FoodCorps Offers Public Service Program for Oxy Students

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Author: Sundeep Singh

The Remsen Bird Fund hosted Curt Ellis and Deb Eschmeyer, co-creators of FoodCorps, on Oct. 5 as this month’s First Tuesday Lecture guests to discuss their ambitions for nutrition education.

Initially conceived in 2009 and operational since February of this year, FoodCorps’ primary goal is to improve general health in America by spreading awareness of the benefits of maintaining whole, locally sourced diets. FoodCorps is a sub-project of the National Farm to School Network, a program run in part by the Center for Food and Justice at Occidental College (within the Urban and Environmental Policy Institute).

FoodCorps intends to create a grassroots movement through educating young students (K-12) about food in today’s hugely automated, complicated industry, effectively “investing in the next generation of farmers.”

The immediate focus of the organization is the building of gardens in schools for cafeteria for contiguous consumption and the introduction of food nutrition curricula in low-income, high-diabetes communities. Through the spread of knowledge about nutrition and sustainability, they hope to foster an environmentally-minded generation who will more effectively utilize agricultural and nutritive resources to create a healthier population and a healthier earth.

FoodCorps relies on volunteers to actually go out into the country and implement school and community programs. Their involvement with Occidental centers on this public service program for which they hope to recruit new members.

FoodCorps is looking for anyone who is passionate about public health and motivated to help young students travel to a selected area in the U.S. (anywhere from North Dakota to New York City), where proper judgement regarding diet and nutrition is not common.

Recruits spend 12 months in these communities, aiding in the construction of school-run food gardens as well as teaching students the importance and intricacies of proper food wellness.

Compensation offered for this program is a $15,000 stipend and a $5,500 academic grant. Food- Corps encourages applicants of any qualifications to look into its program. Eshmeyer describes the knowledge and understanding gained by being a part of such a program to be on par with earning a master’s degree in food studies.

Ellis shared the beginnings of his personal interest in food wellness education with stories of an extended trip to Greene, Iowa that he took immediately after college with close friend Ian Cheney. Hoping to escape the urban setting of Boston and to bond closely with nature through farm life, Ellis and Cheney travelled to Greene to grow and farm an acre of corn.

They were enamored by the romantic thought of dirty gloves and the sort of satisfaction that is only accompanied by extensive manual labor. Ellis and Cheney were disheartened and irritated when, at the end of their journey through the farm-belt, they realized that they had spent a grand total of two hours actually working the land that had provided them with so much.

The vast majority of farm labor entailed driving large harvesters over corn crops (work that seemingly anyone could be trained to do). The incongruity of machines working farmland more than farmers did prompt Ellis to write (and ultimately star in) “King Corn,” a video-documented account of their time in Greene.

Inspired by this initial interest in food education, Ellis, now with Eschmeyer, Cecily Upton, Crissie McMullan and Jerusha Klemperer in their small organization, works to affect the dubious practices and profit-driven agenda of big food corporations.

As the current generations of American children are increasingly known by the monochre “the obesity generation,” FoodCorps hopes to reverse this trend and promote healthy eating throughout the nation.

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