UTRGV will host its annual Earth Fest Thursday on both campuses.
From 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. there will be exhibits, arts, crafts, food and activities on the Chapel Lawn in Edinburg and the Student Union lawn in Brownsville.
Marianella Franklin, UTRGV’s chief sustainability officer, is helping with the facilitation of the event.
“Earth Fest is all about celebrating the amazing planet that we live on, its beauty, its inhabitants and its endless biodiversity,” Franklin said. “It’s also about creating awareness on the importance of protecting our planet’s extremely limited natural resources.”
She also said Earth Day’s purpose is to create awareness of “the responsible ways that we can protect our planet.”
Franklin said there are many aspects to this year’s Earth Fest.
“One of the things [we did is we] set things up in such a way that our students have an opportunity to exhibit some of their projects and their programs, as well as fun activities and food and possibly music,” she said.
Last year’s theme was energy, water and space, while this year’s will be food security.
“We have great issues of food security and health in our region,” Franklin said. “If you consider that the Rio Grande Valley was an agricultural oasis, so to speak, we have a lot of food insecurity. We have a lot of areas where individuals do not have access to healthy food, and because our agricultural lands have been converted to urban development, in the near future, we won’t have enough food for not just our nutritional needs but our survival.”
Martha Garcia, a biology senior and co-president of the Environmental Awareness Club, said a lot of people are not informed on how to live sustainable lifestyles.
“They don’t know that they can get a lot of produce from local farmers, that local organic farmers do exist here in the Valley, such as Terra Preta [Farm] and Yahweh’s [All Natural Farm and Garden] in Harlingen,” Garcia said. “All these farmers live sustainable lifestyles and I think that it’s great what UTRGV is doing on focusing on sustainability, Earth Day and climate change.”
During the festival, the fourth annual Food Security Forum will take place, with guest speakers Alexis Racelis, a UTRGV assistant professor of biology, and Guerrilla Gourmet Chef James Canter, among others. The forum will be from 1 to 7 p.m. in the University Ballroom on the Edinburg campus.
In an interview with The Rider, Racelis said there are multiple overlapping goals for this year’s Food Security Forum, such as economic equality, partnerships and climate change.
“One of the things that I work on as a researcher is the impact of food systems, in particular, how food systems are related to a lot of these goals,” he said. “It is clear with food and hunger, you can guess what that connection is.”
Racelis said food security is about how much food we have that is accessible and can help people maintain a healthy lifestyle.
“Here in the Rio Grande Valley, we have some of the worst rates of food insecurity,” he said. “We have RGV residents that go hungry every day. They are undernourished, or they are malnourished. They are not getting the types of food that allow them to live that healthy lifestyle. A lot of our residents don’t have access to healthy food.”
He said the global theme of food security has relevance to the Valley.
The forum will consist of three panels. The first is about nutrition and food access. The second will be about farmers who will discuss their efforts to produce sustainable foods, and the third will be about different organizations and individuals who are working to connect food production with healthy food consumption.
“I think that this would be a fantastic forum to just understand how food is connected to our everyday lives,” Racelis said.
Episodes from the TV documentary series “Planet Earth” and “Years of Living Dangerously” will be screened from 7 to 8 p.m. in Unity Hall on the Edinburg campus and Casa Bella student housing complex on the Brownsville campus.
In addition, a tree planting is scheduled on the Southwick Hall lawn from 10 to 11 a.m. and a yoga session at 12:30 p.m. on the Chapel Lawn in Edinburg.
An exhibition, titled “Meraki: A Vision of Sustainability,” continues through Wednesday in the Visual Arts Building, located at 2412 S. Closner Blvd. Meraki is a Greek word that means to leave a piece of yourself in your work.
Robert Gilbert, an associate professor of graphic design, said his students created the artwork.
“Every year, the students do a large exhibition, which is their final exhibition,” Gilbert said. “This year, the theme is sustainability, so students had a wide range of options that they had to work with, with the idea of sustainability.”
He said the projects in the exhibition range from how sustainability affects society and the earth, space travel and community farming, to board games that are related to sustainability.
The gallery is open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Admission is free.
The celebration will conclude with music, exhibits, arts, crafts and food from 3 to 9 p.m. Saturday at Linear Park in Brownsville.
For more information on Earth Fest, contact the Office for Sustainability at 665-3030 or sustainability@utrgv.edu.
