This fall semester, students enrolled in the Athens Urban Food Collective course, taught by Cornelia Walker Bailey Program co-director Nik Heynen, have been engaging in projects linked to the agricultural initiatives spearheaded by the Sapelo Island Cultural Revitalization Society (SICARS) and the Cornelia Walker Bailey Program.
This year the course, which previously focused on Athens, Georgia, focused on food justice and food sovereignty as it relates to Black geographies and land loss. Students were assigned readings that encourage them to think critically about our nation’s food systems, concentrating on the role of race, class and gender in the issues of land dispossession, accessibility to good quality food, and discrimination within agricultural institutions.  Additionally, students participate in “project days”, in which they work in small groups to aid the Cornelia Walker Bailey Program with a variety of projects including creating signs for the fields in Hogg Hammock, helping propose label designs for sugarcane syrup to be produced from the cane grown on Sapelo, and adding capacity to the growth of the Cornelia Walker Bailey Program on Land and Agriculture.

UGA students deseeding indigo pods grown on Sapelo at UGA’s Geography – Geology Building.

Tags: Indigo, UGA Geography, UGA studnets