tkerssen@foodfirst.org or by phone at (510) 654-4400, ext. 223

HGP


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