When did you know that you wanted to work in food?
Food has always been important in my family. My grandmother's grandparents emigrated from Italy to San Francisco in the 1920s, and brought with them a love of growing and cooking food, which they passed on to their children and grandchildren. My grandmother tells me stories about her childhood growing up in Marin, where her family had a large garden that provided most of the food they ate. And how she first tried a store-bought tomato when she was 30, which she found to be extremely disappointing. Growing up I spent a lot of time at my grandparents' house, where I helped my grandmother in the garden or in the kitchen. At family gatherings I would spend most of my time in the kitchen helping her prepare and serve food for the guests.
However, it wasn't until college that I really started to see good food as a movement or as something we needed to be fighting for. Up until then it was just a part of my life, a given. But I soon realized that this is not the case for most people. After being dissatisfied with the low quality and high cost of the food in the dining halls I moved into a student run housing cooperative where I took on the role of "food coordinator" for the house. Part of my job was to organize meals and food buying, which we did collectively. Initially, we were buying from a large grocery chain, but as I learned more about our broken food system I wanted to find alternative sources to buy from. So I went down to the local Farmers' Market and spoke with some of the farmers there, one of which we started to buy from wholesale every week. And it was pretty exciting for us, as college students, to be able to buy mostly local organic food without having to increase our food budget at all. So this really sparked my interest in working in food because it felt like a very pressing problem, but one that was surmountable. Through this experience I was also able to identify some of the gaps in our local food system, which prompted me to pursue food as a career path.
How did you get your current good food job?
As I became more and more interested in food systems in college I decided I wanted to get involved in urban agriculture, which I heard was quickly growing as a movement in Chicago. For my final quarter I enrolled in the "Chicago Field Studies" course, which was a class in conjunction with an internship of your choosing. I Googled "urban agriculture Chicago" and one of the organizations that came up was The Urban Canopy. I emailed them to see if they would be interested in receiving me as an intern, and I actually didn't hear back from them for a while. So I assumed they weren't interested and interviewed with some other organizations.
But then, about two weeks before my deadline for choosing an internship, I got an apologetic email from one of the members of The Urban Canopy, asking if I wanted to speak with him on the phone about the possibility of an internship. So I called him up and he told me a little about the business' mission and values and I was left very impressed and inspired, and started interning with them soon after. The internship lasted about three months and during that time I learned a lot and became close with the other employees, which was a tight knit group of five people at that time. As the internship was ending and my graduation date quickly approaching, I asked if they would like to hire me as a full time employee for the foreseeable future, and they said yes, so here I am!
How did your previous work or life experience prepare you for a good food job?
The skills that were most important for me to be successful in my good food job were not necessarily those directly related to food. Sure, I loved to cook and I had a little experience farming and gardening, but nothing that would prepare me for a large farming operation. I think what helped me the most was my ability to adapt to new situations, be humble, and interact with people from backgrounds different than my own. My Dad is from Spain so I did a lot of traveling growing up and got a lot of practice jumping between different cultures and languages. I also had the opportunity to study abroad in Ecuador for six months in college, where I helped conduct a research project in coffee agroforestry in some very isolated farming communities. My research partner and I were there for 8 weeks interviewing farmers, many of which had never met anyone from outside the community. It was especially important that we be humble and respectful so that people felt comfortable opening up to us. We also made sure to phrase things in such a way that let them know we were there to learn from them, not push any ideology upon them or teach them how things "should" be done. This is just as important when working in communities in the U.S in which you are an outsider (in my case, on the South Side of Chicago) as it is working in communities abroad.
What was the greatest obstacle you had to overcome in pursuing your Good Food Job dream?
As a recent college grad, something I've been struggling with is defining my long term career goals. There are so many options, especially within Good Food right now, and it can be overwhelming. I don't feel l have in-depth experience or knowledge in any one area, but I have lots of interests and potential paths I could follow, its just hard to know which is the most "right" for me. Something that helps me persevere when I feel uncertainty is knowing that, at the moment, I'm doing something that's in line with my values and interests and I'm learning a lot. As long as I can say that, I think the rest will work itself out.
Name one positive thing that a former employer taught you that you continue to appreciate?
Part of The Urban Canopy's business model is internal social sustainability. For us, this means creating a social atmosphere among employees that encourages peer-to-peer accountability and tries to give everyone a good amount of autonomy and decision making power so they feel motivated and valued in their job. We have weekly meetings in which we rotate roles of facilitator, agenda planner, note taker, etc. We vote on topics to come to unanimous decision after having in depth discussions. Before we start a work day on the farm we go around and each give a brief "check in" on how we are feeling and what we want to accomplish that day. Working in this way definitely presents its own unique challenges and we are constantly making improvements to find the most efficient way to run our business while still maintaining a collaborative structure. This is one of the things that originally drew me to The Urban Canopy and continues to motivate me in my job because I feel like I have a more active role in the operations of the business, as opposed to just being expected to follow directions.
What can you identify as the greatest opportunities in food right now?
There have been more and more sustainable / local / urban farming ventures popping up in recent years as we are realizing the importance of having food sources close to the communities consuming the food. A rise in demand for local food sources among consumers is helping this sector grow significantly, and I believe it will continue to grow in the future as world populations increase and we are forced to find more sustainable means of feeding them.
If you could be compensated for your work with something other than money, what would it be?
FOOD. This is definitely one of the perks of working for a farm. Its amazing how much excess food there is, and being able to have unlimited access to fresh, local, organic produce has definitely saved me a lot of money and made me a healthier person.