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Ietef Vita is advancing entry to nutritious meals in Denver and past by way of city gardening, youth-oriented nonprofit work, and rap music.


A blazing midsummer solar shines overhead as 35-year-old Ietef Vita rattles off the fruits rising in his yard—apricots, plums, peaches, apples. On one tree hangs wine-colored globes, tapered like teardrops. “The crimson pears are simply coming in,” he says. This city orchard is just half of Vita’s idyllic Westminster residence backyard. Within the entrance yard, a veggie lover’s paradise, bees dart between onion and echinacea flowers.

It’s not simple tending to such various flora, however Vita has years of expertise coaxing crops to edible maturity: From 2008 to 2016, he was a gardener for Elyria-Swansea-based GrowHaus, a nonprofit schooling heart and farm co-founded by his mom, artist and cultural activist Ashara Ekundayo, to enhance the neighborhood’s entry to nutritious fare. Even earlier than gardening turned his occupation, Vita’s household taught him tips on how to alter for Denver’s intense solar, low rainfall, and comparatively poor soil with tips like dropping banana peels into the grime to extend potassium content material.

5280 Well being 2022

Vita, who grew up in 5 Factors, credit gardening for serving to him preserve his life straight—“pushing seeds, not medication,” he says. And whereas he’s conscious of the intergenerational trauma many Black individuals expertise towards agriculture due to slavery, Vita believes city gardening can mend the rift whereas bringing higher consuming habits to communities affected by poor well being. “An important half is individuals having entry [to good food] and, on the identical time, actually therapeutic that post-traumatic stress that’s deep within the mobile reminiscence,” Vita says.

Since 2007, Vita has been spreading that phrase by way of his different ardour—rap music—underneath the moniker DJ Cavem. He’s thought of the daddy of eco hip-hop, a small however enthusiastic style that layers hard-hitting beats with lyrics about meals justice. His tunes and mission caught the eye of former First Woman Michelle Obama, who invited Vita to carry out on the White Home in 2015 to assist publicize her Let’s Move initiative.

Different high-profile gigs have included a stint as a private vegan chef for ex-Denver Nugget Wilson Chandler from 2017 to 2018 and making meals for a non-public get together hosted by Will and Jada Smith (their son, Jaden Smith, is a pal of Vita’s). Regardless of dwelling a life more and more crammed with high-profile names, nevertheless, Vita’s best affect is likely to be by way of his extra intimate, grassroots work with the subsequent era.

Ietef Vita in his garden in Westminster
Picture by Jeff Nelson

Inside a kitchen in a Curtis Park neighborhood heart, Vita fills a meals processor with cashews, maple syrup, coconut oil, and complete vanilla pods. He’s main a youth workshop by way of Denver City Gardens, which oversees 190 neighborhood gardens, the most important such community within the nation. The 20-some youngsters in attendance watch attentively as he demonstrates tips on how to make a vegan cheesecake, lining two pans with a walnut-date crust, pouring within the cashew filling, and sticking them within the freezer. “After I was a child, french fries have been my vegetable,” he says.

As we speak, many neighborhoods in northeast Denver—reminiscent of 5 Factors, Globeville, and Elyria-Swansea—stay meals deserts with few full-service grocers and a glut of fast-food choices. This results in an elevated threat for meals insecurity (the sustained lack of ability to entry wholesome meals), a blight that disproportionately impacts low-income communities and folks of coloration: 22.5 p.c of city Black Coloradans and 13.6 p.c of city Hispanic Coloradans undergo from meals insecurity, in comparison with a statewide common of 9.6 p.c, in line with a 2020 Colorado Well being Institute report. Missing nutritious meals is related to a slew of bodily and psychological well being issues, together with hypertension, poor oral well being, and maternal melancholy. These results trickle right down to food-insecure youngsters, too, who’re at the very least twice as prone to report “truthful or poor” well being and a 3rd extra prone to have been hospitalized than their friends with loads of wholesome meals to eat.

(Learn Extra: How Mo’Betta Green Is Seeding Change in Denver Neighborhoods)

“Who right here is aware of somebody with diabetes?” Vita asks. A lot of the youngsters’ arms shoot up. African Individuals are 60 p.c extra probably than non-Hispanic white adults to have the illness, which can also be linked to meals insecurity, and twice as prone to die from the continual sickness. Vita’s grandmother was one in all its victims.

Seeding Change Vita mailed more than 20,000 seed packets to urban gardeners across the nation.
Vita mailed greater than 20,000 seed packets to city gardeners throughout the nation. Picture by Jeff Nelson

A vegan for the reason that age of 14, Vita remembers having to stroll 2.3 miles to LoDo’s Sakura Sq. to seek out tofu. In an try to make sure future generations wouldn’t must comply with his footsteps, Vita co-founded a GrowHaus initiative known as Seed2Seed in 2010. The eight-week summer season management program teaches excessive schoolers from north Denver about city agriculture, wholesome consuming, and community-based social justice. Greater than half of the scholars on the Denver City Gardens workshop are in its 2021 cohort.

Vita pulls the cheesecake out of the freezer and begins doling out parts in paper bowls. The teenagers are quiet at first, seemingly not sure about how the motley mixture of fruits and nuts will style. As they pattern the dessert, although, chatter slowly bubbles up. Hesitance turns into curiosity, then outright pleasure. One pupil calls out to a different throughout the room: “You need to make cheesecake?”

These moments inspire Vita to maintain preaching the advantages of plant-based consuming—which research present helps lower cardiovascular morbidity and handle insulin resistance—notably to youth. He additionally desires to impart that meals and agriculture might be viable careers. “It takes somebody relatable,” says Rob Payo, Denver City Gardens’ director of Okay–12 schooling and the organizer of Vita’s workshop, “to make extra of an influence.”

Illuminated by the pink glow of a salt lamp, Vita’s residence studio resounds with beats from his upcoming album, Koncrete Backyard, set to be launched this spring. Considered one of its singles, “Pull up on the Gate,” got here out this previous April and highlights his experiences with racism when tending gardens in prosperous Denver neighborhoods. References to individuals calling the police on his landscaping crew move alongside messages about composting, permaculture, and forgoing pesticides.

Vita's hand while he's gardening.
Picture by Jeff Nelson

The music glamorizes a lifetime of rising and consuming crops (“I like my meals vegan, avocado toast”), however Vita doesn’t need to cease at giving his listeners a gardening soundtrack; he goals to present them the instruments they should dig in. Whereas getting ready to go on tour to advertise his 2019 album, Biomimicz, he partnered with Broomfield-based seed firm Botanical Pursuits to provide packets of kale, arugula, and beet seeds. Though the COVID-19 pandemic foiled his plan to distribute them at exhibits, he nonetheless mailed out greater than 20,000 of the packets to city gardening organizations across the nation. For Koncrete Backyard, he intends to present away much more elaborate promotional supplies at his concert events: full kits with sprouting trays, seeding directions, and recipes for the ultimate merchandise.

Nonetheless, Vita’s goals continue to grow. He opened for Wu-Tang Clan this previous fall and is already engaged on his subsequent album. Strolling by way of his entrance yard backyard, nevertheless, he takes the time to pause and pluck basil and mint leaves. In the course of the workshop, he talked about how gardening confirmed him a brand new aspect to the meals he ate rising up. “I didn’t know potatoes take advantage of lovely white flowers,” Vita stated. These explicit crops are usually not in bloom proper now, however they are going to be quickly sufficient.





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