What can you grow in rock?

“What can you grow in rock?” Carlos asked his teacher, Mr. Perales, kicking around the dust and stones that make up the soil of the winding garden behind his school. Today was my first day at my job with the Community Food Bank, and my supervisor, Amanda, brought me along to a meeting at a local high school. I get really excited when teachers understand that students are capable of understanding complex concepts and put forth high expectations for comprehension and application of these concepts, so this meeting was really inspiring to me. To have the opportunity to support such forward-thinking educators generates such a powerful feeling of triumph for me.

Mr. Perales had big plans for his sophomore and senior students for the year, based on a grant he had recently received, and wanted to talk to Amanda about possible lines of intersection. The course would begin with an examination of social inequalities, specifically on the impact the current food system has had in creating such inequalities. America’s obsession with specialization has produced an environment in which about 2% of our population grows the food eaten by the rest of the 98%, which has resulted in a vast number of families facing food insecurity. Can you imagine being the head of a household and not being able to properly feed your children? What manifold psychological and emotional implications that must have.

Here are the problems, now what are we going to do about it? That will be Mr. Perales’ approach to this class. Armed with an overview of anthropological research methods, students will be tasked with investigating the sustainability of their own neighborhoods. How many gardens are there? How many people are dealing with hunger? The students would then develop a student-driven plan of action to address the needs discovered within their communities. This is where the food bank would come into play, because Mr. Perales wanted to bring in experts to show students what could be done in their own neighborhoods. He had plans for his students to visit farms around town, take composting workshops, and gain an understanding for what can be grown in rock, and how it could be accomplished. This information would be used to develop their own school garden, with the intended eventual result of a neighborhood seed bank, providing for the community the resources to meet nutrition needs locally.

Beyond the paper curriculum, however, Mr. Perales espoused his further-flung desires to make his students marketable by helping them to become not just builders, but rebuilders; not just landscapers, but garden designers. Through his dynamic course structure, he wanted to have his students examine how working class folks fit into the environmental movement, in turn building up knowledge and skills in gardening and green energy in preparation for entering a work force increasingly in need of such expertise. He envisioned a kind of Green certification program, something that his students could present when applying for Green jobs to show an understanding of the theory and practical abilities that would make them invaluable to the field of employment.

In the desert, a planter has a lot to consider to make a garden successful. Water catchments, sunken plots to retain the little water that comes in, composting for supplementary soil better fitting a garden than the dust that covers the ground, plants that can survive the various conditions that can differ even by placement within the garden… all of these a planter must study up on, take advice from other farmers about, and put into action. Just as the seemingly impossible task of growing food in the desert can be made feasible with the necessary commitment and willingness to learn, so can the daunting task of resolving hunger issues in the United States be confronted through appropriate action.

By assisting in the Community Food Bank’s school gardening program, I feel like I have the opportunity to open the eyes of so many students to the realities of food insecurity in their own neighborhoods and make them aware of the myriad ways they can help create a sustainable, beneficial solution to hunger. Mr. Perales is planting seeds of thought, of consideration for the reasons why social inequalities exist. He is sharing with his students information about community efforts to confront these problems, helping students find the most effective programs for helping the community just like a planter would choose the crops with the best chance of surviving the local conditions. A planter might then build a compost pit and add to it daily, creating a sustainable source of nutrient-rich soil to add to the garden to ensure continued success. In the same way, Mr. Perales is giving his students environmental skills to cultivate continued momentum in the Green direction.

Things can be grown in the desert if we put in the work to discover effective, sustainable methods. We can work to eradicate social injustice in the same way.