I am so honored to have the opportunity to work on food security policies as the second Food Security Policy Manager with the Empower Missouri Team. I intend to help further the incredible work Empower Missouri has been doing for over 120 years.
I started my work in food security before I knew what food security was. Having been raised on a cattle ranch in southern Missouri, the decision to own and operate my own small farm didn’t seem like too far of a leap. After extensive research, I developed a closed-loop system with a next-to-nothing budget and was able to meet a large portion of my family’s nutritional needs. People began to ask me how they could improve their access to healthy food and have more autonomy over their health. I initiated a grassroots education campaign to increase the ability of people to put healthy food on the table regardless of location or budget which would span over a decade.
During this time, I began to identify what food security is and the global impact of food and nutrition insecurity. So motivated by this awareness, I commenced taking undergraduate courses in agriculture to further my understanding of agronomy and food systems. My undergraduate education led me to pursue a master’s in human rights, focusing on food security and emphasizing food as a human right. Concurrently with my educational endeavors, I worked for the USDA as a program technician in Audrain County Missouri, giving me a strong understanding and interest in how policy relates to food security.
The history of our country and our state are deeply entrenched in the systems that control food sovereignty and health autonomy. So ingrained in our day-to-day lives, these systems are often unnoticed or simply accepted as just being the way things are. The further I got into the work and education of food security and human rights, the more passionately I believed that policy was what could change systems, and both had to change in order for our lives to improve.
I have been told by many players throughout my life that I am “stubborn”, I “can’t leave things alone”, I “make life harder for myself than it has to be”, and that if I “could just accept the way things are you would be much happier”. I have found myself unable to change these areas of my character so instead, I have found a path forward with Empower Missouri that capitalizes on those traits and allows me to leverage them enthusiastically to create systems change via food security policy. If you are reading this and have also been told similar things about yourself, I encourage you to explore advocacy and activism, it may be exactly what you didn’t even know you were looking for.
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