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.
Full Story: http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1508378/student_
farmers_on_an_ecomission/