The Deep Dish

An insider look at food and farming from Civil Eats

In this edition of The Deep Dish, we showcase the remarkable ways that young people bring their energy, passion, and commitment to the food system. Below, we feature six inspiring profiles of some of the next generation of individuals who are addressing climate change, labor organizing, aquaculture and fisheries, access to farmland, and much more. We also update our previous reporting on youth converting an abandoned correctional facility into a farm. And we share some previously unseen, behind-the-scenes photos from our recent Civil Eats TV episode on women brewing sake in the U.S., which features a young sake maker and her family.

As always, thank you for reading: Civil Eats members like you make our work possible. If you love what you’re reading, please encourage your friends and colleagues to become members today and help us continue to tell these important stories. Members receive our weekly reporting round-up as well as The Deep Dish. We hope you enjoy these newsletters—and we welcome your feedback.

~ The Civil Eats Editors

• Features:
  • A Climate Activist to Watch
  • Feeding the Effort to Unionize Food Service Workers
  • An Oyster Farmer Carrying on the Family Business
  • Growing Food for Climate Action and Racial Justice
  • The Graying of the Fleet: Fishermen Struggle to Stay Afloat
  • Working for Food Justice in North Carolina
• The Check-In: Students Are Building the Next Generation of Farmworker Advocates
• Unseen Scenes: Brewing at Sequoia Sake
• What We're Reading

A Climate Activist to Watch
Ollie Perrault wants you to care about agriculture’s sizable contribution to climate change, as well as potential solutions to save the planet.

BY TWILIGHT GREENAWAY

Young climate activists have done an impressive job of claiming the spotlight and making their voices heard in recent years—and for good reason: The climate crisis is already impacting their lives and shaping their futures.

In Uganda, 23-year-old activist Vanessa Nakate has urged world leaders to leave the oil in the ground as a way to safeguard food and water supplies in Africa, the continent most vulnerable to climate change. In Canada, 17-year-old Anishinaabe activist Autumn Peltier has fought for clean water for First Nation communities and has made “We can’t eat money and we can’t drink oil” her catchphrase. And Greta Thunberg—whose Fridays for Future campaign has helped embolden youth across the globe and points to farmer suicides due to rising climate strife as reason to strike—worked with Mercy for Animals on a video that reached 1.5 million people, imploring her audience to look critically at large-scale animal agriculture and eat plant-based diets.

But here in the U.S., aside from the Sunrise Movement’s focus on the Green New Deal and its brief mention of agriculture, few young activists appear to be drawing a direct line between the climate crisis and the food system.

That’s what makes Ollie Perrault one to watch. The 15-year-old activist is growing up on an organic community supported agriculture (CSA) farm in western Massachusetts, where she and her family have spent the last two years responding to extreme weather. In June and July 2021, the farm saw 16 inches of rain—“more rain in the first two months of harvesting than we normally get in an entire season,” recalls Perrault. “And then this year, we experienced a level-three emergency drought throughout most of the summer.”

At age 11, Perrault attended a Youth Climate Summit through Mass Audubon's Youth Climate Leadership Program that catalyzed a shift in her worldview. “I realized that if I want a shot at a livable future, and if I want a future for my family's farm, I need to act, I need to get involved, and take a leadership role in my community,” she says.

Perrault, who has been home-schooling since second grade, has spent the last few years focusing much of her energy on climate activism—a kind of full-time version of a Thunberg school strike. Then, last year, she founded her own local organization, Youth Climate Action Now, which her parents see as a key element of her education. The entirely youth-led group fluctuates from seven to 20 members, depending on the meeting, and it is focused on organizing, building power, and providing a place for youth to commiserate about what it’s like to grow up in the face of a massive global crisis.

Feeding the Effort to Unionize Food Service Workers
Young people are joining—and often leading—burgeoning food workers unions.
BY ANNIE SCIACCA

When Fern Potter took a job at a Starbucks in Louisville, Kentucky, they weren’t intending to unionize the store. Potter, 19, had just left a job at a Chipotle and was simply looking for another job. After they were hired as a shift leader, they learned that if they wanted healthcare or better wages, unionizing might be a path to make change. “Once I got there, I realized that things needed to be changed and fixed,” Potter said.

Inspired by the wave of organizing that burst into public view with the unionizing of stores in Buffalo, New York, in 2021, Potter called up the Starbucks Workers United campaign and began to mobilize their Louisville colleagues. In May, the store’s employees became the first certified Starbucks union in Kentucky.

Potter is one of the many young people joining a wave of unionization efforts in food service. In the last year, 240 Starbucks stores have unionized. Since then, workers have voted to unionize at Chipotle, Trader Joe’s, and even at the cafeterias that fuel tech giants like Google.

“I think people have been angry for a long time, but before . . . workers would just go with it,” Potter said. “I think part of it is COVID—people were looking around at structures that exist thinking, ‘It could be better.’”

Kent Wong, director of the UCLA Labor Center, said young people have played a key role in the current wave of service industry unionization. “This sector has not historically been highly unionized,” Wong told Civil Eats. “But in the last year or so, there has been significant growth in the organizing at Starbucks and in fast food restaurants, and many of these campaigns have been led by young workers.”

Like Potter, Wong sees the pandemic as a catalyst. “All of these so-called essential workers are in the types of jobs where you have to show up, be in front of customers, and many of the workers were concerned that they were in environments that were unsafe, with high rates of infection,” Wong said. “So, in spite of the fact they are called essential workers, they were being treated like anything but.”

(Return to top)

An Oyster Farmer Carrying on the Family Business
Gaby Zlotkowski inspired her family to create an oyster and kelp farm in lobster country to start introducing species diversification.
BY BRIDGET SHIRVELL

When she's not doing schoolwork or playing field hockey, 15-year-old Gaby Zlotkowski can be found working with oysters: flipping cages, harvesting, shucking, and more. It’s not uncommon for teens to help with the family business, but the island town of Isleboro, Maine, about 100 miles northeast of Portland, is primarily lobster country. It’s all the more notable that Zlotkowski was a driving force not only behind her mom starting Isleboro Oyster Company, but is also now pursuing an oyster and kelp farm of her own.

"Growing up on an island where there's only really lobstering, I thought [the oyster farm] would be a really good opportunity for our family—and I'd get oysters whenever I wanted," Zlotkowski said.

The timing is right as Maine’s coastal waters have grown warmer, and many lobsters are moving further north, endangering the industry. Last month, the Monterey Bay Aquarium added lobsters to its "do not eat” list, prompting political backlash from a Maine congressman.

After years in the lobster industry, Zlotkowski’s mother, Kim Grindle, says she had always wanted to try aquaculture. "When I started talking about [oyster farming], Gaby kind of pushed me into it and said, 'You have to do this.' She was very eager and she's the reason we're integrating species diversification."

After learning about the kelp farms in Portland’s Casco Bay, Zlotkowski started thinking about how kelp could provide diversification for her mom's oyster farm. When she began the 2021–22 school year and had the opportunity to create an independent learning project, she decided to develop a program on growing kelp.

"I've eaten a lot of kelp in restaurants and really like it," said Zlotkowski, adding that she likes that kelp doesn't require pesticides, freshwater, or fertilizer to grow, and that it can create healthier ecosystems and cleaner air and water.

Most Mainers set their kelp in October or November. Zlotkowski didn’t get her state license until January, but she still managed to lay 1,200 feet of line and harvested about 800 pounds of kelp. She also gave tours of the kelp farm to local schools and was able to employ two friends and her brother on harvest day.

"I'm going to keep growing kelp as long as I can, and as my mom expands her business into a kelp farm, I plan on playing a key role," said Zlotkowski.

While she's not sure what she'll do after school—she's only 15, after all—Zlotkowski sees the work on the kelp farm as a key ingredient.

"As the working waterfront becomes less accessible in parts of Maine, my family's history plays an important role," she said. "I'm proud of my heritage and it's pretty unique. There are a few things that I'm interested in doing after school and I think aquaculture and fisheries will play a major role."

(Return to top)

Growing Food for Climate Action and Racial Justice
The latest National Young Farmers Survey found that farmers continue to lack the support they need to succeed, despite the vital role they will play in the years to come.
BY LISA HELD

As a teenager, Iriel Edwards couldn’t wait to get out of rural Louisiana. But while studying entomology at Cornell University in New York, her path began to change, curving unexpectedly back toward home.

Edwards woke up most days terrified of what her future would look like as the climate crisis intensified. She also learned about the devastating rates of Black land loss and food insecurity in the rural South. She worked in a greenhouse on a project that investigated rice varieties brought from West Africa by enslaved people. Then one day in the library, she discovered Leah Penniman’s book, Farming While Black. “I had never even visualized that possibility for me before then,” she said.

Now, she adds, “farming feels like a practical, tangible thing that somebody can do to make change here and now.” Edwards, 24, works for Jubilee Justice, where she manages a 5-acre farm in Alexandria, Louisiana, on land that was once a plantation. There, her team of Black farmers just wrapped up its third trial season of growing rice using a climate-friendly system called the System of Rice Intensification, or SRI. The organization’s mill will come online before the end of the year, enabling them to begin selling the grain. At the same time, she has started to grow vegetables on her own plot of land with a partner who grows mushrooms.

According to the results of the National Young Farmers Coalition’s 2022 survey, many of Edwards’ peers share her motivations. Of the 4,300-plus farmers under age 40 who responded, 83 percent said that environmental conservation was one of their primary motivations for farming; meanwhile, 29 percent of all farmers, 54 percent of BIPOC farmers, and 74 percent of Black farmers surveyed ranked anti-racism work among their primary motivations.

The survey also shows that little has improved for young farmers in the last five years, as a significant percentage of respondents reported facing the same challenges to success they identified back in 2017. They’re still struggling to access capital and to manage high healthcare, housing, and production costs. Student debt is still an issue but doesn’t rank as highly as before, likely because most people have paused their payments during the pandemic.

And if President Biden’s plan for partial debt relief is implemented soon, many farmers are likely to benefit, said Carolina Mueller, the rancher and coalition manager who worked closely on the survey.

However, the challenge once again topping the list is finding and affording land—and over the past five years, it has likely gotten worse, Mueller said. Early in the pandemic, wealthy buyers flooded rural areas, driving land values up. At the same time, foreign investors, billionaires, and corporations have also been buying up farmland at high rates. “It’s overwhelming how much of a challenge accessing land is for young farmers,” she said.

Edwards says land is fortunately still affordable in Central Louisiana. Even so, she is now one of 100 land advocacy fellows spread out all over the country advocating for local and national policies that will guarantee equitable access to land for the next generation of farmers. And she has witnessed the impact of Black land loss in her work with Jubilee Justice: In working with Black farmers, she has been made aware that, “there are not very many of us.”

Like close to three-quarters of the farmers surveyed, Edwards has also witnessed the impacts of climate change as she plants and harvests. As older farmers age out and farming gets more difficult due to weather extremes, she said, supporting young farmers will become even more critical.

“Young farmers are politically and socially driven, they're environmentally conscious, they want to engage with their community, they want to solve the world's issues—and they have the energy to do it,” Edwards said. “Instead of allowing for barriers to persist . . . [the government should] support people who are ready to do that work.”

(Return to top)

The Graying of the Fleet: Fishermen Struggle to Stay Afloat
Commercial fisherman Lucas Raymond is one of many in an industry facing a worker shortage, with too few young fishermen coming in to replace the aging workforce.
BY TILDE HERRERA

Lucas Raymond has been working as a deckhand on a boat that catches monkfish, pollock, hake, and occasional cod out of New Hampshire's Rye Harbor for the last decade. His fishing trips often involve navigating rough, stormy waters and typically last two to three days, but the 30-year-old enjoys doing physical work outside. “Even at the end of a very hard day, it’s rewarding,” Raymond says.

He considers fishermen to be some of society's last hunters. "We bring in a very healthy, natural wild protein source, and that’s so important. It's a shame to watch [the industry] struggle the way it is."

Like many sectors, commercial fishing is facing a worker shortage, with too few young fishermen coming in to replace the aging workforce. The average age of groundfish and lobster captains in New England is 55 years old, according to the New England Young Fishermen’s Alliance (NEYFA). "It's an industry that is truly dying,” Raymond said. “There are so few people getting into it. It's incredibly disheartening."

The biggest barrier to entry for the industry is cost. Although Raymond is a seasoned fisherman, going into business for himself would be very expensive. A small boat—even a fixer-upper—can cost up to $40,000. He’d need to pay about $25,000 to moor the boat, $5,000 to insure it, and at least $10,000 for gear—not to mention fuel, which is running about $6 a gallon.

Raymond would also need to spend another $30,000 for his own groundfishing permit, with specific quota to catch individual groundfish species. Since this basic permit would have limited quota, he'd need to lease additional shares to fish throughout the season from a fisherman or sector that owns permits with groundfish quota. Since 2010, this is how New Hampshire's fish populations have been regulated, and it’s an approach that Raymond and others believe has decimated small independent fishing boats in favor of larger operations that buy and trade catch shares like a commodity. A groundfish permit with enough quota to earn a successful living could cost as much as $200,000, says Andrea Tomlinson, NEYFA’s executive director.

Launched in 2021, the organization is addressing the “graying of the fleet” with a training program that gives experienced fishers like Raymond tools to move to the captain’s wheelhouse. Tomlinson says it’s the first program of its kind to target mid-career fishermen with training in business management, regulations, safety, permitting, marketing, and financing, along with mentorship from an experienced boat captain. Raymond is one of six participants in the inaugural program as he works toward his goal of owning his own fishing boat.

“Hopefully, I can make that happen in the next year, but realistically, it may take a couple,” Raymond said. “Either way, what I hope to get out of this program is to put myself in a better spot toward boat ownership."

With help from the Alliance, Raymond is learning business skills such as how to create a business plan and secure a boat loan, which could help him—and other young fishers—take the helm much faster.

(Return to top)

Working for Food Justice in North Carolina
An update on a plan to convert an abandoned correctional facility into a working farm and education center—and the network of youth-led food justice organizations that helps support the work.
BY CHRISTINA COOKE

Over the last few weeks, the youth involved in the Growing Change program have adopted two orphaned cows: One was born in the driving rain of Hurricane Ian and got so wet her mother did not recognize her scent; the other was a rejected twin. The young men, who are part of a project to flip a decommissioned North Carolina prison into a sustainable farm, are bottle-feeding the two animals and plan to introduce them into the farm’s multi-species grazing system soon.

“There should be a term beyond humanely raised,” says Noran Sanford, Growing Change’s founder and executive director, for the love and care the boys are giving the animals.

Seven 14- and 15-year-olds, all on the edge of the criminal justice system, comprise the current group helping convert the Scotland Correctional Facility, abandoned since 2001, into a working farm and education center. (We first reported on the effort in 2020.)

Growing Change is one of seven youth-led food justice organizations across North Carolina that make up the Food Youth Initiative (FYI), a project of NC State University. Other FYI groups include Transplanting Traditions, a community farm led by Karen refugees from Myanmar, PJC Poder Juvenile Campesino, a farmworker youth council affiliated with NC FIELD, and Pupusas for Education, a nonprofit that provides higher education scholarships to undocumented and DACAmented students.

“Youth are going up against the tide all the time,” says FYI’s youth food systems coordinator Bevelyn Ukah. “On the other hand, youth are the best, the most provocative storytellers in the world. In that sense, they’re well positioned and our greatest hope. Not because, ‘Oh my gosh, youth are the future,’ but because of their levels of willingness and courage to push against the status quo.”

The pandemic presented FYI with great challenges: For a couple years, the organization was not able to carry out its central work of convening youth to learn, share ideas, and build off each other’s energy. But the group is finding its footing once again, Ukah says.

Significantly, FYI recently received a $1.7 million grant from Blue Cross Blue Shield to fund racial equity work in food systems. And the organization is once again bringing young people together. In its first in-person effort since the pandemic, about 18 participants and their adult allies painted a food-justice mural on the side of a community food truck that will be used to help prospective chefs and young people launch food businesses and navigate the systemic barriers that often stand in the way. After an eight-month process, they unveiled the completed truck at the Transplanting Traditions farm in June.

“It’s really important to create the space where youth have roots,” said Cecilia Polanco, the director of development of Pupusas for Education, who is also helping lead FYI’s racial equity work. “If they see an injustice or need support, they’ve got supportive adult relationships they can call on. We’re also creating a standard they take into the world with them [where they can say], ‘Actually, this is not right. We can do better.’”

In addition to caring for the baby cows and carrying out other elements of the program’s master plan, the young men at Growing Change are establishing a vermicomposting business using food waste they collect from local residents and businesses. They are also expanding a project they developed during the pandemic to distribute boxes of food to people in need. To stock the boxes, they collect overflow food from the local food bank and partner with local churches to help them establish gardens.

“They’re feeding hungry neighbors,” says Sanford, “but deeper than that, they’re demonstrating that despite their challenges, they can be part of the solution, not the focus of the problem.”

(Return to top)

The Check-In: Students Are Building the Next Generation of Farmworker Advocates
We talk to Yadira Paz-Martinez, a 19-year-old farmworker advocate and former farmworker.
BY GRETA MORAN

As the sun dipped in the sky in late July, a group of students and migrant farmworkers gathered just outside a farmworker labor camp in Sanford, North Carolina. The students quickly began chatting and laughing with the workers, who they visited earlier to perform a play they wrote called “Dichos del Campo” (Sayings From the Fields) that riffs off the popular Mexican soap opera “Como Dice el Dicho” (As the Saying Goes).

The play covers some of the most pressing health topics facing migrant farmworkers in North Carolina: extreme heat, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, acute nicotine poisoning (known as green tobacco sickness), and the isolation and mental health impacts of living in rural migrant camps. They’ve returned a month later to play games that spark discussions on these same topics, with platters of beans, rice, and tamales to share.

These students have performed the play, relying on a few props and a lot of improvisation, across farmworker labor camps in North Carolina, as a part of the Student Action with Farmworkers’ (SAF) Into the Field summer internship program. Every year, around 25 students—many of whom are from farmworker families themselves—participate in SAF’s program, working at a range of advocacy organizations, while producing documentaries and performing plays. The program unofficially began in 1976, with a group of Duke University students that was investigating migrant camps, and it has continued to bring young farmworker advocates into the fields ever since.

We spoke with Yadira Paz-Martinez, a 19-year-old Duke student and recent participant, about what she learned about effective farmworker advocacy from SAF.

What prompted you to apply to SAF’s Into the Field program?

I'm originally from Sampson County, North Carolina, and a lot of my family are farmworkers. Before coming to Duke, my life revolved around this world—a rural community closely connected to farmworkers—and I utilized my summers to work in the fields. After I started attending Duke, I shifted away from that community. So, I wanted to figure out a way to reconnect, and I looked for programs that focused on engaging student advocacy within farmworker communities.

How has this work shaped your advocacy?

When I was younger, I remember hearing the contractors and bossmen yell at other workers, disrespecting them, and treating people as if they were only assets for profit instead of humans. I never understood why farmworkers were treated in such inhumane ways. Not only did I grow up seeing how these farmworker families do not receive the income they deserve doing the kind of work they do—but on top of that, their human rights are stripped away. These experiences really made me want to ensure that farmworker families have the income and the human rights they deserve.

What has been the most meaningful part of the program for you?

There were so many meaningful moments. In the program, there is this theater component. When I first got accepted into the program, I was like, “I don't understand how this is going to be effective.” At Duke, you learn the importance of quantifying work, statistics, and change. But theater is nothing like that [and yet it was] just as valuable as any data point. Just sitting there and communicating about their lives, their history, learning their stories—that was all so valuable, not only as nonprofit workers but as humans, really being able to connect with one another.

Are there any changes you’d like to see at the policy level to help address any of the issues you’ve been working directly on?

There are a lot of [policies] that enable all these injustices to continue. One of the biggest issues that I saw, at least working with the North Carolina Justice Center and SAF, is that a lot of growers and contractors get away with injustices, despite there being laws that protect farmworkers. Of course, these laws only protect to a certain extent. They don’t protect in a profound way.

What else have you learned about how to be an effective farmworker advocate?

A lot of people confuse “working for” and “working with.” You come into these communities and your mindset is, “Okay, I'm going to work for them.” But a lot of it is working with them. You need to be able to build relationships and trust with farmworkers. SAF cannot create the change they want to make by themselves. It really taught me the importance of building relationships and how actually going out there—hearing them out, hearing their demands, seeing what they need and want—is so crucial.

This interview was edited for length and clarity.

(Return to top)