Goodness Grows
When your roots are in the garden, it’s only natural you want to protect the planet and the community that helps you thrive. At Annie’s, we believe in getting involved, giving back, and digging in! We help nourish communities by providing healthy food, promoting sustainability and supporting organizations who share our vision. We value all beings and are serious global stewards.
We work to make our footprint small, our generosity big and our impact on future generations positive.
Giving Back
Gardens are places to connect kids to real food, explore new flavors and talk about where our food comes from. We offer Grants for Gardens donations to community gardens, school gardens and other educational programs that connect children directly to gardening. These funds can be used to buy gardening tools, seeds or other needed supplies. We also offer our delicious product to organizations and events promoting gardening and the environment through Cases for Causes.Grants for Gardens
Click here for applications and guidelines.
Click here for applications and guidelines.
Cases for Causes
Click here for applications and guidelines.
Click here for applications and guidelines.
Grant Recipient Stories
See how previous Grants for Gardens recipients are using funds to grow their gardens.
Prestwood School
Prestwood School in Sonoma, CA, used their Grants for Gardens funds to plant an herb garden in the school's existing garden.
The Going Green Foundation
The Going Green Foundatoin in Dearborn, MI, used their Grants for Gardens funds to transform the Organic Farm at Crowley Park into a farm to cafeteria program.
North Shore Community School
North Shore Community School in Duluth, MN, used their Grants for Gardens funds to make much-needed improvements to the school greenhouse and implement a 3-season gardening system to provide vegetables for the school cafeteria.
Dover High School
Dover High School in Dover, NH, purchased four raised garden beds for the school's existing garden with their Grants for Gardens funds.
High Country Conservation Center
High Country Conservation Center in Frisco, TX, used their grant funds to construct a greenhouse and garden beds as part of their living classroom.
Sustainable Agriculture Scholarships
Sustainable and organic agriculture is at the very root of our philosophy: Planet to Food. Food to People. People to planet. We believe that healthy soils and healthy farms are the foundation for healthy foods, which help make healthy people! Therefore, we're proud to support the next generation of farmers by offering $100,000 in funds to students studying sustainable agriculture.
The deadline to apply for the 2012/2013 Sustainable Agriculture Scholarship was December 15 2011. All applicants will be notified of their status on or around April 15, 2012.
Recipients of 2011/2012 scholarship funds include:
Graduate
Shereen D’Souza, $10,000, Yale
 “My vision of sustainable agriculture values the intricate interconnections between food, people and planet. As such, I realize that the struggles to further sustainable agriculture in the US are intimately linked to similar struggles in the developing world.”
| Before enrolling at Yale to earn her masters in Environmental Science, Shereen was a Management Volunteer with the Peace Corps in Honduras, focusing on supporting subsistence hillside farmer’s return to organic and soil conservation techniques. By the time she was finished with her service, Shereen knew combining development with a concern for sustainable food and farming systems would be her life’s work. After her service, Shereen moved to California where she became involved with Oakland Based Urban Gardens and Oakland Food Connection. She then enrolled in the Apprenticeship in Ecology Horticulture at UC Santa Cruz, and later became Director of the California Food and Justice Coalition. Her studies at Yale will enable her to pursue her career goals that include advocating for supportive policy through multilateral organizations like the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and working with think tanks focused on food and farming issues. She also hopes to one day return to California to pursue her dream of setting up shop as a small-scale organic farmer. |
Abha Gupta, $10,000, Oregon State University
 “Having a strong connection to our food and how it is grown is integral to a healthy society and individual health. People must know what it means to eat well and produce food in a responsible way, if only because we should know how to tend to one of our basic human functions.”
| During her first farming season out of college, Abha worked at Blue Heron Organic farms, an experience that has shaped her views of the food system. Through her work, Abha saw how farming organically is more about farming the soil, rather than the vegetables themselves. Abha is now assisting the university’s permaculture and organic food and gardening courses. Her research investigates how farm to school programs affect students’ academic achievement by means of meditating factors like school pride, responsibility, cooperation with peers and other forms of school bonding. Once completing school, she hopes to continue working with the farm to school movement, whether it be developing farm to school programs, teaching, or working on bringing farming and gardening to communities as an extension agent. |
Dylan Wann, $10,000, Texas Tech University
 “I feel that sustainable agriculture is a process and a movement by which we, as humans, labor to understand Nature’s intricacies and work with her, not against her, to meet the material, physical, cultural, and social needs of humanity now and forever.”
| Growing up on the prairies of Wyoming, Dylan’s family raised beef cattle and grew alfalfa to provide hay for the heard. It was there he was able to understand how essential it was to intentionally and correctly manage pasture and crop land so they didn’t exhaust the native forage or soil resources that their entire system depended on. Dylan’s masters’ work at the University of Georgia focuses heavily on improving the sustainability of both peanut and cotton production in the southeastern U.S. As he begins his PhD research at Texas Tech, he will be working to develop insect-resistant cotton verities for certified organic production, in a commodity where commercial production is typically dominated by genetically modified crop varieties and heave chemical inputs. |
Amy Coplen, $2,500, Yale
.jpg) “By reviving and protecting sustainable agriculture, we can bolster food security, create a network of vibrant, healthy communities and ensure that our children inherit a thriving planet.”
| As the coordinator of the Public Schools Program for the Yale Sustainable Food Project, Amy works to give children the opportunity to explore the origins of food. Enrolled in the Master of Environmental Management program, Amy studies how to preserve and reinvigorate America’s agrarian roots and to work for sustainable agriculture change. Currently she is developing a radio-documentary project to record interviews between farmers and their close family and friends. She hopes to create a database of knowledge that can be transferred from generation to generation. When finished with her program, Amy hopes to open a vegan and vegetarian restaurant with her husband, using locally sourced, organic and sustainably grown ingredients. |
Renee King, $2,500, University of Wyoming
 “Sustainable agriculture doesn’t just benefit the earth through practices that build soil health or improve plant nutrient content. It also means that those who produce food earn a viable income on which they may live, which in turn stays in the community to support other local businesses.” | Over the past 10 years, Renee has worked in several areas of the agricultural industry. She’s been involved with the Wyoming Farmers’ Marketing Association, working to increase access to local fresh foods and is the “go to” person regarding organic production and processing. For six years she was the Meat & Food Science instructor at Sheridan College where in addition to teaching, she was responsible for operating the college’s meat processing facility under the Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point inspection system. Thus far her background is focused primarily on food science and meat processing. She is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Wyoming, focusing on soil science, which is essential to all aspects of agriculture. Once her program is complete, she hopes to work internationally on organic farming projects and providing women farmers with the tools necessary to enhance their ability to produce food. |
Landon Young, $2,500, Purdue
 “I define ‘sustainable agriculture’ as: agricultural production that is dynamic, proactive, productive, self-replenishing, maintainable, beautiful, resilient and evolving. Sustainable agriculture should be aesthetically pleasing ecological habitats, a complete garden.” | In high school, Landon began a landscape design and construction company to help pay for college, and while in college he worked in research labs. He soon realized a newfound passion for research and sold his construction business to focus entirely on teaching, research and academia. Landon became an Undergraduate Research Assistant in the Lopez Sustainable Horticulture Lab where he researched ways to improve environmental quality in agricultural plant production. The following summer he traveled to Uganda on a service-learning trip to teach personal hygiene, teach English, and build houses and waste removal systems. During his fourth year of school, he co-founded an environmental non-profit where a student-led team of engineers, landscape architects, horticulturists and natural resource planners prepared a Quality Function Deployment matrix to evaluate water purification design in Tanzania. He would like his research for his PhD to include making innovative discoveries that enable other researchers to make more progress in sustainable horticulture and water purification. |
Undergraduate
Joshua Knight, $10,000, University of Kentucky
 “To me sustainable agriculture is the use of ethical land management systems to increase soil fertility, promote social justice and achieve economic sustainability.”
| In 2007, Joshua left a six year career in Information Technology to begin working on an organic farm in Georgia. While he always considered himself an “animal person”, it wasn’t until he read about Joel Salatin’s alternative livestock systems in Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore Dilemma when he was struck with a radical shift in thought: not only was it possible to raise humane animals as an integral beneficial part of the environment, but he could also escape the confinement of spending life tethered to a computer. He spent three growing seasons on farms before returning to school to pursue a degree in Sustainable Agriculture. After completing his degree, Joshua hopes to join the Peace Corp and continue his work in agriculture and food security issues. |
Alissa Martin, $10,000, University of Massachusetts at Amherst
 “Realistically, we will leave a footprint. With billions of people living on this planet, there is no way we could feasibly feed, house and clothe them all without doing so. The challenge is how to do this responsibly and in a way that respects the environment, people and their communities.”
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Veronica Palladino, $10,000, Cornell
 “Sustainable agriculture is a system where farmers have the right to choose what they will grow and how they will grow it. It is a system where agriculturalists, consumers, policy-makers, and researchers consider the means of producing food just as important as the ends.” | A year abroad traveling and working in Argentina, Nicaragua and Guatemala built Veronica’s interest in sustainable agriculture. Although her roots are in agriculture, it has been her time abroad, her coursework, and her interactions with friends that ignited her passion for agriculture. Upon returning home, she enrolled in Cornell as an International Agriculture and Rural Development major. Veronica is member of the honors agriculture fraternity Alpha Zeta, and a member of a cooperative house. Through these organizations, she helps host an Agriculture Day on campus every semester and volunteers at Cornell’s student-run organic farm. Once finished with her degree, Veronica hopes to work and live on a domestic small-scale farm and also work internationally to promote agriculture as a means of improving human livelihoods. |
Marissa Kruthaup, $2,500, University of Kentucky
 “We cannot sustain our bodies in optimum health if we are not applying to the principles of sustainability to the food. The sustainability of the food cannot be accomplished without good stewardship of the land.” | Growing up, Marissa always had a large garden. When she was 10 years old, she and her brother decided to turn it into a business and signed up for a spot at their local farmer’s market. Together they selected the produce they wanted to grow and helped decide where to plant each item. On Friday evenings, they would pick everything that was ready for harvest to sell on Saturday. Two years ago, they added a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) component to their business. The first year they had 58 families and 115 families this past summer. Now at the University of Kentucky studying Sustainable Agriculture, Marissa is focusing on World Food Issues and continues to learn new ways to grow her CSA. |
James Schroepfer, $2,500, South Dakota State University
 “Sustainable agriculture is a method, in tune to nature, of producing quality food for humans that promotes health through good nutrition.” | James grew up on a 60 acre farm, where he helped raise and preserve his family’s own food. Now at South Dakota State University, James is studying Agronomy to learn the basics of plants and soils. Having worked on and visited different farms, James hopes to use his knowledge and experience to help producers everywhere create local, community-supported farms that raise a mixture of animals on pasture and plants in demineralized soils through Holistic Planned Grazing, a method that focuses on renovating the soil without relying on fertilizer of herbicides. This is a new concept that uses animals and their interactions with dirt to bring the soil back to life. James plans to integrate this system on his farm and travel the world teaching others how to replicate it. |
Michelle Wong, $2,500, University of New Hampshire
 “Sustainable agriculture is not just about the end product that is sold and eaten, but concerns the whole process of production.” | With cooking as a new-found hobby, Michelle applied to a local fish market for a summer job. Little did she know that her new dishwashing gig would quickly evolve into a passion for the culture, characters and cuisine of the sea food industry. Her passion for cooking and aquaculture brought her to the Island Creek Oyster Company last summer, where she worked as a farm hand, culling and raising oysters. As a sophomore majoring in Hospitality Management and Ecogastronomy, Michelle plans on combining her two focuses and continue working for Island Creek Oysters on the farm and in their growing aquaculture projects overseas. |
Partnerships
Annie's is excited to support many wonderful organizations helping to make the world's gardens grow. Here are just a few of our partners:
