A garden volunteer hauls compost to the bins at the Edible Schoolyard Community Farm in Stockton on July 12.
Every Wednesday, cars full of families line the block to pick up free bags of organic produce from the Edible Schoolyard.
The Edible Schoolyard at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School in Berkeley is the organization’s original location.
Kitchen equipment is stored in a classroom-kitchen facility at the Edible Schoolyard at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School in Berkeley on Sept. 3.
A round metal trellis stands inside the Edible Schoolyard garden at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School in Berkeley on Sept. 3.
It smells like diesel and rubber in south Stockton’s Boggs Tract neighborhood.
With the San Joaquin River to the north and crisscrossing freeways to the south, this section of Stockton is a de facto island — and a dumping ground for things other communities don’t want. Pockets of homes exist alongside freight truck lots, railroad tracks and cement and tire manufacturers. Tent encampments line the freeway on-ramp and the air teems with pollutants.
Yet, each Wednesday, cars full of families line the block here to pick up free bags of organic produce. It’s usually enough to brighten a week’s worth of meals: a few chubby squashes, bundles of radishes, ripe stone fruits and piles of lush greens, all grown locally.
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Residents of this historically disinvested food desert have access to this generous supply of fresh food thanks to one of the Bay Area’s most famous nonprofits, the Edible Schoolyard Project, which took over a five-acre community farm in the neighborhood three years ago.
Fruit trees provide food for families that receive free produce from the Edible Schoolyard Community Farm in Stockton.
The project was a significant scale-up for the organization founded nearly 30 years ago by Chez Panisse chef and activist Alice Waters.
In 1995, Waters led a group of volunteers and teachers to transform an underused patch of land at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School in Berkeley into a one-acre organic garden that sparked a worldwide pedagogical movement. The garden and attached kitchen classroom connected students to an “edible education”: the idea that cooking, growing and experiencing food can heighten learning. The resulting nonprofit has developed this idea into a library of lessons that integrate gardens and food into language, arts and science curricula.
Inspired by this idea, more than 6,000 school gardens, from New York City to Madagascar, have sprouted in the years since. It’s no coincidence that Michelle Obama put in a vegetable garden at the White House during her tenure there; In 2014, President Barack Obama recognized Waters for her culinary activism with a National Humanities Medal.
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When I was a restaurant critic, Waters’ most famous restaurant, Chez Panisse, didn’t impress me much, but her mission always resonated with me. While we might disagree on some culinary particulars, we share a deeply rooted belief that food can teach us about what it means to be alive on this planet.
Visit the Stockton farm and you’ll be greeted with sunflowers. Shady fruit tree canopies and the soft clucking of chickens have a softening effect on frazzled neurons. Hay bales circle an open-air classroom where instructors host free cooking demonstrations for visiting public school students.
Chickens roam in their pen at the Edible Schoolyard Community Farm.
To me, the farm is the pinnacle of Waters’ philosophy put into practice.
So, six months ago, I was disturbed to hear from current and former staff that Edible Schoolyard’s leadership had descended into a state of “pure chaos” amid a perfect storm of financial challenges and directionless governance. And that the passionate idealism of Stockton farm staff was being rewarded with marked disinterest from the greater organization.
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To get a full picture of the situation, I reviewed public and internal financial documents and spoke to nine individuals with ties to the organization, including current and former staff with close knowledge of the nonprofit’s overall financial matters, current and former Stockton staff, and the current chairman of the board. My ask to speak with Waters went unanswered.
Before it was repaired, plants often died due to extreme temperatures in the greenhouse at the Edible Schoolyard in Stockton.
Recent events painted a picture of an organization in turmoil. Three board members resigned within one week in August while the chair is fighting off calls for his resignation. Two full-time Stockton staffers have left this year, with one leaving a scathing resignation letter detailing burnout due to a “toxic work environment” rife with “a million microaggressions.”
Edible Schoolyard appears to be running a significant operating deficit. Yet it’s simultaneously attempting to launch a new project to cement Waters’ legacy — the Alice Waters Institute. Nearly five years after the institute’s founding, however, no one I spoke with has been able to clearly articulate what its actual purpose might be. In the months that I’ve been following this story, the institute has shifted from a home base for improving the University of California system’s food program, to a chef and educator training hub, to a cooking school, to a big question mark. Its partners have seemingly distanced themselves from the project and little progress has been made as the effort burns through millions of dollars in seed money.
At the heart of the matter is this: One of the most well-known and celebrated nonprofits in the Bay Area appears to be imploding.
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A garden volunteer works on a bed at the Edible Schoolyard Community Farm in Stockton.
Last summer, Liesha Barnett, then Edible Schoolyard’s farm education manager in Stockton, was........