Alumni Interviews | Lauren Kohler '19

Lauren Kohler ’19 did just about everything there is to do at the YSFP, from tending Yale Farm crops to writing our ever-popular newsletter. The former Farm Manager is no longer harvesting carrots on the Old Acre, but she’s not done thinking about the food we eat and where it comes from. Kohler is now the Director of Food Systems Philanthropy at Stray Dog Institute, a private operating foundation that provides funding to and conducts research with organizations in the food systems and farmed animal advocacy movements. YSFP communications team member Sadie Bograd ’25 spoke with Kohler about her work and how it was shaped by her time at the Yale Farm.

This conversation is part of a new Voices series about the exciting work YSFP alumni are doing in the world of food and agriculture. The transcript has been edited lightly for length and clarity.

How would you describe your work at Stray Dog Institute?

I help execute, develop, and manage our food systems programming, philanthropy, and strategy. In addition to managing our grants, I provide support beyond the check: for example, sharing a funder perspective on a presentation, or weighing in on a new strategy. I've also facilitated three different working groups since I came onto the team [in 2019], helping to provide a space for collaboration and a facilitating force for organizations in the movement. My work spans the philanthropic side and the connector, facilitator, and collaborative space-builder role.

On that note, could you describe the general landscape of food systems grant-making and the food systems movement?

Stray Dog Institute sits at the intersection of the farmed animal advocacy and food system transformation movements. Our benefactors, Chuck and Jennifer [Laue], have dedicated their time and their money to trying to end factory farming and make the world better for people, animals, and the planet. Because of their vision, we keep animals at the center of our work, and that's why we're focused on ending factory farming specifically. But we also recognize that factory farming exists within the broader landscape of the food system. And you can't look at industrial animal agriculture without looking at the intersecting oppressions and injustices that create the extractive, exploitative food system that we have today. We find a lot of overlap with [food systems] groups that are fighting to end factory farming in the US. It may not be for animals: it may be for rural communities, environmental justice reasons, public health reasons, soil health reasons.

Do all those different groups usually work together? And what are some of the challenges with doing so?

Different issues will bring different folks together. For example, one issue that I led a working group on was checkoff programs. Checkoff programs are a fund that producers of certain commodities, like dairy or beef or soybeans, will pay into per amount that they produce. That money is supposed to go to broadly promoting the consumption of that product and R&D for that product — we all know the “Got Milk?" campaign and “Beef. It’s What's for Dinner.” One of the issues is that the program has basically been co-opted by industrial animal agriculture, and that money is being used to support their interests at the expense of family farmers. That's a case where cattle ranchers and animal welfare advocates came together to fight a common enemy.

One challenge to collaboration between the farmed animal advocacy and food systems movements has been, rightly or wrongly, the idea that animal advocates prioritize animals at the expense of human interests. Today, the animal advocacy movement is a lot more inclusive and intersectional. There's also some understandable historical distrust there between rural communities and farmers and animal advocates. I think that that's been a difficult gap to bridge. On the other side, there continue to be challenges to collaboration between some food systems groups. Some folks see farmed animals as central to regenerative agriculture and aren't open to considering regenerative models that decenter animal farming. I think it can be off-putting to some animal advocates to see that side of the food systems movement promote beef consumption or cattle ranching as integral to a sustainable food system.

But I think that the animal advocacy movement overall has become much more aware of the importance of a big tent approach, and I think that has helped bridge the gap. There's a place for animals in conversations about the food system, and that doesn't take away the place of any other food systems actors. Animal issues have historically been seen as naive or pie in the sky. We’re really interested in having open conversations that challenge that, recognizing that conversations about the food system have to be about everything in the food system.

What have been some of the historic and current gaps in funding for food systems and farmed animal advocacy, and how do you try to fill that niche?

Historically, the animal advocacy movement has been predominantly very white, leadership has been male-dominated, and the funders have been white and male. That has led to an under-resourcing of groups that are not led by people of those demographics, particularly BIPOC-led groups and community-led groups. That's changing in some really good ways, and we have tried to be part of that change.

In addition, the animal advocacy movement has historically seen a lot of project-based funding. I can understand why a funder would be motivated to ensure that as much of their money goes specifically to their highest concerns, such as chickens in crates or the separation of cows from their babies at birth. However, focusing funding on specific issues may create challenges for nonprofits in covering their basic operating expenses. As a result, Stray Dog Institute has shifted to giving mostly unrestricted, general operating grants. Additionally, we used to give larger grants to fewer organizations. About a year after I came on the team, we decided that we wanted to take a movement-building approach and to spread that support across more organizations in the movement at necessarily smaller grant amounts.

Along with funding in smaller amounts, are you generally funding smaller organizations?

It varies. Sometimes our support may be a drop in the bucket for an organization with a multi-million-dollar budget. Those organizations are doing great work, and we do want to support them. But I find it really meaningful to provide support to smaller organizations who might not have a lot of funder support. A smaller grant can have a larger impact for an organization with a smaller budget. And I think that for those organizations, our support can mean more than the money itself, like having a funder who knows other funders say, “Hey, I'm supporting this organization, I think you might want to consider supporting them, too.”

I've asked you a bunch of questions about your job. I also want to talk a bit about your time at Yale. How do you think your work on the Farm influenced your career path?

My time at the Farm was so foundational to everything that I did in college and beyond. I have always been interested in the intersections between people and animals and the environment. I came into Yale knowing that I wanted to major in environmental studies, but not thinking that I would connect it to the food system so directly. I got pretty burnt out in college because so many of the issues in the food system are just so entrenched and sometimes feel hopeless. It felt hard to be like, ‘I want to focus my career on this.’

Working with the YSFP gave me a space where I could feel optimistic about the food system and working in the food system. The Farm was my happy place at Yale. The Farm was always the place where I went to feel at peace. And the people on the Farm are some of my favorite people in the world. It was very influential in making me feel like this work could be sustainable, and something that brought me joy, and something that's meaningful.

I'm a very hands-on, tactile person. Reading and writing and talking all day gets so exhausting. The appreciation of both hands-on and intellectual food systems work, and the way that those two things combined at the YSFP, felt very energizing.

That's great to hear. I feel like I'm constantly telling people this is the happiest place on campus. Every week I pick a tomato off the vine and I’m like, ‘Ah, life is going to be okay.’ Do you have any favorite memories from your time at the Farm?

Oh, all of them. I remember my sophomore year, when I was a Farm Manager, I worked with another awesome Farm Manager named Adam. We were Sunday workday managers, so there were fewer visitors on the Farm during our workday. There was one time where we raked all the leaves on the Farm into a huge pile and jumped in it. That's just a really happy memory, one of those where you take a photograph in your mind. I also think about the tomatoes in the hoop houses, and seeing the rows and rows of them strung up, and having been part of stringing them up when they were little tiny tomato plants and then seeing them go all the way to the top. Just all of the times walking around the Farm and it feeling like home. Even when there wasn't anyone there, it felt like home.

Soil Health Policy Guidebook with Abbey Warner YSE '22 and Darya Watnick YSE '22

This November, the Yale Center for Business and the Environment’s Regenerative Agriculture Initiative published the Soil Health Policy guidebook. The report, written by Abbey Warner YSE ’22 and Darya Watnick YSE ’22, offers recommendations for creating community-driven, state-level soil health policy and programs. YSFP communications team member Kapp Singer ’23 sat down with Warner and Watnick to learn a little more about the goals of and approaches to creating the guidebook.

This interview has been edited lightly for length and clarity.

Abbey Warner YSE ‘22 (left) and Darya Watnick YSE ‘22, the authors of the Soil Health Policy guidebook.

Kapp Singer: Why is soil health so important?

Darya Watnick: Soil health is the basis for anything that you're growing because all of the nutrients live in the soil. Soil holds water, so thinking about the soil health as a baseline means that anything else growing in the soil is going to have better yields, better health, and better nutritional value in some cases. The better your soil, the more resilient your crops are going to be to droughts or pests. There are just so many benefits to thinking about farming through the lens of soil.

Abbey Warner: The only other thing I would add is the importance of having a broader view of soils—how are they also relevant to people who aren’t farmers or thinking about food systems? Soil provides a range of ecosystem services, from water filtration, to nutrient cycling, to food provisioning, which are all really critical to how we grow our food and our fiber. It’s also really important for other benefits related to water pollution or the ability to withstand drought and have more healthy ecosystems.

KS: What motivated you to create the Soil Health Policy guidebook?

DW: I had a summer internship in the summer of 2020 working with some folks who were starting a community group to launch a bill that would hopefully create a soil health program for the state of Colorado, run through the state’s Department of Agriculture. I have continued working for them since that summer—it’s almost been a year and a half at this point—and the program is now in place in Colorado, which is very exciting. I’d been talking to my supervisor about how we learned so much through that process, and how there are other states that are interested in following this same path. We came to the conclusion that we should write it down so that people don’t have to reinvent the wheel. There’s an initiative at the Center for Business and the Environment at Yale (CBEY) called the Regenerative Agriculture Initiative (RAI) that provides funding for student projects related to regenerative agriculture, and I thought this would be a cool opportunity.

AW: Darya and I were chatting about what to do for RAI and because she had already come up with a great idea, I was super on board. I had also been working in Colorado that summer and was really interested in the farming challenges there—ideas around soil health and water management. We ended up getting funding through RAI to create a guidebook that would collect all of these lessons learned from Colorado and also from other states that had passed soil health bills or programs, including California and New Mexico. We interviewed over 30 stakeholders from those states and also from other states that were in the process of working on soil health legislation or coalition-building to try to understand both the lessons learned and the needs of groups not as far along in the process. We were trying to strike a balance between providing concrete recommendations that are practical, but not overly prescriptive, because each state has a very different context around soil health.

KS: Your report outlines that a community-based approach is key to tackling issues of soil health. What kind of results or outcomes become possible when the whole community is involved?

AW: At its most basic level, having community involvement in soil health policy-building is really the only way to get these sorts of policies and programs passed. With every natural resource issue that you’re working on, there’s always going to be different sides to issues. There’s also a lot of very real concerns that different stakeholders have about how agricultural policy is made, how environmental policy is made, and the repercussions those policies could have for certain communities. It was really interesting hearing about how in some cases, it wasn’t even necessary to organize for the support of certain stakeholder groups—like commodity crop organizations—but to organize to the point that they wouldn’t actively oppose a certain policy.

DW: Community-building also helps bring farmers or ranchers—whoever is going to be implementing the practices—to the table, because they’re the ones who are going to be doing this work on their fields. You could have the greatest program, but if they don’t feel like it’s actually valuable to them in any way or worth their time to implement, then obviously you’re not going to have a good result or make a real impact. 

KS: Tell me about your approach to creating this guidebook. Are there any notable parts of the process you’d like to share?”

AW: Darya and I came in with a really concrete idea about what we wanted to do, which was helpful in keeping focused throughout the process. The first semester we were working on this mainly involved background research, outlining the project, and getting the Institutional Review Board (IRB) exemption so we could interview people. Then, in January of last year, we started our interview process, and that was when we interviewed over 30 different stakeholders. That was my favorite part of the process—it was really interesting to talk to all these people and get to ask them questions about what sort of lessons they wanted to share with other people, or what sorts of things they were curious about in soil health policy-making. We were able to tap into this wide network of people from different worlds, but who are all really coming together on soil health. I felt so lucky to get to talk to all of those folks. Then, at the end of the spring semester, we started our writing process. We outlined and drafted the guidebook and then edited it throughout the summer and into the fall, and then we worked with a design team to help us format it so that it would look fun and exciting to read instead of looking like a typical research paper.

DW: We split up the sections and did a little writing retreat—we went to an AirBnB for a weekend and spent hours writing. This was a huge part of how it got done—just sitting down and forcing ourselves to write.

Soil Health Policy: Developing Community-Driven State Soil Health Policy and Programs (November 2021). Click here to read the full report.

KS: Now that the report has been published, whose hands do you hope it will end up in? Who do you think would benefit most from reading through the Soil Health Policy guidebook?

AW: We’re really hoping it ends up in the hands of either already established groups that are hoping to drive soil health policy-building in their state, or maybe in the hands of state agency staffers or legislative staffers who are already thinking about soil health and other environmental issues.

DW: We wrote it for a very specific audience—the groups Abbey just mentioned—so hopefully it finds its way to that audience. 

AW: And that could also include people at nonprofits, or really anyone who is interested in soil health, which is cool. There are definitely states that are already interested in this work, like Montana, Nebraska, and Virginia. There are lots of different people who are already thinking about this all over the nation. Hopefully they can pick the report up wherever they are in that process and find something useful to them.

KS: Is there anything else you’d like people to know about the guidebook that I haven’t asked about?

AW: We’ve gotten some feedback from some people that this toolkit could be helpful for other natural resource issues like urban greening. Since a lot of the tips we were trying to give are very practical, and not necessarily exclusively related to soil health, anyone who is trying to build a coalition around a natural resource issue may find something useful in it.

KS: Thank you both so much.

GFF Grace Cajski Explains Her Project that Explores Hawaiian Fishpond Aquaculture

Grace Cajski was a 2021 Global Food Fellow. To learn more about the Yale Sustainable Food Program’s Global Food Fellowships, please visit this page.

Growing up in New Orleans, I loved going to the water with my father. We’d kayak. We walked along the bayous and boated across the lake. My father is from Oʻahu, and, in the summer, we’d go back to his childhood home. There, we sailed, explored, and visited with family and friends. One of whom was Vernon Sato, my father’s old neighbor. He was a phycologist and aquaculturist. In his retirement, he wrote a book about Moliʻi fishpond, an ancient Hawaiian fishpond. Sometimes, he’d take us there. 

Nine hundred years ago, the Hawaiian population was growing into the hundreds of thousands. They invented fishponds, loko iʻa, to feed their community. It was the first aquaculture system in the Pacific Rim. Chiefs, or aliʻi, designated a kiaʻi loko to care for and operate the fishpond. Caring for a fishpond was an art, and the knowledge it took to understand the pond and its creatures required years of apprenticeship. When the West colonized, when it forbade most Hawaiian practices and converted communal land into private property, this artistry was lost. 

In the past fifty years, nonprofits and community groups have been working to revive fishponds. They have removed invasive mangroves and rebuilt the kuapā. Now, they are contending with problems like pollution and invasive species. Additionally, the aquaculturists who operated the ponds a generation ago are aging, and their knowledge will soon be lost.

If these problems can be resolved, fishponds could salvage Hawaii’s ecosystems. And, they could help solve the anthropocene's defining problems: resource scarcity, ecosystem decay, and climate change. 

During my gap year, I became fascinated with fishponds. Particularly, I reflected on how humans know the natural world: I realized that we know it through work, and that the food chain is what fundamentally connects us to the ecosystem. Beyond observing nature, sustainable food systems are how humans play a role within the environment and are part of natural ecosystems. 

I wondered, how are ancient Hawaiian aquaculture practices relevant to solving the environmental and social issues associated with the anthropocene today? Who are the figures behind this movement? And, can these revived practices inform other aquaculture projects? 

During April of 2021, I received a Global Food Fellowship from the Yale Sustainable Food Program to write about the fishponds and the community around them. I hoped to delve into the aquaculturists' stories and their work. I planned to bring their philosophies and knowledge to a wide audience with my writing. Through my project, I also planned to explore solutions, illuminate challenges, and celebrate Hawaiian culture. 

I embarked on my project in June of 2021: I spent thirty-five days on Oʻahu and spoke with more than forty fishpond caretakers, scientists, nonprofit leaders, civil servants, community members, conservationists, and educators. I visited fishponds, aquaculture facilities, and nonprofit offices. I snorkeled in search of seaweed, and I removed mangroves from a fishpond. I typed transcripts of my interviews with elders and fishpond leaders, and sent them to the University of Hawaii's Center for Oral History. 

​​I am grateful to have had the opportunity to witness and take part in such work, as well as to have connected with so many inspiring figures. I am humbled by the privilege of hearing their stories, and telling them.

To learn more about my research, you can read my article about fishpond aquaculture for ECO Magazine here, and you can read my blog post for the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication about how climate change is threatening fishponds here. I have work forthcoming in Oceanographic Magazine, and I will be presenting the project at the American Geophysical Union Fall 2021 Conference. 

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This project was also supported by the Yale Law School’s Law, Ethics & Animals Program (LEAP), the Yale Environmental Humanities Program, and the Yale Summer Journalism Fellowship.

Q&A with Forest Abbott-Lum YSE '21

Group picture from the 2-bin volunteer build (all done by hand!) in early March 2020. Volunteers are standing in the 2 bin system itself.

The following is a transcript from an interview done in October 2020. “KE” refers to Kayley Estoesta, a YSFP Comms Manager, and “FAL” refers to Forest Abbott-Lum, the YSFP Composter-in-Residence.

The “A-peel” of Compost

KE: How did you become interested in the world of waste management? 

FAL: Waste management kind of just happened to me. Around 2016, I started looking for jobs in New York City, where I could use Mandarin, and also get outside. And what came across my radar was the New York City Compost Project, which is funded by the Department of Sanitation. They were hiring for a position with a pretty wild title called “Organics Recovery Coordinator.” It was located in Flushing, Queens, which is America's fastest growing Mandarin-speaking Chinatown. It just seemed like a unicorn of an opportunity, because I would get to be outside managing an industrial compost site, and I'd also get to be doing Mandarin Chinese outreach for the community, and building a zero waste coalition from home gardeners to the people that did Tai Chi in the park. 

Forest taking a break from some tractor work at the compost site in Queens (look at that carbon:nitrogen ratio!).

It was really exciting to be on the front lines of getting people to not take trash for granted. And I became totally fascinated by the flow of urban food waste. Waste is an externality that we all have personal contact with to some degree. The biggest slice of the food waste pie is actually household food waste. 

Waste management is also a very male dominated space. In general, the community gardening and environmental outreach world is pretty female-dominated. But to generalize, the world of waste management is a bunch of dudes between the ages of 40 and 60, and a really macho work culture with big machines and heavy lifting. And that was such a new cultural space for me to be in. I'd been in the policy world, and then I had been in the world of sustainability startups. The identity of someone who's in waste management sometimes can be completely opposite to the identity of someone who self-identifies as an environmentalist; yet, we're all in the environmental field. 

And I can tell you a little bit more about the compost site that we were running in Queens. If we had been in California, it would have technically been large enough to be considered and regulated as an industrial compost site. But as far as industrial compost sites go, it was actually quite small. What we were trying to do was prove that you could make compost in a way that was friendly to urban environments. It doesn't smell bad, it doesn't attract rodents, and it can benefit the community who gardens and participates in it as a green space. 

KE: Before we get further, could you briefly explain the process of composting? And speak to why composting as opposed to other methods of waste management?

FAL: Composting is a managed method of controlling the decomposition of organic waste, so that your end product creates a nitrogen rich, organic material that can be used as a type of fertilizer. A lot of people who are backyard composters get really anxious about what they can compost. They're like, “Is the whole pile gonna become contaminated if a little bit of egg white gets in there?” But when you get to the industrial scale, people are composting Diet Dr. Pepper by running over it with a huge machine and crushing out all the liquid, or composting entire dead pig carcasses.
When you’re making industrial-scale compost, things are getting so hot in the pile that you can get to a point called PFRP (process to further reduce pathogens, 15-20 degrees C). The microbial activity is getting so hot, you're killing off all of these harmful pathogens, which is what you have to do to sell compost if you're an industrial compost site. But once you're getting that hot, you can put pretty much anything organic in there. Meat, dairy, compostable bags made of bio plastic, shredded dollar bills.

Forest waving from the deck of an industrial compost sifter in California while getting trained as a US Composting Council Site Operator.

The Issue of Household Food Waste

KE: Could you expand on your earlier point about urban food waste being the bulk of all waste? 

FAL: 40% of total food waste in America is generated in the process of getting food from a farm all the way to someone’s fork. Of that 40%, how much do you think is generated from individual households? It's 43%. So it's not the majority, but it's the biggest slice of the pie by far. What’s more is that household food waste is eight times more carbon intensive than upstream food waste just because of the refrigeration and preparation it took to get to your fridge.

Composting is not a perfect solution to this issue. The best case scenario for reducing food waste is just having people eat the food. Second best is that animals are eating the food. Third best, and this is contested, is power generation through a biogas digester. And then in fourth place is compost, but the EPA considers compost just a little bit above landfill or incineration.

I wanted to address briefly what happens to food waste if it goes to the landfill. And of course, this really varies by where you are. If you're here in Connecticut, my understanding is most of your trash is getting incinerated. But if it's going to landfill, the food waste problem also becomes an environmental justice problem. Because oftentimes, landfills are located next to communities of color. And then you have just a bunch of volatile organic compounds and potential health risks. Some of the earliest environmental justice work by the Black community was protesting the building of a landfill. There's a long history between environmental justice and landfill organic waste. You have to think if it’s not going to the compost site, where is it going? And chances are to the landfill or the incinerator.

But I think the really tricky thing about household food waste reduction in the United States is that this is a dispersed collective action problem that happens out of the eye, making it harder to implement mass behavior change.

KE: How much do you see this problem of food waste being at the scale of the individual and the individual's behavior, versus at the scale of the local/city government level, versus national policy? 

FAL: Food waste does vary from place to place. If you're in the Global North, most of your food waste is consumer driven at the household level. And if you're in the Global South, most of your food waste is driven by supply chain losses. I'm just going to zero in on the United States.

I think there are so many well-intentioned food waste bloggers that are trying to teach you how to cook with your banana peels. And I applaud their effort. But I think that approach is a bit misguided.

What has worked in other parts of the world, South Korea being a good example, is when you make the private public. In parts of Seoul, they installed food waste counter machines, where you have to separate out your food waste, and then bring them to a publicly viewable area where it runs up a fee for how much food waste you're generating. That's actually seen a 95% decrease in household food waste. 

With my experience in New York City, which is a fairly liberal city, I don't know if Americans would go for that approach. The challenging thing about the United States is that for so long, we have really normalized the idea that trash is something that you only need to think about for like 0.3 seconds. Changing the narrative on that is not impossible, but it is difficult. Part of what we were doing for the compost project was to set up a food scrap drop off station. We would set up buckets to collect compostables voluntarily from New York City residents. And while people were commuting to the subway, we would place them out and have outreach materials. We were essentially public-facing representatives of compost on behalf of the Department of Sanitation. 

Another important thing is changing the material circumstances of how people buy groceries. On the grocery store level, this means selling unbundled produce, and making sure that when you buy a pack of herbs you can take what you want from it. I have a bunch of rotting herbs in my fridge right now, don't y'all? So changing the material circumstances and portion sizes in which people consume food are your best strategies for reducing household food waste.

Making Compost Cute! : Compost at the YSFP

Food scrap + carbon mix at the Yale farm with some really healthy looking red wiggler worms!

KE: Could you tell us about the new compost system that you helped build for the YSFP last spring?

FAL: The idea was that we would create a system that would be rodent proof and allow us to compost a wider range of waste. What that entails is making sure your bins are sealed off so you don't have rodents getting in, because that is the worst case scenario for any community compost site. Number two priority is to actually compost the range of waste that is produced on the farm, especially the aromatic food waste that hadn’t been composted before. To do this you need a sealed off compost bin and a good mix of browns, which are carbonaceous materials needed in order to get your compost pile hot enough to kill off a lot of the pathogens. That’s 131 degrees or above for three consecutive days.

One benefit is that when you build a really nice looking compost system involving the community, it visually centers it as an important part of the farm in a way that a decomposing pile of organic material does not. Making things cute is actually very vital.

After a colleague, Jenna Davis, helped me get the lumber, I partnered with my friend Jon Miller. He is running a business that helps veterans with job placement (Outlaws Inc.) and he wanted a test run for mentorship and to build something with his hands. By winter we were able to build a three-bin system. 

Jon with the first three-bin at the Yale Farm.

After this pilot, we had some extra lumber; coordinating with Jacquie and Jeremy, our next idea was to do a public-facing workshop. We had about 10 people from the Forestry School and YSFP come out to help us build a two-bin system, which is going to be dedicated to in-person events at the Farm when they resume, so you can just walk right beyond the pizza oven and then drop off your compostables. 

It was my first time actually building a compost bin. And big shout out to Jon, for being my main mentor and showing me how to actually put it together. But I came in with the plan and the blueprints and a compost site from the New York City compost project. And that is open source. So if anyone ever wants  to build their own, I have the blueprint ready for them. It just takes a day and two people. YSFP funded the materials, they were super supportive in getting it all together.

KE: Thanks so much for your time and for sharing all this knowledge, Forest. I can’t wait to see our compost in action back at the Farm!

EXTRA RESOURCES:

Open source blueprints for building 3-Bin Compost System

Political Dessert with Paola Velez

The following blog post shares more from Paola Velez during her visit Paola visit to campus as part of the Yale Sustainable Food Program’s “Cooking Across the Black Diaspora” series. A themed line-up for Chewing the Fat, these events were conducted in collaboration with the Afro-American Cultural Center at Yale, and the Yale Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration.

In doing so, the series commemorated Black History Month, and the 50th anniversary for both the Afro-American Cultural Center (fondly referred to as “the House”) and the Yale Department of African American Studies. Ezra Stiles College and La Casa Cultural also supported Paola’s time on campus.

Paola’s visit included a podcast on Chewing the Fat, lunch and flavor pairing workshop using frio frio (shaved ice) at La Casa, and a public conversation with then Head of College Stephen Pitti at Ezra Stiles.

Chef Paola Velez’s earliest food memories are from the Dominican Republic, where she lived with her mother in a sleepy town known for cacao farming. But even after she and her mother moved to the Bronx, she still had strong memories of food. The mothers in their mostly Dominican neighborhood gathered often for their families to share meals. One mother would bring the rice, another the beans, and so on. Until they had enough for everyone. Food insecurity may have affected her childhood, but her community came together to cook together. There she learned hospitality. She learned how to share a meal.

This act of sharing food remains an important ideal to Velez. “It’s the great equalizer: food is that moment in time when we all have to be quiet and eat.” By cooking for people, she is able to direct the conversation that they will have with their food and each other. At the moment, such conversations center the past. Velez may cook with plenty of local Mid-Atlantic ingredients, but she elaborates on their history by connecting her sourcing to anywhere that the African slave trade touched: not only from the Americas, but Asia too. Soy sauce, for example, sneaks into her desserts for a touch of umami.

After all, Velez considers it her duty to cook with history, especially as a pastry chef. Everything associated with dessert, like alcohols, sugars, and fruits, comes from the African slave trade. Her awareness of the cultural significance of her food allows Velez to ask all her patrons to grapple with its violent history.

But she does more than spark conversations about history. She asks people to do something about it. And here, Velez leads by example. As an executive chef, Velez makes a point of hiring marginalized people, especially women of color and trans people. She never had a culinary mentor, but Velez hopes to utilize her position of power to open doors for people like her. To do this, she built a team at Kith/Kin founded on trust and mutual respect. “People need to feel safe at work to succeed,” she explained. She learned how to be a good manager, and teaches those below her the same practices. She asks questions. She listens.

To hear her talk, it is clear that Velez is much more proud of her work with people than her work with food. She spoke excitedly about how she brings a rotating staff with her to banquets and offsite events, so that everyone has a chance to find their future employer and move up in the ranks. Her goal is to train her staff well and have them move on, rising to power in a different restaurant and opening those same doors for marginalized people in their own place of work. Little by little, Velez is creating a community of love in the world for world.

She asks us to do the same. One of the most emotional moments was when Velez explained how much it meant for her to be here, at Yale, talking to a room of aspiring leaders. “I just cook food,” she said, but that food is an entryway point to places like Yale and the people “with the king’s ear, who can mobilize change.” Who she will be voting for in years to come. Who she will be trusting to teach her children. Who will be making policy to make changes for the better. People like us, who go to Yale or work in DC, are the people Velez hopes to influence through her food. She tells us her story in a way we cannot ignore. At least, I hope not. Just like there is no such thing as a free lunch, there is no such thing as an apolitical dessert.

Andi Murphy: Indigenous Foodways & Storytelling

In celebration of Native American Heritage Month, the YSFP joined the Native American Cultural Center (NACC) in welcoming Andi Murphy, Navajo journalist and creator of the Toasted Sister podcast, for a two-part online event, featuring a cooking demo and a conversation that explored indigenous food sovereignty.

A video of the cooking demo can be found below. Follow along to learn how to make one of her favorite dishes, a Wild Rice and Bison Stuffed Poblano Pepper with Pumpkin Seed Sauce.

The Politics of Indigo: a Q&A with Deja Chappell

Deja Chappell ’21 has worked with the YSFP as a Market Manager and as a Seed-to-Salad Coordinator. This year, she leads the natural dye workshops for YSFP students, and participates in farm workdays. She is currently pursuing her B.A. in Ethnicity, Race, and Migration.

Camden Smithtro ’22 is part of the YSFP’s communications team. She is an Environmental Studies major, with a concentration in Food and Agriculture. The best part of her job is learning from her fellow YSFP staff members!

Camden Smithtro: How did you begin dyeing with indigo?

Deja Chappell: I got involved with natural dyeing really randomly, just being on Instagram and looking at people do natural dyeing or mending, and fashion sewing. Pretty much anything with textiles. I was like, ‘oh, this is really cool!’

Before this I’d been introduced to the idea of eco-fashion, which was presented as ‘you better make really good individual choices. And you better, you know, only buy really expensive ethical brands.’ But then looking into it more, and also finding more people of color in that section of Instagram, I realized that eco-fashion was bigger than just your individual decisions.

There's a whole global fast-fashion industry that's built on exploitation and unsound ecological practices. So I sort of saw natural dyes as a way to counter that. Yeah, it's really tactile, and it's really cool. And yeah, it was this aesthetic preference, but it was also this political decision as well.  

I started following this one particular dyer, Graham Keegan. And he was doing a national tour, basically a cross-country dye workshop tour. I saw there was one in Alabama last summer, right before I was about to go out of the country. And so I was like, ‘what if I signed up and just went to do it? Otherwise I wouldn't know how to [dye with natural indigo].’ And then I went to that workshop, and that was a really wonderful experience. I met a chef there who had been involved in the YSFP in the early days, and knew Alice Waters. It was in the middle of nowhere, at an Antebellum mansion near Selma in a place called Marion, Alabama. It was a very interesting experience. I learned a lot and that's when I realized after you process all the indigo, and after you make the vat setup, there is so much room to be creative.

And of course, I'm still learning more. I'm from the Southeast, and am the descendant of enslaved people. I thought about exploitative mono-cropping and enslaved labor in the Southeast and how we always hear that they were growing cotton. When I researched more, I realized they were also growing indigo, because indigo grows really well in humid climates. And I realized not only is this [Southern land] unceded stolen territory that's being exploited, with its soils being diminished and ruined from the plantation economy, but this exploitation was also tied to the global textile market. And to this day, I feel like there's a connection between racial capitalism and the fast fashion industry, especially all of the waste and environmental destruction from fast fashion today. So I feel connected to natural dying in a political sense. Even if it's just an interest, it still has these political implications.

CS: So you follow these people on Instagram, then you went to the workshop. Was the next step talking to Jeremy and bringing the indigo to the farm? Or was there also an in-between?

DC: Oh, yes! So the way that the Yale Farm started to grow indigo began with the all-staff meeting in spring 2019. I had already been working for the Farm coordinating with public schools for Seed to Salad. And then we had the all-staff meeting and Marisa talked about growing mushrooms, and Jeremy made a point that the Farm is a place where we want to support everyone’s curiosity. And we will also pay [for students] to do cool things. So, at the end of that meeting, I just went up to Jeremy and I was like, would we ever grow indigo? And Jeremy told me ‘yes, the Farm is focused on food, fiber, and fuel. So that would fall into the fiber category. And that is absolutely something we'd be interested in doing.’

And then I told Jacquie, and Jacquie told me that someone had tried to do, you know, indigo and natural dyes before and it just sort of faded out, but the Farm would love to do it again. So it's actually not even me that started it. Many people before me have been interested. But it really was just that simple conversation.

The next thing I knew, Jeremy is telling me that he’s going to be planting indigo for the summer [of 2019]. So then when I came back to school that fall, we had this little test plot of indigo.

CS: Yeah, I was a Lazarus Summer Intern that summer. I remember seeing the baby indigo!

DC: And I'll just go ahead and say that last year, when I tried to process the plants that was my first time ever doing that, it failed. I let them soak too long. And then I also did that again this year. But the encouragement from Jeremy and Jacquie and everybody has been: it's okay to fail here. This didn't work out this year, and we'll do it again next year. We'll try again, and we'll learn. I still wish we could dye with our own indigo. But I feel like next year, we will know exactly what to do.

CS: Can you walk me through how you get from plant to pigment?

DC: Yes. But first I want to — part of this process being so political is acknowledging that something you think can only be done one way is just maybe one of many ways. It may be a way that was developed for efficiency and not for any other goal in mind. So the way that we attempted to extract our indigo is through aqueous extraction, which just means soaking in water. Indigofera tinctoria is the plant type. But when we say indigo, indigo is the pigment within the plant. In the plant state, you can dye with that directly onto fabric. But to make an indigo that is the most legible as indigo dye, you have to turn that into pigment. I think it's indigoten into indoxyl, which is the oxidative form of that. And that is where this aqueous extraction process comes in.

We soak the leaves in water, and the temperature really matters. You can absolutely do a cold soak. Some dyers say the cold soak gives you a pure, richer color. Then you soak that in water. And when that water starts to turn teal, that's the prime time to then go process the pigment that's been soaking. If you let it soak too long, the water turns brown or darker. That means it has soaked past the time where you could really process it with the aqueous extraction. And that's what we've now done twice. But we won't do it again!

If the process works, you take the leaves and debris out and add slaked lime or calcium hydroxide. Ryan Steele ’21, our in-house chemist, can explain the actual formula and what happens, but you start by whisking the slaked lime in, just a couple of teaspoons per gallon. It’s about an hour-long process of whisking on and off. It takes a while. But once you've whisked it enough, that pigment binds into itself and it can settle on the bottom. Then you let it settle, and keep it absolutely still.

Finally, you pour off the water on the top, and now you have a blue paste. The blueness of that paste is going to be based on the time that you harvested and the amount of time you let the leaf soak. So no two vats are going to be the same, and no two process extractions are going to have the same hue. Making the vat involves iron and a little more slick line and heat.

CS: I’m just thinking about all this. It's such a cool process.

DC: Yes, it's a cool process, but it is chemical heavy, compared to what we've been doing with the marigolds and the scabiosa and the dahlias, which just involves steaming to get pigment directly from the flowers. And again, there are methods with indigo leaves that are more similar to that. We haven't tried it, but the color comes out a little bit more teal than the blue we’ve seen.

So yes, this aqueous extraction method is one method, but it's not the only method. Fibershed has an extraction guide. They take a stance and say the aqueous extraction method comes from this idea of efficiency, and just trying to convert a whole lot of leaves into indigo really quickly. But that is sort of a capitalist framework of trying to get the pigment, which is just like, ‘let's get it and let's not think about anything else.’ There is also a Japanese method called sukumo. It's actually an ongoing compost pile of the plant which takes multiple years, you know. It takes way more time to cultivate that and then to sustain it, but it actually gives just as rich, if not richer, pigment. But that's not the timeline that a for-profit production would be on. For the ease of our farm, we're doing aqueous extraction. It's something interesting to consider, all the different ways that you could extract pigment.

Another cool thing about the indigo pigment that Ryan can explain a little bit more thoroughly, is that you have all these time windows you need to meet to keep the pigment alive. If we leave our leaves soaking too long, like I was talking about before, it's like there's some sort of irreversible process that disintegrates the pigment. I don't fully understand it. But yes. There are ways to preserve the thing that we want, without just putting it in water and taking it out.

This is a water-intensive process by the way. The water waste from fashion and textiles is a major polluter globally. There are companies that do have a waterless cycle, which means they keep the wastewater and use it again, or something similar. But in general, there's a ton of toxic water waste from textiles and it definitely happens more in the Global South fueling markets in the Global North rather than the other way around.

CS: Where do you see yourself going with this hobby or this interest?

DC: I hope that the Yale Farm continues to do natural dyeing at any scale after I'm gone. I would love to study sustainable textiles. I'm not particularly interested in working in the fashion industry. But I am very interested in any way we can have sustainable processes for cultural and aesthetic things that people are attached to. Everyone wears blue jeans and there's all sorts of trends and standards for what people wear with their clothes. Clothes are very transient, but they're also very personal. I would love it if we could still have our culture, but not have all of the ecological devastation and labor exploitation. I would love if we could still have that, but I do think that we would need a fundamental restructuring of the entire global economy and the dismantling of racial capitalism.

But as far as natural dyeing, I think it's just something that is fun, and I'll try to do it wherever I go. One thing that I realized through this process is that you don't have to turn your interests or your hobbies into something marketable. You could do an experiment, and you can be interested in it for a little bit, walk away from it, and then come back to it. And if someone becomes interested in it, because of what I’m doing, then that's worth it.

CS: Do you have any final thoughts that you want to share?

DC: I'm still learning about, and want to center a vision for returning to natural ways of doing things that actually account for Indigenous, Black, and Third World histories of sustainable living and innovation. Often, when I think of indigo dyeing, the first place my mind goes to is Japan. I actually do have Japanese heritage; my mom is Japanese and Black. But there's all these lovely pieces from centuries in the past, and those things are preserved in museums. Naybe because we're growing Japanese indigo for climactic reasons, I think of Japan. But you know, natural dyeing and indigo extraction from different types of plants has been prominent throughout Central America and Africa, especially West Africa, and also all throughout Asia. It's really exciting to think about the global histories and epicenters of textile innovation throughout history, and connecting them all in this global sense—beyond just one culture.

Agricultural Justice as Racial Justice

MLK Day Pierson College Tea with Savi Horne

Ulam: Main Dish

A Film Screening and Conversation with Alexandra Cuerdo

The 6th Annual Melon Forum: senior essays on food and agriculture

Asian America is in the Food

Photography by Erwin Li.

Food for the Ears: Podcasting the Science & History of Our Meals

Photography by Noa Hines '21 and Erwin Li.

Food = Text with Soleil Ho

Photography by Noa Hines '21.

The Food Markets of Saint Petersburg

Food is a subtle thing.

When Emily Sigman MF/MA Global Affairs ’20 traveled to Saint Petersburg last summer, she spent much of her days exploring its street markets. From the ​byzantine aisles of Sennoy to fruit stalls scattered the city, Emily was keen to observe what subtleties there may be. For starters, the brightly speckled berries that adorned so many booths. How much could they reveal about Russia’s biodiversity? In how small farms grew, but also in what could be foraged?

It helped that berry vendors often had their own stories of (mis)adventure. Mostly older women, the ​stall owners trekked ​hundreds of miles into the countryside to pick their desired fruits. As they set up their businesses from the trunks of their cars, these women regaled Emily their tales of evading regulatory authorities: an endless game of cat-and-mouse.

Wild mushrooms were also popular goods in Saint Petersburg’s markets. During her presentation for our weekly knead 2 know series, Emily invited two audience members to act out a script she’d written. Her text featured a number of conversations she’d had with locals about their perceptions of mushrooms.

“Do you know how to prepare these mushrooms?”

This conversation’s participant had asked Emily about cooking mushrooms. She’d had her own interesting theories of how toxins came to be “on” mushrooms, and what restaurants and processors then did to remove them. Surprising? Yes. But un-scientific? Not necessarily.

Most unexpected though, were the literary connections Russian locals drew with the city’s markets. One of Emily’s acquaintances dubbed Sennoy “a field of miracles in a country of fools.” She caught the reference immediately. “Field of Miracles” was the title of a popular television show, with a deeper reference to Tolstoy’s famous children’s story, The Golden Key. And the use of “fool”? Actually positive. Based on the Russian folktale trope Ivan the Fool, this character is simple-natured, his destiny always one of good fortune.

In her time abroad, Emily was exposed to a vast spectrum of Russian ethno-gastronomic experiences and beliefs, windows into the more complex cultural workings of food. In other words, sometimes, the most interesting connections between food and identity were not as obvious as a clearly stated culinary tradition. Instead, cultural milieus were built subtly, subconsciously. For example the literary references to describe these markets hinted at a cultural claim over space, couched in, or at least related to, Russian and Slavic identity. How then, might these perceptions interact with the non-Slavic foods and people who also inhabit, and even control neighboring and overlapping spaces? Another research question for another day.

Emily’s research was partially funded by the Yale Sustainable Food Program’s Global Food Fellowship. Photos provided courtesy of Emily. Event photography by Vuong Mai '21. 

Celebrating Foods of the Black Diaspora

For Black History Month, the Afro-American Cultural Center and Yale Sustainable Food Program have partnered together for a special event series, “Cooking Across the Black Diaspora.” The collaboration honored and commemorated this year’s 50th anniversary for both the Afro-American Cultural Center and Yale Department of African American Studies.

“Cooking Across the Black Diaspora” weaves into the Sustainable Food Program’s long-standing speaker series, known as Chewing the Fat. Building upon the conversations with past Chewing the Fat guests like Michael Twitty and Leah Penniman, we recognize the food traditions and innovations of Afro and Black-identifying peoples from across the world. In hosting Nyesha Arrington, Paola Velez, Kiki Louya, and Bryant Terry, this series held space for four chefs to share their stories, of food and identity, heritage and resilience, healing and justice.

The series culiminated in an evening celebrating the foods of the Black diaspora. Students and New Haven community members shared reflections on sweet potato pie and chosen family, soup joumou’s history in Haitian liberation, and the evolution of rice across continents. Logan Klutse ’22 offered a poem contrasting growing up hungry with the abundances of Yale’s dining halls.

Bryant Terry then followed, noting while he's proud of his cookbook Vegetable Kingdom, his live events mean little if they did not inspire community and action around Black foodways. Cooking to the tune of Bjork's "Hunter", Bryant demoed his book’s carrot soup, sharing his beginnings as a food justice activist inspired by the Black Panthers’ Free Breakfast program. Besides a few cooking tips, Bryant spoke more on the powerful connections between Black cooking and broader racial justice. The evening closed with conversation, book signings, and more of Bryant’s delicious carrot soup with Atticus sourdough.

Special thanks to the Afro-American Cultural Center at Yale, the Yale Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration, Saybrook College, LoveFed New Haven, People Get Ready Books, and the Table Underground for also supporting Bryant’s visit.

Icon Image from Bryant Terry’s Vegetable Kingdom. Photography by Noa Hines ’21.

Vegetable Kingdom with Bryant Terry

Photography by Noa Hines '21.

Detroit's Hyperlocal with Kiki Louya

Kiki Louya on our podcast, Chewing the Fat (episode embedded).

Students, staff, and community members enjoy conversation together at lunch with Kiki.

Kiki addresses a question about Michigan’s agricultural diversity.

Beginning the cooking workshop.

Adding local Massaro Farm kale to finish off our peanut stew!

Students enjoy a snack, or (second) lunch.

A Congolese peanut stew, similar to Muamba Nsusu.

Kiki Louya shares her story at an afternoon Timothy Dwight College Tea.

What does building a hyper-local food movement around equity look like?

Kiki Louya is a born Detroiter and Congolese-American chef, who founded Folk and The Farmer’s Hand. Together, the restaurant and grocery store have advanced the fair treatment of food and farm workers alike, supporting thriving urban agriculture and food justice efforts in Detriot. Also a co-owner at the all-women hospitality group, Nest Egg Detroit, Kiki visited Yale on February 24 to speak more about triple bottom-line practices (environment protection, social responsibility, economic success) in food business.

Kiki’s visit was the third in our “Cooking Across the Black Diaspora” series. A themed line-up for Chewing the Fat, this series was conducted in collaboration with the Afro-American Cultural Center at Yale, and the Yale Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration. In doing so, it commemorated Black History Month, and the 50th anniversary for both the Afro-American Cultural Center (fondly referred to as “the House”) and the Yale Department of African American Studies. Timothy Dwight College also supported Kiki’s time on campus.

Following a podcast session with YSFP student Thomas Hagen ’20, Kiki shared lunch with Yale students & staff, as well as New Haven community members at the House. Emphasizing her connection to food through her father’s cooking, Kiki spoke of the unapologetic ways she often brought her Congolese heritage into her menus and work, even when her career in hospitality may have been at odds with her own family’s wishes for her; later that afternoon, a number of students were able to enjoy cooking with Kiki, learning of a Congolese peanut stew Kiki’s father often made for her as a child. A perfect dish for winter!

YSFP student Kenia Hale ’21 moderated Kiki’s public conversation, exploring how Folk and the Farmer’s Hand have worked to address inequity, from tipping policies to empower urban agriculture in Black neighborhoods. The next day, Kiki was able to delve further into Detroit’s urban “revival” and working with many stakeholders like activists and farmers as part of a class visit to YSFP Director Mark Bomford’s college seminar, "CSYC 312: Sustainable Approaches to Food & Agriculture.”

YaleUniversity · Kiki Louya: A Detroit For All

Food & Urban Empowerment with Erik Clemons

In honor of 2020 Martin Luther King Jr. Weekend, the YSFP hosted a conversation with Erik Clemons, founding CEO and President of the Connecticut Center for Arts and Technology (ConnCAT). Based in New Haven, ConnCAT hosts after-school job, arts, and culinary programming to advance the careers of unemployed or under-employed adults and at-risk youth. In a public conversation at Pierson College, Erik shared with students and New Haven community members about his working relationship with Yale, ongoing development projects in Dixwell, and how ConnCAT’s programming has led to meaningful employment and equity in the New Haven community.

This Chewing the Fat event was co-sponsored by Pierson College and the Yale Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration.

Photography by Logan Howard '21.

Indigenizing the Local Food Movement with Elizabeth Hoover

Indigenous communities around the U.S. have long sustained their unique relationships to culture, land, and one another through food. As part of our Chewing the Fat series, the YSFP invited Dr. Elizabeth Hoover, Associate Professor at Brown University, to speak more about her research on indigenous foodways.

After recording a podcast with YSFP student Amy Zhang ’21, we hosted Dr. Hoover for lunch on the Yale Farm with Yale students and staff (thank you to Sanctuary Kitchen for catering!). The group gathered also to workshop a chapter from her forthcoming book, From “Garden Warriors” to Good Seeds: Indigenizing the Local Food Movement (University of Minnesota Press). In particular, students explored the relationship between food and gender norms through terms like “rematriation”, and asked questions on how climate change affects indigenous food systems and ways of living.

That afternoon, Dr. Hoover began her widely attended public lecture with stories of road trips; for years, she’d driven around the U.S. to meet with various native tribes and communities. Through these travels, she’d documented their seedsaving, farming and other cultural practices, explaining how stewarding seeds has transformative implications for food sovereignty. Seeds, after all, were gifts: they offered both biological and spiritual nourishment to people. YSFP Deja Chappell ’21 moderated the conversation that followed.

The Native American Cultural Center (NACC) hosted Dr. Hoover for a dinner with NACC students and community members. Along with other NACC student staff, YSFP-NACC liaison Catherine Webb ‘22 prepared buffalo creek squash soup, a hominy-bean salad, and sunflower seed cookies. The recipes were inspired by chef Sean Sherman’s Sioux Chef cookbook.

Elizabeth’s visit was co-sponsored by the Native American Cultural Center and the Yale Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration.

Photography by Addee Kim ‘22.