CAES Newswire

 College of Agricultural & Environmental Sciences UGA Cooperative Extension
Menu
Published on 04/25/19

UGArden receives grant to extend outreach to UGA food pantry

By Sadie Lackey

Food insecurity is an issue among college students that is rarely discussed but all too common. With limited funds or inconsistent income streams, some college students may have to choose between paying rent and buying groceries.

With this issue affecting their friends and neighbors, students working at UGArden, the University of Georgia’s student-run farm, decided to take action.

With the help of a $5,409 grant from the UGA Parents Leadership Council, a group of highly engaged parents, UGArden will now be able to provide fresh produce to the UGA Food Pantry, said John McGinnis, president of the UGArden Club.

The grant will be used to buy harvesting supplies, a refrigerator for the garden and one for the UGA Student Food Pantry. The refrigerators will extend the shelf life and food safety of the produce.

The pantry was established in 2011 and is located at the Tate Student Center. The student-run resource center serves about 100 students a day. While the volunteers have always had canned goods and packaged foods available, storage had been a major hurdle in supplying the pantry with produce, McGinnis said.

“We did some research and found that the food pantry did not really have much produce,” McGinnis said. “That is where we came up with this idea.”

With 1 in 5 college students struggling with food insecurity, it seemed to make sense to help their peers in the best way they could — with fresh vegetables, he said.

“Fresh produce is super important for the pantry because our goal is to provide students with meals that are not only delicious but also healthy,” Ava Parisi, the UGA student pantry’s director and a student majoring in health promotion and behavioral medicine. “We care for a lot of students’ well-being, so being able to provide healthy and fresh options helps tremendously.”

UGArden already supplies vegetables to community organizations and local middle schools with produce. Most of the produce goes to Campus Kitchen, a student-run community kitchen operated through the UGA Office of Service-Learning (OSL) that provides meals to senior citizens around Athens. OSL is a UGA outreach unit that is overseen by the vice president for public service and outreach and the vice president for instruction. 

This is the kind of project that the Parent Leadership Council was excited to support.

“The UGArden is making an important and positive impact on the student experience in its own unique way,” said Elizabeth Correll Richards, chair of the Parents Leadership Council. “The Parents Leadership Council is proud to help with the funding needed to continue its excellent programming.”

For more information about UGArden and its impact, visit www.ugarden.uga.edu. For more information about the UGA Student Food Pantry, visit greeklife.uga.edu/content_page/uga-food-pantry-content-page. For more information about the Parent’s Leadership Council, visit give.uga.edu/parents-families/parents-leadership-council.

Sadie Lackey is a student writer for the CAES Office of Communications and Creative Services.

Authors:
Sadie Lackey
Experts/Sources:
David Berle
UGArden intern Lily Dabbs, a second-year geography major working toward a certificate in urban and metropolitan studies, delivers the first crop of UGArden vegetables to Ava Parisi, UGA Student Food Pantry director and a student majoring in health promotion and behavioral medicine. Photo by Vince Selvidge.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.
Download Image
Peach growers are looking forward to a fruitful season as the weather this winter and spring have been near-perfect for the sensitive crop. This year is projected to be a much-needed comeback from the disastrous season they experienced after a late freeze in March 2023 took out more than 90% of the state's crop. (Photo by Dorothy Kozlowski/UGA) CAES News
Growers hopeful 2024 peach season will rebound from disastrous 2023 04/10/24 Emily Cabrera
Last year, the peach industry lost $60 million due to the late freeze that hit much of the Southeast in mid-March 2023, said Jeff Cook, University of Georgia Cooperative Extension agent for Peach and Taylor counties. With no freezing temperatures in the forecast and hope for strong pricing during the upcoming season, peach growers are looking forward to a much-needed rebound year.
UGA wheat breeder and geneticist Mohamed Mergoum smells one of several test brews created by Creature Comforts on its annual Get Comfortable collaboration using a variety of wheat Mergoum developed at CAES. CAES News
Creature Comforts partners with UGA wheat breeder to create 2024 Get Comfortable brew 04/09/24 Maria M. Lameiras
Wheat breeders spend years meticulously crossing varieties to coax the best traits out of each species, carefully propagating plant varieties that are healthier, heartier and better suited for the environments where they are grown. Brewmasters are equally painstaking when choosing the components that will give their beers a specific flavor profile. These two exacting professions came together this spring when Athens-based Creature Comforts Brewing Co. reached out to the University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences to find a sustainable wheat variety they could use to make a good beer for a great cause.
A field of corn at sunset. CAES News
UGA Extension protects family farms and sensitive species 04/04/24 Emily Cabrera
Stanley Culpepper has dedicated the length of his career to supporting farmers in their mission to feed and clothe the world. For the past 25 years, Culpepper has been a weed science specialist for University of Georgia Cooperative Extension and a College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences faculty member. Recently his job has become increasingly complex as mounting challenges around the availability of pesticides — primarily herbicides — have taken center stage in agricultural production.
A mug of UGArden's chamomile tea. CAES News
UGArden herbal tea program launches sales in campus dining halls 03/21/24 Jordan Powers
The door to UGArden’s herb drying room leads to an olfactory explosion — sharp peppermint, earthy tulsi, sweet calendula and floral chamomile mix into an herbal perfume that would undoubtedly have tea drinkers reaching for their kettles. Now University of Georgia students will be able to get a taste of UGArden’s chamomile tea, along with a selection of the student community farm’s other herbal teas, with their campus meals as the UGArden medicinal herb program expands into UGA dining halls this spring.
A recent CAES study shows that consumers want retailers to provide basic information about the environmental impacts of local food when purchasing food online. CAES News
Consumer interest in sustainability should influence how retailers market local food 03/07/24 Maria M. Lameiras
Two recently published studies by University of Georgia researchers show that the consumers surveyed believe buying local is a more sustainable option, but they also value the convenience of online shopping and prefer that retailers provide basic information about the environmental impact of local products in the digital marketplace. Driven by increasing consumer interest in buying local and concerns about the impact of agricultural production systems on a changing climate, the studies were based on data from a web-based survey about consumer interest in sustainability, information about food production and online marketing preferences.
UGA horticulture course teaches fundamentals of floral design CAES News
UGA horticulture course teaches fundamentals of floral design 02/08/24 Jordan Powers
As students filter into Julie Campbell’s Tuesday morning lab, they are greeted by bins of sharp tools lining cold, stainless steel tables. It’s dissection day, but not the kind you may expect. This is “Floral Design and Management,” or HORT 3030, and today’s lesson is the anatomy of a flower. Students pass pale pink carnations and delicate yellow-and-orange Alstroemeria around the room as Campbell, assistant professor in the University of Georgia Department of Horticulture, begins a lecture on plant morphology.