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Food Day Youth Summit

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2012 Youth Summit: October 26!
SUNY-Potsdam Campus
Save the Date!

On October 24, 2011, over 200 people from around the northern New York region attended the Food Day Youth Summit organized by GardenShare.

Twenty-nine high schools sent teams of students and adults with a passion to explore the crucial food issues of our day. Each team returned home having devised a Food Action Project to implement at their school.

The teams arrived on the campus of SUNY Potsdam from across the Adirondack-North Country region—from Alexandria Bay and Schroon Lake, Copenhagen and Keene Valley, Westport and Ogdensburg, and elsewhere in between. To see the complete list of participating schools, click here.

To see photos from the North Country Food Day Youth Summit, click here.

Food Day—October 24—is a new nationwide event that aims to change the way Americans eat and think about food. Activities around the country encouraged Americans to “eat real” and support healthy, affordable food grown in a sustainable, humane way. To celebrate Food Day in the North Country this year, GardenShare created a day of dynamic presentations and workshops for students in grades 9 through 12.

GardenShare’s Food Day Youth Summit focused on the following themes:

  • Enjoying healthy food & creating healthy diets
  • Considering alternatives in local agriculture
  • Ending hunger & making food affordable
  • Understanding our food system
  • Curbing junk-food marketing to kids

The day kicked off with a keynote presentation by Mark and Kristin Kimball, whose 500-acre, horse-powered farm in Essex County raises enough vegetables, meat, maple syrup, and grains to feed a hundred “farm members” for a full year. Kristin Kimball has written about their life in the Adirondacks in her acclaimed new book, "The Dirty Life: On Farming, Food, and Love."

A variety of workshops were also offered:

  • School Gardens from Seed to Salad Students considered the basics of school gardening so they can start or expand a garden project at their school and connect it with the classroom, the cafeteria, and the community.
  • Junk Food Safari On this fun-filled “safari,” students learned to examine with a critical eye the claims of food marketing and advertising (especially ads aimed at kids) in order to make healthy and responsible food choices.
  • My Big Farm / My Small Farm A panel discussion between four high school friends about theirrespective family farms (a large mechanized dairy farm, a small free-range beef CSA farm, and a small two-person dairy farm) opened a safe space for a discussion of the humane treatment of animals, food affordability, and the pros/cons of scale, leading to a deeper understanding of each style of agriculture.
  • My Food (and How It Got That Way) This “Food Systems 101” session used an exciting new DVD to explore how food is raised, processed, transported, and eaten in America—and how this impacts people and the environment in our region.
  • Farming by the Foot (Not the Acre) Two young farmers helped students explore how eating seasonal food from local small-scale farms benefits the health of people, their communities, and the environment.
  • Justice or Just Us? From an overview of the “food gap” in the Adirondack–North Country region, students learned simple food assessment tools their teams can use in their own communities to uncover food gaps and help make healthy food affordable and available to everyone.

Also included was a special roundtable discussion for school food service personnel entitled “Healthy School Food: Challenges & Solutions.” 

The day also included a lunch menu showcasing locally produced foods. After lunch, school teams met individually to decide on a Food Action Project for their own school or community. To see a list of the schools and their chosen projects, click here.

In evaluations completed at the end of the day, students gave a thumbs up to the Food Day Youth Summit:

  • “Wonderful! Good info. Fun activities. Delicious lunch.”
  • “The workshop ‘Justice or Just Us?’ really brought the problem of local hunger to life.”
  • “Awesome. Very informative.”
  • “Great info. I intend to write my college admission essay based on today’s workshops. Thank you.”
  • “It made me more conscious about what I eat.”
  • “Eye opening.”
  • “Thank you so much for providing this summit.”

Also in the evaluations, two out of three students reported being “more interested in eating a healthy diet” and “more aware of the structure of our food system” as a result of the summit. Nearly half said, “I intend to improve my home nutrition environment” and “I am more interested in cooking at home.” Half also reported that they were made “more aware of junk food marketing techniques.” A similar number said they will “look for volunteer opportunities” in their communities because of what they learned at the summit.

Adults attending included teachers from a range of subject areas: earth science, health, agriculture, and physical education, plus an environmental club advisor and a school food committee member. Besides teachers, other adults included a school nurse, a school wellness committee member, food service personnel, and parents.

The Food Day Youth Summit was made possible thanks to the generosity of several key supporters. The Alcoa Foundation provided a $15,000 leadership grant for this event. Additional major funders include the Grasseroots Fund of the Northern New York Community Foundation and the Evergreen Fund of the Adirondack Community Trust. The New York State United Teachers (NYSUT); St. Lawrence Cardiology, Potsdam; Farm Family Insurance, Hammond; the Food Bank of Central New York; Hands On Health Holistic Healing, Hannawa Falls; and the World Artisan, Potsdam, also provided sponsorships. For complete descriptions of our funders, click here.

For more information about GardenShare and about how you can help sponsor next year’s Food Day Youth Summit, email Aviva Gold or call (315) 261-8054.