Berry Good Food Foundation supports a local and regenerative food system in San Diego and Baja California with programs around food security and food education by building bridges between farmers, chefs, scientists, and citizens to challenge the industrial food system while advocating access to healthy food for all.
BGF Foundation Cultivator Christina Ng is coming into its eight years of operation as a nonprofit serving San Diego County and northern parts of Baja Mexico. She said its primary program is its Seeds for the Future School Garden Program.
“That is where Pride Academy [El Cajon] came in,” she said. “They were a recipient of our 2023 iteration of our Seeds of the Future School Garden grant. It is an annual grant we put up for the last seven years. The grant is open to all San Diego County schools or organizations who are looking to establish, refurbish, or enhance school garden programs at their school. What makes us special is that beyond the school garden education piece, is that we have a very robust network in the chef community. We often bring in programming not only just to grow food, but grow food, harvest food, then learn how to cook that food with scratch recipes.”
Ng said this is one of its “unique superpowers” as a nonprofit, to take healthy whole foods and take them through the entire cycle from growth to eating.
“Our secondary program is an educational media piece Future Thought Leaders panels, produced in conjunction with University of California television channel UCTV, and we have 12 episodes/panels,” she said. “These panels are led by our founder Michelle Ciccarelli Lerach. She is the moderator of a conversation over any topic about food. In the last 12 episodes we have talked about topics such as mushrooms used medicinally and culinarily, sustainable seafood, soil health and how that affects our agricultural systems. And our most popular Future Thought Leaders panel is called ‘Let Food Be Thy Medicine” and on the UCTV platform and our YouTube channel, it has more than 15 million views and counting. We are very proud of that production, and we will be putting on two more of those panels this year. One in Baja California in June, and one in November here in San Diego.”
Ng said these two panels will be added to a metric of panels will be part of the World Design Convention, which is in San Diego and Tijuana this year and will be officially part of Word Design Convention calendar this year.
“Those are the passion projects of our founder, but they really serve as an introductory session. Before podcasts became extremely popular, these were like that. A coffee table styled podcast in nature. Very conversational. Surface level information-wise. You do not need to be a PhD to understand the content.”
To learn more about BFG, shop it store, its panels, grants, classes, donations, and events, visit www.berrygoodfood.org.
