Emma Sarigianis posing in front of the Farm Alliance of Baltimore van, which is used to transport their produce to farmers markets.
Image Credit: Meredith Epstein
About 23.5 million people living in the United States do not have access to fresh and local food. They rely mainly on fast food restaurants to feed themselves and their families. They live in a food desert. Emma Sarigianis, a Sustainable Agriculture student who started her education at the University of Maryland’s Institute of Applied Agriculture in the fall of 2018, spent her summer interning at the Farm Alliance of Baltimore. This membership organization is a network of farmers who work to give members of Baltimore City access to urban grown food. They work with communities that are in food deserts to give residents access to fresh produce they otherwise wouldn’t have.
While there, Sarigianis worked in the office reaching out to farmers and she proposed a farmer of the month program to reward the hard working members of this alliance. Additionally, she worked with Whitelock Community Farm to harvest such vegetables as lettuce, tomatoes, squash, and cucumbers for their farm stands, as well as for the Waverly Farmers Market. Using her organizational skills, Sarigianis created a donor database to track donations, created a template to thank donors for their contributions, and designed a calendar that included all of the activities planned by the organization for their donors.
While interning, Sarigianis gained communication skills by talking directly with the farmers, even when they were slow to communicate with her. She gained time management skills by learning how to balance her time between family, friends, and work. And most importantly, she gained confidence in herself by speaking at conferences on behalf of the Farm Alliance of Baltimore. Sarigianis made a great impression with the other employees she worked with, as her advisor, Meredith Epstein, explains “Emma boldly created her own internship opportunity, and her supervisor was impressed with the passion she brought to the position. Emma’s cheerful attitude and extroversion made her successful whether she was working on an urban farm, selling at the farmers market, working in the office, or advocating at an event. She really got to do it all.”
This internship confirmed to Sarigianis her desire to work within the food system to make food more readily available for those living in the city of Baltimore, Sarigianis’s home town. She explains, “I learned a lot about my city and what urban farmers need to accomplish in order to help those who are struggling right in our backyards.”
In the future, Sarigianis wants to continue working with groups like the Farm Alliance of Baltimore to fight against food deserts by providing people in all parts of the country with readily available fruits and vegetables.
