The Green Solution to Food Apartheid

see those in the real world. Some of the inventions were ingenious, like what if you could take your sunscreen in a pill instead of having to deal with applying it? And sometimes well, there were things I still think about, like the idea of vertical farms. What if you could grow entire farms inside skyscrapers and rotate the crops to face the sun. And what if these skyscraper farms were in cities so you could reduce the distance to get

all this fresh food to people. It's kind of incredible, right In some ways, vertical farms are like robot butlers and jet packs, these things science magazines and the jetsons told us about inventions that feel like they should be just around the corner to solve all our problems. But what if we don't have time to wait. According to the U s d A, about twenty three point five

million people live in food deserts today. Those are areas where it's difficult or impossible to access affordable, healthy food options, and it's no surprise that nearly half of these food deserts are in low income areas, as well, areas where grocery stores don't think they can make a profit, so people are forced to make do with what's available. They eat fast food or junk food because that's what's near, which leads to all sorts of health complications. It's a cycle,

and it is depressing. But there are things we can do right now. It turns out growing your own food is one of the most promising solutions. We don't often think of gardening as a path to self reliance, but growing, whether that's part of a community garden or even in your own backyard, allows people to eat healthier, disrupt a broken system, and meet their own food demands. And along

the way, it should make for happier and healthier communities too. Hey, there I'm Mongais Articular, a co host of Part Time Genius, one of the co founders of Mental Flaws. And this is Humans Growing Stuff, a collaboration from my Heart Radio and your friends at Miracle Grow. My goal is to make this the most human show about plants you'll ever listen to, and along the way, we'll share sweet, inspiring stories, tips and tricks to nurture your plant addiction, and just

enough science to make you sound like an expert. In today's episode, we're going to explore the issues surrounding food deserts and the bootstrapped community builders and leaders who are working on growing solutions to eliminate food insecurity. Chapter six, Can growing food Grow Freedom? The truth is, food deserts aren't a new phenomena. Years ago, I was driving into Wilmington, Delaware to pick up a friend from the train station. I actually went to elementary school in Wilmington's My school

buzz used to take me along this same route. But before I picked up my friend, I needed to run into a grocery store, so I stopped by this familiar chain. But what I saw inside was dismal. I remember being struck by how sad the offerings were the shelves were barely stocked, the produce was meager and old, and for me, the experience was jarring. This felt like the flimsiest excuse for a grocery store, and there really weren't other options around.

Of course, this isn't a problem that's unique to Wilmington's. All over the country you can find areas that are flush with grocery stores. They have aisles upon aisles of fresh produce, and then on the other side of town you can pass through neighborhoods with a single poorly stocked store, or sometimes areas where they're just dollar stores or corner stores as replacements. So I've been wondering what's being done to change or combat this issue. Kamal Bell is on

the front lines of fighting food deserts. Easy teacher and the founder of Sankofa Farms in North Carolina, just outside of Derham. The farm is focused on serving those in the Grham and Orange County urban areas that are effectively food deserts. Each week, Kamal and his team delivered dehydrated chips, farm fresh egg, and honey, all made for the bounty

of his farm and his bee hives. Additionally, Kamal has made it his personal mission to teach students in these areas stem and agriculture to set them up for success and the nutrient rich future where they can grow their food not only for themselves but for their communities. I called up Kamal to hear more about his journey with Sankofa and how he seemed to change in the communities he serves, especially when they have access to healthy foods. Hey, Comal, Hey,

how are you doing doing well? First things first, I want to hear how you got into farming. All right, So I was on track to be a veterinarian and I was sitting in class one day and this dawned on me. It was like, what are you gonna do with this? That really serves people, and that serves you and me and my wife we will find out we

were having our first son. So I was thinking about what could we do to always support him, like no matter what happened, whether we were unemployed, whether we employed, if something goes wrong, and how can we always make sure this young man is taken care of? And farming dawned on me. And also at this time, I was working on my masters. I was studying these things called food deserts, and I'm thinking about what's the common thread

that connects everything and farming was that thing? And what sort of gave you the confidence that you could grow stuff and and be a farmer? That's a great question, Like, that's a great question. Not a lot of people ask me that. So the what gave what drives me to do that is one. I feel like I'm really helping my community. I'm curious. Santo actually has a few meanings, right, Okay, can can you talk about the alternate meetings of it? Yes? So sant cofa also means to go back and get it.

So it comes out of the Aconn language in West Africa, and it's symbolic or represented by a mythical bird. And as it's moving forward, its head is turned backward. If we want to fixed problems in today's time, we have to look back in our ancestry, in our history to be able to attack these issues. Saying kofa came up when I learned about these food deserts, and I was just like, how can we get people food? If we're trying to get people food, of course we need more

people to produce food. Um, there's also allocation issue that goes into the whole making of the food desert. But for me, like what I felt like I can really impact was the growing of the food. At first, I started out selling dehydrat and chips. I have a commercial dehydrot like fifty ft away from me in my garage that we used to use. And the whole idea behind that was to get people who were living in food

deserts and affected by food and security healthier food. So we should dehydra apples, pineapples, kale, mangoes, cinnamon, apples, bananas. We used to make all these products and get them to people who are affected our food and secure areas. And for me, East Greensboro is a food desert through and through, but in West Greensboro you had a more fluid side of the the town. You have like this overabundance

of healthy food white you have food stops everywhere. But we were able to streamline the leverage that we had created with the dehydrant chips, and then that led us into getting the farm. I know you spent a lot of time delivering food to various communities and groups. Can you talking a little bit about the diversity of groups

that you're passing food along too. So there's an organization called Root Causes that works with Farmer Food's a food distribution uh, it's a cook in Derhm and they get food to people who have been recommended by the doctor. And I like the food we really fresh, so like I'll go to the extra mile to make sure it's like far Fresh is not as it hasn't been sent for a couple of hours. I'll go wake up at around five thirty, get there around six thirty tomorrow morning.

So jobs to the farm. Harvest Food had that dropped off by nine thirty, and then they distributed it in their bags like it's part of a larger system. They send bags of healthy produce to people. It's just been really cool to work with organizations that can do the handom distribution aspect. It's just it's just really cool. It's

just really cool. There's a teaching component the story. It involves you being at a public school and R Yes, I actually drew up this idea of the farm and took to the principle because I was teaching agriculture at the school. And the students will gravitate towards the work and they will also change their behavior. So I saw that introducing them to agriculture gave them a foundation outside the classroom, and that's I think that's what we want education to do. Like it just can't be useful in

the school. So I literally took them out to the farm and two of the students, one of them, his birthday is actually today. His name is Kamani. I have a birthday Comini. He'll be listening to this at some point, having another student, Cameron, whose birthday was last week. They actually have stayed with the program from its inception all

the way until now. So it's been really cool to see their growth and see their knowledge based growth, and then see them be able to say, hey, yo, i am in this food instant care area, but I'm in this place where I have access to fresh food because I know how to do it and how to grow it, and I can take it home with me. I'm curious, just as we get into food deserts, how would you define the food desert. That's a great question, um, because terminology can be use it gets people to confuse them.

I just define it as a place where you don't have access to healthy food. So it gets tricky because the U s A has definition and then people saying not food desert, it's like a food apart tide. I hear all that, but I might look the reality is people want to eat healthy and don't have access to it. And in economics goes into it because you look at cars, like some people might not have cars to to drive from the store. Then you look at how the city

is drawing out like city planet, goes into it. Um through these communities, I'm like, dam, I'm tired of seeing corner stores. Everywhere you see corner stores or you're left or you're right. You don't even have to go with all this unhealthy food. When you start seeing family dollars in communities, that's a pretty good identified that it's a food desert. It's just any place that I go in and I know that people you can like really see a food and just by the how you see the

people in the area. In an urban setting, now in the rural setting, you're even further from a grocery store because our farmers in a rural area, you would think, since there's farms around there, getting healthy food, but a lot of the farms aren't producing that quality of food. So we're really talking about like a really a really large issue that affects people, that affects a lot of people. What you think to be I think it's a multi tier plan. I think we have to look at food distribution.

We definitely have to look at agricultural education and really getting kids in because if once these students get in permanent situations like they can turn their backyards into a into a guarden, everybody has to pitch in. So I think we have to look at distribution, We have to look at getting the younger generation to agriculture, and then overwall awareness, I think a lot of people aren't aware

that they're living in a food insecure area. Once you would come aware, we can start troubleshooting and working with structures in our communities that are trying to fix the issue. But even if you can't get to some of these large organic like groceries and stuff there, it's expensive, right it is. There's a real value to being able to

grow your own it is. And then the economic piece where people if if not saying it's a one it's like a remedy for everybody, but there are people who want to do better in their communities and agriculture can be that tool that resource because like one thing that's like that you hear a lot is that the community don't have resources. There are resources in these areas. Just change your perspective on where you are and you can begin to reimagine how you can change that area, your

resource in your community. And look at this land that's there, look at the way the houses are situated. So there are people who I think were really if they had access to the resource, were really changed. And I see that especially with the bees. People like love bees. My wife just got certified two weeks ago. I'm certified for the students of certified beekeepers. I never know I was gonna be a beekeeper. You would have asked me three years ago, I would have well, four years ago, the

bere like I'm scared of bees. But just getting people access to resources and opportunities and will see a shift in a lot of things. I mean, my my favorite thing on your I was looking at the store on your website, and you know you've got some lettuce and T shirts and stuff, and then it's like Lesa be high. Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, And I think that's a program that's going to really be really take off because right, was like this whole movement start with us seeing the police botell

with George Floyd. When that wave hit, there was a lot of attention that went to black farmers and black people in agricultural spaces and we got like this wave of followers out of nowhere. And somebody hit me up on Twitter the day They're like, can I at least to be high? And I'm like, where do you live? He was like California And I was like, well, you can lease it at sent off. It will send you

the honey from your high. He was like, I can't wait till the next spring, but I think we're gonna see a really big jump in that program next year because right now we're at forty behalves, so we wouldn't

have a lot. I've never seen that before that. I loved it so much just looking at um, you know, you know, but one of the things you were hitting on with social issues and and uh, when you're not dependent on others for food and you're not feeling that insecurity, then you have space to concentrate and change other things in your life, you know. And and I was curious

if you're thinking about that as well. Yeah, if I think about like how much time that we spend going to a grocery store, and society is already fast paced where we want to be, Like, honest, we're doing all these things at some level to eat. Everybody wants to heat. But if we could just start going into this for ourselves, we would have more control over every other aspects of our life, especially our health. We had top of the quality between healthy eating and you're health. Those things go

hand in the head. I don't think it's I think it's a basic human necessity. Like us, we don't we grow food for ourselves. I think we can really impact and create a lot of change. I know you spent a lot of time delivering food to to various communities and groups. Have you seen the impact on the people themselves, the people who are receiving the food. I have it, and that's primarily because we're dropping it off, and I probably haven't because I haven't like consciously thought of it. Yeah,

I feel like they made me cry. If somebody I was just like, yeah, that kills just so good, and my daughters liked it. On my son, I think i'd probably like tear up. Yeah, of course, I don't want to ever feel like the job is done and I don't want to settle. So this morning in my mind, I'm like, oh, I didn't do enough, Like I'm that type of person, so I want to do more. That's really cool. Come Al though, thank you so much for hanging out with us and and sharing your story. No problem,

thank you for interview. It has been real cool. Humans growing stuff will be right back after a short I've been thinking a lot about what Kamal said about how the resources are there to grow our own food and

become independent of the food distribution system. It made me think of the Bronx green Up, the community gardens here in New York, where sometimes people grow so much food they end up sharing it with their friends or, in one man's case, even mailing the harvest to his relatives in Puerto Rico, and I thought about Shelley from the Highland Community Gardens to where the organization takes saplings and plants them in neighbor's backyards so families can cultivate their

own veggies. It's a service they offer to combat food deserts. But Gary Oppenheimer, the founder of Ample Harvest dot org, has figured out another way to help. What if there was a better way to share all the extra food we end up growing. What if we could take all the extra produce that's farmed and connect American gardeners the local food pantries in need. It's an incredible idea and I wanted to hear more, so we gave him a call. Hey, Gary, how's it going? I am well man, how are you

doing super well? And it's really nice to be chatting. So I want to hear all about how you started apple harvest Dot Oregon and to get your backstory a little bit. Um. I went to college, studied psychology and decided when I was done with school that I should never be psychologist, which my wife bully agrees with. And fast forward to nineteen. We buy a house in northern New Jersey and a large piece of property, and I decided that I had all this time, I should know

how to garden, so I became a master gardener. I was successfully, as it turns out, like millions of other gardeners, growing more food than I could use or preserve or share with friends. I started looking around to see where I could donate, and I found a battered woman shelter in my town, and I took the food there. The woman who accepted the food, she said, thank you. Now we can have fresh food, And that was a weird thing.

I remember walking away hearing. Around the same time, I was asked to take over the management of my town's community garden, and I did at the end of the prior growing season. When I first met with the people in the garden, one of the people said to me that she was deeply concerned because the at the end of the growing season, there's a lot of food being left over in the garden. People were bored, overwhelmed, went on vacation. She said, I don't want to see that

food go to waste. And I said, well, if we're gonna have an ample harvest, the least we could do is get it to hungry people. Now, I had never said the for example, harvest in my life. I've never those two words, that had never come together. They loved

that idea. We set about setting up a program in this community garden to do that very thing, and in the process I discovered that when I went on to Google, Google said the nearest food program to me was in Morristown, New Jerseys, away, which I knew was wrong, and It's suddenly dawned on me that the food problem we were experiencing wasn't about the food, it was about information. I had been misinformed, as we all have been, that you

weren't allowed to donate food to a food pantry. That you will all heard the mantra at food drives of jars, cans, boxes, but no fresh food. We were told you can't do that. What I realized this was fundamentally a problem of misinformation and missing information. The misinformation you're not allowed to donate

the food. The missing information was too word to donate it, and the optimum day of the weekend time at which to do it, because if you timed it just right, the food pantry did not need to refrigerate your food, because the food could be donated just before the hungry families take it home. I then got two volunteers to help me, and over the deck to nine weeks, we

built what is today ample harvest dot org. The idea was to create a massive public awareness campaign helping millions and millions of gardeners learned that they can donate food, and to build an optimized search engine of America's food pantries and for the pantry to guide the gardener to the day of the week and time of day that's best for donation. That was launched in May of two

thousand nine. Here we are now in October of twenty twenty and nearly nine thousand food pantries, about a quarter of all the food pantries in America in communities in all fifty states are now a part of ample harvest dot org. And I should tell you one big important number. Pre COVID, the National Guarding Association said that America had forty two million gardeners of all households. Now in these COVID years, it's skyrocket at the sixty two million gardeners.

Sixty two million people in this country grow food, not like a farmer to make money, but for their own pleasure and enjoyment. And that's our target population. And that's just since COVID. Well, the the from the jump of forty two to sixty two million is just since COVID, correct. And part of that, when you think about it, is if you're no longer commuting to work, if you're working from home, for example, you have time to garden. And most people once they start, really enjoy it and don't stop.

You know you were telling me before before the show that that you had actually um donated in a vast amount of food from your own garden. How much did you donate again? About two hundred and fifty two pounds, give or take, which is amazing. That's like five times the size of my seven year old, which is impressive. Let me tell you something, um, pre covid our data show that America's gardeners grew eleven plus billion pounds more food than they could use or pres over share with friends.

If all that food, if all of that food we're donated, that would feed twenty eight million people a year. And so how many how many people estimated? Do you do you think ample harvest dot org is is feeding or helping to feed right now, we're not really feeding people. I'd rather say we're nourishing people because food pantries do their best to feed people, but they're getting whether it's food donated or it is food that they acquire, but it's all processed food. It certainly feeds you, but it's

not fresh food. Right now, with this country needs more than anything else, is nourishing healthy fresh food. With ample harvest dot org, we don't touch the food. We are enabling the gardeners across America to learn that they can donate food and then to donate the food. We are orchestrating a wholesale change. We also know that two thirds of gardeners, once know they can don't they will actually expand the size of their garden if they have the

space to actually donate more food. Do you think that when people show up to these food pantries and are receiving fresh foods that down the line they start thinking about growing them themselves. I don't know. I hope they do. What I do know is that when food, fresh food is donated to a food pantry, when a hungry family comes in and I've been I've been in food pantries many times across the country, and I try to be a fly on the wall in the corner, just watching

what's going on. When this fresh food there, that's the first table that the people go to because when they see the tomatoes, the zucchini, this squash, what have you, they know what really value that brings to the nutrition of the family, and they get that food. You know what. One of the things I've been curious too is like as you stand from a distance as this conductor of this incredible service and organization. How much do you get

to be a fly on the well? What sort of experiences have you seen uh and witnessed from when you go into these places. Routinely we get phone calls and we get emails from people struggling to put food on the table, and we do our best. We we we we direct them to the United Way, we direct them to Why Hunger where they can get help. But I

get to hear firsthanded difficulty that people have. Back in thirteen, I get an email from a woman who says, I'm having a great deal of difficulty putting food on the table. I worked, my husband's not able to work, my kids are hungry. Can you help us? That's one of many types of letters and stuff that come in like that. But this woman was active due to US Navy. Wow, we had a member of the military struggling to put food on the table. I have a hard time talking

about it even today. I also, on the other side, routinely get emails from people about I'm so glad I found you, and I'm so glad I heard about you. I got an email from a guy in the Southwest who said he was so grateful to hear about ample harvest dot org. The prior year he had thrown away eight gallon drum of grapefruit from trees on his property. Wow, the opportunity is staggering. And it doesn't have to be a garden who has a truckload of food you can

walk in with. You know, a handful of carrots, are a handful of parsley, or boxes and cartons, whatever it is. It's not important how much the gardener is donating. It's that the food doesn't go to waste. And by the way, I should point out that since food waste is a critical contributed to climate change, the environmental and climate change benefits of this program are huge. Not only is climate

change reduced, but so is the waste stream. So the environment is better, climate change is reduced, the community in the country are healthier. This is a win win win all the way around. And by the way, the gardeners can get a tax deduction for the donor in the food. But we know from our studies but the majority don't care. They just want to be doing the right thing. So, Gary,

what kind of work are you doing with community gardens? Specifically, we have a program if you go to Ample Harvested Dog Slash Community Garden that we've had a program to help community gardens learn about donating. My belief has always been that community gardens are important because there's a good amount of food there. But the real pressing need for us is the individual gardener, the person who's working in their own backyard. They don't subscribe to gardening magazines, they're

not on guardening website. They just they've always known how to grow food. They learned it from their parents or whatever. But nobody has ever gotten to them and said, by the way, you can donate that surplus food. Gary, thank you so much. It's it's been such a pleasure of chatting with you. Thank you. It's a pleasure. Thank you very much. Sankov and Ample harvest dot Org aren't the only organizations of their kind working so hard to supply

pantries and people in need. But what about self reliance and this idea of growing your own One of the things we've heard over and over on this program is that it doesn't take that much room to grow what you need, especially if you're creative. The phenomena is called

micro gardening, and it's exactly what it sounds like. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization describes micro growing as the intensive cultivation of a wide range of vegetables, roots, tubers, and herbs, all in small spaces, so think about like balconies, patios, rooftops, and the u N is huge fans of this. In fact, the f EO thinks it could be the best answer to providing food and nutrition security to low income households because it doesn't require a backyard. Most micro growing happens

in small wooden boxes or stacked garden boxes. You can do it all in an area of about ten square feet. Of course, when you're micro gardening, you've got to think about how to use the space efficiently, and there are lots of options. If you listen to our first episode where we talked to Mr Plant Geek Michael Perry, he talked about these amazing plants that actually grow vegetables on

top of one another. Well, egg and chips plant is basically all one plant which is grafted in the middle, so it grows as one and it's an eggplant, a k a magine on the top and a potato on the bottom. So hence the egg and chips There's also another plant in that series, which is the tomotato, and that is tomatoes on the top and potatoes on the bottom, and that was actually marketed as ketchup and fries plant in the US. This is something that used to be done during the war in order to make the use

of space in limited spacing gardens and on allotments. Plants like these are great space savers and help your garden grow more efficiently. With solutions like microgardening your own food. Suddenly people have some agency and when you're not hungry, it's so much easier to fight for the things you need. It's not something I thought about, but Naima Penniman from so Fire Farms, she put it beautifully, just what's possible when you have food at your fingertips. I'm curious, you

know you use the phrase food apartheid. I'm wondering if you could sort of define that for our audience. Yes, the government designates food desert areas. We put far using this term food apartib because a desert is a natural phenomenon, and we believe the system that has created food opulence for some and extreme food scarcity for others is there's nothing natural about that that's a man made condition that

we have a responsibility to to shift. One of the lines that you said that really struck me was to free ourselves, we must feed ourselves. Can you talk a

little bit about that. Yeah, So to free us out as we must feed ourselves is having determination over something as basic as the means of our survival through the food we consume every day, is a really critical part of our liberation as people's And Kenny Luhimer, who started Freedom Farms and Sunflower County, Mississippi, said, if you have five courts of greens and gumbo soup can for the winter, no one can push you around or tell you what

to do. She recognized that who controls the food controls the people, and that as civil rights organizers organizing the South at that time, if you did not control the means of your survival, you would come groveling, putting down your voting ballot, you know, putting down your protest signs, and come begging for food because that is something we

all fundamentally need for ourselves and our family. So there's this connection that is so relevant today too, And I feel as especially in the midst of this pandemic we found ourselves in where the cracks and the food system are laid bare, and the food and security that already

existed is heightened and made even more extreme. I feel that also in this pandemic moment is kind of a wake up caller reckoning of the importance of reclaiming that for ourselves, building more community self determination and food sovereignty. So how do we combat this notion of food apartheid and give people their agency back. It's like Naima said, we teach them to grow by empowering people to start

their own gardens. It gives them the tools to fight against hunger and malnourishment, because self preservation begins with self reliance. The truth is, I don't think about food security that much. We give money to food banks, my wife cooks meals and drops them off to a center close by. It's a small part of our lives, but not one that occupies much space in our brains. But this year a

few things came into focus. During the start of the pandemic, when grocery stores were overwhelmed and food delivery services were taking a few weeks to deliver food, we started meal planning and rationing in a way that we never had before. We started thinking about food is a scarcity, something we've been lucky enough never to do before, and it made us genuinely worry for others. I worked on this show earlier this year where we reported on the Minnesota experiment,

which was new to me. It's this experiment that was conducted during the tail end of World War Two, and it was one of the first studies on what famine and hunger can do to bodies, something that hadn't been investigated before. The study focused on men in their twenties, people who were hail and hardy and sweet temperament. But one scientists started restricting the food, the subject's behavior changed drastically. Suddenly, they became irritated and impatient when service was slow. They

were possessive over their food. They hunched over their trays and use their arms to box others out and protect their meals. They started using a lot more salt, and fairly soon the food and security made them paranoid and aggressive, and their bodies began to ache. Their knees and feet swelled. They didn't have the energy or motivation to do little things like make their beds, or take showers or go

to classes. It's incredible to see what happens to a population when you take away the consistent access to meals. How so much of what drives you and feels like a hallmark of your personality evaporates when there's no food

on the table. I'm not saying this is one to one, but if I can get angry when I skip a meal, what's an And for the kids who have to wait an entire weekend to get access to a school breakfast or lunch, but when the only things they can put into their body is the fast food and food from

a corner store that's available. I was reading this article in the Journal of Sustainable Development, and it points out in a recent study by the University of Minnesota, the highest levels of obesity were observed in census tracts with no supermarkets, where the residents only had access to bodega's and convenience stores. These are areas where diabetes and cardiac problems end up most prolific. But look at what happens

when you tackle the problems early. A two article in Lancet showed that boys and impoverished areas who benefited from this randomized nutrition intervention and This was in the first two years of their life. They earned wages as adults that were fifty higher than non participants. How we eat from a young age actually changes our financial prospects in life. I don't like politics, but I do believe in humanity and science. So I'll leave you with one last study.

It's an old one, but it's one I think about a lot. The marshmallows study. You've probably seen or heard about this one. But scientists take a kid and offer them this delicious marshmallow. They place it on a table and then tell the kid they can have the treat now, where if they wait ten minutes and resist the temptation, they'll get two marshmallows. Then they leave the room, and

the results are pretty well known. The kids who wait all that time for the second marshmallow are better at self control, and scientists have said that these kids have the grit to become more successful in life. And maybe that's true. But what happens if you live in a house where you don't know where your next meal is coming from. What if you're in a situation where you take the food in front of you because you can't

trust that a second marshmallow actually is coming. What if you've been conditioned to grab what you can get to survive. But also what if a little education and a little support can change that narrative. What if that same kid can come into the marshmallow experiment after eating a handful of cherry tomatoes, or know that there's a fridge full of food waiting for him stuffy grew and canned or pickled, or even just food that's waiting for him to pluck

off a little vine in his kitchen. Because having a full belly might not sound that important until you realize it is. And what if having a little garden that you own that you can harvest is actually guy to your ability to change the world. That's it for today's episode Don't Again. Whether you're a beginner like me, a pro trying something new, or someone in between enjoying your backyard garden, there are incredible resources waiting for you on

the Miracle Grow website. Next time on our show, we'll focus on the stunning ecosystem hiding in your backyard and the magical relationships that help a garden to flourish. If you like what you heard, don't forget to Rain and review the show on Apple Podcast. Also, we want to hear from you. What are your inspiring plant stories, relatable

struggles or growing questions. Tag us in your post or tweet using the hashtag Humans Growing Stuff, and don't be surprised if you hear your story featured on an upcoming episode. Humans Growing Stuff is a collaboration from My Heart Radio and your friends at Miracle Grow. Our show was written and produced by Molly Sosha and me Mongay Chatigler in partnership with Ryan Ovadia, Daniel Ainsworth, Hayley Ericson, and Garrett Shannon of Banter Until next Time, Thanks so much for listening.