September is Food Literacy Month here in the Sacramento Valley! We try to SEE sustainability every day within our stores, and we always love to support organizations working on enhancing food literacy in our communities. Now’s the perfect time to celebrate some of our amazing local partners in sustainability!

Just think, “Every bite of food we chew has a story.” That’s from Amber Stott, the founder of Food Literacy Center, whose mission is “to inspire kids to eat their vegetables. We teach children in low-income elementary schools cooking, nutrition, gardening, and active play to improve our health, environment, and economy.” In other words, they are teaching kids and their families food literacy, or “the [inequitable] impact of our food choices on our health, environment, and economy.”

Lake Washington Farm Site (located across the street from our West Sacramento store) is the Center for Land-Based Learning incubator small farm business model. At any one time, this farm hosts four farms with the aim “to inspire, educate, and cultivate future generations of farmers, agricultural leaders and natural resource stewards.” One current farm is Wildgust Farm where they “believe food is medicine and our first defense against illness...[and] is dedicated to healing our bodies, minds, and communities through how food (and medicine) is grown, shared, and consumed. We believe in replenishing our soils, safeguarding our water supplies, and being reciprocal stewards of the land. Wildgust Farm aims to reconnect our patrons to the people’s medicine through transparency, education, and mindfully grown medicinal plants.”

Community Alliance with Family Farmers’ mission is to “build sustainable food and farming systems through policy advocacy and on-the-ground programs that create more resilient family farms, communities, and ecosystems.” One of the ways they create food literacy is through their annual California Small Farm Conference which hosts workshops for new farmers on the basics like On Farm Composting and Land Access for Beginning and BIPOC Farmers, as well as more systems thinking-based options like Integrating Sheep into Orchard Systems and Climate Change and Ag Policy.

Yolo Farm to Fork’s mission is that “kids… learn where good food comes from, to develop a taste for healthful eating, and experience the garden as a living laboratory that inspires life-long learning and career goals.” Read more about them and their program on “Growing the Next Generation.”

Davis Farm to School’s mission is “to create an educational and cultural environment in our schools that connects food choices with personal health, community, farms and the land.”

Are you inspired? So are we!