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Columbus City Schools Grad Creates Pathways to Healthy Foods
June 15, 2022 -- Connecting agriculture to the world and creating pathways to accessing healthy foods is a passion for Yolanda Owens.
On a hot sunny morning outside the Kunz-Brundige Franklin County Extension Building, Owens showed off the garden plots with the Columbus skyline in the distance.
“I wanted teachers to be at this building where they can see the innovation and work we do as well as the agrarian backdrop and the skyline of downtown Columbus,” Owens said of the ongoing STEAMM Rising program that brings Columbus City Schools educators to The Ohio State University for professional development opportunities. “I wanted teachers to see the juxtaposition and how these things connect.”
Owens grew up in the southside of Columbus, a homegrown Buckeye, graduating from Centennial High School in 2002.
Owens serves as the Pathways and Partnerships Strategist for the College of Food, Agriculture, and Environmental Sciences (CFAES) at The Ohio State University and is the first Black/Latinx president of the CFAES Alumni Society Board.
Her love of agriculture started with her family’s connection to food and farming. She described her mother as community-minded. Her family belonged to a food co-op. Owens recalled picking up boxes of produce every Friday before going home. Her father, meanwhile, grew up in a small town in rural North Carolina and Owens fondly remembered visiting her grandparents.
“My grandmother had a greenhouse and a smokehouse, and she had a huge garden that I used to help her in,” said Owens. “She would make all these things from scratch. I remember she would pick stuff out of the garden and cook dinner.”
Owens continued her interest through high school in an afterschool group called Rites of Passage. As part of that group, she went to Ghana, where she said she gained a broader understanding of the multi-faceted connection to agriculture.
She then went to OSU, where she initially studied communications. During her sophomore year, she took a year to help with the group, where she took a second trip to Ghana. Owens recalled the pivotal moment of visiting a cocoa farm.
“At this cocoa farm, I remember watching all the processing, and as we were leaving, I remember saying how I wanted to buy a chocolate bar because we were so close to the source,” said Owens. “A young lady with us said, ‘we don’t buy it.’ I asked why. She said it was too expensive. That, for me, was a switch. It blew my mind that there is a system that is inequitable…where agricultural richness is being exploited so much that they can’t afford the end products.”
Owens transferred to CFAES, studying agriculture communications and specializing in international social and economic development.
“I saw a problem and said this is what I want to try to fix,” she said.
Owens graduated in December 2007 and faced challenges from the Great Recession. She later got a job at the Godman Guild Association, which had an award-winning community garden.
Although she originally intended to travel the world using her skills to address food access, she saw inequities in her backyard, inspiring her to work with food access.
“When I started working there and interacting with the high school students, I realized I can’t go out and save the world and do all these amazing things when I have these things going on in my backyard that I can address with my own skills,” she said.
Seeing food inequalities back at home, Owens' big goal was reconnection. Owens explained that in 1920, about 14% of all U.S. farms were Black-owned, and as of the 2020 Census, only 1.4% were Black-owned.
“For me, it’s about creating these spaces for people of color and creating that reconnection,” she said.
This goal of reconnection also helped spark her idea of creating her own business. She started her business Forage + Black in 2020, launching after delivering her Tedx Talk on the importance of connecting communities of color with agriculture. Sporting a shirt from her company that said “a pretty big dill,” Owens described how her business merged her love of agriculture with communications.
“I wanted to have apparel that sparks the connection of Black culture and green thumbs,” Owens said.
As part of her role at CFAES, she looks at big picture solutions in creating pathways for people of all life stages to learn about agriculture. Through lecturing as part of STEAMM Rising, Owens’ goal is to show educators how agriculture relates to their lives and curriculums to get students involved earlier.
“As a product of Columbus City Schools, to connect educators and to open their eyes to the ways agriculture connects to the world around them is something that is very exciting to me,” Owens said, later adding, “The technology and innovation that is in the space of agriculture was really important to show these teachers because oftentimes when people think of agriculture, they think of plows, sows, and cows. You think of something in a somewhat antiquated space and not really connected to technology, engineering, math, or medicine.”
As Owens looks back at her time at Columbus City Schools, she has one major piece of advice for current students.
“I had a lot of opportunities at Columbus City Schools, and it is really important for students to take advantage of those opportunities and not count yourself out,” she said. “Don’t disqualify yourself before applying.”