LISTEN: Lunch Hour Harvest Webinar Series Recap
This spring, Tennessee Local Food joined the Tennessee Department of Health and the UT Institute of Agriculture to start a conversation we don't get to have often enough — the one where agriculture, local food, and public health sit at the same table.
Lunch Hour Harvest has brought together farmers, extension specialists, public health professionals, and community organizers, one lunch hour at a time. If you missed a session or want to revisit one, here's where we've been. Every session is recorded and free to listen.
Introductory Webinar: TN Agriculture & Public Health
Panelists included:
Femeika Elliot, Rooted East Knoxville
Dr. Dawn Ford, Tennessee Public Health Association
Dr. Kim Morgan, UT Institute of Agriculture
Our opening session traced a single thread from the soil to the plate to the health of a community. Dr. Dawn Ford grounded it in numbers: sixty percent of Tennesseans live with at least one chronic disease, and rural counties consistently fare worse than urban ones. But when Chattanooga surveyed residents about food insecurity, the top barrier wasn't distance to a grocery store — it was cost. Femeika Elliott pushed further, making the case for naming what her community experiences as food apartheid rather than a food desert, because redlining, highway displacement, and grocery divestment were decisions, not accidents. Dr. Kim Morgan added the economist's view: we've gotten very good at growing food that survives shipping, and lost something in nutrient density along the way.
Soil Health Practices & Food Nutrient Density
Panelists included:
Dr. Arvazena Clardy, Tennessee State University
Katharine Ray, The Heimerdinger Foundation
Kelsey Davis, Blooming Acres Farm and Tennessee Department of Environment & Conservation
Session two went underground. Kelsey Davis distilled regenerative agriculture into three practices anyone can picture: disturb the soil as little as possible, keep living roots in the ground year-round, and grow a diversity of crops instead of the same thing in the same place season after season. Tilling, she offered, is like having someone turn your whole house upside down once a year. Dr. Arvazena Clardy followed the thread up into the plant with advice for growers at any scale — test your soil first, because a $15 UT soil test is cheaper than guessing wrong on fertilizer. Katharine Ray brought it home with fourteen years of the Heimerdinger Foundation's Meals for Health and Healing, which delivers nutrient-dense meals free of charge to Tennesseans in cancer treatment. Food as medicine, in practice.
Mental Health in Agriculture: Supporting Tennessee Farmers
Panelists included:
Chaney Mosley, PhD., Associate Professor, Agricultural Education, Middle Tennessee State University
Andy Lawrence, LPC-MHSP, Tennessee Department of Mental Health & Substance Abuse Services
Emily A. Paskewitz, Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development, University of Tennessee
Our third session was the hardest conversation, and one of the most needed. Most research on stress studies the kind that arrives, peaks, and resolves — but as Dr. Emily Paskewitz explained, farm stress doesn't work that way. Weather, commodity prices, input costs, and trade policy sit permanently outside a farmer's control, and because most Tennessee farms are family farms, the pressure follows you from the field to the dinner table. Andy Lawrence and Dr. Chaney Mosley named the barriers plainly: stigma, cost, privacy in places where everyone knows everyone, and the impossibility of giving up three hours for a one-hour appointment. What helps, they said, is connection — strong social networks consistently produce better outcomes. And Dr. Paskewitz offered a finding worth sitting with: farmers rarely see themselves as at risk, but they will do anything for a neighbor. That's the door in.
Resources named in this session include Tennessee AgrAbility, the Tennessee Suicide Prevention Network, Farm Aid's farmer hotline, QPR gatekeeper training, and 988 for immediate support.
Lunch Hour Harvest is presented in partnership with the Tennessee Department of Health and the UT Institute of Agriculture. Views expressed by speakers do not necessarily reflect the positions of the Tennessee Department of Health.
CPH Recertification Credits: This program was approved for Certified in Public Health (CPH) continuing education credits by the Tennessee Department of Health, an approved provider by the National Board of Public Health Examiners. Up to 1 CPH Recertification Credit may be earned at this event. To receive recertification credit, log this activity in CPH Central: https://www.nbphe.org/stay-certified/.
NCHEC CECH for CHES/MCHES: Sponsored by Tennessee Department of Health, a designated provider of continuing education contact hours (CECH) in health education by the National Commission for Health Education Credentialing, Inc. This program is designated for Certified Health Education Specialists (CHES®) and/or Master Certified Health Education Specialists (MCHES®) to receive up to 1 total Category I contact education contact hours. Maximum advanced-level continuing education contact hours available are 0. Continuing Competency credits available are 0.
