Monday, January 17, 2022
Dear Friends,
With the beginning of Yale’s spring semester now one week away, we at the YSFP are eagerly anticipating the safe return of students to campus. With an eye toward the bright days ahead, we have opened applications for the Yale Farm Summer Internship, Global Food Fellowships, and term-time positions. Please find descriptions of these opportunities below.
Yale Farm Summer Internship
The Yale Farm Summer Internship (YFSI) engages directly in food and agriculture through hands-on learning at the Yale Farm. Over a 10-week program, interns learn to grow, harvest, and cook with a diverse array of fruits and vegetables. We use our own experiences with field work, soil fertility management, crop rotations, and weed and pest controls to inform the questions we ask to farmers and food system actors in the broader community.
The YFSI strives to be equal parts action (cultivation, harvesting, pizza-making) and listening (to presentations, conversations, and readings that pay particular attention to groups marginalized by mainstream food systems). In careful accordance with all public health guidelines, this year's internship will combine field work, culinary education, independent research, and critical reading on the problems and opportunities in our food systems.
Open to current Yale College students. Applications are due February 13, 2022.
Global Food Fellowship
The Global Food Fellowship sponsors the academic and extracurricular study of food systems beyond Yale's campus. It offers the opportunity to bring place-based practice and participant observation into examining multiple levels of food systems.
There are two types of Global Food Fellowship Awards:
1. Independent Award: students propose projects based in place and in service to existing food-related efforts.
2. New Haven Award: students work directly with a local community partner, gaining field experience and allowing for proximity to mission-based work in a local context.
Open to all Yale undergraduate and graduate students. Applications are due March 16, 2022. To apply: search “Global Food Fellowship” in the Student Grants Database.
Student Jobs
The YSFP is hiring current Yale College students for the following term-time positions: Farm Manager, Culinary Events Manager, Communications Manager, Podcast Manager, and Creative Visual Lead. You can read descriptions of these positions before applying here by February 13, 2022.
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To learn more about the YFSI, Global Food Fellowships, and term-time positions, please join Jacquie, Jeremy, and I at our YSFP Summer Opportunities & Job Fair Zoom on Friday, January 28 from 2:30 – 3:30 PM ET. Please register here and a Zoom link will be emailed to you.
Finally, it’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. This weekend, New Haveners marched for the 52nd year in honor of Dr. King’s legacy. You can check out some of Yale’s upcoming virtual events here. We’re particularly looking forward to hearing Dr. Dorceta Taylor discuss the intersection of civil rights and environmental justice next month.
Wishing you all a happy and safe New Year! Warmly,
Isabel
Remember summer? Throwback to these beautiful flowers from the Yale Farm. Photo by Jeremy Oldfield
On the Farm
Yale Farm Events
We are excited to invite enrolled Yale students to participate in our events on the Farm. Next week, we will share links to sign up for our upcoming workdays.
CitySeed has been organizing physically distanced farmer's markets on weekends; please visit their website for the latest information.
Students sort through garlic at a fall workday. Photo by Reese Neal
Events in Food and Agriculture
UConn CAHNR Extension: On-Farm Composting with Assawaga Farm
Tuesday, January 25 | 6:30 PM – 8:00 PM ET
Curious about building biologically active compost on small farms? Yoko and Alex will share their composting system, which uses very basic tools with a low starting cost. This method produces high quality compost that is used in small amounts for ongoing inoculation of the soil rather than to boost OM% or add significant amounts of nutrients. It is also excellent material to make compost extracts, teas and/or feeding worm bins.
Yellow Farm House: Food and Author Gender Series, Rachel Black
Thursday, January 27 | 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM ET
This event series will explore where modern beliefs, emotional connections, and behavior patterns about food come from. After all, food informs and is informed by everyone’s identity. The foods that people prepare, eat, and enjoy are reflections of racial or ethnic backgrounds, geographical provenance, family histories, and — as will be explored in this virtual series — gender. In this session, Connecticut College professor Rachel Black will share insights from her new book Cheffes de Cuisine: Women and Work in the Professional French Kitchen and her research on Lyon, a region of France known for its female-led kitchens.
Agrarian Studies: ‘Nature’ and Territories as Victims: Decolonial Incursions in Colombia’s Transitional Justice Process
Friday, January 28 | 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM ET
Join the Agrarian Studies Program in discussing the current work of Kristina Lyons, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. Lyons's research is situated at the interfaces of socio-ecological conflicts, transitional justice, community-based forms of reconciliation, science studies, and legal anthropology in Colombia. The paper she will be discussing was funded by a 2021 Fulbright Award, and supports the work of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) in local communities in southern Colombia. Her research renders visible the territory as a victim of the country’s social armed conflict by reconstructing the socio-environmental memory of the war.
Email agrarian.studies@yale.edu for the Zoom link.
YSFP: Summer Opportunities & Job Fair
Friday, January 28 | 2:30 – 3:30 PM ET
Join Jacquie Munno, Jeremy Oldfield, and Isabel Rooper to discuss the YSFP's term-time student jobs and summer opportunities, including the Yale Farm Summer Internship and Global Food Fellowships. You can read descriptions of our term-time opportunities here. When you're ready, apply here.
Register here to receive the Zoom link.
Yale School of the Environment: Martin Luther King Jr.: The Intersection of Civil Rights and Environmental Justice
Friday, February 18 | 12:30 – 2:30 PM ET
While Martin Luther King Jr.’s civil rights activism often concentrated on the equal use of space — from the right of people of color to picnic in a local park to being able to sit under a shady tree in an urban area to buying and living in safe homes — the nomenclature of environmental justice had yet to be penned. But MLK Jr. and civil rights activists were at the very forefront of addressing environmental justice issues and that is the subject of an upcoming panel discussion keynoted by Yale School of the Environment Senior Associate Dean of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Dr. Dorceta Taylor. Dr. Taylor, one of the nation’s preeminent scholars of environmental justice, teaches YSE courses on environmental justice, leads two pathway programs, and has written numerous books on diversity and the environmental movement including “Toxic Communities: Environmental Racism, Industrial Pollution, and Residential Mobility.”
This panel discussion is limited to Yale community members. Register here.
Delicious fall pizzas created by our culinary events managers. Photo by Reese Neal
Jobs, Opportunities, Awards, Calls for Papers and Proposals
In addition to this section, there are some great online resources for finding jobs in food. Take a look at Good Food Jobs and Food Tech Connect.
The Udall Scholarship offers awards to US sophomores and juniors committed to careers related to the environment, tribal public policy, or Native American health care. Yale College’s on-campus deadline for the Udall is February 4, 2022, at 1:00 PM ET. Learn more and apply here.
The Law, Ethics & Animals Program at Yale Law School (New Haven, CT) has opened applications for its student grant program. The grants support student-led projects that advance understanding of, draw attention to, and/or develop strategies to address the urgent threats facing non-human animals. Beyond research and scholarship, applications for podcasts, journalism, documentaries, software, art, and other projects are encouraged. Funding awards range from $250 to $2,500 and can be used for project-related expenses. All current Yale students may submit project proposals, which are due by March 31, 2022. For more information, visit the LEAP website and contact noah.macey@yale.edu with any questions.
The National Young Farmer Coalition has released its national survey. If you are a farmer interested in improving federal ag policy, please add your voice to the conversation today. Take the survey here.
SAGE Magazine (New Haven, CT) is a student-run environmental publication at the Yale School of the Environment. SAGE is currently welcoming any environment-related pieces, including personal essays, narrative journalism, poems, short stories, photo essays, and visual art that relate to this year’s theme – Cultivation. Submissions are due by February 15th, 2022.
The Duke Campus Farm (Durham, NC) is hiring a Field Education Manager for its one-acre working farm. Learn more and apply here.
The UConn College of Agriculture, Health and Natural Resources (Vernon, CT) is hiring a Communications Specialist. Apply by January 31st, 2022. It is also hiring a Project Co-Coordinator for its Solid Ground Farmer Training Program. Learn more and apply by February 11th, 2022.
NHS of New Haven (New Haven, CT) will virtually host an Organic Vegetable Gardening Series over six sessions in February and March. Register here.
A view of the fields in the fall. Photo by Reese Neal
News and Resources in Food and Agriculture
We’re always interested in a range of perspectives in food and agriculture, so feel free to send us articles and suggestions at sustainablefood@yale.edu.
Resources and recurring programs
We have a podcast! Check out Chewing the Fat on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Soundcloud for stories on people and ideas making change in the complex world of food and agriculture.
Students, are you looking for food and agriculture-focused courses? Check out our Spring 2022 undergraduate and graduate course listings.
The YSFP is hiring! You can read descriptions of our term-time opportunities here. To learn more about our summer internship, check out our website. When you're ready, you can apply for a term-time job and/or the summer internship using our common application. The application deadline is February 13th, 2022. To apply for a Global Food Fellowship, search "Global Food Fellowship" in the Student Grants Database. To learn more about all of these opportunities, join us at our info session on January 28th, 2022, from 2:30 – 3:30 PM ET.
News in food and agriculture
What does an abolitionist approach to food systems change sound and look like? In this conversation, Ashanté Reese discusses incarceration, abolition, and liberating the food system with six food and agriculture organizers. To hear more from Reese, check out her book Black Food Geographies: Race, Self-Reliance, and Food Access in Washington, D.C.
Despite the amplified hardships faced by farmworkers due to COVID-19, Maine Governor Janet Mills vetoed a bill that would have allowed farmworkers to unionize, citing concerns that the proposed law would be too complicated.
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