Arizona State University’s College of Health Solutions held their sixth annual food and thought community event, to highlight women in the food and agriculture industry Thursday afternoon.
The panel included four women who work in food and agriculture across the Phoenix metro area.
Kathy Dixon, a clinical professor at Arizona State University, hosted the Q&A style event.
Dixon asked the panel members to describe what changes they have seen in their food and agriculture careers.
“To see a better understanding of the integration of cultures and addressing some of the past wrongs to really embrace food in a way that’s meaningful to each local community has been really exciting to watch and see,” said Adrienne Udarbe, executive director of Pinnacle Prevention, which is a nonprofit that focuses on food systems and built environment initiatives in policy work.
Ashley Schimke, who works at the Arizona Department of Education in the Health Nutrition Services Unit, said that she has seen more of an interest in consumers purchasing local foods and people being more interested in where their food is coming from.
Schimke’s main roles at the department are the national farm-to-school network and in-school gardens specialist where she encourages all of their meal service operators to buy local and encourages school gardens as a learning tool.
Schimke and Patricia Johnson, the vice president of nutrition services with the Dairy Council of Arizona agreed that they are both seeing changes in the ways schools are handling food options as well.
“I remember working the lunch cart and some kids were ordering Mountain Dews and flaming hot Cheetos for lunch-those days are over,” Johnson said.
Johnson’s main job is to oversee a program called Fuel Up to Play 60.
Fuel Up to Play 60 is partnered with the NFL to create a school based program that gets kids to not only be physically active for 60 minutes everyday, but also exposes students to more nutrient rich foods: fruits, vegetables, whole grains, low-fat and fat-free dairy, she said.
The four women also expressed the challenges they face working in the food and agriculture industry.
Sara Dolan, a general farm manager at Blue Sky Organic Farms, said she has seen a decline in farmland, “within seven to nine miles of our farm, we are going to have over 20,000 houses built on farmland.”
Dolan has a 35 acre farm in Litchfield park that grows 120 crops, has two food safety programs, processes salad mix and has animals.
Dolan explained that she has seen a decline in labor and has found it almost impossible to hire someone who wants to work in a field.
“There are very few people who actually put their money where their mouth is and continue to support locals,” Dolan said.
Johnson agreed and said that she has also found it difficult to find people who want to work on dairy farms.
Johnson also stated that homes have been built near dairy farms in the Phoenix area and have had to move the farms further away because of people complaining about the smell, “It’s the smell of money people,” she joked.
Udarbe also agrees and said “the greatest challenge that truly keeps me up at night is our loss of agricultural land and the fact that it’s being reduced and developed for other purposes.”
Schimke says the biggest challenge is that we’re not valuing our food and we’re allowing a lot of it to go to waste.
The panelists mostly agreed that they don’t see much challenges in being a woman in food and agriculture.
Dolan explained the only challenge she faces is with salesman.
“They almost always call David (her husband) to confirm that I know what I’m doing,” she said.
Contact the reporter at leberman@asu.edu.
