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In the middle of the summer in Houston, Texas, the only thing that is more pervasive than the heat is the humidity—and when the air conditioning isn’t working properly, the consequences can be dire. Mad Austin, a former barista at a Houston Starbucks, knows those consequences all too well.
“Last summer, my store did not have a properly working AC—it was over 85 degrees in the store on a regular basis,” she says. “Having to go from one end of the store to the other constantly in order to gather customers’ items and bring them up front, you’re basically doing a workout.” And given that the external temperature was 110 degrees at the time, going outside offered no relief.
Eventually, it got to be too much. Austin says that workers in the store went back and forth with management on repairs for their air conditioner for weeks, resulting only in temporary fixes that would break down again. Then, they decided to go on strike to demand a permanent solution. Workers picketed outside the Starbucks, holding signs with slogans like, “Our work environment is hotter than the coffee!”
Austin says that after the strike, Starbucks management ordered two external air-conditioning units for the building, and after they were installed, the temperature in the store dropped 20 degrees. More than a year later, Austin left her job at Starbucks and is now an organizer with Starbucks Workers United, the labor union that has organized more than 10,000 Starbucks employees. Along with wages and benefits, protections for safe working conditions—including heat mitigation—are one of the union’s asks in the ongoing negotiations with Starbucks.
“It wasn’t just uncomfortable,” she says of the heat inside the store; she was concerned for her health and safety. In a statement, a representative for Starbucks said, “We are committed to ensuring our partners feel safe and supported at work . . . Where issues in store jeopardize the well-being of our partners, we have been working with deep care and urgency to take action.”
Workers protest the heat outside a Starbucks in Houston, TX, July 2023. Mad Austin, who went on to become an organizer with Starbucks Workers United, holds the “Ask Me Why I Am on Strike” sign. Photo courtesy of Starbucks Workers United.
The Hazards of a Hot Kitchen
Summer heat is, of course, not a new phenomenon, but as climate change takes hold, it’s clear we are in a time of increasingly hot summers. 2023 was the hottest year on record, and with those unprecedented temperatures came more severe weather, including wildfires, floods, and brutal heat waves and drought in places across the globe.
Temperatures are only predicted to rise further in the coming years, intensifying those effects and their impact on local infrastructure. When Hurricane Beryl thrashed the city of Houston in early July, millions of people went without power for days, forcing an untold number of business closures—and countless lost wages for employees. Hurricane Helene devastated businesses and restaurants in its wake, and doubtless Milton will too.
For restaurant workers in particular, the hazards are immediate: Standing over a ripping-hot stove or in front of an oven all day would make anyone sweat, even under the best weather conditions. According to a 2023 survey of restaurant workers conducted by Restaurant Opportunities Centers (ROC) United, 20 percent of respondents “described experiencing a significant heat-related incident or long-term health impact due to prolonged work in extreme heat,” recalling incidents of fainting, dizziness, and heatstroke.
And it’s a legitimate risk: More than 2,300 people in the U.S. died in 2023 as a result of “excessive heat,” according to an Associated Press analysis of Centers for Disease Control data, though that figure is likely underreported.
But there are currently no federal regulations for working conditions in the heat. Only six states—California, Colorado, Maryland, Minnesota, Oregon, and Washington—have passed laws that provide protections for workers in extreme heat conditions, and those laws mostly apply to outdoor workers. Just this July, Cal/OSHA, California’s worker safety agency, introduced new rules for indoor workplaces, requiring employers to have a plan for mitigating heat when temperatures exceed 82 degrees.
Other states, including Texas and Florida, have banned local municipalities from passing their own heat protection regulations, suggesting that local laws were more burdensome to enforce than those at the state level; the Texas ban also invalidated local ordinances that mandated break time for construction workers in the heat.
In July, President Biden proposed federal heat regulations that would apply to all employers under the jurisdiction of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), meaning they would cover both indoor and outdoor workers. Under the regulations, indoor employers like restaurants and commercial kitchens “would be required to identify work areas with the potential for hazardous heat exposure” and enact policies to monitor them.
Employers would also be obligated to provide specific worker protections depending on the heat level: At a temperature threshold of 80 degrees, they would be required to provide employees with cold drinking water and cooler break areas; a temperature of 90 degrees and above (considered a “High Heat Trigger”) also requires mandatory rest breaks of 15 minutes every two hours.
“Climate change is a workers’ rights issue, and if we don’t fight for each other, who’s going to do it?”
ROC United, a nonprofit organization that works to improve the lives of the restaurant workforce, has held heat awareness trainings for restaurant workers in the past. The organization is actively campaigning to get OSHA to certify the federal regulations, urging workers to submit comments to the U.S. Department of Labor. Over the past couple of years, as OSHA has developed this rule, ROC United has submitted more than 1,000 comments from workers in the restaurant industry.
“When you think about the restaurant industry, you think about these tight, confined spaces with open flames,” says ROC United Deputy Director of Organizing Jordan Romanus. “But we’ve also been trying to focus on making sure that all restaurant workers are included in this process, both the back-of-the-house and the front-of-the-house. If you’re working on the patio and it’s a hot summer day, that is equally brutal to being in the tight, extremely hot kitchen.”
Workers Organize for Change
In recent months, more workers have taken matters into their own hands, fighting for protections from the heat. Workers at Seattle sandwich shop Homegrown signed their first union contract, which ensured time-and-a-half “heat pay” for working on days when temperatures are especially high. But four months after that contract went into effect, Homegrown announced it would shutter all but two of its locations, citing “economic impacts, including rising labor costs, and food prices” as the reason, impacting more than 150 employees.
Last summer, Shae Parker was working at a Waffle House in South Carolina where she says the air conditioner was constantly on the fritz. The first few times, the company would call a maintenance technician to make repairs, but Parker describes them as a series of “quick fixes” that didn’t solve the problem. Parker was one of many Waffle House workers who picketed outside of the company’s Georgia headquarters in July 2023, demanding protections from the heat as well as other important safety measures. Waffle House did not respond to a request for comment.
Heat has also galvanized Starbucks workers at locations other than Austin. Last October, a group of Starbucks baristas in Berkeley, California went on strike, citing a broken air-conditioning unit that resulted in some employees experiencing symptoms of heat exhaustion. “Heat is actually a very common issue at Starbucks stores; we’re hearing about issues with air conditioners constantly,” Austin says. “We’re trying to secure a contract that makes sure any issue that impacts the health and safety of workers is taken seriously, and that the company is held accountable. We have to make sure that our concerns and issues can’t just be pushed to the side.”
Regarding the ongoing bargaining, a Starbucks representative said in a statement that “we are proud of our progress to date. The work together continues, and we look forward to continued negotiations.”
What happens at Starbucks could have an impact far beyond its own stores. The coffee behemoth has always been a trendsetter—it’s credited with making benefits like health insurance for part-time employees and tuition reimbursement more common throughout the sector—and its approach to heat protections could inform the entire industry’s approach.
In the interim, workers are fighting for what the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health (COSH) calls “heat justice.” COSH, a federation of 26 grassroots worker groups, is advocating for a slightly more comprehensive national heat standard than proposed by OSHA. The COSH standard would require workplaces to maintain a maximum temperature of 80 degrees, and if that is exceeded, ensure that workers have access to water and breaks in air-conditioned spaces.
COSH is also advocating for mandatory training for workers on how to recognize the signs of heat-related illness before they become too severe. “This heat is not just uncomfortable, it’s dangerous,” said Keith Bullard, the deputy director of the Union of Southern Service Workers, at a September town hall. “Heat illnesses at work are 100 percent preventable, and what makes it preventable is not rocket science: It’s air conditioning, it’s water, it’s access to cooling breaks.”
The Ethics and Expense of Protecting Workers
Without a mandated standard in place, it’s up to individual restaurant owners to act ethically and protect employees from the heat. The ROC United report explicitly suggests “installing and maintaining HVAC/AC systems in kitchens, ensuring workers are hydrating and taking frequent breaks, and implementing proper ventilation systems around ovens, stovetops, and heat-producing restaurant equipment.”
Chleo restaurant. Photo by Read McKendree.
Energy-efficient HVAC upgrades can have a major impact. “Getting rid of an old, inefficient machine is a no-brainer,” says Michael Oshman, CEO of the nonprofit Green Restaurant Association, which offers sustainability certification to restaurants that meet its environmental standards. “It can be hard to justify financially, but when it’s hot and the [electric] bills are getting higher, it makes more sense to make that investment.”
He also encourages restaurants to think creatively, both for their bottom line and the environment. He recommends painting the roof white, which reflects heat away from the building, or putting in a rooftop garden, an upgrade that can both add locally grown produce to the menu and help cool the air well beyond the restaurant itself.
But the costs of these upgrades can be prohibitive in an industry with famously thin margins. In July, Hope and Charles Mathews, the owners of Chleo, a small restaurant in Kingston, New York, closed for an entire week to install an HVAC upgrade to their building, which they own. Their building’s HVAC system piped “makeup air” directly from outside into the kitchen to alleviate the extreme heat of the restaurant’s wood-fired grills, which can burn up to 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. But when the outside temperature is nearly 100 degrees, that approach offers little relief.
Initially, the couple intended to replace the system with one that would push cooled air into the building year-round, but that would’ve cost them more than $60,000, money they didn’t have to spend. They’ve settled, instead, for a pair of “splits,” a cheaper set of units that would pump cooled air only into the restaurant’s warmest spaces, still a major investment in equipment. Also an investment: increased utility bills that come with more air-conditioning.
“Utilities are very expensive. Honestly, I don’t even know what these new air-conditioning units are going to cost us, which is totally scary,” Hope says. “When your utility bills are already over $2,000 per month, you don’t want to go much higher than that.”
And sometimes, protecting workers from the heat means telling them not to show up at all. The Mathews’ HVAC upgrades happened only after they made a decision earlier in the summer to shutter their doors for a few days during a heat wave. “We’re a mom-and-pop operation, and we have to make decisions sometimes that aren’t necessarily in our best financial interest, but are in the best interest of the people that work with us,” Hope says.
Yukon Pizza’s pies are made with sourdough starter from 1897, passed down by owner Alex White’s great-great-grandfather, a miner during the Klondike Gold Rush. Photo courtesy of Yukon Pizza.
Yukon Pizza owner Alex White closed his Las Vegas restaurant for much the same reasons. During a July heat wave after its HVAC system gave out, the restaurant’s wood-fired pizza ovens were pumping heat into the space, and it was nearly 100 degrees indoors. “Our number one priority is the health and safety of our customers and our employees,” White says. “There’s no reason or need for any of them to be working in those temperatures.”
OSHA’s proposed rules for a national heat standard are now in the final public comment phase, and both workers and business owners can offer feedback on the proposal through the end of 2024. But even if those rules go into effect—and the outcome of the 2024 election will certainly be the main factor—they will only be useful if restaurant owners and operators follow them. In California, lawmakers have had to find “creative workarounds” for its farmworker heat safety rules to force employers to comply.
“We need permanent solutions, and we need support,” Parker says. “We need everyone to get on board and spread the word. Climate change is a workers’ rights issue, and if we don’t fight for each other, who’s going to do it?”
Workers hope that alerting the public—the customers who enjoy the fruits of their labor—will help their cause. “We got to talk to a lot of our customers and people walking by on the street about what was going on,” Austin says of the Houston Starbucks strike. “People really responded to that. They were going inside telling managers that they stood with the workers, and that they didn’t feel comfortable buying from a store where workers are sweating into their drinks or suffering while making them.”
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]]>The post Is Your Grass-Fed Beef for Real? Here’s How to Tell and Why it Matters appeared first on Civil Eats.
]]>In recent years, demand for grass-fed beef has grown rapidly, thanks to the popularity of high-protein diets and growing consumer awareness about the overuse of antibiotics on farms and other related concerns. Grass-fed beef is also seen as nutritionally superior to its corn-fed counterparts, thanks to the omega-3 fatty acids that cows ingest when they graze on clover and other grasses. Grass-fed burger chains are popping up all over the country, and even Carl’s Jr. began offering a grass-fed burger earlier this year.
But what exactly do we mean when we say “grass-fed”? And is all grass-fed beef the same?
It’s All in the Finishing
“All cattle are grass-fed at one time in their life, until most end up in a feedlot where they’re finished on grain,” says Texas rancher Gerry Shudde. Indeed, most cows spend at least six months eating grass, before they are “finished,” or fattened up, with grain. The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association puts that number at 12 months, but most grain-finished beef cows don’t live beyond 18 months.
According to rancher and the author of Defending Beef Nicolette Hahn Niman, the real number likely falls somewhere in the middle. “On average, the cattle in the U.S. that is going through feedlots is slaughtered at 14-16 months,” she says. “They do grow fatter and faster if they’re being fed grain, so they’re going into feedlots at younger ages to shorten that time as much as possible.” In a feedlot environment, grain causes cows to put on about one pound for every six pounds of feed they eat. In contrast, grass-fed cows are slaughtered anywhere between 18-36 months.
“When you keep cattle on grass their whole lives, and truly have them forage for a diet that their bodies have evolved to eat, you allow them to grow at a slower pace,” says Niman. Not surprisingly, caring for the animal for so long can be expensive for ranchers and consumers.
Many informed eaters will tell you that this slower process results in a signature flavor and distinct leanness that sets it apart from its corn-fed counterpart, but the fact is that beef producers can label their product “grass-fed,” even if the animal is fed grain over the course of its lifetime. Unlike the lengthy auditing process involved in U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) organic certification, the use of “grass-fed” is only regulated under the agency’s “marketing claim standards.”
According to these standards, grass-fed cows are supposed to be given continuous access to rangeland, and they cannot be fed grains or grain by-products. In the event of drought or other “adverse weather conditions,” farmers are allowed to bend these rules if the animal’s wellness is in jeopardy, but they must maintain meticulous records. Unfortunately, these regulations are, for the most part, a paper tiger.
Missing Oversight
Marilyn Noble of the American Grassfed Association argues that beef producers have little incentive to stick with those rules. “It’s a big issue, and there is a lot of misunderstanding. The Agricultural Marketing Service developed the grass-fed standard, but the Food Safety and Inspection Service actually enforces it,” says Noble. “The two organizations, even though they’re both part of the USDA, don’t communicate especially well. You see a lot of beef labeled as ‘grass-fed,’ but whether or not it actually meets that standard is questionable.”
Noble’s skepticism is rooted in the fact that, for the most part, the USDA allows producers to determine whether or not their beef meets the grass-fed beef marketing claim standard. Noble says farms “self-certify” their own beef, and the Food Safety and Inspection Service generally goes along with their claim. The ubiquitous “naturally raised” label on meat has no enforceable meaning either, and further muddles a consumer’s ability to find beef that has been exclusively raised on pasture.
The American Grassfed Association, established in 2003, has far more stringent standards for its own label than the USDA, and hires third-party auditors to inspect the farms of its 100-plus certified producers across the country each year.
Farmers’ markets are also often full of vendors offering grass-fed beef from their own pastures. And the rising popularity of meat CSAs and whole animal buying clubs is an indication of how dramatically this trend has grown in recent years. With these options, consumers can talk directly to farmers to find out how their beef was raised. Many of these producers have begun using the term “pasture raised,” another unregulated labeling term that is popular among ranchers.
Even Whole Foods has adopted some of this farm-to-market language in its meat sourcing standards. For example, “pasture-centered” farms score a 4 out of 5 on the grocer’s Animal Welfare Rating scale (owned by Global Animal Partnership). In reality, Niman says, these animals may not be doing much of the foraging that gives grass-fed beef its nutritional benefits.
“[Whole Foods] has been encouraging this segment of beef in the marketplace where animals are roaming on a small area with vegetative cover,” says Niman. “But they’re being provided feed, and not actually getting most of their nutrition from foraging. It’s almost like a feedlot.”
At BN Ranch, which Nicolette operates with her husband, Bill Niman, “the godfather of sustainable meat” and founder of Niman Ranch, cattle is given more time to slowly develop fat over a period of more than two years. For the Nimans, good “eating quality” in the beef is paramount. But, Nicolette says, that’s not always the case on farms where people are “doing it for philosophical reasons. They believe that grazing is ecologically superior, and that it is the right way to raise cattle. The things that are motivating them are not eating quality.”
As a result, grass-fed beef’s lean flavor is often seen as inferior. Some chefs, particularly in fine-dining steakhouses, still resist serving grass-fed beef in favor of corn-fed, USDA prime beef, because of its fat content.
Worth the Wait
Michael Sohocki, chef of Restaurant Gwendolyn in San Antonio, Texas, chooses grass-fed beef over the cheaper, richer, corn-fed cuts because he firmly believes that the process is worth the extra time and money. And his discerning diners come to his restaurant because they know the meat has been properly sourced. “When you eat stockyard beef, all of that beef is the same,” says Sohocki. “It’s done that way to guarantee its consistency. That’s what McDonald’s specializes in.”
Sohocki calls grass-fed beef “the only trustworthy product left in this world.” He sources it from nearby Shudde Ranch, where Jeanne and Gerry Shudde make a point of raising a specialized cross-breed of species suited to naturally develop fat on pasture.
“Our [cows] are on grass when they’re with their mother. And when separated, they stay on the grass,” says Gerry Shudde.
The Shuddes decided to go grass-fed by chance after acquiring a herd of Longhorn cattle that they planned to cross-breed with their own. The offspring did not fare well, but the Shuddes ultimately decided to keep the longhorn cows. When they butchered a six-year-old cow, which had been raised on grass for much longer than usual, Jeanne says, “It was really tender. We thought ‘gosh, this tastes better than what we get in the grocery store.’”
From there, the Shuddes developed their own, new breed of grass-fed cattle. They were already raising cows without antibiotics or hormones, and their farm eventually evolved into a completely grass-fed operation by 2002. Still, they had to find the right cow to produce the quality of beef that they desired. “Most of the animals that you find today have been genetically selected to do well in a feedlot environment,” says Jeanne. “If you take them and put them on grass and think they will [taste good], I’d say maybe, maybe not. But if you take an animal that is genetically survival-oriented, it will become well-marbled on grass.”
Their own cows are now a cross between that original herd of Longhorn cattle and a heritage Devon bull. “Our belief is that if they eat what they evolved to eat, and live in the way that they have evolved to, the nutrition for the animal’s survival will be there,” says Jeanne. “If the nutrition is there, humans will get that nutrition when we eat the meat.”
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]]>The post As GOP Candidates Gather in Iowa, Two Visions of Farming Clash appeared first on Civil Eats.
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With its millions of acres of farmland, Iowa is a crucial part of our country’s food landscape. Almost a third of all pork sold in the United States is raised in Iowa, along with two billion bushels of corn, half a billion bushels of soybeans, and 13.8 billion eggs. The majority of this food isn’t produced by independent family farmers, but rather on large-scale commercial farms and in a growing number of concentrated animal feeding operations or CAFOs.
As a result, Iowa is rapidly becoming one of the most important food and farm battlegrounds in the country. So it’s not completely surprising that agriculture investor and lobbyist Bruce Rastetter is planning to bring a host of GOP presidential candidates together for the inaugural Iowa Agricultural Summit this weekend. Rastetter organized the event to “allow elected officials and public policy leaders to have a public discussion on issues that are vital to the Iowa and American economy.”
If you’re not familiar with Rastetter, the multi-millionaire is one of the most prominent agricultural figures in Iowa. As CEO of the Summit Group, Rastetter has invested in a number of agricultural industries, including production agriculture and renewable energy, and serves on the Iowa Board of Regents.
His company’s operations focus mostly on grain and meat production, but he also dabbles in alternative fuels like ethanol. More importantly, Rastetter has been described by many as a “GOP megadonor.” According to the Des Moines Register, Rastetter has contributed nearly $1.5 million into the coffers of GOP candidates.
Rastetter’s status as a “kingmaker” has been successful in attracting GOP candidates to Iowa, which is of course a crucial state for presidential hopefuls. Eleven potential contenders for the GOP nomination for the 2016 presidency–including frontrunners Marco Rubio, Scott Walker, and Jeb Bush–have confirmed that they will attend the event. Considering the importance of the Iowa Caucuses in presidential primaries, it’s no surprise that the candidates would be paying close attention to the issue that deeply concerns many caucusing Iowans–agriculture. (Here’s the Register‘s detailed list of the top issues Rastetter intends to cover.)
A screen shot from the Iowa Ag Summit website shows several of the confirmed GOP candidates.
The problem, says Hugh Espey, Executive Director of Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement (CCI), a grassroots advocacy group working on a range of progressive issues, is that the face of agriculture discussed at the summit only represents a portion of what’s happening in Iowa.
In the case of water pollution, for example, the situation in the state is dire. Agricultural waste has caused dangerously high levels of nitrates in two of Iowa’s major water sources. “We have 3 million people in Iowa and 21 million pigs,” says Espey. “Those pigs produce waste that is equivalent to 50 million people. All of that manure is applied to the land and it ends up in our rivers and streams. We’re literally drowning in manure.”
Nitrate pollution has gotten so bad in these rivers that Des Moines Water Works, the utility that provides water to more than 500,000 Iowans, is suing three counties in Northwest Iowa for failing to maintain agricultural runoff ditches, where waste is disposed of before it can reach the state’s water supply.
“They’re talking about what they can do to make more money off of farming and food production, and that’s more pesticides, more genetically modified organisms, and bigger equipment that is designed to take jobs away from people who work on farms in Iowa,” says Espey. So when the Iowa Ag Summit was announced, Espey knew that his group had to take action.
As a result, CCI and a coalition of other organizations and sponsors, including Farm Aid and the Land Stewardship Project, have planned a counter-summit in protest to the Iowa Ag Summit. Called the Food and Ag Justice Summit, the event will focus on presenting an alternative approach to agriculture.
On the first day of the Iowa Ag Summit, CCI activists will line up at the doors and distribute their vision for food and agriculture justice to the event’s attendees. Saturday’s protest will also potentially involve some direct action inside the walls of the Iowa Ag Summit. “We have members who have tickets and what happens there is yet to be determined,” says Espey.
That afternoon, protesters will gather for a teach-in on the Iowa State Fairgrounds, featuring some of the country’s most prominent agriculture and environmental justice speakers. Farm Aid’s Advocacy & Issues Director Alicia Harvey, The Oakland Institute’s Anurhada Mittal, and Patty Lovera of Food & Water Watch will all speak on issues ranging from farmworker protection to ecological farming practices.
Mittal first engaged with Rastetter’s vision for corporate agriculture in a land deal in Tanzania. “We have been looking at this trend in foreign land investment deals in Africa that are promoted as a way to bring food security, infrastructure, and jobs,” says Mittal. “One of the deals involved Bruce Rastetter as the CEO of a company called AgriSol. When we looked at the deal, we saw that his company was asking Tanzania to make changes in their regulations on GMOs and take out a World Bank loan.” Mittal says that Rastetter’s company was looking to pay less than twenty cents per acre for an 800,000-acre expanse of farmland.
An Oakland Institute exposé of AgriSol’s investment in Tanzania ultimately led to the deal falling through, but Mittal notes that this is the same type of plan that Rastetter and his corporate ag partners have planned for states like Iowa.
“The Iowa Ag Summit is about their vision for world agriculture, and we find it to be very dangerous,” says Mittal.
Farmer and small farm advocate George Naylor, who will speak at the counter-event, believes there’s a growing interest in small-scale farming models, even in the heart of a state that has long been dominated by large commodity production.
“There’s a community of farmers, especially young farmers, trying to raise products in an alternative way, and market them locally. And a lot of towns now have farmers’ markets, which didn’t just a few years ago,” he says, also pointing to the Practical Farmers of Iowa, which has a sizable following and convenes a large annual convention of sustainable producers in the state.
“The organizers of the event want us to believe that agribusiness is doing us a favor by creating cheap food and we just have to accept the fact that our land is being destroyed, our water is being polluted, and family farmers are being replaced,” he says.
CCI hasn’t invited the candidates to their event, but Espey says, “We’re going to take our message to these candidates in another setting because they need to hear about what it’s going to take to make a better food production system a reality.”
“Some say that with events like this we’re preaching to the choir,” Naylor adds. “But I think we have to recognize the the choir is a lot bigger than it used to be, and a lot smarter.”
Twilight Greenaway contributed reporting to this article.
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]]>The post How a Football Field Farm Helped Bring Back a Struggling College appeared first on Civil Eats.
]]>Just three days into his tenure, Sorrell slashed the school’s football program. With operational costs upwards of a million dollars, Paul Quinn just couldn’t afford to sustain the program. It didn’t help that the team had years of abysmal records, and a plea to the school’s alumni base to match the funding the team required went entirely unanswered.
After the football team was cut, the field that had housed the Paul Quinn Tigers sat empty for three years. Then Sorrel talked with Trammell S. Crow, a local real estate magnate and philanthropist who wanted to build a community garden. The initial effort was a series of raised planting beds that could house a few crops each growing season.
But Sorrell wanted to take things further. The campus sits in the middle of a part of Dallas where residents have the least access to fresh food. So, after an attempt to build a grocery store on the campus fell through, Sorrell decided that the College would grow its own food. With funding from Crow and PepsiCo’s Food For Good Initiative (a program which has raised eyebrows among many within the food movement), Sorrell set out to build the We Over Me Farm in 2010.
Today, the organic farm produces 30,000 pounds of food, has donated between 15-20 percent of the produce to local food charities, and has put the college on the map as an area food producer.
Veteran farmer Hannah Koski took over the operations in 2012. Koski got her start at an organic farm in Maine, where she served a largely affluent clientele with the finest organic produce. “I wasn’t happy that I wasn’t challenging myself to help improve the community I was in,” she says. After studying horticulture at Cornell, Koski moving to Dallas for a relationship, and the opportunity at Paul Quinn College essentially fell into her lap. She quickly got to work improving and expanding the farm. Now, she says, “our practices and procedures are more agriculturally sound, which has helped us just about double our production since 2012.”
Nearly half of the produce is sold directly back to the community. A portion of the farm is set aside to grow crops that are in demand locally, mostly soul food staples like collard greens, okra, purple hull peas, and summer squash. Through regular “Gleaning For Good” events, Koski’s team also works with the North Texas Food Bank to glean the farm, and all of the collected produce is then distributed to local food pantries.
The community that surrounds Paul Quinn College is also increasingly involved in the farm. One work-share volunteer tends to a small flock of chickens in exchange for their eggs, which she then uses in a weekend meal program. Another community advocate helps market the farm’s produce to churches and community groups in exchange for her own share of pick-your-own-produce.
“One weekend, we literally had three generations of one family all volunteering at the farm,” says Koski. “It was awesome.”
A section of the farm is dedicated to growing crops for a select group of local catering companies and restaurants. Each of the farm’s four culinary clients has a dedicated growing plot managed by a team of student workers, who are responsible for communicating with their clients, setting expectations, and quality assurance. Each client is given the chance to choose five specific crops for the farm to grow, and they then commit to buying it all.
One farm client is the massive catering company Legends Hospitality, which is responsible for feeding thousands of hungry sports fans at AT&T Stadium, where the Dallas Cowboys play. Another is Cafe Momentum, a restaurant that employs high-risk youth offenders.
For some student workers, We Over Me Farm has provided a unique opportunity to try out career paths they might have never considered. Take Chardae Plump, a 23-year-old Health & Wellness major from Wisconsin. Plump is the farm’s veteran student employee, with four years of farm-related work under her belt. She started out as a biology major, but her time on the farm caused her to think critically about the American diet.
“Working here has also taught me a lot about what we eat. We eat a lot of fast food, not a lot of healthy choices here. Growing up, my mom loved vegetables, but I never knew how they grew or how to sustain a farm,” she says.
Plump hopes to join the military after she finishes college, but she still plans to keep a backyard garden. In the meantime, she often brings fresh produce back to her dorm in an effort to eat well. “I’ve learned how to survive for myself. I see myself growing my own food and having my own garden–essentials like tomatoes and cucumbers,” she says.
Chanson Goodson, who Koski describes as her “right hand man,” grew up just down the highway in Highland Hills. The legal studies major started working at the farm initially because it paid $10 an hour, and planned to move on after a semester. “But I liked working outdoors too much,” he says.
In the last two years Goodson has taken a leadership role in the farm’s educational programs. After college, he hopes to attend law school, but not until after he spends a few years working at the farm.
The student farmers at We Over Me are constantly seeking new opportunities to expand their business. In addition to the crops they grow on the football fields, the farm has also installed a custom-built aquaponics system, beehives, chicken coops, and a fledgling fruit orchard. A brand-new, massive greenhouse will serve as the home for a forthcoming cut flower business for the farm and a new opportunity to generate revenue.
For Koski, these programs will help enable We Over Me to teach students a wide array of skills. And in the coming months, she hopes to expand the farm’s educational programs to include other underserved populations, including the elderly and people with physical and developmental disabilities. Ultimately, she hopes to grow We Over Me into something that is “much more than a farm.”
For the students of Paul Quinn and the people of Dallas, the farm is already that. It’s a place where students who are struggling to find their place in this world can learn about themselves. It’s a place that infuses a poor community with organic, culturally-relevant produce. More than that, though, the farm has shown that it’s possible to combine entrepreneurship, social justice, and food security to form a sustainable, profitable business.
“At the end of the day, the farm is about the students,” says Koski. “Most are from under-served, disadvantaged communities, and I want to set them up for success as much as possible.”
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