Food Activism and Community Health
Our Healthy Farm Food Project was born out of necessity when we discovered that members of our own Summerland community were living without access to fresh food. What first appeared to be a picture-perfect coastal town revealed a deeper challenge when one of our farm stand workers shared that there had been no fresh food in her home for years. That moment changed how we saw our community.
We asking ourselves a difficult question: if someone working alongside us had gone without fresh food for so long, how many others might be facing the same strugle?
At Sweet Wheel Farm, we believe healthy soil grows healthy food and creates healthy people. Every fruit and vegetable grown on our farm is produced without herbicides, pesticides, or synthetic fertilizers. By caring for the soil, we care for the land and the people who work it, and depend on it.
Our work is rooted in the belief that community health begins in the soil. Sweet Wheel Farm is rebuilding that connection—growing food that truly nourishes the body nourishes the body and strengthens our community from the ground up.
Despite Santa Barbara County being one of the most productive agricultural regions in the country, the system that feeds our community is deeply disconnected from the land around us. More than 99% of the produce grown in Santa Barbara County is exported outside the region, while over 95% of the food consumed here is imported from elsewhere.
This means that even though we are surrounded by farmland, access to fresh, locally grown food is not guaranteed. Even more limited is access to chemical-free food. Much of the global food system treats food as a commodity product rather than what it truly is—nourishment for our bodies and our communities.