Part of URI’s fall Honors Colloquium
Agricultural and food justice advocate Vanessa
García Polanco ’18 will present at the 2022 University of Rhode
Island Honors Colloquium Tuesday, Sept. 27, discussing “The Exception and Not
the Norm: Becoming an Agricultural and Food Justice Advocate.” 
Vanessa García Polanco ’18, policy campaigns co-director at the
National Young Farmers Coalition
An alumna of the
University, she has received numerous honors for her work and brings her
experiences and identities as an Afro-Dominican immigrant to her policy and
advocacy activities.
Polanco will speak at 7 p.m. at Edwards Hall on the Kingston Campus and online. This is the second presentation of the fall Honors Colloquium, “Just Good Food,” which will be presented in person and streamed live (video links available on the day of each event, at the link above).
Polanco serves as the policy campaigns co-director for the National Young Farmers Coalition in Washington, D.C., working and conducting research in food justice, food systems and immigrants, and traditional underserved or historically socially disadvantaged farmers.
She co-designs the strategy and implementation of Young Farmers’ policy campaigns, ensuring equity-driven, farmer-centric research, policy, and programmatic interventions for a more just food system.
Polanco also is an organizational council member and co-chair of
the Farming Opportunities & Fair Competition Committee of the U.S. National
Sustainable Agriculture Coalition and previously worked with the U.S.
Department of Agriculture and the Michigan State University Center for Regional
Food Systems.
She is a member of the United Nations YOUNGO Agriculture Working Group and was part of the 2021 New York Times Generation Climate at the UN Conference of the Parties Climate Hub. Polanco is a James Beard Foundation Scholar and a 2021 Emerging Leader in Food and Ag.
Polanco graduated from URI in 2018 with her bachelor’s degree in Environmental and Natural Resource Economics; she participated in the Peace Corps Pre-Program (Agriculture) and URI Honors Program.
She also was a member
of the Student Senate for four years and was the president of Student Action
for Sustainability. Looking forward to returning to campus to speak at the
Honors Colloquium, Polanco said, “I have been thinking a lot about how my time
at URI prepared me to embark on the roles I have known and the conditions that
cultivate success in my field. I am also a we. I also ask, why are there not
more young immigrants and New Americans in agriculture policy and advocacy like
me? Over 13 percent of the U.S. population identifies as an immigrant and many
more as New Americans.”
The URI Honors Colloquium is the University’s premier lecture
series. Hosted by the University’s Honors Program, this university-wide educational forum
is open to the public. This year’s free lecture series will bring several
experts to the Kingston Campus to examine local and global food systems,
examining ways to create equitable, sustainable and resilient food systems, on
Tuesday evenings through Dec. 13; also online. Learn more about the fall colloquium.