Jes Carr and Nicole Broder want to teach you about food.
That’s why the pair of William and Mary sophomores is raising money for the Tribe Truck Farm, a classroom on wheels they hope will offer people a way to learn about how food is grown and why you should care about where your food comes from.
The idea is simple: They want to raise money to buy a pickup truck so they can use the truck’s bed for the miniature farm, where they’ll start by growing herbs, tomatoes, peppers and other plants that don’t need much room to grow. Then they’ll use the truck to show off the farm not only to William and Mary students but to students across the region.
“It’s not so everyone goes out and says ‘I want a truck garden,’” Carr said. “It’s about how you can take a space that’s not conventionally used for food and can grow something there.”
By demonstrating a successful garden in the back of a pickup truck, they hope people who see it will be inspired to grow some of their own food even if they live in a small apartment where growing food might not seem practical at first glance.
To raise awareness and money for their project — they hope to gather $15,000 to fund the pickup truck and a conversion kit that would allow its engine to run off waste vegetable oil — they’ve set up a page on kickstarter.com, a website that allows entrepreneurs to showcase their ideas with the hope that people will back them via donations made on the website.
So far that site has netted them $2,449 with 25 days to go. They will only receive money from Kickstarter if the whole $15,000 is donated by May 3. So far, 34 people have backed them on the website. The smallest donation they’ve received is $1 and the largest is $500.
The idea for the project came last summer when Carr was working on an independent research project about urban agriculture. The government and environmental science and policy major got the idea for a garden in a pickup during the course of her research for that project. Her research indicated that no college campus in the U.S. has a project like this one, so she told Broder about it and the two of them got started with the planning.
Carr and Broder applied for a grant from William and Mary last year, but were rejected. They’re re-applying now that they’ve ironed out some issues brought up by the university, though one concern lingers: Who will carry on with the truck after they graduate?
To address that question, they have been canvassing the college for clubs and volunteers interested in participating in the maintenance and operation of the truck farm.
Their motivation for the project is not because credits are on the line or a course requires it of them.
“It’s about taking that extra time to consider where the food came from,” Broder said. “It may be that meat came from a place not so great or the vegetables aren’t in season.”
Carr and Broder are five days in on their Kickstarter page, and so far, they’re on track to raise the $15,000 by the 30th day.
You can see their kickstarter page by clicking here.
