A City Grower's Reflections on Her Time at ROOTS

City Growers Andrea (left) and Abigail (right)

My name is Andrea Sims, I am a senior at New Britain High School, and I started to work at ROOTS mainly because I love to garden. I have a multitude of plants at home, a small vegetable garden in my backyard, and am known to be the only green thumb in the family. Along with gardening, I also was drawn to the job due to the community gardens and working with the elementary schools around my town.

I’m interested in learning more about and possibly having a positive impact on food justice and environmental issues connected to industrial agriculture. With large scale agriculture, there are less varieties of crops and more use of pesticides and GMOs. This way of growing plants is not environmentally-friendly because of the run-off of all the chemicals. Gardening, the thing that is supposed to be beneficial to the earth, is now being a product of industrialization, the main reason for pollution.

We are also putting less healthy foods into our bodies, because it’s cheap and affordable, but should we need to? Everyone should have the right to healthy organic foods without wondering if it will cost too much. Even in New Britain, there are supermarkets with over or under ripe foods, but everyone still looks in the bins because of the sales. I’ve walked by molding bread and vegetables and advertised ‘organic’ foods that have raised prices. By selling and producing foods this way, it becomes harder to get the foods needed and so much easier to forgo getting fruits and vegetables altogether.

The reason why growing organic is more expensive is due to the materials needed to take care of the plants. With ROOTS, I’ve seen how we can work around these problems. Most notably, with the aquaponic system at New Britain High School.  While it can seem expensive at first, it cuts the cost of pesticides and plowing and is extremely sustainable in urban areas. There is no chemical run-off, no pesticides, no GMOs. Space isn’t an issue either because it can be compact. With companies who also farm fish, this can also keep the fish healthy with minimal work.

The mission of ROOTS is to make healthy food accessible and affordable. I can proudly say that I am a part of making that happen; from seeing our mobile market selling fruits and vegetables, to taking care of the greenhouses, and even packaging the foods. If people need financial aid, we have an EBT program to help afford the food. Everyone deserves to have access to organic and healthy food.