Nikki Tate - Down to Earth: How Kids Help Feed the World

Children pick fresh tomatoes at a farm in India. NIKHIL GANGAVANE/DREAMSTIME.COM

A young child in this family of Romanian farmers uses a long stick to beat the top branches of plum trees. The ripe plums fall to the ground, where they are easily collected. CATALIN PETOLEA/DREAMSTIME.COM

On family farms around the world, children help grow food.

Many community-garden and urban-farming projects in cities and towns welcome families and children, and more and more schools are setting aside space for food gardens. Lots of families grow vegetables or keep a few chickens in the backyard. You dont need much room to grow good stuff to eat: a large pot on a balcony produces more tomatoes than you might think!

When my nieces and nephew come to visit me at Dark Creek Farm, one of their favorite things to do is help me prepare a meal made with food we have grown or raised ourselves. Depending on the season, we might dig up some potatoes and harvest beets, tomatoes, carrots or parsnips to serve along with pork chops from one of our pigs. Dessert might be delicious strawberries served with ice cream made from fresh goat milk, or a rich custard tart made with some of our duck eggs.

A child in Kenya milks the family goat. IMAN M.P. HEJIBOER

At Dark Creek Farm we love our Muscovy ducks. Alexander makes friends with this duckling that will grow up to lay delicious eggs for us to eat. danielle tate-stratton

Even in the dead of winter, we enjoy food weve frozen, dried or preserved in jars. Theres no doubt that fresh peas picked moments before they appear on the dinner table are extremely tasty, and, even more important, theres something deeply satisfying about helping produce the food you eat.

In Down to Earth well explore some of the many ways children help collect seeds, weed gardens, milk goats, herd ducks and more as they grow, harvest, prepare and distribute food.

CHAPTER ONE

Seeds and Plants

Riddle: Throw away the outside and cook the inside. Then eat the outside and throw away the inside. What did you just eat?

Answer: An ear of corn

AMAZING THINGS IN TINY PACKAGES

Seeds are packed with all the nutrients young plants need to start growing. TOM GISEL

What do carrots, pumpkins and lettuce have in common? Yes, they are all things to eat, but they are also all easily grown from seeds. Whether a farmer plants a huge field of wheat or a family in an apartment nurtures salad greens in pots out on the balcony, it all begins with a handful of seeds.

GIANT SEEDS WITH MANY USES

Children in the Solomon Islands climb palm trees to harvest coconuts. NADINE AU-YONG

Coconuts are some of the most useful seeds in the world. Not only can you eat the meat of a coconut (the white, fleshy part); you can also polish floors with the husk, cook with coconut milk and use coconut shells for fuel.

FOOD FACT: Some seeds, like carrot seeds, are tiny. Twenty-four thousand carrot seeds only weigh about 28 grams (1 ounce)! Some are huge. The largest seed in the world is from the Coco de Mer, a kind of palm tree found in the Seychelles. These huge coconuts can be 30 centimeters (12 inches) long and weigh 24 kg (44 lbs)!

Even before plants send roots down in the soil and leaves up toward the sun, young sprouts provide nutritious snacks for people. Some kinds of sprouted seeds are particularly tasty. Mung bean sprouts are popular in stir-fries, alfalfa sprouts are great in sandwiches, and giant sunflower sprouts add a delicious crunch to salads. Check for sprouts in the salad area of the grocery store or try sprouting your own at home! AMANDA VALLOZA

SMALL SEEDS, MASSIVE PUMPKINS

The Delaney family of Pickering, Ontario (Chris, Jen, Alanna and Kirsten), worked together to grow this giant pumpkin, which won first prize at the 2012 Norfolk County Fair and Horse Show in Ontario and weighed in at a whopping 765 kg (1,683 lbs). JENNIFER SHAFTO

You might be able to hold a whole lot of pumpkin seeds in your hand, but chances are you wont be able to budge the gigantic pumpkins that can be grown from these flat seeds.

Each year in the autumn, many rural communities host country fairs. Pumpkin-growing contests provide a challenge for gardeners of all ages, and the results make popular displays.

Roasted pumpkin seeds are a tasty snack! RACHEL TAYSE

The largest seed bank in the world is the Millennium Seed Bank Project near London, England. A secure underground vault provides safe storage for billions of seed samples. The bank provides samples to researchers and seed banks elsewhere in the world, and it also conducts research on seeds included in the collection. WIKIPEDIA/PATCHE99Z

FOOD FACT: In October 2011, the record for the worlds largest pumpkin was awarded to Jim and Kelsey Bryson of Ormstown, Quebec. Their entry to the Prince Edward County Pumpkinfest weighed an astonishing 824.9 kg (1,818.5 lbs)! Thats a lot of pumpkin pie!

WHY DOES GENETIC DIVERSITY MATTER?

Carrots come in many sizes, shapes and colors. TEXAS AM AGRILIFE COMMUNICATIONS/KATHLEEN PHILLIPS

Site of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, Norway. SVALBARD GLOBAL SEED VAULT/MARI TEFRE

Did you know there are about 5,000 varieties of potatoes? And yet, its unusual to find more than a handful of types for sale. The varieties available in grocery stores tend to be uniform in size and shape, travel well and produce consistently good yields per acre. While these are all handy traits if you are interested in shipping potatoes that travel and store well, there are dangers associated with only producing certain types of any crop.