Reading about Bed-Stay Campaign Against Hunger was inspirational. I don’t know many people who make such a change in direction during life as did Dr. Melony Samuels, whether gradual or overnight. I wonder if she always had a spark to help people, and the platform of helping just changed, but that is just friendly speculation.

The approach they take, in ensuring dignity and autonomy, is crucial as we’ve understood from the past, and the important work of reaching out to families and individuals to identify needs and opportunities should be the model of any service or technical organization. As they experienced initially, most people did not choose fruits and veggies at first because they did not know how to prepare them. Similarly, they avoid glass containers because some homeless shelters do not allow glass in their premises, thus solving a technical difficulty for some of their members.

My main interest in Dr. Samuels program is her focus on neighborhood efforts and personal development (both education and professional experience). I believe the future of urban food systems relies on this type of collaboration between blocks and neighborhoods, where productive land (soil or pavement or roof) is shared for such purposes.

I also appreciate the integration of livestock in urban environments, and I hope to see aquaponics systems as well. However, the problem with livestock at some cities is limited and limiting zoning and regulations. These usually relate to health concerns and esthetics, and are outdated at times. Luckily, there are movements to change these and I hope to see more animal production in cities. I say this with half a heart as I do belief we need to shift more to a vegetarian / vegan diet in the long run, but if urban agriculture is the solution than a transition period, or permanent, an introduction of hyper local animal products would also benefit if done correctly.

 

Dr. Vandana Shiva, as any holistic thinker and visionary, recognizes the interconnected nature of the reality we are a part of. She doesn’t just recognize it, but as can be understood from her talk, she lives by it. Similar in how Winona LaDuke lives, and aspires her community to do the same. Nabhan, in describing the connection between former diet and land to the transition to fast food also hits home with the analysis of interconnected phenomena. While each one may be said to target different things, they all describe / shed light on important aspects of the connection between science and culture.

Science is usually propagated as the solution for every challenge life has for us, and phrases such as “we just need to be more efficient and the problem will go away” are constantly bombarded in policy discussions, classrooms and the media. The problem with the standard view of science is that it compartmentalizes everything, at least it tries to do so since the scientific revolution while overlooking important connection. And that is the heart of the struggle between science and culture, notably statistics and economics that determine different policy and business outcomes.

In other words, it can be argued that to solve the problems of climate change and the food system we need to (among other things) reevaluate not necessarily the conventional tools we use (statistics and economics) but the assumptions (world views) we hold while using them. As a simple illustration from the world of economics is the assumption that “X would happen if all else remains constant and only Y changes”. The underlying assumption is that it is possible for anything, everything almost, to remain constant. That couldn’t be farther from actuality, as all things are impermanent, and constantly change though in varying speeds, some noticeable immediately or over time, and some not noticeable at all in a given life time. Yet we still think that assumption to be true. In turn, that leads to a misunderstanding of cause and effect, which in turn leads to unfortunate and unpredicted, at least undesired, circumstances.

What some aspects of the week’s material express is the need to reevaluate our assumptions of connections and cause and effect. Hopefully, if achieved holistically, we could more away from lobbyists of any kind, and focus on finding the culturally appropriate scientific designs that will aid regions and communities in their regrowth.

Berry’s reading for this week reminded me of a conversation I had with a great coworker in the office about community and food memories. We were discussing the role of home gardening in everyday life, which was part of a greater conversation about state wide rural and urban planning. Both of us were in favor of home gardening for several reasons, but his main reason was that gardening, and a strong connection to food in its natural environment is key to inspiring people about food and its place in society. I couldn’t agree more.

The question, as in many occasions, is how do we create and promote such access to food inspiration on state wide development policies, both in rural and urban environments. I believe that regional planning that focuses on neighborhoods and small towns (or sections of cities) is the key, and we should avoid investing solely in highly populated urban areas. This would enable regional development of the economy, education, health care and create a stronger local food system. A key benefit would be that it would mitigate urban migration, thus reducing unemployment, overcrowding and the associated effects of these.

Regional planning of this kind still does not provide food inspiration by itself. To address this, there must be an emphasis on community and neighborhood based food and energy projects. Picture this: a city block that has one main community farm (either a typical soil garden or vertical farm), and most of the other buildings also have rooftop gardens that supplement / support the greater production of the block. The majority of the food will be consumed by the neighborhood, and any surplus could be stored/ sold/shared with another neighborhood. Specialty crops, and probably some other variety would still be available at farm stands that deliver from farms outside the city (probably more common in areas with much limited vertical space).

Naturally, the value system of such neighborhoods would be very different from what it is today. To begin with, gardening (and farming), wouldn’t look like a burden or a chore, but as a way of life that everyone contributes to the food system. This in turn would bring the realization of the sense of interconnectedness we have with the social, environmental and economic spheres of our lives, and cultivate mutual responsibility. A necessary outcome of such an approach is also, in my opinion, a change to our diets and menu – we will mainly eat much more vegetables and much less meat. To begin with, in order to support more vegetable and fruits demand the out-of-city farmers would transition away from corn (that feeds cattle mostly) and soy in order to grow fruits and vegetables. This would also greatly reduce the environmental impacts of agriculture but that is a different conversation. To inspire in the way that our conversation begun, and as my coworker said recounting his childhood memories from wild berries, we have to focus on sparking the imagination of food in order for this to happen.

 

I appreciated reading this week’s material as it heavily discussed topics of government involvement and focused on the disparities of the racism, colonialism, neocolonialism and neoliberalism. I do not mean to undermine Holt-Gimenez’s article, in the sense that I agree with him that to rebuild the public sphere we must address racism in the food system, but I think that another important mission is necessary – the uprooting of the terms race and racism. By this I do mean that discrimination and exploitation of others does not occur. What I am referring to is that the term race, when applied to people, is a product of a philosophy and “science” that believed that people of different ethnic/geographic origin belong to different races of people. Such a mentality tended to categorize race by color of skin, continent of origin and examples we are all familiar with.

However, scientists today know that all current people on the plant belong to the same race, and that is Homo-sapiens-sapiens. Thus, scholars know that country or origin or skin color make no difference on our “race”. Despite this knowledge, government (and politics), schools and universities, and markets still perpetuate the idea that people have different races. Even the IRS asks you to mark your race. That’s absurd.

Now, I do not mean to say that if we remove “race and racism” from our dictionaries than all social problems will be solved. Rather, that if we adequately educate, from kindergarten to higher education that we are all the same people, and that we must look past exterior differences and focus on our shared compassion and responsibility we could adequately address social issues.

I whole heartedly believe that alongside food justice campaigns, we have to have educational campaigns that address our misconceptions of societies. Otherwise, while we might be focusing a new system on “racial” considerations, we will still be perpetuating the ideas of different races. Again, I am not saying that racism, in the conventional use of the term does not exist, only that we can work at things simultaneously and make a just food system and a just and compassionate society.

Pollan articulates to great length the dilemma faced by omnivores. However, as he concludes with Wendell Berry’s “eating is an agricultural act”, eating is an ecological and political act as well. Thus, making it more complicated, the omnivores has several dilemmas to tackle: what’s good to eat, what’s good for the environment, and what sort of politics does one follow or endorse.

To be specific, by ‘good’ I mostly mean healthy: healthy for the body (nutritious food) , and healthy for the environment (minimal pollution, preserving biodiversity, etc.). The first dilemmas was thoroughly covered by Pollan. It should be understood that all three dilemmas are interconnected, though each might have different reasoning mechanisms. The second dilemma concerns the impact of our food system and food choices. For some people, this might include local consideration, such as “that farm is polluting lake Champlain so we won’t by dairy/produce from them”. other considerations may include regional, national or international circumstances: I won’t buy soybeans grown in the Amazon due to deforestation.

The third dilemma is perhaps the more challenging to consider; at least it is the one that I think we least challenge – what kind of government do we have, and ought we have? This relates to conversations we had in the past, but it centers around what type of relationships different people see between individuals, communities and government. Do we want a government that promotes individual rights at all costs, even when that endangers the  existence of the planet? or do we want a government that protects the balance of the world ecosystems and the expense of certain rights being less protected (the latter refers to changing how private property is viewed, and whether or not people have any claims over natural resources.) There is a spectrum of possibilities for different societal-government relations – but the truth is that we rarely intellectually challenge the system, and we accept things as they are. The dilemma here is do we change the political system or not? how to change and what to? different people will provide different answers.

To conclude, I enjoyed reading this chapter but believe that the conversations of dilemmas can be further extended to the  society and culture. That might lend more insight into what our system needs to be, and how to change our system to get there.