Food Security Interactive worksheets at Bergamo Botanical Garden

Bergamo Botanic Garden created different worksheets to engage a range of audiences with food security, enabling them to express themselves and take various challenges. The worksheets are related to the food security topics our garden is focusing on throughout BigPicnic 

The worksheets help to make people aware of some aspects of food security such as plant biodiversity, sustainability, labelling and ecological footprints. These tools have also allowed us to collect data directly from the public; gaining an understanding of their perceptions, their knowledge, their needs and expectations when they think to food security. 

We used the worksheet both in the garden and out of it . How do they work? 

The first one is about food plant biodiversity: “A challenge – How many plants have you eaten in your life?” We invite people to discover and choose from over 300 different common names of plants. People can put a cross close to the plant name, add a plant not shown and count how many plants they have eaten and compare their score with other visitors. The list of plants can be changed and modified according the audiences’ needs. 

The second sheet is about the impact of food on the planet: “Calculate your footprint… at lunch or dinner”. People can figure out their own ecological, water and dioxide carbon footprints of a single meal of the day.  The worksheet includes different columns: 15 different common foods, each with different figures according to the portion size and weight and boxes to calculate the footprints in grams of CO2, in litres of water, m2 of land needed to produce the single food and of the whole meal. People are very surprised to discover how big their impacts are. This helps to increase awareness in ecological footprints.

The last sheet is about labeling and gives the public the chance to share their opinion about what they would like to read on the label for fresh food, drinks and packaged food. This has allowed us to collect data about people’s perceptions of food and their needs when they chose what to buy to eat. 

We found these worksheets simple to use and fit to collect data to help us get to know our audiences better.