Cultivate Community
San Antonio Garden Olympics to Focus on Urban Agriculture By Elise Urrutia This spring from March 1 through March 19, with the push of a button, San Antonio gardeners and urban farmers can help sound the alarm about the power of growing your own food. As a part of the annual San Antonio Garden Olympics, the second Spring Garden Competition challenges citizens to record their home grown gardening activities. “The goal is to gather data to increase our understanding of how much food San Antonians are producing in their own back yards or on their community garden plots,” says Stephen Lucke, CEO of Gardopia, a local non-profit dedicated to stemming the tide of hunger in our city. The competition is part of an ongoing initiative to measure harvests from homes, communities, schools, and urban farms. After registering their urban plots on the Gardopia website, gardeners and farmers will compete in the olympics by recording their harvest data through June 21. The competition is open to families, school groups, individuals, businesses, and communities. “Regional food production is imperative to the health of the people and the 52 |
Spring 2022
planet. Right now San Antonio has no clue how much food is being produced or consumed within the metro area. The first step for us is to begin gathering this information,” says Lucke. Next, Gardopia hopes to create an action plan to increase resources for urban agriculture. The effort ultimately aims to improve nutrition by providing better access to local food, which in turn increases job opportunities, keeps local funds in the region, and even encourages tourism. On a larger scale, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the City of San Antonio Climate Action Plan both have reports that detail the need to increase food security to address unhealthy lifestayles and environmental degradation. Since graduating in 2012 with an undergraduate degree in biochemistry and a masters degree in nutrition from Incarnate Word University, Lucke has put his professional energies into the
