Kimberly Vargas, 20, recently got the words “Food Justice” tattooed across her back. “I wanted something I’d never regret,” she says, “and know that food justice is something I’m going to be working on forever.”
Kimberly wasn’t always so passionate about food. For her first fifteen years, growing up in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, she thought of food mostly out of hunger or boredom. She ate, she says, a lot of soda and chips. Then, through a New York City program that employs youth during the summertime, Kimberly got a job at Added Value, a farm built atop an old asphalt playground, in a far corner of Brooklyn.
That summer, Kimberly planted crops, harvested food. She loved it so much that, at the end of the summer she decided to stay on as an employee of Added Value – and that’s when her real education – and the real work – began. She managed the farmers market, worked on compost, was a youth leadership trainee, then a youth leader, then started teaching first and second graders about farming and local food. Finally, she moved onto making media about food, including a short video called "Red Hook Lunch".
All this work made her think, hard, about her food choices and how they affect the community. The year she turned seventeen, after seeing a documentary called King Corn, she decided to cut her one-soda-a-day habit, cold turkey. She committed to just one soda-free year, but after the year was over she found the desire was gone. “My first sip made me nauseous, it was so strong. So now, when I miss that fizzy taste, I just have a seltzer. It does the trick.”
Fifteen was very old, Kimberly says, to be first learning that an apple comes from a tree, not a store. To make sure that other kids don’t have to wait as long, she’s moved on from Added Value, and is studying to be a teacher. She first saw the value of this work at Added Value. There, when she taught first and second graders about farming, and about good food, she saw it affect the whole community.
“I’d see new faces at the farmer’s market,” she said “and when I asked them how they heard about it, they said ‘my kid’s been raving about the farm, but I didn’t believe it was just right down the block.’” That’s a common surprise, says Kimberly. The farm is in an unusual place, tucked into a post-industrial Brooklyn neighborhood, right behind the new Ikea. “One parent didn’t believe her child,” Kimberly said, “that she saw a farm in Brooklyn. But when she learned that it was right around the block, she came to the farm to check it out, and ended up coming every Saturday to volunteer.”
That’s something Kimberly hopes to do in her own work – to help whole communities eat well by teaching kids about good food. “Kids have a lot to offer to their parents about what they’re learning in school,” she says “but a lot of parents write it off as just more math, more English, who cares, but this is something that can really affect their every day lives, get them to cook better, feel better, live better.”
If she’d never come to Added Value, Kimberly says, her life would be a lot different. It’s put her on a path she loves. “My mom goes to work grouchy, but I go to work happy every day. I love what I do. Everyone should have that feeling.”
Kimberly got a taste of what another life might be like one winter, when she worked in the office at Added Value, doing paperwork and preparing for the spring. “Being stuck in eight hours office was miserable. All you can do is prepare for spring.” Kimberly remembers how she felt on that first warm day after a long winter in the office. “You step outside and see that the garlic is already starting to get big. There’s a lot of work to do. The farm is a mess from the winter, the leaves have to be cleared, the greenhouse has to be cleaned, but then before you know it a whole team of volunteers and staff show up and get to work, getting food in the ground, getting good and sweaty. It’s invigorating to know that it’s all starting, again.”