Yale Sustainable Food Program

storytelling

Farmworkers' Rights, Marimbas, and Dancing in the Moonlight | knead 2 know ft. Bea Portela '24

There was a fantastic turnout at the Friday workday and all the tasks were completed in record time. Not only did students tidy up multiple different tunnels around the Farm, they also raked fallen leaves, removed hops vines, and turned the compost. All in all, it was a highly productive session and we are super grateful for the wonderful sense of community throughout the day. 

It was then time for Global Food Fellow Bea Portela '24 to present her knead 2 know. Through her summer internship at Southern Migrant Legal Services, Portela immersed herself in the advocating process via direct outreach to farmworkers. “They don’t really know about our services,” says Portela, “so it’s up to us to reach out to them and tell them that we exist.” As part of her outreach, Portela got the opportunity to travel to a lot of beautiful places in the south. However, with various ‘private property’ and ‘no trespassing’ signs around the farms, work was both beautiful and challenging. Portela shared with us that working and living conditions of farmworkers were not ideal. Many homes were left unfinished. Some farmworkers lived in makeshift barracks and cramped conditions. Portela believed that it was important for people to understand the conditions that farmworkers were living with, in order to emphasize the importance of giving farmworkers the support they need and reaching out to them. 

The farmworkers she talked to were not always receptive due to understandable reasons like fear of retaliation and potential for job blacklisting. If a farmer is not efficient in their work, Portela noted, word can get around the recruiters who have contacts with each other, effectively preventing the farmworker from getting hired anywhere in the United States. Portela with the outreach team ultimately tried a new outreach strategy towards the end of her internship that she calls “the tentacle approach”, which essentially meant that the legal aids were  talking not only to farm workers but also people in the community connected with them including family and friends, former employees, community leaders, local immigration advocates, and more. This, while Portela experienced only once, already proved to be very successful and a more effective way to do outreach.

Afterward, the Yale Marimband performed for the first time on the Yale Farm. There was nothing quite like it: attendees got up and danced as fun rhythms rang through the air. Cheers and laughter ended the day on a high note, marking the performance a resounding hit. Intercultural Moonlight Stories the same night was also a success. With s’mores, hot chocolate, tea, and a campfire warming everyone up in the chilly night, we witnessed so much talent from singing to poetry reading to kazoos to group performances and more under the moonlight. The group cheered each other on in a supportive, intimate atmosphere. 

In accordance with daylight savings ending, the next (and last!) knead 2 know of the semester on Friday, November 10th will start at 3:30 PM EST. Lazarus Summer Intern Rebecca Salazar will be talking about her podcast episode titled “The Three Sisters of Abya Yala: Mesoamerican Histories of Agroforestry, Animacy, and Agency”. The event will be in collaboration with the Henry Roe Cloud Conference timed with the 10th year celebration of the Yale Native American Cultural Center. 

Photos by Reese Neal '25 from this past week’s knead 2 know can be found here.

Moonlight Hauntings | Friday, October 28

On Friday, October 28th, after the pizza had been eaten, the workday had been completed, and the sun had set, students made their way back to the Old Acre for Moonlight Hauntings, a live poetry Halloween event in the Lazarus Pavillion. The event, a collaboration between the Asian American Cultural Center and YSFP, featured poets and performers from Jook Songs, Oye, and WORD, the predominant slam poetry groups on Yale’s campus. 

Snacking on berries and cookies warmed by the embers of the woodfire oven, still hot from the afternoon pizza, students were treated to myriad performances, guitar songs, and poems ranging from topics such as climate change, love, and insects. 

We could not have thought of a better way to keep of Halloweekend; everyone’s poems brought so much light and joy to a chilly evening. We love having student groups at the Farm. Come chat with us during workdays or knead 2 know if you have an idea for an event collaboration with YSFP. More photos of the event can be found here. 



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Moonlight Stories on the Farm

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Under a full moon on November 18th, YSFP students Kayley Estoesta ’21 and Ally Soong ’22 hosted a night of spoken word poetry and music on the Farm. With the theme of moonlight stories to guide them, students came together to share their work, perform for each other, and enjoy some bubbling apple crumble during a chilly evening of community. We hope to turn this event—co-hosted with the Jook Songs—into an annual celebration on the Farm. Photos by Reese Neal ’25.

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GFF Grace Cajski Explains Her Project that Explores Hawaiian Fishpond Aquaculture

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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.


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Aesthetics of Food & Farming

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Besides cooking and gardening, painting and drawing have been wonderful and healing ways for YSFP students to stay connected with food and agriculture, especially while physical distancing. Through the creative visual lead position and other opportunities, our students often use their art to tell stories about the Yale Farm. In doing so, they add their own voice and experiences to the rich conversation around the aesthetic of food; what’s worth learning? Examining? Re-imagining?