Meet Florencia

MY JOURNEY TO THE KITCHEN AS AN ACTIVIST

The call came a week after Eat Less Water was published. The marketing director at my publishing house had just gotten off the phone with a producer at KTLA Morning News, one of the most-watched news programs in the greater Los Angeles area. They wanted to feature the book the following morning. This would be my first time speaking on live television—a chance to reach hundreds of thousands of people in one of the nation's largest metro regions. No pressure. 

But I knew the material like the back of my hand. The book was the product of seven years of research and traveling 16,000 miles, meeting with farmers across the U.S. who showed me how they grow food with less water and with the best sustainable farming practices.

Early the following day, I found myself in KTLA’s green room with actress Bo Derek. She was there to promote an initiative to stop the illegal poaching of endangered species. 

As I watched her nearing the end of her interview, the producer looked over to me. "You're up," she said. My heart pounded. 

A crew member rolled me in an office chair into the darkened sound stage toward the glowing news desk. The headline on the screen read: Our Water Footprint: Farm, Food, and Plate with Florencia Ramirez of Eat Less Water.

One of the four newscasters began with the question, "What made you want to write this book?" 

At that moment, I realized how far back my story stretched – before the years I spent studying public policy at the University of Chicago, before working on community and state-wide initiatives as a young organizer, and long before selling 80,000 shower timers in my quest to save water with my small water-conservation business. 

The origin story for my first book began with my parents. My father had taken me and my sisters to rallies supporting Cesar Chavez and his fight for farmworkers' rights. My mother showed me the power of education in her bilingual classroom. From them, I learned that we don't have to wait for others to make the change we want to see. Through all these streams of experience, I eventually found myself drawn to a new kind of activism that took root in the kitchen, where small daily actions could ripple outward to create meaningful environmental change.

As the interview continued, I explained how 70 percent of all freshwater around the planet is used to grow food. And told them how if we want to save water, we need to eat less of it. The producer signaled that I'd been given two extra minutes. 

Toward the interview's close, one of the anchors asked, "How can someone watching at home start eating less water?"

My mind raced to all the solutions offered by the farmers I'd learned from. I mentally sifted through the years of experience as an activist and educator. I landed on "Buy organic food" as the quickest response. 

Even as I said it, I knew, while part of the solution, it was too simplistic an answer. I had lost those in the audience who shared my concern for the environment but felt they didn't have a budget for organic food. 
My time was up. I was rolled off the stage, and the final answer dangled in the air, unresolved. The search for resolution was the beginning of Kitchen Activism, the path that led me here—to you.

Dolores Huerta (left), a very young me (middle) and Gloria Steinem (right)

Bo Derek and me in the green room