Artists for Soup sees the exchange of local knowledge and science-based strategies as central to transforming food systems. We host monthly workshops at the demonstration garden Artists for Soup’s Program Director, Eleoena Arauz, started on her parents’ farm in El Corozo in 2014. This demonstration site has become a learning center for families and school communities interested in biointensive gardening, seed saving, composting, slow drip irrigation, solar oven, and high efficiency stove use. In 2018 Echo and John Jeavons with Ecology Action both held small workshops at the demonstration garden on increasing dietary diversity and nutrition.

We have invested in the demonstration garden and meeting spaces to support workshops that bring together international and local groups. And as local community members develop strategies for building dietary diversity, composting, and seed saving seed, it becomes clear that the solution for hunger and environmental destruction is right under our feet in spaces where communities learn from each other.

In the upcoming year, Artists for Soup plans to improve the demonstration garden by developing a seed bank that will benefit small growers locally and beyond our region and upgrading all gardening irrigation to the slow drip method. In addition, we will continue to install sustainable technology in the kitchen at the demonstration garden: solar ovens, high efficiency stoves, and a high efficiency oven.