A grandmother, a Spanish teacher and a local advocate for sustainable agriculture all led a group of five Global Studies sophomores to organize SWAG: Students Working to Act Green. Paul Books, Rachel Escobedo, Brandon Fielder, Nick Grubbs and Matthew Jones not only enjoyed the naturally grown food that they tasted in Costa Rica; they returned to Austin, and learned, from a trio of sustainable food advocates, what they can do to bring better-tasting, safer, and environmentally friendly food to their high school and the Austin community.
The seed was planted in Costa Rica. After days of learning about innovative farming techniques, and interacting with the Bribri people, who find most of their resources in nature, agriculture was on our minds. Our teachers had us huddle up in “think tanks” to identify global problems that affect us locally. Our group thought about all the damage that is being done around the world with chemicals being used, and globalized food distribution. In Costa Rica, all around us, there was natural-growing food that tasted amazing. We asked ourselves, could this way of natural living and farming work in an industrialized, globalized place like Austin?
Through our research, we learned that massive farming, a process begun with the Industrial Revolution, led to increased use of pesticides, in order to produce larger quantities of food that could be shipped further away. According to the advocacy group DoSometing.org, 80 percent of the insecticides could be controlled simply by rotating a different crop for just one year. About 50 percent of all chemical fertilizers eventually break down into ammonia, and are released into the atmosphere. Could a shift to smaller, local farms be a solution to this global issue?
Back in Austin, we found a few pot-stirrers and visionaries who are already involved with sustainable agriculture. One of our own group member’s grandmother, Margaret Neill, has grown her garden for over 40 years and eats only organic food. “When I first started growing, I used a pesticide that got on me and I had a neurological reaction. That was when I realized it could really hurt my family,” Ms. Neill said ever since, Rachel’s grandmother has shopped at local farmers’ markets, Whole Foods, and produced her own garden.
Professor Lawrence Sclerandi (belovedly known as Profe), a Spanish teacher at Austin High School, is the founder of the Austin High Garden Club. Each week he is thrilled to see the different faces who show up to help him out in the garden. It started out as just a garden project to beautify the school, but he then started teaching the students about planting various foods and utilizing some of the techniques we witnessed in Costa Rica. Profe picked up some of his vision for gardening from his travels through Latin America, too. “I had never before paid any mind to plants, or how they grew,” he explained to us. “When I traveled to Ecuador with the Peace Corps, I lived with people whose lives were dependent on their harvests. This impacted me deeply, and I grew to appreciate plants and my food much more.”
In an attempt to ascend into the ranks of the pot-stirrers like Margaret Neill and Professor Sclerandi, our team decided to take some action by getting a little dirty, and earning our Green Thumb. We threw ourselves into Professor Sclerandi’s garden, and tried to help out by working with the compost pile and adding organic matter into the garden beds. We named ourselves SWAG (Students Working to Act Green), and tried to become pot-stirrers (or at least compost-stirrers) ourselves. Harvested food from the school garden goes home with teachers or club members, or is incorporated into the lunch program at the Austin High cafeteria. Through the garden club, we were introduced to another visionary in healthy living: Andrew Smiley. Mr. Smiley is the deputy director of the Sustainable Food Center in Austin, and is a member of Student Health Advisory Council (SHAC) for the Austin Independent School District. Currently, he is working with AISD’s school lunch programs, trying to incorporate local organic food on the menus. In April, one of our SWAG members was able to participate in a SHAC monthly meeting. That night, committee members ate a home-cooked meal that was all prepared from local growers and even from the Austin High garden. It was delicious!
The problems that our generation faces in the next couple of decades are not going to be resolved easily. It’s going to take a collaborative effort by everyone to slowly get back on the right track to maintaining a sustainable lifestyle. We have already started this journey by advocating for the preservation of our planet through our SWAG project. And hopefully, one step at a time, everyone will join in and help, so we can all work towards a goal of creating a world where we can live in harmony with the environment.