KAYTE YOUNG: Production support for Earth Eats comes from: Bloomingfoods Coop Market, providing local residents with locally sourced food since 1976. Owned by over 12,000 residents in Monroe County and beyond. More at Bloomingfoods.Coop. And Elizabeth Ruh, Enrolled Agent with personal financial services. Assisting businesses and individuals with tax preparation and planning for over 15 years. More at PersonalFinancialServices.net 

(Earth Eats Theme Music) 

From WFIU in Bloomington Indiana, I'm Kayte Young and this is Earth Eats.

SHARRONA MOORE: And I talk to them constantly about activism, food justice, systematic oppression, food equality, food access, food security. Those are terms that they’re becoming familiar with early because this is the work that we do. 

KAYTE YOUNG: This week on the show we visit with a youth farming program on the far east side of Indianapolis for a farm tour and an interview with founder Sharrona Moore. They've got a lot going on. You won't want to miss it, so stay with us. 

Let's start with food news with Renee Reed. She's got one story from Chad Bouchard this week. Hi Renee. 

RENEE REED: Hello Kayte. 

A sobering report from the United Nations says the pandemic could cause a 132 million more people to suffer from hunger due to food system collapses and extended shutdowns by the end of the year. That's in addition to the 619 million people already undernourished last year - an overall increase of about 19%. 

David Beasley - head of the World Food Program said nations need to invest in hunger relief to avoid mass starvation and other significant issues. The report calls for a transformation of food systems to decrease the cost of nutritious foods and to boost affordability of healthy diets. 

World hunger was in a steady decline until 2014, but numbers have since increased by about 60 million people. African countries have the highest rate of undernourished in the world at 19%, which is nearly double the global average. Asia has the highest total number with 381 million people undernourished in 2019. 

Gilbert F Houngbo President of the International Fund for Agriculture said that during the report's public release that policy makers have to consider agriculture, the environment, health, poverty and hunger as a network of related issues. Quote "World problems are interconnected and the solutions are intertwined. The current pandemic is a wake-up call to all of us." 

That report comes to us from Chad Bouchard. For Earth Eats News I'm Renee Reed. 

(Earth Eats News Theme Music plays out) 

(Calm guitar music) 

KAYTE YOUNG: Lake swimming, bonfires, and late-night ghost stories in cabin bunk beds, long hikes and camp songs, tug-of-war, and acorn arts and crafts - those are some of my summer camp memories. This year, most summer camps and youth programs have been cancelled due to restrictions in place to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus. This has left many families scrambling for childcare, and many kids with too much time on their hands. Sharrona Moore decided to go ahead with the Next Generation Farmers Youth Program at Lawrence Community Gardens. 

SHARRONA MOORE: Sharrona Moore. I am the founder of Lawrence Community Gardens, right off the corner of 46th and Post Road in the far east side of Indianapolis. 

So Next Generation Farmers Summer Youth Program is all about teaching the kids the Junior Master Gardener curriculum and also strategic organic agriculture practices along with some small farm business enterprise skills. We have a youth program that's running right now, the Next Generation Farmers Summer Youth Program. 

KAYTE YOUNG: [Narrating] The program takes place entirely outdoors so social distancing is a real option, but they had to make many changes for the day camp to be as safe as possible for participants. 

SHARRONA MOORE: The first thing we did was we cut out all volunteerism. So we don't accept any volunteers right now. We offer all the children masks, we supply clean garden gloves every day, sanitize or disinfect them by washing them with bleach water every day. And then also they have latex gloves as well. If they're handling produce, they have plastic gloves that they can use to handle those. They all got hand sanitizer, and they got the disposable masks, but I also gave them bandannas. Each child was required this year to have their own water bottle - their own reusable water bottles. One person is distributing the lunch, you know what I mean with gloves on, masks, 

KAYTE YOUNG: [Interviewing] Not having everybody come and...

SHARRONA MOORE: Yeah, no, no, no, so here everything is grab-and-go, or we're distributing it. So those are the changes that we made this year also with social distancing, they usually are spread out a lot more. And truthfully being outside, is increasing their immune system. It's building their immune system, the amount of vitamin D and eating from this farm is increasing their immune systems already. So when they go back to school their immune system will be stronger because we didn't have our big volunteer days with the Chamber of Commerce and our community partners. 

We grow for funding to grow our youth in ten weeks ahead of time to help us get our hoop house developed and planted and cultivated so that we would have produce now for our youth to sell for this program. We needed their help regularly, so they came out and helped with getting the farm going. They came out Tuesday, Thursday and Friday and those three days we really got a lot done. 

(Calm guitar music) 

KAYTE YOUNG: [Narrating] I've had Sharrona on the show before. She's also the founder of the Black Farmer's Coop in Indianapolis. We talked with her about food desserts and farmer's markets and whiteness. I dropped by the farm last week for a chance to see their youth program in action. The farm is flat and open with a few outbuildings, a hoop house, and an almost finished entrance road off a busy street. On this morning there's blue skies and a cooling breeze. Sharrona introduced me to two young participants for a tour of the farm. 

(in the background)

KAYTE YOUNG: I would love that.

SHARRONA MOORE: ...for the tour.

KAYTE YOUNG: That would be fantastic.

SHARRONA MOORE: Zion, this is Miss. Kayte. 

KAYTE YOUNG & ZION MOORE: Hi

SHARRONA MOORE: Jackson this is Miss Kayte. 

JASON HARMS: My name is Jason Rosales Harmes. 

ZION MOORE: I am Zion Moore. 

(Sound of an indistinct conversation between participants in the background, and of feet walking on dry grass) 

KAYTE YOUNG: We started at a wooden shed with the double doors flung open facing the road. It their farm stand. 

JASON HARMS: It's open basically every day from 8 to 12. And this is the last week for the youth program. It'll still be open a little bit after. It's not open year-round but most of the summer. We got a lot of cucumbers, a lot of jalapenos, chilies, spicy peppers, just bell peppers, purple bell peppers, eggplants, banana peppers, a lot of herbs, dried herbs, eggs. 

This is our You Pick for Free section where people can come pick produce for free. 

KAYTE YOUNG: You got cucumbers. 

JASON HARMS: We got tomatoes, onions. Here I'm pretty sure these are carrots. 

ZION MOORE: Yeah, these are carrots. 

JASON HARMS: And then these over here are also carrots, and these right here are all strawberries. 

KAYTE YOUNG: And then we moved into the main growing areas. 

JASON HARMES & ZION MOORE: We have some watermelons.

KAYTE YOUNG: Yeah. 

JASON HARMS: That's zucchini. 

ZION MOOORE: Tomatoes.

JASON HARMS: More tomatoes. More tomatoes. 

ZION MOORE: And as you can see, we have built them up because when it rains, it can sometimes flood and kill the plants. We built it up so that, when the water... when it floods here, like all down there it will be all flooded, but the plants will still be okay. 

KAYTE YOUNG: Oh so the water kind of goes in this channel. 

ZION MOORE & JASON HARMS: Yeah.

JASON HARMS: In the road, so they don't get damaged. 

KAYTE YOUNG: That's great. And has that happened this year? 

JASON HARMS: Oh yeah, there's a lot of water. 

KAYTE YOUNG: [Narrating] Next stop was the chicken coop. 

JASON HARMS: This pipe right here, this is watering. That other pipe here is a food thing. And if we go in... this is where we get all the eggs from. 

(In the background a rooster occasionally crows) 

KAYTE YOUNG: All that's so cool. 

JASON HARMS: Those are those chickens right there, are the ones that are the males of the group. 

KAYTE YOUNG: Uh huh

ZION MOORE: And here - 

JASON HARMS: Those chickens are all female. 

ZION MOORE: Here's a fact; chickens don't like water so how do they bathe? They take a dirt bath. They use their feet and loosen up the dirt until they can like kick it up on their back and it keeps them cool. 

KAYTE YOUNG: And so how do you keep them safe from like hawks and stuff like that? 

ZION MOORE: We just built a fence around it so that predators can't get through and we built a roof over it so that no flying animals can get inside, or nothing can crawl up in there. 

JASON HARMS: And during the day we keep a close eye on them, make sure they don't too far and at the end of the day we take a head count for the chickens and make sure they're all there. 

KAYTE YOUNG: And then you put them inside. 

JASON HARMS: Yeah. 

KAYTE YOUNG: So that's something that has to be done every single day right? 

JASON HARMS: Yup. 

ZION MOORE: At the bottom right here, this is basically the same thing that was over there on the rose, so that it won't get really wet in there. So that the water would be all in there. It won't be where really wet.

KAYTE YOUNG: So it's like a drainage ditch. 

ZION MOORE: Yeah. 

KAYTE YOUNG: Or almost like a moat. 

ZION MOORE: Yeah. Step over here or that rooster, he's gonna attack you. 

(Sound of rooster clucking in a low tone)

KAYTE YOUNG: [Narrating] They keep chickens mostly for the eggs, but they do have a couple of roosters in the flock. 

ZION MOORE: That other one is kind of small and got the long tail, he's kinda the mean one cause if you just run from him, he'll chase you. That other one if you go close to him or try to pick up a chicken or mess with them, he'll go attack you. He's kind of the real... male chicken. And the other one he's kind of like the second male chicken. He came second. 

(Sound of chickens clucking in the background)

JASON HARMS: The first rooster's a rare breed of chicken. There's a matching pair so this one right here and then the rooster, they match and they're a pretty rare breed. 

ZION MOORE: So he protects her more than anybody else. 

JASON HARMS: Yeah. 

KAYTE YOUNG: Okay. 

ZION MOORE: The last year or maybe some people this year, they had never seen a real chicken before. So this is like their first time seeing a real chicken. So I guess it might have been kind of interesting for them. 

JASON HARMS: You just back away slowly and look them in the eye. They won't... they probably won't attack you if you do that. 

ZION MOORE: Yeah. 

KAYTE YOUNG: [Narrating] Back away slowly and look them in the eye. Got it. The next stop was the beehives. We approached two bee boxes on the path leading from the chicken coop to the hoop house. 

JASON HARMS: A beekeeper that comes and checks all the hives to make sure they're all doing well, seeing if there's any honey ready to be harvested. We got a new set of bees back there but those are kind of more mean than these. 

KAYTE YOUNG: They're a different variety?

JASON HARMS: Well...

ZION MOORE: I don't think so. It's just on... when the person that first brought them here, they brought them in the middle of the day. And the middle of the day is when bees are most active. When... if you like want to do anything with bees you probably want to do it early in the morning or late in the afternoon. 

JASON HARMS: And he made them mad. He killed a couple of them while transporting them. So they got mad and stung us all. 

KAYTE YOUNG: [Narrating] Next was a stop at the massive hoop house filled with lush greenery. 

JASON HARMS: We have a lot of jalapenos. We got okra, a lot of our herbs are back there like the basil, thyme, stevia, a lot of stuff like that. Back behind the...

KAYTE YOUNG: [Narrating] To the left of the hoop house was a small structure.

JASON HARMS: We have a generator for our water pump, so we have a hose that we have connected up to it.. It's really long and we just water plants like that sometimes. 

ZION MOORE: And so we have right here this is my mom's office - it's a trailer, because we don't have really any other... 

KAYTE YOUNG: [Narrating] Wrapping up the tour is an RV that serves as Sharrona's office. 

ZION MOORE: Is where we have our solar panel. So she just does all her office work in there. 

KAYTE YOUNG: Okay. 

ZION MOORE: And our farm stand has solar power on it. 

KAYTE YOUNG: So you have a little bit of electricity?

ZION MOORE: Yeah, a little bit. 

JASON HARMES: Yeah.

KAYTE YOUNG: I asked Jason and Zion about their interest in the program. What motivates them? 

JASON HARMS: I just want to help the community because there's not many grocery stores here. There's not one in the neighborhood. Are all of them are on Pendleton Pike and there's no sidewalks to get to those or buses. 

KAYTE YOUNG: Do you also enjoy growing food? Like do you have an interest in farming? 

JASON HARMS: Yes, I have an interest in farming but I'm not going to go into it as a major in university. 

KAYTE YOUNG: Right, uh huh. 

ZION MOORE: I actually have my own business. I don't really have a name for it yet because it's a really small business I haven't sold anything yet. I have these rare chickens and their eggs that can hatch chicks, they can go for around 100 to around 50 dollars apiece. Called an Ayam Cemani chicken, it's an all-black chicken, their eyes are black, their feathers are black, their bones are black. 

KAYTE YOUNG: And so you're raising them and then selling the chickens that hatch. 

ZION MOORE: Yes. That's really my business ,yeah. 

KAYTE YOUNG: [Narrating] It was just about time for lunch. 

ZION MOORE: During lunch we also do curriculum that basically, it's basically a school. 

JASON HARMS: We learn about money saving, planting, harvesting, a lot of things that could help us out at the garden, manage our money that we earn from the garden. 

KAYTE YOUNG: Yeah so, I saw a list of like different topics you guys had done, so you've done money management, chicken raising, chicken processing, so what was that like? 

JASON HARMS: So we killed one of the chickens who wasn't very helpful because she was mounting the chickens and ripping their feathers off because she wanted to have an egg, but she was..

ZION MOORE: She wanted to fertilize them but she couldn't fertilize because she's not a boy. She's still a girl but she was acting like a boy. So she was no use and she stopped laying eggs, so we had to put her into a crock pot, cook up some rice. 

KAYTE YOUNG: My two young tour guides were not shocked by the chicken processing workshop. Jason had dealt with killing live chickens for meat in her grandmother's village in Honduras. And Zion had processed a rooster from his home flock that died accidentally. 

ZION MOORE: One more thing is with the farm stand is we as a youth program, sometimes take a list of all our prices and the food that we have and we take it over there, we walk over there to the senior home across the street and go door by door and see if they want any produce. Cause most of them are really ill or old and they can't come over here or walk. And so we'll get like a cart or wheelbarrow get their stuff and then bring it over there. I think that's pretty much it. 

KAYTE YOUNG: Thank you so much for talking to me you guys, this was great. 

ZION MOORE: You're welcome

JASON HARMS: You're welcome. 

KAYTE YOUNG: That was Jason Rosales Harmes, and Zion Moore - senior farm hands with the Next Generation Farmers Youth Program at Florence Community Gardens in Indianapolis. 

After a short break we'll talk again with CEO and founder Sharrona Moore about her vision for the program. Stay with us. 

(Earth Eats Production Support Music) 

Production support comes from: Bill Brown at Griffy Creek Studio, architectural design and consulting for residential, commercial and community projects. Sustainable, energy positive and resilient design for a rapidly changing world. Bill at GriffyCreek.studio.Insurance agent Dan Williamson of Bill Resch Insurance. Offering comprehensive home, auto, business and life coverage, in affiliation with Pekin Insurance. Beyond the expected. More at BillReschInsurance.com.Bloomingfoods Coop Market, providing local residents with locally sourced food since 1976. Owned by over 12,000 residents in Monroe County and beyond. More at Bloomingfoods.Coop. 

(Cheerful guitar music) 

You're listening to Earth Eats, I'm Kayte Young. After my guided tour of the Lawrence Community Gardens, Sharrona Moore got the young farmers set up with lunch.

SHARRONA MOORE: There were some changes also with food this year, so normally we get our food from our... our students get free lunch from the township schools - qLawrence Township Schools. Well this year Lawrence Township Schools wasn't doing free lunch. So now my funds, some of the funds are diverted to providing them with lunch. The options are not always healthy as I would like for them to be, but they get lunch while they're out here. 

KAYTE YOUNG: Once the food was safely distributed, we stepped into the shade of the farm stand to talk about Sharrona's vision for the Next Generation's Farmers Youth Program. 

SHARRONA MOORE: So we teach them how to cooperatively work together and systematically grow food to become their own farmers' market. So students have a chance to learn, they learn how to become the master of their produce items. If they're growing tomatoes, they're going to learn everything there is to learn about that - growing tomatoes. So that they can produce a quality tomato crop. Now if they're friend or neighbor is growing cucumbers then their friend or neighbor is learning all there is to know about cucumbers so they can grow a quality crop, as well as the health benefits of the produce that they grow. So they can communicate those things back to our customers who come through. 

They learn how to take care of chickens, they learn basic beekeeping skills, and this year we had about eight students sign up to take or to be sponsored to take a beginning beekeeper class. So next spring they'll come back and they'll be the owner of their own hive out here. So they'll have all their equipment and their hive, and they learn the importance of bees. So that's another value-added item for our farm stand, and for the kids to be able to make money off of. 

All of the produce that's being harvested, that's sold at their farm stand is donated from our garden to their program. So they earn profit sharing, but they are learning inventory, overhead and profit, data collection, you know record keeping, all those important things in order to run a small business. So they count the register, they learn how to do financial transactions - cash and credit cards, we even take SNAP here. So this'll be our first Saturday this upcoming Saturday will be our Saturday being open. 

KAYTE YOUNG: I wanted to hear about the stipend structure in place for program participants. 

SHARRONA MOORE: Junior farm hands make $50 a week, stipend, plus they earn profit sharing off of what's made at the farm stand. Senior farm hands, a second-year students make $75 a week and still earn profit sharing. Third year students earn $100 a week, and still earn profit sharing, and then also the senior farm hands this year are, we got some extended funding to keep on a few. So they'll continue to work out here Tuesday and Thursday from 5 to 8 and on Saturday 10 to 2. So our farm stand will be open 3 days a week, and they'll continue to earn profit sharing, plus a stipend every week for just continuing to work out here. We'll be able to keep four or five of them. 

Senior farm hands are actually team leaders, so when they come back their second year, they've learned everything. They're nominated by their peers, which is important. Because peer observation is really important right? Their peers are observing their work ethics, their character, their behavior, how they treat other people, their knowledge here at the farm. So their peers are paying attention. As a senior farm hand they are a leader, a team leader. So it's their job to make sure in their team... the junior farm hands have to look to their senior farm hands for resources, information, correct way to do things here at the farm, so it's nurturing their leadership skills as well. 

KAYTE YOUNG: I asked Sharrona about the logic behind offering the stipend. 

SHARRONA MOORE: Well first of all we're working to reduce youth crime. By giving these kids a stipend every week, they're not going to be out opening up car doors stealing change. They're gonna feel like their work has worth. So they get their certificate in the end, and parents were looking for stuff for their kids to do... but understand $50 a week is not a lot of money. These kids are out here because this is absolutely what they wanna do. It's more to growing food, and being out here in the sun, and being hot and dirty everyday than just $50 a week. 

What they're doing is... and I talk to them constantly about activism, food justice, systematic oppression, food equality, food access, food security, those are things that, terms that they're becoming familiar with early because this is the work that we do. Why do we grow here? We grow here to fight food insecurity. That's why we're donating half of what we grow to the pantries. But we're also here to improve food access for our food community. There's nothing else in this area where people can go and just get fresh organic local food. 

Going to the grocery store is not freedom. The grocery store still controls what we eat. Being able to grow food and be in control of your wellness is true freedom, and so that's what we talk to the kids about. We also talk to them about investing in their communities as they get older - building in their communities, building businesses here, building your homes here, not just taking your families and moving outside the community cause there's issues here, but being a part of the solutions in the communities. So those are other things that I talk to them about all the time. 

It's about learning how to be sustainable. You can grow enough food to take care of yourself, and your neighbors, at your own house. Doing it systematically in your neighborhood means that everybody in your neighborhood eats. Now we don't worry about the grocery stores closing. Cause we're going to farther away and we're gonna buy our sugar and our flour in bulk, and we're gonna come back and we're gonna distribute amongst our neighbors; we're gonna buy that collectively. 

But our community should be able to be sustainable. Just by our own efforts. And that's what we're teaching them. How to care... how to homestead, cause we don't expect the grocery stores to come back. They'll have to gentrify our whole neighborhood for the grocery stores to come back. At way things are right now, the economic foundation of this neighborhood, the median income of this neighborhood, grocery stores aren't coming back. More and more businesses are leaving. They have to be aware of this. This is awareness at an earlier age, this is rebuilding and building a new nation. That's what this starts with, this small group of kids, this is building a new nation. 

Food is justice, it's equality, it’s the one thing that no matter what color you are, what gender you are, no matter what religion you are, we all eat. Everybody eats. This is about justice for all people right here, they need to know that. I'm eating lunch at the same time so excuse me. 

KAYTE YOUNG: It's okay.

SHARRONA MOORE: I gotta each lunch on the run. 

KAYTE YOUNG: I asked Sharrona what she had in mind when she offered a chicken processing workshop in a youth program. 

SHARRONA MOORE: The chicken processing was... we sent out permission slips to see if parents wanted, there were some parents that didn't want their children to see that. But I need them to understand when you order six chicken wings how many chickens goin' die. We need them to understand the importance of why we're growing food, and where these chickens fit in the cycle of the system here. They also learned how to butcher a chicken. So if you buy a whole chicken in the store, where do you start cutting it? It was more to the whole process than just the slaughter, the processing the chicken. 

KAYTE YOUNG: And as we learned from Jason and Zion, they're learning a lot more than how to process chickens. 

SHARRONA MOORE: They have to care for them every day. We have five teams and each team is assigned a job duty for the day. So during the course of five weeks they care of those chickens five times. From feeding, watering, collecting eggs, maybe they have to clean out the coop and put new hay down. They understand their behaviors, they learn how to round them up, they learn so much about how do chickens bathe, how do we keep them healthy, even putting the apple cider vinegar and garlic in their water - you know to keep them from getting worms. (laughs) They know about that. We learned about eggs, sizing, how to grade them, the different colors of the eggs, right? 

Processing the chickens was also about them understanding clean eating. If you eat meat you should know where your meat is coming from. And if you're gonna raise chickens at your own house, this is how you will process your chicken. They understand the process of getting the chicken from the farm to the table. Everything here is about getting the food from the farm to the table. How do we do it? From the seeds to the harvest, right? To taking the harvest back, diverting waste back to the compost and making new soil. 

KAYTE YOUNG: I was interested in experiencing some farm to table salsa. Before I hit the road, I stopped by the farm stand to pick up supplies. I bought several varieties of peppers, golden cherry tomatoes, a cucumber and a couple of egg plants. The eggplants are for baba ghanoush, not salsa in case you're wondering. As I was about to head out, Sharrona offered me a Carolina reaper pepper. 

SHARRONA MOORE: It's... your whole life'll flash before your eyes. 

KAYTE YOUNG: (laugh) Alright I'm gonna treat this one special, I'm not gonna throw it in with the rest of them. 

[Narrating] We'll hear more about that hot pepper in another episode. To learn more about the Lawrence Community Gardens and The Next Generation Farmer's Youth Program, check our website EarthEats.org. 

Be sure to find us to find us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. We have a short video this week of chickens taking a dirt bath, and Zion explaining. You can find us @EarthEats. 

That's it for the show this week. We'll see you next time. 

RENEE REED: The Earth Eats team includes Eobon Binder, Chad Bouchard, Mark Chilla, Abraham Hill, Taylor Killough, Josephine McRobbie, Daniel Orr, The IU Food Institute, Harvest Public Media and me, Renee Reed.  Our theme music is composed by Erin Tobey and performed by Erin and Matt Tobey. Earth Eats is produced and edited by Kayte Young and our executive producer is John Bailey.

KAYTE YOUNG: Special thanks this week to Sharrona Moore, Jason Rosales Harmes, Zion Moore, and everyone at Lawrence Community Gardens. 

Production support comes from: Elizabeth Ruh, Enrolled Agent providing customized financial services for individuals, businesses, and disabled adults, including tax planning, bill paying, and estate services.  More at PersonalFinancialServices.net. Bill Brown at Griffy Creek Studio, architectural design and consulting for residential, commercial and community projects. Sustainable, energy positive and resilient design for a rapidly changing world. Bill at GriffyCreek.studio. And Insurance agent Dan Williamson of Bill Resch Insurance. Offering comprehensive home, auto, business and life coverage, in affiliation with Pekin Insurance. Beyond the expected. More at BillRescheInsurance.com