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<\/p>\nST. PETERSBURG, Fla. \u2014\u00a0As we celebrate Women\u2019s History Month, in 2025 the USDA reported that more than one in three food producers in the U.S. are women, contributing to both local economies and the nation\u2019s food supply.<\/p>\n
To continue to grow those numbers, one Eckerd College alumna has returned to campus hoping to help current students grow those numbers even more.<\/p>\n
\u00a0What You Need To Know
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\nEckerd College Community Farm welcomed back one of its founding members, Maggie Jensen, who brought the acre of plants and produce to life more than 15 years ago as a student
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\nJust like the USDA reporting how women\u2019s involvement in agriculture has grown in recent years, this garden has blossomed, and about 80% of the students working on the community farm are women
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\nThe garden has now transformed into an outdoor classroom, offering volunteer and work opportunities to any student in any major
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\nWhile getting their hands dirty, Jensen wants to give everyone a hands-on approach when it comes to teaching about sustainability
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Pulling fresh produce from the soil in the same place she once pulled weeds, Maggie Jensen now manages the farm at Eckerd College.<\/p>\n
\u201cActually, I graduated in 2011, and that\u2019s the year that we actually started this farm. It was a grass field. There were fire ants and sand spurs,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
As a student, the garden club became her safe space. Since then, she has watched the area blossom into a hands-on outdoor classroom.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo it kept growing and growing and growing. And about 15 years later, the school realized that they needed to fold it into the school\u2019s operations,\u201d Jensen said.<\/p>\n
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Maggie Jensen harvests fresh carrots from the Eckerd College Community Farm. (Spectrum News\/Claire Alfree)<\/p>\n
\nIt became not just a place to learn where food comes from, but also a source for volunteer hours and a job for Madison Prikryl.<\/p>\n
\u201cI realized while taking that class that I live in a food desert and food is very scarce there. We have a very low-income area right there. And it\u2019s a vacation town, so food is mainly accessible to tourists but not the local population,\u201d Prikryl explained.<\/p>\n
She says Jensen is more than just a role model. She is helping her build skills she can use after graduation.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like the skills that I\u2019ve learned here are going to help me possibly go back home and make changes to structures in our towns, infrastructure, or also in our community garden that might help the local population there,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
Many of Jensen\u2019s student workers have been excited to touch grass.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of students who work here or volunteer here say that this is like a screen detox for them and that they need the fresh air and the physical work so bad that they come out and just feel better. It gives them the energy and the motivation to go back to their schoolwork,\u201d Jensen said.<\/p>\n
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The garden at Eckerd College has now transformed into an outdoor classroom, offering volunteer and work opportunities to any student in any major. (Spectrum News\/Claire Alfree)<\/p>\n
\nAnd it is helping to shape the future of farming, especially for women.<\/p>\n
The Census of Agriculture reports that more than half of farms in the U.S. now have at least one female producer.<\/p>\n
\u201cEighty percent of our staff on the farm are female. It\u2019s awesome,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s all teaching students how they can protect the environment, quite literally in their own dorms or backyards at home.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe students are learning about sustainability, but they\u2019re doing it by actually practicing it,\u201d said Jensen.<\/p>\n
Planting seeds of knowledge today, hoping it will create deep roots in their own gardens down the road.<\/p>\n
And they keep these students busy all year round. In one year they grow nearly 900 pounds of vegetables, and it goes back into all of the cafeterias on campus.<\/p>\n
Jensen says many of the original members of the Eckerd farm have since moved across the country and started farms of their own.<\/p>\n
The network now allows current students to travel and connect with women leaders in agriculture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. \u2014\u00a0As we celebrate Women\u2019s History Month, in 2025 the USDA reported that more than one…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":195859,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[1011,274,90888,1190,2200,115,596,202,204,203,199,201,200,135,278,2032,835,53989],"class_list":["post-195858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-app-human-interest","tag-app-top-stories","tag-claire-alfree","tag-human-interest","tag-instagram-bn9","tag-news","tag-pinellas-county","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news","tag-tampa","tag-top-stories","tag-trending-topics","tag-vod","tag-womens-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=195858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195858\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/195859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}