By Jason Pena, ASU Food Systems graduate student.

It was a cool December morning just south of the Salt River near Phoenix when we arrived at Spaces of Opportunity. This part of the community has historically been marginalized by economic hardships, but in 2015 something changed for the better of the community. Spaces of Opportunity was founded in 2015 on the idea brought forth by the Roosevelt School District to turn 19 acres of vacant property, which for over 40 years was cotton and maize, into an urban community garden. 

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By Mary Mik, ASU Food Systems graduate student. 

Relocating for a Dream

Joe and Emily relocated to Arizona three years ago from California. There, they spent 25-year working in bars, restaurants, and clubs. With their track record in hospitality, desire to connect people with fresh food, and Emily’s green thumb, Joe and Emily imagined a new kind of work in their new home of Arizona.

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By: Nicholas Benard, ASU Food Systems graduate student. 

As our group from ASU’s Food Policy and Sustainability Leadership Cohort gathered in front of Jeff Zimmerman, founder of Hayden Flour Mills, you could feel his excitement begin to build up. He almost seemed to hum with energy. Part of that excitement came from having our group visit his mill in-person at Queen Creek, Arizona, as last year the visit was conducted virtually due to the pandemic.  “I had also come down with Covid,” Jeff added, explaining how last year he pulled himself from bed and roused himself to still give his Zoom talk about growing heirloom grains in the desert. As our visit and conversation with Jeff continued, it became clear that there are few forces in the world that could deter Jeff from sharing his passion and vision for these crops.

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By: Kate Seybold, ASU Food Systems graduate student.  

Aguiar Farm is owned and operated by Fernando Aguiar and his family. Originally from Mexico, Fernando grew up on a farm and learned the trade working alongside his father and grandfather. After moving to the United States in 1981, Fernando worked in construction for 10 years before returning to his agricultural roots and starting Aguiar Farm in Paulden, AZ. Today, Aguiar Farm sells direct-to-consumer at farmers markets, such as the Prescott Farmers Market. They also sell to restaurants and other wholesale customers via Sun Produce Cooperative, a Phoenix-based organization dedicated to creating market access and alternative distribution channels for Arizona’s small-scale producers.

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By: Abigail Martone-Richards, ASU Food Systems graduate student. 

The Prescott Farmers Market in Prescott, Arizona was founded in 1997 as a seasonal market, expanding to year-round in 2014. Heading up the market is Executive Director Kathleen Yetman who, in addition to running the market, is pursuing a master’s degree in Sustainable Foods Systems through Arizona State University. Currently, Kathleen oversees a staff of 9 people who run all operational aspects of the market and has plans to double her staff as the market continues to grow. Each week the market is made up of 50-60 vendors and averages 4,000 visitors from Prescott and the surrounding area, resulting in approximately $30,000 in weekly sales. The market’s mission, “to support and expand local agriculture, cultivate a healthy community and increase access to affordable local food,” is the guiding force as it looks to expand its current programming and meet ambitious future goals.

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By: Deborah Sadler, ASU Food Systems graduate student.

In December of 2021, the new cohort of ASU graduate students in the Sustainable Food Systems  program spent a morning visiting and touring Kerr Family Farms in the West Valley area of  Maricopa County, Arizona. Farmer Wes Kerr explained the history of the family farm, daily logistics on the farm, and his passion for dairy farming. 

Wes Kerr’s great-grandfather first started dairy farming in 1927, and moved his operation to  Arizona in 1940. Their current facility was built in 1990 and remodeled in 2014 to accommodate  milking 40 cows at a time. Kerr Family Farms milks around 1,150 cows a day, for around 75,000  pounds per day of milk. While Kerr Family Farms is a big dairy on the national scale, the farm is  considered small by Arizona standards, which has a small number of dairies, most very large. However, Wes thinks that the focus should not be on the size of the farms, but rather on their  management practices. He says that “farms can be well-managed or poorly-managed at all  sizes.”  

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By: Wazenn Nithesh, ASU Food Systems graduate student. 

Water security is a major – and often growing – challenge for many countries today. The magnitude of impact is profound as water scarcity drives the bottom line for food sovereignty and food security. According to the World Bank, feeding 9 billion people by 2050 will require a 60% increase in agricultural production, which accounts for approximately 70% of all freshwater withdrawals globally. 

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By: Sharla Strong, ASU Food Systems graduate student. 

As sustainability and food systems students, it is inspiring to witness successful environmental projects and a privilege to learn from indigenous people. Over Fall term, our class of graduate students with the ASU Swette Center for Sustainable Food Systems had been learning about managing natural resources. Now we were on a Food and Farm Tour of Arizona, visiting different types of farms, ranches, and orchards while learning about different aspects of our food system.

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By: Michael Ryan, ASU Food Systems graduate student.

It’s not by accident that the history of Kuechel Farms, a large citrus grower in Yuma, Arizona begins in a town called Orange. His family is largely responsible for creating the ubiquitous orange groves that sprawled across the town and county that would later bear that fruit’s name. The lessons he learned from the rise and fall of his family farm in Orange, California may be the very thing that saves his current citrus farm in Yuma, Arizona. 

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By: Stephanie Lip, ASU Food Systems graduate student.

During our December immersive, we had the pleasure of touring and participating in the farm-to-school and “edible education” program called Garfield’s Garden on the Corner. Led and managed by the Mollen Foundation, we experienced the collaborative efforts between the Foundation and Garfield Elementary School. We met with Paige Mollen, co-founder of the Mollen Foundation, and Katie Poirier, Executive Director of the Mollen Foundation – both are alumni of ASU’s Food Policy and Sustainability Leadership Graduate Program. We also met with Maya Dailey, Garden Site Manager, Alex Layshock, Garden Specialist, and Jessie Hess, Kitchen Classroom Specialist. I was particularly excited to get a glimpse of Garfield’s Garden on the Corner because a partnership with a program like this is my hope as a school food service director.   

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By John Gifford, ASU Food Systems graduate student.

Increasingly, ranching and conservation are viewed as mutually exclusive practices. One is centered on resource consumption while the other advocates for the protection of wildlife, wild lands, and natural habitats. As wild species worldwide continue to lose vital habitat to suburban and exurban development, sprawl, and agriculture, the relationship between ranching and conservation grows more complicated. Ranchers claim the right to utilize public lands—even lands that are deemed “critical” in the effort to save wildlife—citing grazing agreements that go back decades and generations, while environmentalists argue that cattle have no place in arid regions like the American Southwest. Their rationale? Cattle destroy vital wildlife habitat. And as the number of imperiled species grows, more of our public lands are designated as critical habitat in the effort to save them from extinction. Of course, this deepens the rift between ranching and conservation. One wonders: can the two coexist? Can economically viable ranching occur on lands simultaneously managed for natural-resources conservation? 

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By Ami Freeberg, ASU Food Systems graduate student. 

On December 7, the Food Policy and Sustainability Leadership students visited Duncan Family Farms during a week-long immersive exploring farms, ranches, food processors, and gardens around Arizona. 

If you buy organic salad mixes from the grocery store, chances are good that you have eaten greens grown by Duncan Family Farms. As one of the leading certified organic farms in the country, Duncan Family Farms has expanded from their headquarters in Goodyear, Arizona to grow in California, Oregon, and New York to ensure a year-round supply of greens. However, they didn’t start as a multi-region salad green farm. Arnott Duncan is a 4th generation Arizona farmer with roots in the region’s standard commodity crops of cotton and alfalfa. In 1985, he left his family’s farm to grow on his own, starting off with a few hundred acres of row crops. By 1992, Arnott and his wife Kathleen wanted to expand their impact through education so they turned part of their farm into a destination for students to learn about agriculture and rural life, hosting 40,000 kids each year. 

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By Jillian Dy, ASU Food Systems graduate student. 

Five Days. Eighteen students hailing from thirteen states. Fifteen sites throughout central Arizona. 

The ASU Farm Immersive was a journey through the desert to meet some of the innovative and hardworking people who are growing and processing our food, conserving our natural resources, and managing land in Arizona. Our visits included a fourth generation 1,100 cow dairy, a multi-region Certified Organic vegetable operation, a Native farm growing olives, citrus, and alfalfa, an urban community farm incubator, a 72,000 acre ranch managing a mix of private and public land, and a thriving elementary school garden. 

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By Jane Coghlan, Swette Center Student Worker.

Can you envision the value and versatility of a food that can grow in any climate, is highly nutritious, requires low water input, can self-fertilize, and has a long shelf-life? These are the prominent advantages of an ancient food called pulses. Pulses are among the first plants to be domesticated by humans for sustenance, in turn making them a fundamental ingredient in recipes across old and new cultures in every continent (FAO, 2016, pg. 12-13). The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has designated today, February 10, as World Pulses Day to celebrate the extensive benefits of this resilient food. 

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By Luke Swette, Swette Center Student Worker 

Hawai’i remains one of the most beloved states in the country because of its beauty and deep-rooted culture. However, this has not prevented the islands from facing numerous challenges, both socially and economically. For example, it is home to the most sought-after seafood and produce, yet its average grocery prices continue to rise. This is happening for a variety of reasons, mainly because larger corporations make it harder for small businesses to thrive. Among other things, Hawai’i’s food security is an important issue that becomes more complicated the more it is researched.

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For the culmination of his work for the summer as a student worker for the Swette Center, Tucker Larson spent a week at Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture in Upstate New York. Read more about his visit and how it relates to what he is learning at ASU below. 

A sustainable food system is far from linear. Web might be the most accurate representation. It is a flow of materials facilitated by communication networks through the system promoting resilience and diversity. When you pull on one piece of the web, the other sides start to stretch and become distorted. The makeup of each system is different and the results from interactions with one will not necessarily be the same when imposed on another. Each piece of the system and the connections they share with one another make up the foundation, determining how it can flex and adapt. Our food systems will never function sustainably if they are not understood in a larger picture, and Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture is working to further that understanding. 

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By Elora Bevacqua, Swette Center Student Worker 

At first glance, gardening may seem like just a bunch of plants, but upon further inspection, it has enormous impacts on people and their well-being. The recently published article, Gardening for Food Well-Being in the COVID-19 Era, was based on a study done by Estève Giraud, Sara El-Sayed, and Adenike Opejin. The trio looked into the impacts of gardening on well-being in schools, related to COVID-19 and food justice. To assess the relationship between gardening and these variables, they conducted three studies that built on each other. These studies took place between 2018-2021 with the pandemic becoming an added factor. The group concluded that gardening has significant impacts on a child’s hedonic well-being which is associated with a sense of pleasure and positive emotions. Children in the study enjoyed the pleasures of being outdoors, tasting fresh produce, and interacting with their peers and teachers. Additionally, gardening had an impact on the eudemonic well-being of teachers which is associated with a sense of fulfillment and purpose in life. Gardening with their students gave them a sense of purpose. 

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By Kelly McClelland, M.S. in Sustainable Food Systems Graduate

A truly sustainable food system is a food system that provides healthy food for all communities. In my food systems career in Flint, MI, I have observed that adequate nutrition is especially important in a community that has been subject to environmental injustice and social inequality. The Flint Water Crisis and COVID-19 pandemic have both highlighted that in order to support community-wide health in Flint, a sustainable local food system that provides equitable access to healthy options must be cultivated.

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By Katie Poirier, M.S. in Sustainable Food Systems Graduate 

In the mid-20th century, Arizona was one of the most productive agricultural states. Warm temperatures contributed to plentiful harvests of crops such as cotton, alfalfa, and citrus. Arizona’s central cities and rural towns identified with agricultural production. This agricultural tradition is reflected in the Arizona state flag, and occupies 3 of 5 coveted C’s of Arizona (cotton, citrus, cattle, copper, and climate).

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By Tucker Larson, Swette Center Student Worker

Located in South Phoenix at the northeast corner of Vineyard Road and 15th avenue is the Spaces of Opportunity Garden. The garden is a collaboration between four different nonprofit groups with the goal of transforming empty lots into a diverse agricultural and educational asset in the community. The four nonprofits involved are the Desert Botanical Garden, Unlimited Potential, TigerMountain Foundation, and Orchard Community Learning Center. Recently, John Wann–Ángeles, the director of the Orchard Community Learning Center, took some time to show us the urban agriculture collaboration.  

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