Produce income: LSU offering teens agricultural opportunity

Shirley, one of the “McKinley Farmer’s of Tomorrow,” is selling the group’s own brand of hot sauce, called “Old South Baton Rouge Hot Stuff,” at the farmer’s market. The group of high school teens is working for LSU’s “Summer Experience,” where they learn about nutrition and cooking skills while practicing farming and selling

July 11, 2007 — Some area teens will have well-rounded produce expertise after spending eight weeks in Summer Experience, where LSU will teach them nutrition, leadership, teamwork, farming and business skills while actually growing, harvesting, cooking and selling produce. The program runs from Tuesday, June 12, through the first week of August.

After a successful pilot program, LSU’s School of Human Ecology is again hosting the program with about 20 students from McKinley High School, who call themselves the McKinley Farmers of Tomorrow. Four are program veterans who will work as peer helpers.

This year’s farmer’s market has two additions. The teens will sell their own bottled hot sauce, which students made after harvesting peppers last fall. They will also offer recipe cards and samples of dishes they have cooked with in-season produce, such as smothered squash, and offer personal cooking tips to help customers try unfamiliar produce.

Work Schedule

On Tuesdays, the students will meet in Room 219 of the Human Ecology Building at 9 a.m. to cook and learn about nutrition. At noon, the students get to eat the foods that they prepared. The students will also do a pre-test and decorate aprons on their first Tuesday.

On Wednesdays and Thursdays, the students meet at 7 a.m. at the Islamic Complex on Washington St. and Thomas Delpit to learn horticulture and gardening as well as leadership and teamwork skills. Teams of students will drive to family-owned farms in places including Zachary and Denham Springs, as well as at the LSU Hill Farm Teaching Facility and the Burden Center to farm. The students will also work on developing and preparing the site for an urban community market garden adjacent to the Islamic Complex.

On Thursdays and some Saturdays, a group of students will take turns selling the produce they have gleaned as well as local farmer’s produce at the Islamic Complex farmer’s market. Each team will spend one Saturday a month selling produce. The students will have a final celebration at the McKinley Alumni Center in August.

Community Service

This program is an extension of nutrition instructor Judy Myhand’s service-learning course where students develop and test quick, easy and healthful recipes in a laboratory setting and share this knowledge with a food bank. Her former students who are volunteering are Ashley Stumpf, Candace McCord, Elizabeth Eaton, Juliana Briscoe, Kathryn Steffan, Kathy Campo, Jacob Lebas and Michelle Theriot.

“It shows that students who take service-learning courses don’t stop serving when the class ends,” Myhand said. “This summer project is giving college students an opportunity to apply their knowledge as volunteers, receiving no financial compensation or course credit.”

Economic growth

This project helps toward fulfilling the LSU Flagship Agenda’s goal to improve the economic opportunities in the Old South Baton Rouge community. Old South Baton Rouge is neighboring community located just north of the LSU campus. The program has already made strides, as the OSBR community has maintained and continued to use the farmer’s market that the Summer Experience group set up last year. In addition, LSU’s Community University Partnership, or CUP, will provide the program financial support and supplies. LSU is trying to make the program self-sustainable. The farmer’s market revenue is used to stock the food lab and to provide a $500 stipend for each high school participant.

“The high school students work hard in the project and are compensated for their work of planting, weeding, harvesting, hoeing, selling and cooking,” Myhand said.

Horticulture Professor Carl Motsenbocker will teach the teens about farming and have them practice by growing food at the LSU College of Agriculture’s School of Plant, Environmental and Soil Sciences’ Horticulture Hill Farm Teaching Facility. The students will also glean crops from the Burden Center and from local farmers, which helps the group to make money because the farmers allow them to glean for free. Horticulture graduate student Emily Neustrom is the overall coordinator of the project and will bring in speakers to educate the teens on business. Minister Fahmee Sabree of The Islamic Complex is also providing leadership and business training, as well as offering free use of the center’s land for gardening and selling.

In the food laboratory, Myhand teaches the students nutrition and cooking skills that lead to having a thrifty, high-protein diet. She suggests eating the way our great-grandparents ate, by heavily incorporating a balance of legumes for vegetable proteins, greens and whole grains.

“I show them how to prepare traditional foods in a more wholesome and healthful way that is still a pleasure to eat,” Myhand said. “At first, they don’t like it, because they are accustomed to eating traditional foods such as beans and rice with high quantities of sausage, which takes away from the entrée’s healthfulness and is not the most economical choice.”

Forever LSU thanks you for your continued financial support of our students, faculty and programs. Our goal is to raise $750 million by 2010. Please visit www.foreverlsu.org for more information on how we're progressing and how every Tiger can help.

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Michelle Spielman
LSU Office of Public Affairs