Hi! I'm Florencia, a Kitchen Activist. I'm also a trained researcher at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy, activist, educator, mother, and Founder/Program Director of the Pesticide Free Soil Project.
My entry into water conservation began shortly after giving birth to my youngest child. I found an article in the Los Angeles Times with tips for saving water during the drought. “Take shorter showers,” the ad read; it inspired my idea to sell shower timers. “You can save 2500 gallons of water in one year if you shorten your long shower by 4 minutes,” I told potential customers. I sold 80,000 shower timers. After I learned we each eat anywhere between 500-1300 gallons of water daily, I knew I was in the wrong room of the house.
The most far-reaching, effective place to save water is to eat less of it.
I live with my husband and three children, in Oxnard, California, an agricultural town on the Pacific coast that smells of celery, strawberries, and fertilizers. The abundant farms drew my family to California from Mexico three generations ago. One set of grandparents followed the crops as migrant farm workers and never left; the other grandparents worked in a sugar beet factory that gave birth to my hometown.
I've been interviewed by NPR, American Public Media, KCRW’s Good Food, New York and Bay Area Pacifica Radio, Entertainment Weekly, CBS, KTLA Morning News, and several popular podcasts. I won the Creative Nonfiction Gift of Freedom Award from A Room of Her Own Foundation and received the Environmental Hero Award from the Santa Barbara Community Environmental Council.
I am working with youth interns and community collaborators to transition schools and parks in and around Oxnard, California, from chemicals to organic landscaping with Compost Tea Parties. Through this nature-based solution, we increase soil health on playgrounds and public landscapes and educate the community on water scarcity and climate change solutions.
My upcoming books are THE KITCHEN ACTIVIST (Red Hen Press, Spring 2026) and Drops of Water, a children’s picture book that teaches the life-sustaining power of a single drop of water and why we must protect it.
There is power in the collective! It is the idea that gives me hope. We can influence food systems to grow and produce our food differently, but only if we merge our influence. Collectively we will rewrite the story of the future of water on this exquisite planet we call home.
Join me in the movement to eat less water NOW.
Be your own revolution,
Florencia
"This is an important book. The world of water is actually complicated and complex, perhaps even more so than food, but Ramirez drips below the surface to help us begin to understand the connection and to expand our consciousness so that we can be ever more mindful and grateful as we live each day."
-LARRY YEE, PRESIDENT, THE FOOD COMMONS
The most far-reaching, effective water-saving strategy is to EAT LESS OF IT. Did you know you eat, on average, between 500-1300 gallons of water each day? This is water embedded in your food, called the water footprint. Water experts predict half the world will not have enough water by 2030; already true for 1 billion people. Future wars are expected to be fought over water, causing death and destruction. The good news is that because 70% of our planet's finite supply of freshwater flows to grow food, you and I can rewrite the water story, and it begins with your next meal.
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