Seeing Green: Kelly Hoban Green '00

Release date: March 19, 2007 |

Think Globally, Eat Locally: Kelly Hoban Green ‘00
by: Ann E. Kolakowski

A first trip to Europe inspires treasured memories. Some travelers' imaginations are transformed by its breathtaking landscapes. Other visitors come back with vivid impressions of its great works of art. After her initial foray to France, Kelly Hoban Green also returned with completely new perceptions -- of produce.

Green, who majored in international and intercultural studies, studied at the Sorbonne through a Goucher program. Dining in Parisian cafes and at her relatives' home in Strasbourg, however, provided an unexpected gastronomical education.

"I've always liked food and enjoyed eating," she says. "But having access to truly fresh fruits and vegetables made me aware of the food I was eating. When I returned to the U.S., I noticed that I wasn't getting the same quality."

That awareness led to Green's first job, as a research and scientific exchanges management specialist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

One of the highlights was helping to organize a scientific workshop in Islamabad, Pakistan, for U.S. and Pakistani scientists. It was a trip to the American Midwest, however, that opened her eyes to current industrial farming practices. "I grew up in suburbia," she says. "Stepping onto a working farm made me question whether I personally could support such a system."

A colleague told her about the Center for a Livable Future at the Johns Hopkins University, founded in 1996 as the first academic center within a U.S. public health school to focus primarily on food production and its subsequent impact on both the environment and human health. She was hired in 2001 to coordinate center-funded research.

The center's major projects have included research into antibiotic resistance as a result of agricultural use, the health impacts of a more Westernized meat diet in China, and the identification of public health indicators in the Chesapeake Bay.

Partway through her nearly five-year tenure at the center, Green and her husband, Dan, a pharmaceutical sales representative, moved to Crofton, MD. She made the 40-minute commute to Baltimore until early 2006, when she found a new job -- as stay-at-home mother to daughter Kaitlyn.

Green also spends May through October managing one of six farmers' markets for FRESHFARM Markets, a nonprofit organization that promotes the local food movement in the Chesapeake Bay region. Like all FRESHFARM venues, the Silver Spring market Green oversees features only farmers and producers who sell what they personally grow, raise, or make.

"My concern for how food is produced in the United States and how that ultimately affects our environment and our own health is what drives my constant quest for locally produced foods," she says. "I can ask the producers about their practices, and I can feel good about my environmental impact. Now that I have a daughter, I have a vested interest in how my actions will affect her future."

For more information:
Center for a Livable Future
FRESHFARM Markets