The Food Ed Coalition Spotlight Series highlights people and organizations doing amazing work in food education and access in NYC. Find more from the series on the Food Ed Hub.
Quotes have been edited for length and clarity.
Interview with Stephen Ritz, founder of Green Bronx Machine.
In case you missed it, check out Part 1 of our interview, focused on development and impact.
What does a typical lesson by Green Bronx Machine look like?
A typical lesson is simply this, it is the art and science of growing vegetables indoors, aligned to common core next-generation science standards and sustainable development goals. The kids think they’re coming to school to grow vegetables. But what they’re really doing is science and math.
Our curriculum is used by the State University of New York to train teachers in all subject and content areas. I didn’t say it’s food, I didn’t say it’s gardening. It is about scoped, sequenced, and scaffolded instruction that is data-driven, that has rubrics for every single lesson, that has an exit ticket for every single lesson. Give this to a teacher who’s struggling, and they’re no longer struggling. On the flip side, when you give it to the teacher who has always wanted to be that champion gardener or food educator and they love it. It’s aligned to a low-cost piece of portable technology that can game-change a classroom and get children really excited about learning. And that technology also scales up to commercial applications because we partner towards 2,200 living wage jobs.
We find that the children really enjoy the technology, particularly the little ones. And my work started with the overage, under-credited youth, the disconnected youth, the ex-offenders, the kids who were really not going to school. It was my credibility to woo them into living wage opportunities. When you look at the way marginalized communities don’t have access to meaningful employment, it’s really hard to think about ‘go to school to get a degree’, for what? We can’t talk about graduating kids on time if we’re sending them to college they can’t afford and not preparing them for career opportunities, for living wage opportunities, we’re perpetuating poverty.
So for me, this work emerged at a real critical time in New York City around infrastructure, and then around the good food movement, and then the whole food movement, and the urban agriculture movement. Now controlled environmental agriculture is one of the biggest growth industries in the world. It’s perfectly aligned to taking on the climate challenge. As we go from 6 billion to 11 billion in your lifetime, the need to grow food efficiently and locally has never been more critical. The need to refresh our soil and sequester carbon. And the best way to do that is by growing food indoors and locally. It’s the perfect storm of opportunity. But the reality of the work is that it takes courage. This work is really about courage. It's standing up and saying ‘hey, you really shouldn’t be making that much money running a non-profit’. The work that I’m doing should not be the exception, it should be the norm. teaching kids to eat healthy, giving kids access to healthy food. That’s where we need to get as a city and as a nation. But closer to home it all starts with community. And that’s where our work resonates, in our community. If we don’t innovate we’re going to die.
The food system isn’t broken. It’s doing exactly what it’s designed to do and was designed to do; extract as much from as many and put that power in the hands of the few and perpetuate privilege. We have to redefine that. And when you teach kids to grow, it changes everything. Plus you get to eat it every 30 days or sell it.
The work that I’m doing should not be the exception, it should be the norm. teaching kids to eat healthy, giving kids access to healthy food. That’s where we need to get as a city and as a nation.
How have your classes, curriculum, and gardening changed during the COVID pandemic?
COVID made us leaner and meaner in some regards. When COVID happened, the first thing I did was I took to the streets. I was out in the streets, every single day teaching to windows. I look up at a building with 25 stories, hundreds of stories of windows, hundreds of kids. I was in the streets every single day teaching to windows. My wife accessed hundreds of devices and got them to the kids who needed them most. We turned our gardens into internet hotspots. We launched a TV show called Let's Learn with Mister Ritz! that had 2 million views. Lots of nonprofits did really great stuff so hats off to them, but we were the first who actually delivered groceries the day before at community gathering points and sent those kids home with the groceries, then convened them online and taught them how to cook. We delivered over 200 lessons. We were named the COVID food heroes.
Let me shout out the Steven and Alexandra Cohen Foundation, Gotham Greens, Newman’s Own, Whole Kids. These are the amazing foundations that got behind us to really do amazing work. It was the public and private sectors that really came together to do one thing: put unity in our community. No big executive salaries, no massive campaigns. It was us taking it to the street. It was the essential workers. There are a lot of things that plagued our residents that unless you live there, you don’t know. So our work is about equity and I’m delighted to be the champion. I’m the president of the children’s union.
How can people support your work right now?
It's about capacity. Certainly, money makes a difference, but it’s also the ability to see the future, and you have to invent it because it’s going to creep up on you no matter what. So what do we love? We love talent. I never knew how to grow food, if it wasn’t for Viraj Puri at Gotham Greens, I wouldn’t have known that plants are edible. So it’s young people who are smart, who are innovative, who know how to build a business. People who understand how to leverage resources. Those are the critical pieces, it’s not about money. It’s really about capacity. It’s really about talent. It’s really about the ability to want to connect with our children because no child rises to low expectations.
The children who are coming to school both pre-COVID and certainly during COVID and certainly after COVID have a level of trauma and pain that is herculean. What we really need is compassion. And that’s why I say, let compassion be the new curriculum. Let empathy be our new north star. You don’t have to be great to start but you have to start in order to be great. Every drop of kindness fills the cup.
My collective call to action is to be kind, to be true, to be honest, to be sincere in all that you do, whether you’re working with me or working with anybody. That’s what the world really needs – a little more confidence, a little more dedication. Love people and use things, don’t love things and use people.
...let compassion be the new curriculum. Let empathy be our new north star. You don’t have to be great to start but you have to start in order to be great. Every drop of kindness fills the cup.
What does the Green Bronx Machine look like 5-10 years from now in terms of the work you are doing and the communities with whom they are working?
We’re looking at scaling in a very controlled but impactful way. And what does that mean? In some cases that looks like a buy-one-get-one-free model. I’ve been able to replicate that work in some of the wealthiest communities in the world, so we’ve gotten them to sponsor schools. It looks like more robust professional development. It looks like making Bronx schools, the best schools in New York City, and every Bronx, in every city in America, and around the world. Making marginalized communities the hotbeds for innovation.
It looks like our students from the South Bronx becoming the next Rubén Díaz Jr., or the next Eric Adams, or the next Senator Gustavo Rivera, or the next Vanessa Gibson. That is what it looks like. It looks like cleaner, healthier, more resilient communities. Every time I keep a burger out of a kid’s belly and replace it with a banana, I am saving them and the world. It looks like good policy.
Green Bronx Machine will probably become a student-led and youth-led organization. I’m already planning what the next five years look like and that will be a dramatic amount of transition. Then watch for me to start championing policy. I’m excited about the new mayor, I’m excited about the change in leadership in Washington, hopefully, we’ll continue along a progressive path. I’m really excited about guys like congressman Jim McGovern and our own congressman Jamaal Bowman going from principal to the house. I’m excited about The Green New Deal for Public Schools. These are the things that really can transform our country.
I’m also excited about the regenerative agriculture movement. Even though I’m growing indoors with kids, the notion of sanctifying our soil, of sanctifying the environment, and also growing more food. I’m really excited about the vegan movement, the plant-based movement. Meat was synonymous with a dead thing hanging in a window you went to a butcher shop for. In my children’s and my grandchildren’s generation, meat will be synonymous with 23 amino acids that can largely be plant-based and have 95% less input. How cool is that? That’s the ability to redefine the future.
For me, the pandemic has really been emblematic of the three larger viruses that have plagued mankind since the beginning of time; racism, greed, and corruption. The Black Lives Matter movement really brings this country to a better place and an opportunity to talk about the issues is absolutely critical. Make no doubt about it, food justice is racial justice. Who has access to what, where, when and how, and at what price, determines everything. A lot of people are getting fat by keeping things just the way they are while a lot of people continue to get sick and that is no longer acceptable. The good food movement demands that we pay a living wage for food. Cheap food has become so damn expensive. It all starts with kids, and it all starts in school, and it all starts in public school.
Instead of people pretending that they are the light at the end of our tunnel, our community is the light inside of the tunnel. We’re going to illuminate the way, and that’s what this work is about. I’m having a great time doing it. I’m up early, I go to bed late, and I get up and I do my best dreaming wide awake because I dream of a better, brighter future that starts with communities like mine, for everybody.
Do something today that you and your future self will thank you for. And continue to be kind and continue to astound the world with random acts of kindness. In a mean world, it’s okay to be kind. Eat healthy, and eat local, and eat seasonal.
Instead of people pretending that they are the light at the end of our tunnel, our community is the light inside of the tunnel. We’re going to illuminate the way, and that’s what this work is about. I’m having a great time doing it. I’m up early, I go to bed late, and I get up and I do my best dreaming wide awake because I dream of a better, brighter future that starts with communities like mine, for everybody.
Learn more about Green Bronx Machine:
Interview in Authority Magazine: Food Deserts: Stephen Ritz of Green Bronx Machine On How They Are Helping To Address The Problem of People Having Limited Access to Healthy & Affordable Food Options
Trailer for their award-winning documentary, which will be publicly available in 2022: Generation Growth
TV Series: Let’s Learn with Mister Ritz!