Teaching lands nourish hungry Aggies

Red, ripe cherries hide in small clusters amid long leaves in the UC Davis teaching orchard. They’re sweet, juicy, beautiful. In area grocery stores, such delights cost up to $8 a pound, but these would have gone to the birds. They must be harvested by hand, and at the price of labor, they’re too expensive to pick, said orchard manager Victor Serratos of the Department of Plant Sciences.

A food reclamation program at UC Davis is picking up where teaching about growing, measuring, irrigating, fertilizing and pruning leave off. Undergrads are harvesting cherries, oranges, lemons and other fresh food grown on campus teaching and research lands, packing them up and delivering them to fellow students who need them.

Fresh Focus salvaged more than 12,800 pounds of produce over spring, summer and fall quarters of 2022, according to the program’s reports. That’s the equivalent of nearly 10,700 meals during those sessions. The program, which is operated by the UC Davis Student Farm, has gleaned vegetables primarily from the farm’s market garden. To increase the amount and variety of produce shared with students, Fresh Focus recently began collaborating with the Department of Plant Sciences, said farm Director Colin Dixon.

Waste is an issue throughout our food systems, said Laia Menendez Díaz, the Fresh Focus intern coordinator and a graduating senior majoring in plant sciences. Through the efforts of students like Menendez Díaz, one tiny part of that system – the campus’ teaching fields – is becoming more efficient.

“I’m interested in food justice for all, and this is one of the things I can do in my program,” Menendez Díaz added.

Through such student efforts, Fresh Focus makes a small dent in a shocking statistic: About 45 percent of students at UC Davis face food insecurity, according to a student-led research study published earlier this year. The students who are most likely to wonder how they’re going to eat are transfer students, first-generation college students, Latinx students and students in their senior year.

Students feeding students

The roots of Fresh Focus reach to 2014, when two students started gleaning surplus produce from the 27-acre Student Farm. This new collaboration fetches fruit from department orchards, including the 3-acre plot off Hutchison Road where Menendez Díaz and other students recently picked cherries. This land also grows peaches, nectarines, apricots, prune plums, apples and almonds, Serratos said,

“There can be lots of waste when we do experiments,” said Abigail Oswald, a second-year plant sciences major and lead student farmer. “You have all the inputs: irrigation, staff, lots of expenses.”

A program like this makes better use of resources farther up the finance chain, as well, said Gail Taylor, a distinguished professor and chair of the Department of Plant Sciences. “These lands are generally funded through the food industry and growers of California, so it’s wonderful that we can give back in this way, and that our sponsors’ dollars are being used even more effectively for the benefit of our student population.”

Food and happiness

Wendy Martinez Castañeda is the Fresh Focus internal partners and production coordinator and was among the students in the orchard picking cherries. The next day, she and still more students gathered at a building at the Student Farm, where they packed the cherries and other produce into baskets and bags, then crates for delivery. Martinez Castañeda climbed into the small delivery vehicle called the Mule and motored to the Memorial Union. There, she unloaded several crates at the back door of the ASUCD Pantry, led by the Associated Students of UC Davis in collaboration with the Aggie Compass, Basic Needs Center.

In 2022, the Pantry gave food and other basics to nearly 6,800 students, who visited more than 42,600 times, said Assistant Director of Basic Needs Martin Tellez. The Pantry is just one of several programs on campus operating under the umbrella of Aggie Compass, Basic Needs, addressing the layers of challenges many students face beyond their studies. (Staff and faculty also can receive assistance.)

“There was a survey, and (clients) said they wanted more fresh fruit,” Martinez Castañeda said as she left the cherries. “They’ll be so happy to have these.”

Fresh Focus delivers food to nearly a dozen programs on campus and in surrounding communities all year long.

“This program is making fantastic use of the resources and effort we dedicate to our research,” Taylor said. “We are delighted to add even more fresh produce to the campus efforts to address student food insecurity this year, by harvesting the department’s research orchards.”

Related links

Learn more about Fresh Focus and other programs of the Student Farm, part of the Agricultural Sustainability Institute.

Donate to the Fresh Focus program.

To donate to The Pantry, contact staff advisor Martin Tellez at mtellez@ucdavis.edu or (530) 754-3039. The Aggie Compass Basic Needs Center provides a wide range of food products, goods, services and resource referrals to students. To donate or volunteer, please check out this webpage.