Sustainable Food Production

Grace Gray is an "honorary member" of Essex Rotary - and joins us when she can for lunch.  Her current day job involves production of food at the Intervale.  

She is a bit of a celebrity at the District 7850 level, as the District and Essex Rotary (thank you Edith) worked with her to receive a $30,000 plus grant to study and work in Italy beginning in December 2025 and lasting through the end of the year.  Grace will fill us in on her plans and work to promote sustainable agriculture across the globe.  

Here is a description of her project from the District 7850 Newsletter: 

A Global Grant Scholarship was recently approved and awarded to Grace Gray who will be attending the Peace Center at the University of Rome Graduate School.  Grace’s Field of Study is Environmental Food Studies Program.  Her research/thesis will focus on reforming factory farming in collaboration with the global non-profit Compassion in World Farming. 

Grace has experience as a manager at an organic vegetable farm in Vermont.  Her passion in this field is very evident in her commitment to advance ethical and safe environmental farming practices within an unprecedented climate crisis.  We are very proud of what she has already achieved both academically and socially within the communities she has lived.  Grace already has excelled in leadership skills and championed many projects such as: 

• She helped divert 17,000 pounds of food waste by delivering surplus food to local shelters in Virginia 
• She volunteered weekly at free-food giveaways for low-income residents  
• She collaborated in a sovereignty movement with Dakota tribal leaders to revive traditional foodways for the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate in South Dakota.