<aside> đźš› Hey Ecowarriors-in-training! This week, you'll learn about food! Everyone needs food to survive, but how does it get to your plates? Today we'll be learning about all the heroic workers that fill your stomach. Who knows, maybe one day you'll be a food hero too! We'll be using strawberries as an example.

</aside>

Introduction:

First, strawberries have to be planted and grown at farms around the world. This process involves a lot of steps, like making sure the soil is healthy, watering the plants, getting rid of any sick plants, and then picking the fruit.

Growing the berries also needs a lot of people like the farmers and field workers who are often out in the sun all day picking the fruit that we eat.

It’s important to know that a lot of the people who pick the fruit are immigrants from all around the world. They usually have to work in the fields under harsh and demanding conditions and they don’t get a lot of breaks or money for all the work that they do!

Once the strawberries are picked, a truck driver transports them to a manufacturing plant where they are packaged up by the workers and managers at the facility.

This is usually where the “bad fruit” is removed from the harvest. But guess what, a lot of times the bad fruit isn’t even really that bad, it just looks funny! This is a problem because there is a lot of food waste that could be used to feed people, but instead, it’s thrown away.

After this, the fruit is ready to be sent to the stores! Another truck driver brings all the berries to either big stores called “wholesales” or smaller stores called “retails.” Wholesale stores distribute large amounts of berries to smaller stores and places like restaurants (because they need a lot of them).

The retail stores are where people like you and me buy our berries to eat at home. At both of these stores, there are lots of people who work very hard to make sure that we get the food we eat. This process is called a supply chain.

Drawing Activity!

Now that you know how a strawberry gets from the farm to your plate, you’re going to make your own comic illustrating the supply chain. It can be about any fruit or vegetable that you want, but you have to include all of the “food heroes” that make it possible.

Remember, these are the farmers, field workers, manufacturing workers, truck drivers, store workers and more! Your comic can include real people or you can make your characters fictional.

<aside> 🎊 Great job finishing today's activity! We hope you had fun and learned something new! Once you're done, make sure to fill out this form of the day!

</aside>