Meet Katie Stagliano: This 9-year-old South Carolina girl grew a 40-pound cabbage for a school project and inspired 100-plus youth-run gardens

Katie Stagliano was nine years old and in third grade in Summerville, South Carolina, when she brought home a cabbage seedling for a school project in 2008. Most children would have handed it in and moved on. Stagliano kept growing it long after the project ended, and that decision set off a chain of events that would eventually reach 33 states and feed hundreds of thousands of people.

The seedling grew into a 40-pound cabbage, far too large for the Stagliano family to consume on their own. Stagliano and her mother took it to Tri-County Family Ministries, a soup kitchen near their home. The kitchen turned it into a meal that fed 275 people in a single sitting.

Watching that happen, Stagliano told UC Food Observer in a 2016 interview published on PBS SoCal, made her wonder how much a whole garden could feed. That question became the foundation of everything that followed.


What is Katie's Krops?

Weeks after the soup kitchen donation, Stagliano started Katie's Krops, a nonprofit built around a straightforward idea: teach children how to grow their own vegetable gardens and donate everything they produce to soup kitchens and food pantries.

Her school, Pinewood Preparatory School, offered her space to plant the first garden on campus. Her family got involved too. Her mother became president of the organisation. Her brother runs his own Katie's Krops garden.

According to the organisation, the network has since grown to more than 100 youth-run gardens across approximately 33 states, with over half a million pounds of produce donated to people in need.

Why do youth garden programmes matter?

Research published in the Journal of School Health in 2015, led by University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers and titled School Gardens Enhance Academic Performance and Dietary Outcomes in Children, reviewed a dozen school garden programmes across the United States. The study found that most programmes led to children eating more fruit and vegetables, with some also reporting improved science and mathematics scores. The researchers noted the evidence base was still developing but described the overall pattern as encouraging. (Via TOI)

Does youth volunteering have long-term benefits?

A 2017 study published in Social Science Research, titled Long-term consequences of youth volunteering: Voluntary versus involuntary service, tracked thousands of American teenagers into adulthood using a long-running national health survey. It found that teenagers who volunteered were more likely to continue volunteering as adults and reported better psychological wellbeing than those who did not. Both voluntary and mandatory youth service were linked to higher educational attainment and earnings in later life, though the emotional benefits applied specifically to those who volunteered by choice. Katie's Krops, which is run entirely by children who sign up voluntarily, fits that model. (Via TOI)

How bad is food insecurity in the United States?

According to the most recent United States Department of Agriculture report, food insecurity affected 13.7 per cent of American households at some point in 2024, covering approximately 18.3 million households. That is the highest rate recorded in nearly a decade. The report also found that 5.4 per cent of households, around 7.2 million, experienced a more severe form of food insecurity in which eating patterns were disrupted.

Stagliano has spoken about a related gap she identified in the hunger relief system: that many emergency food programmes distribute packaged rather than fresh food, a pattern she has connected to rising obesity rates in food-insecure communities. Katie's Krops was built in part to address that gap by putting fresh produce directly into the hands of people who need it.

Katie Stagliano today

Now in her late twenties, Stagliano continues to lead Katie's Krops. What began as a third-grade science project in a South Carolina backyard is today a structured national nonprofit with youth growers across the country donating fresh vegetables to their local communities.

(With TOI inputs)