The Intersection of Horticulture, Hospitality, and the Culinary Arts

Jack Maruna has spent the last four years at the intersection of horticulture, hospitality, and the culinary arts. He dedicated most of that time to Auburn University’s Food U program, a campus-wide effort that brings locally grown food to students across campus.

He brought knowledge from that experience to his new role at Jones Valley Teaching Farm as the director of partnerships just a few months ago.

Similar to Food U, Jones Valley Teaching Farm is focused on education in the horticulture and culinary hospitality realm—just at the K-12 level. The nonprofit works directly with 16 schools across Alabama, though its level of involvement differs depending on how much help each one needs.

Understanding the Program Levels

Here’s a breakdown of Jones Valley’s different levels of involvement in Alabama schools.

• Level 1: Hiring an instructor at a school. Jones Valley chooses the horticulture program instructor at the greenhouse, outdoor teaching farm, and culinary lab—it pays their salary, and they teach the lessons developed in house. “That’s the most intimate level of involvement,” Maruna says. “Often we are financing the design, materials, and construction of outdoor, indoor, and greenhouse teaching labs.”
• Level 2: Co-developing an ag or culinary program with the school. The second level typically involves redeveloping the current curriculum. “We essentially help schools revamp their program,” he says. “Or they have an old, dilapidated greenhouse that we help them get back up to speed.”
• Level 3: Finalizing details. The last level is the least involved of the three—Jones Valley refines the horticulture and culinary curriculum, ensuring it’s up to date. “We hone in on the specific, more granular details for the curriculum we’re assisting them in,” Maruna explains. “We’ll go into a greenhouse, recommend equipment, and make sure it fits into the current curriculum.”

But for Maruna, the levels are just the delivery mechanism. The real test is whether what’s being taught can keep pace with where the industry is actually going.

During his time in academia, Maruna discovered that universities could be up to three to five years behind private industry. “That defeats the purpose for me,” he explains. “What are we researching at university if growers are already ahead?”

Maruna sees similar risk in K-12 programs. If the curriculum isn’t closely tied to where the industry is headed, schools fall behind before the students graduate. That’s the main challenge he aims to address at Jones Valley Teaching Farm.

But staying ahead of industry trends only matters if kids are engaging with food in the first place. That fundamental connection is where Jones Valley’s mission really begins.

The Jones Valley Mission

One of Jones Valley’s most ambitious goals is to reconnect children with locally grown food.

“It’s a disservice if you go through grades K through 12 without ever talking about food,” Maruna says. “Then, you enter your adult life not understanding where our food is coming from and how.”

From there, it’s a trickle-down effect on health and making informed decisions about food. About 64% of the U.S. eats three meals per day. It’s very likely, Maruna says, that a majority of those people don’t think about those three meals or how they reached a dinner plate.

“It takes a lot of hands, states crossed, logistics, and trucking to get to the final consumer,” he explains. “When people always have food available to them and lack perspective for how it got to them, they take it for granted.”

The hands-on programming Jones Valley offers has already started making a meaningful difference. In one school that has both culinary and horticulture programs, the organization went through an entire lesson with cucumbers. Students grew cucumbers in a Dutch bucket system, harvested them, then pickled and canned them.

In Maruna’s words, the kids were obsessed with the finished product.

“Kids can’t believe that seeds turn into pickles. When they get into a program like this, they’ll be walking around with a foot-long cucumber eating it raw and loving it,” he says. “That connection afforded them the ability to try it, and I think they love it because they were intimately involved in the process.”

Introducing children to these concepts when they’re young opens their eyes to a future career path.

Planting the Seed Early

Jones Valley offers a two-year internship for high school juniors and seniors. It’s a personal and professional development internship, aiming to give these students direction after they graduate.

“The goal isn’t simply to create farmers. It’s to expose students to the entire food system, from production and distribution to culinary arts, business, education, and environmental careers,” he explains. “This is a human impact opportunity, we see leaders exiting our program no matter what next step they decide to take after high school.”

The program currently has 10 interns. That may seem like a small number, but the impact these 10 people can make is significant.

“You think about 10 interns and it doesn’t sound like a lot,” Maruna says. “But when they all graduate from an internship program and stay in the industry year over year, it ends up being pretty impactful for the state of Alabama.”

Jones Valley’s goal: growing that number from 10 to 50 within the next five years.

Tags: cea, greenhouse