Partner Spotlight - Urban Roots

Farm to Fork: How Urban Roots works with local youth to nourish the community

For some, accessing nutritious food on a daily basis is no issue. For others, accessing healthy food is a daily struggle that may even feel impossible at times. That’s why Urban Roots, a local youth-based community farm, is using their resources to ensure healthy food can be obtainable to all in the Austin area – no matter where you fall on the food access spectrum. 

Urban Roots’ mission is to “use food and farming to transform the lives of young people and inspire, engage, and nourish the community.” This mission statement has proven to have a withstanding impact on local food access as, since 2008, the 3.5 acre East Austin farm has donated over 163,700 pounds of produce and reaches about 16,000 people yearly. Former Farm & Events Specialist, Lucia Sewing-Cole, says that working with youth is crucial for the future of food access in Austin and community investment into the program can help inspire the next generation of farmers.

Urban Roots’ devotion to nourishing the community is a value that makes their partnership with Keep Austin Fed a perfect match. Urban Roots provided 1,842 pounds of surplus produce to Keep Austin Fed in 2020. Lucia says that Keep Austin Fed has helped Urban Roots expand their resources across the city and that feeding our neighbors helps accomplish their mission. 

“The reason Keep Austin Fed is an absolute life saver is because sometimes we’ll have short-notice stuff or large amounts of something and our smaller organizations that we work with may not be able to pick it up. So, Keep Austin Fed is able to close the gap and give it to organizations that we may not necessarily work with.” Lucia says. “I do 100 different things, and one of those is getting food out to the community and making sure that it doesn’t get wasted and, sometimes, I just need help. Keep Austin Fed is amazing at that!”

There are several youth and young adult leadership programs at Urban Roots that strive to accomplish a common goal: inspiring young people to lead the change by getting involved in their communities. This goal was something that recent fellows Luis Garcia and Mychaela Harris say helped them gain hands-on experience with Austin’s local food system and taught them how to be better community members to those in need.

“My entire time there was centered around food justice and learning about how access to healthy food shapes critical parts of who we are,” Mychaela says. “We were given the opportunity to enhance our communication and leadership skills through facilitating farm volunteer days for different businesses in the Austin area. I got to be fully immersed in a farm environment.”

For Luis, this fellowship opportunity allowed him to gain a new perspective on the importance of food access. “I saw within my fellowship group how immediate access to healthy and fresh food from the farm benevolently changed others’ and my own relationship with health and nutrition,” he said. “Seeing this close-up, I became aware of how important urban farms, such as Urban Roots, are in helping close the gap of fresh food made accessible to low-income and minority communities.”

Last year, the Urban Roots youth program was forced to come to an abrupt halt due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our team at Keep Austin Fed lent a hand to glean 500 pounds of carrots from the farm, rather than see it get lost in the fields. Along with several hundred pounds of squash and other vegetables from the farm, the majority of these farm fresh vegetables were redistributed through many of our nonprofit partner organizations. Through a temporary sponsorship of commercial kitchen space from Kitchen United Mix, our volunteers were also able to transform many of these vegetables into individually packaged dishes of sauteed vegetables, zucchini fritters, crudite, and other delightful dishes that were provided to our communities without capacity to prepare meals themselves.

As the pandemic (hopefully) comes to an end, Urban Roots is starting their youth leadership programs back up and have a brand new (and bigger) farm to plow, plant, and harvest! Earlier this month, we were already able to save a couple hundred pounds of squash from the farm and get them into the hands of some AISD school children and their families… We can’t wait to see what’s next!