Interview with Prairie Hale, Zenger Farm, 2009 (audio)
Publication Date
7-24-2009
Document Type
Interview
Duration
38 minutes
Subjects
Urban agriculture, Sustainable agriculture -- Oregon -- Portland
Abstract
Interview of Prairie Hale by Matthew Ford on July 24th, 2009.
Biographical
As of 2009, Prairie Hale served as the Community Involvement Coordinator for Zenger Farm. She began working at Zenger Farm in 2008, after travelling the country working on family farms.
Rights
This digital access copy is made available as streaming media for personal, educational, and non-commercial use within the parameters of “fair use” as defined under U.S. Copyright law. It cannot be reproduced, distributed, or broadcasted for commercial purposes. For more information, please contact Special Collections at Portland State University Library at: specialcollections@pdx.edu or (503) 725-9883.
Persistent Identifier
http://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/10740
Recommended Citation
Ford, Matthew, "Interview with Prairie Hale, 2009 (audio)" (2009). Sustainability History Project. http://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/10740
Description
Prairie Hale, an AmeriCorps member, worked with Zenger Farm in 2009 as a community involvement coordinator, focusing especially in lower-income outer East Side Portland neighborhoods. The farm worked in partnership with Zenger Lents International Farmers Market providing fresh, local, and affordable foods and offered budget meal classes at Lents School. Hale’s educational background in global economics and ecology encourages her to look at the broader issues of food security and how it connects with sustainability. She also volunteered with Growing Gardens, focusing on backyard city gardens, where she saw a growing interest level in urban homesteading rise with the onset of the national economic downturn. Prairie also worked for Food Alliance, a market based organization promoting sustainable agriculture, where she created a data tracking program to study the impacts of the ratings system and how suggested changes impacted each farm’s productivity. Her interest moving forward is educating youth, who often lack gardening education, and serving diverse populations that face barriers producing sustainable food and starting small food-based businesses.
This interview is part of “The Sustainability History Project: Documenting Sustainable Development and Practice in the Pacific Northwest” at Portland State University.