Examining the relationships between Urban Agriculture and Policy is the area of interest for this episode of The Capstone, featuring Sean Flaherty. Sean cites an increasingly urbanized population with growing levels of food insecurity, as the motivation to look beyond improving efficiencies in food production to explore the impacts of policy on municipalities, using the City of Alexandria Virginia as a Case Study. His Capstone project examines the shortage of policies directed toward urban food production–and he advocates for the need to consider the role of diverse stakeholders–including property owners and non property owning municipal residents, urban developers, food and social justice advocates, and municipal agencies–in the work of creating structures that support increased food production in urban areas…or as he says, “production closer to the need.”

Sasha Sigetic is an agricultural educator, farmer, craftsman, herbalist, and mother, who runs Black Locust Livestock and Herbal as well as currently serving as the Program Director for the Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association. Her Capstone project explores hemp as an ecologically valuable crop with viable market opportunities for Ohio farmers which include policy revisions, investments in adequate processing facilities, expanding farmer education, and the creation of farmer cooperatives.

Jez Vedua-Cardenas currently resides in Southeast Michigan, where she was born and raised. Jez is a Registered Dietitian (RD) and an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant (IBCLC), and works with WIC (a supplemental nutrition program of the USDA for Women, Infants, and Children.) Through her work, Jez realized there was a knowledge gap among many health and wellness professionals working with immigrant communities. Drawing on her own experiences growing up as a Filipino-American, and surveying the experiences of others–mothers in particular–she created educational materials for nutrition professionals that highlight traditional Filipino foodways. She emphasizes the connections between food, identity, and what it means to nurture and show love, and examines how assimilation pressures and modern food practices can impact eating patterns and health issues.

In this episode, Olivia Rovang talks about the ways Experiential Education is critical to Food Systems literacy–understanding this type of literacy as an essential aspect of incentivizing stakeholdership and change within the sustainable food systems movement.

Her Capstone project produced a comprehensive reference guide for individuals, communities, educators—anyone interested in increasing their sustainable food systems literacy through experiential hands-on learning activities focusing on systems thinking methodologies.

Courtney Buzzard (she/her) is a M.S. of Sustainable Food Systems Candidate at Prescott College. She is the proud daughter of a long history of farmers on her father’s side and her mother, a Nicaraguan immigrant to the United States. Beginning with a B.A. in Sustainably from Arizona State University, Courtney has long fostered a passion for environmental and social justice. She has worked for over a decade in the food and beverage industry, deepening her love of food and cooking. Courtney aims to inspire the communities of the Latin American diaspora to reincorporate cultural cuisine into their homes through her work. She lives in Arizona with her cat Frankie, where she aims to create meaningful change by improving cultural food access in low-income and immigrant communities. The land she lives and works on is home to the Hohokam and Tohono O’odham peoples.

Food, nature and people have always been MaryEllen’s passions, and her sustainable food

systems work seeks the flourishing of all three. Co-founding a community garden over ten years ago opened her to synergies in natural systems and ways humans could cooperate with them. She recently started a small urban farm in Indianapolis with her husband that provides endless opportunities to support an ecological system where organisms collaborate. MaryEllen believes that humans can join that elegant dance to create a just, thriving food system.

Focused on the Olympic Peninsula bioregion in Washington State, this project addresses limited local food procurement, affordable food access and limited non-direct marketing opportunities for small and mid-sized producers by developing a participatory value chain coordination model. She creates a Geographic Information Systems (GIS)-oriented data gathering and visualization tool for rural food systems that addresses a multitude of social, logistical, and economic challenges faced by regional food systems in rural settings. 

Claire Turner’s Capstone project uses community-engaged research methods to inform business operating model recommendations for The Greenhouse Project (TGP), a historic 2.2-acre agricultural site in San Francisco. The project is envisioned as a model urban agriculture initiative, a collaborative and visionary hub for food production, education, connection, and environmental stewardship, and a site for broader intersections between various food systems actors, researchers, and policymakers. As a final project in the MSFS/MBA degree program, Claire Turner worked closely with organizers of the initiative to create a comprehensive feasibility study highlighting multiple models for how The Greenhouse Project can best achieve its social and environmental commitments while maintaining financial solvency. Her analysis and recommendations seek to demonstrate that an urban farm can be profitable, equity-focused, and sustainable by integrating social and environmental values into the business planning process.

The “Cooking Together Cookbook” is a response to child nutrition challenges that supports an environment where children and parents can learn and enjoy cooking activities together with the goal of improving child/parent relationships, child mental health, and nutrition. Casey McManus created the cookbook as her Capstone project by first examining existing literature for the obstacles that children face in accessing nutritional food. Inspired by the scholarship, she created 16 seasonally inspired recipes and activities that emphasize sensory learning and food literacy components to engage children and their families in fun ways to celebrate nutritious and inspired collaborative cooking.

Indigenous people around the world are initiating food sovereignty movements to regain control of their food systems. The globalized industrial food system has increased the disconnection from traditional foodways and knowledge and has increased the risks of diet-related diseases. Kit Laux examines the food sovereignty movement as one that can build resiliency and reconnect people to nutritious and culturally appropriate food. As a member of the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community on the L’Anse Indian Reservation in Michigan, she describes for her Capstone how Native American tribes throughout the nation are implementing food sovereignty initiatives to increase control of their food systems linking to culture, health, and economic development. Her project’s goal is to increase visibility and awareness of food sovereignty topics specific to her bioregion by developing a website that will share information and provide links to resources that support regaining control of a more traditional food system. Her research points to social media as a proven and effective tool to distribute information widely and quickly throughout her target community. The website she created is drawing on a wide variety of marketing metrics and data analytics to create impact indicators as a strategy for success.