Organic Valley Helps Fruit Tree Tour
NATURAL PRODUCTS MARKETPLACE
Organic Valley is helping Common Vision’s Emmy Award-winning Fruit Tree Tour bring its green theater to urban kids. In a circus-like program featuring a live band, puppets and characters like the rhyming farmer, a team of time-traveling ecogeeks, and Wendy Bob, a 5-foot singing earthworm, bring to life important lessons about healthy food and where it comes from.
Now in its 7th year, the Fruit Tree Tour features a Common Vision caravan powered by used fry oil that visits mostly Title 1 schools surrounded by some of the California’s worst urban food deserts, where cheap processed food is often the only option for kids. Plantings can range from a few fruit trees to a few hundred, transforming desolate schoolyards into urban orchards that can provide enough fresh fruit for a school’s cafeteria and community.
“Lack of access to real food such as fresh fruits and vegetables is a leading driver of childhood obesity,” said Fruit Tree Tour veteran organizer Megan Watson. “Our food systems, petroleum economy and culture of consumerism are causing big problems not only for the environment but for our bodies too. Thankfully, simple acts like planting a tree and growing food have a ripple effect that can create big change for a healthier people and planet.”
This year’s tour will perform and plant at public schools in Berkeley, Castro Valley, Claremont, Compton, Culver City, Fresno, Goleta, Lake Forest, Lawndale, Los Angeles, Mt Diablo, Newark, Oakland, Oceano, Pacific Palisades, San Francisco, San Rafael, Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, Sunnyvale and Watsonville.
