Student ‘Farmers’ on an Eco-Mission

By Maria Garriga, New Haven Register, Conn.

A 20-something hipster in black jeans and flip-flop sandals, college senior Dan Vieira wanders behind the parking garage at Southern Connecticut State University, checking on the maturing plants.

He is emblematic of the notion that it is now cool to save the planet, even at the price of calluses and sunburns.

The Environmental Futurists of SCSU started a garden patch behind the school parking garage last year. That tiny patch has expanded into a garden of 2,400 square feet bursting with thick vines of squash, eggplant and tomatoes. Varieties of leafy greens rise up in rows. Marigolds burnish their fiery orange blossoms throughout the garden. Onions grow in a patch of thin reedy stems. Delicate herbs line the entrance.

The Futurists, a group of 40, hope to raise 2,000 pounds of fresh produce this year from the garden for financially strapped families raising foster children.

So far they have raised 150 pounds. Students such as Vieira water each plant by hand. Some put in as many as 25 hours a week. "We have jobs too," Vieira points out.

So why have the futurists turned into farmers?

They want to cut carbon dioxide produced when food is shipped from distant places, they want to reconnect people with the environment as a life source, and they want to make global environmental issues personal. What could be more personal than food?

"To us, the environment is the places we live, not just the world without people," said Colin Bennett, president and coordinator. "For example, the environment is just as much Grand Avenue in Fair Haven as it is the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.

"To borrow a cliche, we think globally and act locally. To us, it’s more important to protect the people in our community than it is to protect spotted owls," Bennett said, taking pains to point out that he also supports people who protect spotted owls.

Now the Futurists want to turn the garden into a working farm that raises free vegetables and livestock to supplement the diets of economically strapped families.

"We believe that the food system in this country is incredibly unjust," Bennett said. "Many sources report that up to 50 percent of the food produced in this country goes to waste. That’s staggering. Rather than just complain about it, we decided to do something about it. We believe that everyone should have access to fresh vegetables, especially organic vegetables."

These are not your typical farmers.

When rabbits decimated pumpkins and black beans, the Futurists shrugged it off and put up scarecrows. They found deer tracks in the soft beds but made no complaints.

"Animals are our friends," Bennett said, as if he were reminding himself. Even so, the fauna-loving Futurists have nearly completed a wood fence made of salvaged pallets to protect the garden from a groundhog that dwells nearby. So far it has been a good neighbor, yet one groundhog can wipe out a whole garden, and the Futurists know it.

They do not use pesticides, but they plant marigolds throughout the plot. The orange flowers have a charming quality that endears them to gardeners: They have a fragrance attractive to humans and repellent to bugs.

So far, the students in the group have done all their own fundraising.

The administration has contributed by allowing them to use land, and built a shed for the group’s use.

Common Ground High School, a charter school run by the nonprofit New Haven Ecology Project, has donated horticultural expertise, greenhouses and space for the Futurists to expand their work.

Bennett and Vieira estimate they each put in 25 hours a week. The group’s core members put in eight hours of sweat equity on Sundays and Tuesdays.

Nature has paid dividends with ripe peppers, plump eggplants and waist-high cauliflower.

They have a number of ambitions for the farm as a form of public outreach and education on environmental issues such as locally grown food.

If you hear chickens clucking or goats braying behind the SCSU garage, the Futurists may have succeeded in bringing their vision of a working farm to fruition.