The Student Dietetic Association (SDA) has been advocating for an edible community garden on campus for several years, however we have not received the support of the Cal State LA administration. An edible garden would provide a necessary service to our current students, in particular the 41.6% of students who are food insecure at CSULA (Crutchfield, 2018). The garden would serve as a teaching garden to promote food sovereignty, and the produce grown would be donated to those in need.

This petition is requesting access to land (approx. 600-1,000 square feet of green space) to build and create this edible garden on campus. The SDA will be collaborating with the Nutrition Department to help maintain this edible garden once established on campus. The SDA and the nutrition department have a proven track record on campus as one of the oldest student organizations with a proud history of thousands of hours each year of volunteerism.  Our sister campuses CSUN and CSULB have established community gardens on their campuses (opened in 2008 and 2015 respectively) and are doing amazing work, and despite great interest from our students we have not been provided with the space to make this garden happen.

We request students to make a difference on campus by signing this petition to demand that the CSULA Dean of Students and Facilities staff provide us with space to build an edible garden to help provide nutritious and healthy food to our food insecure students.