Our food is brought to us from ever-increasing distances, but is this best for us? Anna Prizzia, the Founder of Working Food, views food as an entire ecosystem that must be cared for from seed to plate, farmer to consumer. Prizzia tells us why she set out to make food more local, creating a community utilizing collaboration, economic opportunity, education, and seed stewardship.

TRANSCRIPT:

Intro: 0:01

Inventors and their inventions. Welcome to Radio Cade a podcast from the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention in Gainesville, Florida, the museum is named after James Robert Cade, who invented Gatorade in 1965. My name is Richard Miles. We'll introduce you to inventors and the things that motivate them. We'll learn about their personal stories, how their inventions work, and how their ideas get from the laboratory to the marketplace.

James Di Virgilio: 0:39

Food. Where does it come from? Do you know where it's coming from? Is it local? Is it coming from across the world? Today's guest, Anna Prizzia, is someone who can help us solve that problem. It's become obviously much more of a hot button issue and hot button topic. And today we're going to dive in and explore, where does your food come from? From seed to the table who are the major players involved in those things? And how can we improve that process? Not only for health, but also for the community. For Radio Cade , I'm James Di Virgilio, my guest, Anna Prizzia the Director of Working Food. Anna , welcome to the show.

Anna Prizzia: 1:11

Thanks for having me.

James Di Virgilio: 1:12

So take us through this process when I was looking through working food and what it does and what it once was, there's so many things you do. Kind of walk us through the overall mission and then problem that you're solving in the community.

Anna Prizzia: 1:25

Sure. So working food is really seeking to sort of be a hub for local food systems, activities from seed to plate. So that's why we have so many things going on. We're really trying to take a comprehensive look at what's going on with our food system and not be the solution to all the problems or trying to address every piece of the system, but to be a go to place for people, to connect with resources in the community on local food, and definitely try to tackle some of the big issues and challenges we have here early on, because in much of the country, people have really taken up local food and food security and things of that nature as a big part of the work they're doing. And we found here in Florida and particularly in Alachua County, we're still struggling with those issues, but more and more, we're seeing local food nonprofits pop up and community organizations take it up. So we're excited. And for us, we do a number of things. One is saving seeds, seeds are the literal foundation of our food systems. So we want to make sure that we're protecting seeds that are adapted to our climate and our region and our tastes and our culture. And so we do that and then we provide those to our community. We also want to make sure people understand where their food comes from and how to cook food, why food is important to our bodies and to our culture. So we have lots of events and programs, and we do a youth garden in two different community centers on a weekly basis to connect students and kids, to gardening and food. And also for the fun that it is to be able to eat healthy and grow it yourself. And then we touch the economic side of things. So we actually incubate food entrepreneurs and we help those food entrepreneurs start businesses less by renting space from us by the hour and hel