Richmond High School Urban Agriculture and Food Systems Class
Thanks to a Stewardship Council grant, Urban Tilth is sponsoring a pilot Urban Agriculture and Food Systems class at Richmond High School during the spring semester of 2009. The class’s food system curriculum is wrapped around an action project—student-powered market gardens and CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) service. Students study the food system from a variety of perspectives—public health, nutrition, local policy, food distribution and marketing, agriculture, and ecology. In addition, students learn organic gardening techniques while tending a raised-bed garden at Richmond High (about 1,000 square feet of raised-bed space) and a 2,000 square foot market garden at Adams Middle School.
Students harvest from these gardens and provide biweekly subscriptions of local produce to 10 Richmond High School families. Students also prepare newsletters with cooking suggestions and healthy eating tips for each of the CSA subscribers.
Richmond and west Contra Costa County are also blessed with an abundance of backyard fruit trees. Volunteer gleaners have been picking some of the excess or otherwise wasted fruit and donating it to the RHS CSA service. Catahoula Coffee shop serves as a central drop-off point for gleaned fruit. We have surprised at the volume of fruit donated on a regular basis. Thank you to all of our volunteer gleaners and to Catahoula Coffee to helping “capture” what would otherwise might be a wasted resource.
RHS students will provided more than 600 pounds of naturally-grown west County produce to RHS families this semester. By engaging RHS students in the production and distribution of healthy foods, we are helping to make healthy eating a more important part of our local culture. We are also creating a local source of low-cost, naturally-grown produce.
This class is modeled after the Organic Opportunities class Park Guthrie developed at Life Learning Academy on Treasure Island in 2004.
We hope to continue this class in the fall of 2009 and expand the market gardens at RHS and Adams. There are more than 20,000 square feet of underused, flat land available at these campuses. If we are able to raise funds to expand the market gardens at these sites, we expect to be able to increase our CSA to 30 subscribers AND host a biweekly farmers market at a local elementary school.
The young people in our community are hungry for an opportunity to help us solve our most pressing problems. Our young people have the energy, skills, and desire to be leaders in the effort to create a more healthy, sustainable, and just community. The Urban Agriculture and Food Systems class allows RHS students to tangibly improve the local food system while learning and earning high school credit.
You can see student produced videos by clicking on the links below:
Saving the Purple Tree Collard Video filmed in December, 2008
RHS Urban Ag and Food Systems Class Video #1—February, 2009
RHS Urban Ag and Food Systems Class Video #2—March, 2009
RHS Urban Ag and Food Systems Class Video Blog #3—April, 2009
Jesse Kurtz-Nicholls is the course instructor. He is supported by Park Guthrie and UC Berkeley volunteer Katherine Collins. The link below is a powerpoint presentation about the class. 9 RHS students presented this powerpoint to the Richmond City Council on Tuesday, May 26th.