Is This the Beginning of the End of Junk Food at Stadiums?

 

Blueberries, avocados, and kale, fresh-picked for salads and small plates. Rows of water-saving aeroponic towers that grow as many as 44 veggie plants each. Fertilizer made from coffee grounds…at a baseball field?

That’s right: Below the scoreboard at San Francisco’s AT&T Park, a 4,320-square-foot edible garden space, the first of its kind in a sporting arena, will grow seasonal produce year-round while hosting outdoor classes on sustainability, urban farming, and healthy eating for Bay Area children. It also features a bar, dining tables, fire pits, and a sod farm (later harvested for use on the field) for picnicking fans. “We hope it really catches on with other parks,” says Eric Blasen, cofounder of Blasen Landscape Architecture, the studio that designed the garden.

Giants outfielder Hunter Pence confirms that it is—at least among Giants team members. At the garden’s grand opening on Tuesday, he said that at first his teammates made fun of his kale salads from the garden—until they tried them. Now they’re a team favorite. 

So does a project like this have potential anywhere outside of San Francisco? For most Americans, a visit to the ballpark means hotdogs and pretzels, not flatbreads and kumquats. And the harvests will be small, only enough for “a fraction” of the stadium’s needs, says Bonnie Powell, director of communications for Bon Appétit Management, an AT&T park food provider that helped launch the garden. “The main point of the garden is to be an educational one: how food grows, and that you can grow it even in small, challenging spaces.”

The garden’s designers hope those themes will resonate with the fans. “We’ll have so much exposure,” says Silvina Blasen, the other cofounder at Blasen Landscape Architecture. “I mean, I think they can seat 44,000 people on these bleachers. It should catch on.”

 

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

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