Izzy Goodchild-Michelman, A.B., ’23, grew up in Spartanburg, S.C., and knows that parts of her home county are food deserts.
She decided she wanted to do something about that — both make healthy and sustainable foods easier to get as well as teach young people about why plant-based nutrition is both better for them and for the environment.
“I knew I wanted to do something impactful, and not just a project that I thought was important, but [one that] would be addressing an issue that was there,” Goodchild-Michelman said about her choice to work with Spartanburg’s Hub City Urban Farm as part of Harvard’s new Service Starts with Summer Program, which encourages incoming first-year students to find ways to lend a hand in their home communities before starting at the College.
The nonprofit farm provides agricultural education and delivers and sells homegrown food to those parts of Spartanburg County where getting to a grocery store can take as long as 90 minutes over multiple bus rides.
Though it spans less than half an acre, the Hub City Urban Farm grew 1,800 pounds of produce last year. All of its organic fruits and vegetables, from tomatillos and okra to melons and pawpaw, are sold from a truck that visits 15 sites each week.
“As kind of an environmental science nerd, seeing the sustainable practices that they put in place, [seeing] how they’ve been able to cultivate in an ecologically friendly way, is supercool,” Goodchild-Michelman said.
