High school scholars in the university's college access and success program receive a hands-on lesson on the history and complexity of wheat cultivation.
From growing tomatoes for sauce to raising dairy cows for the cheese, building a pie from scratch is no easy task – especially when it comes to making dough.
Fourteen students in the academy’s “Life Cycle of a Pizza” course spent a recent morning learning how to cultivate, harvest and mill wheat grown from a biointensive research garden at the Elon Environmental Center on South Campus.
“The ultimate goal is for them to have an idea about the process from which their food comes. They’re disconnected,” said class instructor Crystal Black, owner of Urban Roots NC, a local company that helps clients grow their own food. “I get responses like, ‘I won’t eat at McDonald’s again,’ and a lot of them don’t even realize that produce is cheaper at the farmer’s market compared to the grocery store.”
Food later was used as a weapon in empire conquests. Moore told scholars how the Roman Empire wouldn’t have been possible without the cultivation of grains. Even today food remains a source of friction and hostility in parts of the world as access to arable land and water are the focal points of conflict.
“Hopefully, we bring in some of the social and political implications of a world that’s going to be stressed to feed itself, and how some people have challenges brought on themselves, either environmental or social justice issues, because of the way we farm,” Moore said. “Being aware of the process and implications of that will expand to help meet the challenges we’re going to face in the next 20 to 40 years.”
Another component to the course is working with The Campus Kitchen at Elon University, a program through the Kernodle Center for Service Learning and Community Engagement. Campus Kitchen packages unserved dining hall food – as well as vegetables grown in campus gardens – for delivery to local residents in need of food. As he watched students harvesting wheat at the Elon Environmental Center, program coordinator Steve Caldwell reflected on the misconceptions many people have about food.
“One of the first things I try to get across is that food doesn’t come from a store,” Caldwell said. “Food ends up in a store. Food comes from the earth.”
“You have to work hard for food instead of just going to the grocery store without knowing who worked on it and how far it traveled,” she said.
Tyler Ceperano, a rising sophomore at Southern Alamance High School, shared his own newfound respect for food production. “I’ve started to really appreciate food and the people who make it for us,” he said. “I’ve definitely started looking at trying to get more organic food and more local food instead of just asking to eat at McDonald’s.”
Launched by Elon University in 2007, the Elon Academy is an intensive college access and success program for local high school students with high financial need or no family history of attending college. It combines a month-long residential program over three successive summers with follow-up experiences during the academic year.
The academy is a multi-year, year round program beginning in the summer after the ninth grade and continuing to and through college.