Liberal Studies Professors Makes Great Strides in Combating Food Insecurity
Many studies have shown that more than half of Pomona residents live at 200% or below the federal poverty level and grapple with food insecurity. In response to this crisis, Associate Professor Teresa Lloro and Assistant Professor Jeff Roy in the Department of Liberal Studies worked with their students and community members to launch a Seed Lending Library to provide free seeds for home gardening.
“I learned from local community activists that seed sovereignty is a big deal in low-income communities like Pomona, which deals with the legacies of redlining, White flight, and structural racism,” said Lloro. “People may want to grow their own food, but don’t have land or the financial resources to purchase seeds. A seed exchange provides free seeds to anyone, while also sharing knowledge about seed-saving, an important cultural practice for millennia. Our goal is to give folks the material resources they need to grow their own food.”
As the seed exchange enters its second year of operation, Lloro has recently formed a partnership with Cooperative Gardens Commission (CGC) to further promote food sovereignty. CGC works with farmers, gardeners, activists and organizers to share resources such as seeds, soil, equipment, labor, land and knowledge in order to increase local food production in communities.
“As far as the partnership with the CGC, they have been a fabulous seed resource for us,” said Lloro. “They’re a newly formed collective organization, created in response to the pandemic, that addresses food sovereignty and seed sovereignty through a community exchange of seeds all over the world. As a CGC Seed Distribution Hub, our seed exchange receives boxes of free seeds from CGC that we then distribute to the community.”
Since launching the Seed Lending Library, Lloro and Roy have consistently involved their service-learning students and local high school students in maintaining the seed exchange. Currently, Francisco Benavides, a soon to be first-year plant science major at Cal Poly Pomona, is in charge of the seed exchange.
“Managing the Seed Lending Library has been a great opportunity for me,” said Benavides. “Often times, visitors are hesitant about accepting seeds from us because they’re not confident in their ability to grow the seeds. In order to encourage them, I mention how one often starts off by killing a few plants but by learning from those experiences, one is better able to meet the simple requirements that plants need. I hope that all citizens of Pomona and beyond will be able to grow their own garden. By providing the opportunity to grow their own food, sustainable practices will be promoted from one neighbor to the next.”
The Seed Lending Library is open to the public and operates Monday through Friday and Sunday from 12 to 5 p.m. at Café con Libros in Downtown Pomona and also at the Pomona Valley Farmers Market on Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.
For more information about the seed exchange, contact Associate Professor Lloro at tllorobidart@cpp.edu.